"There is not a way to successfully run a workforce that has the same position split between union and non-union employees. The union employees have a contract that states what they get paid, how much their pay increases, and how promotions and seniority are decided."
This is what's wrong. AFAIK there is nothing like this in the UK. Unions campaign for more money (sometimes even when it's harmful to the company, yes) and protect workers rights (dismissed because of a feud with the boss, they're where you'll get support. bad working conditions and the company won't fix 'em? Union has your back). But to have those restrictions in contracts based on union membership is not something I've heard of here.
Wait, aren't these EXACTLY the sorts of things that we Europeans with our socialised healthcare are warned about?
When the government controls healthcare they decide access! They'll decide you can't do things, they'll tax stuff, they'll restrict your behaviour based on health grounds because they don't want to support/pay for the consequences!
And now it looks like you're getting those laws anyway without the benefits...
OK, from this and all the other responses here it is clear that in the US the unions have turned into some sort of crazy monster.
Over here in the UK they certainly do fight to keep jobs, but not to that crazy extent. I think we in the UK benefited a lot from the 80s when Margaret thatcher completely broke the power of the unions.
Yes, now some lefty Brit will moan at me about how she ruined the industrial capabilities of the country and screwed over the working man, but the working man is far better off now.
We don't really have the concept of "union shops" AFAICT, it's up to the worker to join or not, not forced upon the employer to only employ union staff. And they certainly don't have the power to force the kind of over-employment you describe.
"Unlike Europeans, we don't tend to view capital as uniquely exploitative."
Eh? Not sure I get what you're driving at there.
If anything, many of us realize that a lot of workers will exploit their employers to demand pay and benefits well beyond what their productivity is worth.
Couldn't agree more, this is a huge problem here in the UK with state employed workers that seem to think that they are entitled to an above-inflationary pay rise every year regardless of individual merit (or lack thereof). They strike frequently in order to force more money out of the public purse. We in the UK are growing tired of this as they already have better benefits than most of the private sector that supports them and the government keeps inventing new reasons to swell their ranks.
We also tend to find it offensive when we are forced to join organizations against our will or interests. Why should a worker have to join a union to work at a particular company?
I don't think they have the same sort of power over here in the UK.
Perhaps in the US the unions have gone too far, we don't have that legal requirement to "do business with them", nor does anyone have to join. In the UK you join if you want to, the only legal concession being that employers shouldn't discriminate against you if you are a member of a union.
I take it the situation went too far in the union's favour at saome point in the last 50/60 years?
"I don't find unions offensive, but I am arrogant enough to believe that tying myself to Jim-Bob is going to weaken my negotiating position, not strengthen it, so I don't like it when people start talking about unions as a panacea."
Oh, absolutely agreed, I'm not a member of a union myself, don't see the advantage to me personally. I just don't like it when people start saying they're useless/abusive/evil, as they've done good in the past and continue to help people. Usually people in low paid and less skilled jobs, who need help more than me and my software engineer buddies.
Funny how Unions are also the reason that we have safe working conditions and a reasonable minimum wage in the UK.
I'm not denying that unionisation can bring downsides - strikes, unreasonable pay demands, political grandstanding etc - but without it we wouldn't have a lot of the benefits of collective bargaining that we have now.
I also find it odd that so many americans find the very idea (of workers gathering together to form a stronger position for bargaining with employers) somehow offensive. It seems in the US that the party with more power (the employer) should be allowed to tread all over the weaker individuals in society (employees) because every last one of you is going to be that guy next.
You aren't. You're turkeys voting for christmas. Just to bring a seasonal theme in:)
I fancied the 109 as it doesn't have a fan and it's small.
The slug just about runs torrentflux-b4rt and ushare successfully, but I wouldn't want to try anything more. That's why I have the second one for web/mail/ssh.
Actually there are a bunch of accounts available in the UK that work just like that. Effectively you have a mortgage/current/savings account which is at a large negative balance. You are charged a mortgage style (i.e. fairly low) rate of interest on the actual balance, on a daily basis, so your mortgage interest is offset by what you keep in there.
Presumably there's some sort of credit limit that ticks upward toward 0 over time.
Great little debian server, really bad performance as a NAS. Even with Debian on there.
I like the idea of the QNAP Turbo stations - effectively a modernised NSLU2 with 256 MB of RAM and a 500MHz chip, but then I want another server rather than an actual NAS...
Re:Does it always produce true responses?
on
Torture in Games
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Some people only understand the utilitarian aspect.
Some folks would gladly have the government torture a "goddamn terr'st" because they are not people. And of course these same folks are usually more than happy with the idea of suspending due process because they're "terr'sts".
This seems to come about due to a mix of racism, fear, faith in the government, a desire for some sort of revenge and a genuine lack of understanding of modern justice systems. What's more disturbing is that a lot of folk are willing to put up with a few innocent individuals being imprisoned, tortured and killed (in good faith, of course!) if it the government says it's doing it to keep them safe.
The worst aspect of this (for me) is that I occasionally hear these opinions espoused by my own mother. Then I feel compelled to remind her that since Dad married an Iranian woman, that wrongly accused suspect could be me next.
"Or he'd do what he needed to do in order to survive because there'd be no one around to ask for a handout. I suppose you think it's impossible for people to hunt for food, make clothes from animal skins, and build their own shelters?"
Perfectly possible. Enjoy your life expectancy of 30.
"And then if there's other people around, you can trade for other stuff you might need."
Oh yes, true, but what's to stop those people banding together and taking what he's hunted/made? What's to stop them selling him poison as food?
"As taxes go down, charitable contributions go up"
History does not point to this outcome. History points to misery and poverty.
"As taxes go down, people are better able to afford private schools which give a far better education than the public school system."
Again, historically, this is not the case, poor families get stuck in a cycle of little education and no earning potential. Crime and social dissatisfaction arise.
So by allowing people to keep the money they've made, they're more likely to help their fellow man when he's "down on his luck" and better able to educate their own children.
Wrong. FAIL.
Everything does not flow from the government."
Of course it doesn't, but without a form of government we'd not be anywhere near where we are today. We'd have war lords and private armies, robber barons and mafia organisations that make everything we currently have seem amateur.
"Yes and as the group advances, without a damn central government, so would the individual."
What's a tribal leader or a group council if not a government? Your concept of what a government is (something thrust upon an unwilling population) amuses me.
"The governments one job is to enforce the laws of the land and provide national security."
That's your opinion, it's not shared by very many people.
"If you want anything else, please find another country to live in."
Where are you proposing I move from? I'm already not living in the US. BTW, the US is not going to buy into your crap either.
"Actually, if we were totally alone with no people, we could work the land we wanted, hunt what we wanted, and maintain ourselves, with no other responsibilities or consequences.. Nobody would starve in that situation. Quit trying to spread that fallacy."
If you could hunt you wouldn't starve. Humans tend to hunt in groups though. Also, totally alone, you wouldn't have the benefit of modern medicine, you wouldn't have cars or guns, you'd have a life expectancy somewhere about 30....
"I fail to see how giving away money to people whose very existence raises the cost of living for everyone, and contribute NOTHING back to society, can be considered "contributing back" to said society."
Well, there are two ways to look at this. One is to be a humane individual and decide that paying taxes is better than having people literally starve to death around you, as well as the fact that not only well-off people give birth to Einsteins, so providing sustenance and education to people's kids does help. In your libertarian utopia you'd have families forced to send children to work and with no money to educate them.
The other is to look at it as a way of keeping down crime and ultimately revolution.
"And don't even get me started on the people who purposely stay below the poverty line to avoid having to work for a living. If you don't think they exist, come to Michigan sometime"
Of course they exist, and of course I recognise the difference between the genuinely needy and the abusive scum. I'm not just some bleeding heart "you've got money you pay for everyone!" moron.
I'm talking about the recipe for a practical and decent society, the recipe that every democratic state is currently pursuing. They're pursuing it badly, and there is far too much bloat/pork. But libertarianism is far too far the other way.
I don't respect your right to hang on to every penny you "earn" when others are starving around you. And I'm in the majority here.
I still have yet to hear how libertarian states will deal with the question of poverty, other than by ignoring them, letting them rot and starve and all the while assuming that "It won't be me! It won't be anyone I know!". The American Dream taken to its logical conclusion. Don't tax the rich for the benefit of others! Don't regulate companies to stop them fucking everyone and everything around them! It'll be me next! Soon it'll be my turn to step on everyone else!.
"But not giving away your money to poor people is stealing? Your logic is so circular I could play baseball with it."
1. Please point out where I said "not giving money to poor people is stealing". I said that a society which stands by whilst the poor starve, because it respects property rights above human lives, is not a moral society. Your morals seem to point you in the other direction.
2. If logic dictates that you should stand by and watch people starve rather than pay taxes and help those less fortunate, then fuck you and your logic.
"But that's not what you've been arguing. You've been claiming all along that we should be giving handouts to people who haven't been providing a benefit to society."
No, I have been saying that you must contribute back to the society without which you would not be making that money, and that it is our, collective, choice what to do with it.
"What benefit are the poor providing that we should be paying them for?"
They are not ganging together in great numbers to overthrow you, steal your stuff and kill your family.
Also, I don't think it's a given that I would have starved by now. I suppose it's possible, but you haven't really provided any evidence as to why you're so certain of it.
Starved? Maybe you're the hunting type, but you sure as crap wouldn't have a car, roads, a variety of foods or most of your possessions and wealth. You wouldn't even have language.
"Try to grasp the difference between the rule of law, and the government intervening to reward some people at other people's expense."
I know the difference. I also know that the latter is not an absolute consideration. You object to your taxes going to schools, healthcare, food/shelter for the poor etc. etc.
I object to the idea of a society without these things being funded collectively, through taxation, because YOU directly benefit from the society around you having these things, whether you use them yourself or not.
Are we not discussing government bailouts of massive corps here? How about governments of the world overlooking lawbreaking because of the money these guys bring in?
"WTF? That's very nearly the stupidest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. Let's pretend I build a website and charge $1000. I have in my hand 10 hundred dollar bills. Then April 15th rolls around and I have to send 4 of those hundred dollar bills in for taxes. Now I only have 6 hundred dollar bills. How in the world do you not consider that taking my possessions?"
That's you paying your fee for operating in our society. Not "taking your possessions". There is a difference. Grow up.
Do I think everything government does is good? Hell no. But your "what's mine is mine and nobody can take it from me!" attitude is immature and doesn't take into account that if you were alone in an undeveloped land you'd probably have starved by now. You have benefited greatly from our collective actions (government) and are required to give some back.
"Guess again. Prosperity correlates directly to the amount of freedom we have."
Are you going to back up these assertions or are you going to just re-state these fallacies over and over again?
Without regulation people are free to abuse others however the hell they feel like. We already see things like this in countries without environmental regulation - Coca-Cola polluting water supplies for entire towns, Nike using child labour.
Unless you think these are somehow good things then your system is bollocks. The truth of the situation is that this is the best and quickest way to make a profit, but the few benefit, not the society as a whole.
Look at the industrial revolution - industrialists getting insanely rich whilst their workers died in mines and mills. I don't want to go there again, thanks, we have fought damn hard to get workers rights, environmental controls etc. Getting rid of them is retrogressive idiocy.
"Freedom" is a nice word. Absolute freedom is a lie.
"Nobody abuses the weak more than governments, and government is the ultimate monopoly."
Please demonstrate how modern governments abuse the weak in comparison to the relatively unregulated earlier times that allowed slavery, indentured servitude and mass starvation. Extra points for explaining why situations like occur in Somalia and other places with a power vacuum could never happen in the west.
Face it, the powerful have abused the weak throughout history. Democratic governments mitigate that.
The more power you cede to government (to save you from the scary rich people!) the less freedom you will have.
the rich are not scary. But they are human like anyone else, and history has shown us that humans are short-sighted and (as a group) sociopathic.
Not only are your points above utter bullshit, but you neglect to consider that without government supplied education the country becomes stupid. If you allow corporations to provide education then they will do it for their own advantage and in order to gain more power and profit. Without government restrictions on pollution then manufacturers are free to poison water supplies.
There are many more, I shan't list them all. Needless to say, libertarianism necessarily results in extreme poverty and deprivation, and unregulated abuse. At least in a capitalist democracy there are safeguards.
BTW, I love how you think government is forced upon us but that corporations are "just groups of people". That's class-A comedy. Government is all of us, deciding how our society should be run. The current systems are far from perfect, but they're nothing compared to the abuses that would happen in a libertarian society.
Slashdot Mirror
"There is not a way to successfully run a workforce that has the same position split between union and non-union employees. The union employees have a contract that states what they get paid, how much their pay increases, and how promotions and seniority are decided."
This is what's wrong. AFAIK there is nothing like this in the UK. Unions campaign for more money (sometimes even when it's harmful to the company, yes) and protect workers rights (dismissed because of a feud with the boss, they're where you'll get support. bad working conditions and the company won't fix 'em? Union has your back). But to have those restrictions in contracts based on union membership is not something I've heard of here.
Wait, aren't these EXACTLY the sorts of things that we Europeans with our socialised healthcare are warned about?
When the government controls healthcare they decide access! They'll decide you can't do things, they'll tax stuff, they'll restrict your behaviour based on health grounds because they don't want to support/pay for the consequences!
And now it looks like you're getting those laws anyway without the benefits...
Sucks to be you!
OK, from this and all the other responses here it is clear that in the US the unions have turned into some sort of crazy monster.
Over here in the UK they certainly do fight to keep jobs, but not to that crazy extent. I think we in the UK benefited a lot from the 80s when Margaret thatcher completely broke the power of the unions.
Yes, now some lefty Brit will moan at me about how she ruined the industrial capabilities of the country and screwed over the working man, but the working man is far better off now.
We don't really have the concept of "union shops" AFAICT, it's up to the worker to join or not, not forced upon the employer to only employ union staff. And they certainly don't have the power to force the kind of over-employment you describe.
"Unlike Europeans, we don't tend to view capital as uniquely exploitative."
Eh? Not sure I get what you're driving at there.
If anything, many of us realize that a lot of workers will exploit their employers to demand pay and benefits well beyond what their productivity is worth.
Couldn't agree more, this is a huge problem here in the UK with state employed workers that seem to think that they are entitled to an above-inflationary pay rise every year regardless of individual merit (or lack thereof). They strike frequently in order to force more money out of the public purse. We in the UK are growing tired of this as they already have better benefits than most of the private sector that supports them and the government keeps inventing new reasons to swell their ranks.
We also tend to find it offensive when we are forced to join organizations against our will or interests. Why should a worker have to join a union to work at a particular company?
I don't think they have the same sort of power over here in the UK.
Perhaps in the US the unions have gone too far, we don't have that legal requirement to "do business with them", nor does anyone have to join. In the UK you join if you want to, the only legal concession being that employers shouldn't discriminate against you if you are a member of a union.
I take it the situation went too far in the union's favour at saome point in the last 50/60 years?
"I don't find unions offensive, but I am arrogant enough to believe that tying myself to Jim-Bob is going to weaken my negotiating position, not strengthen it, so I don't like it when people start talking about unions as a panacea."
Oh, absolutely agreed, I'm not a member of a union myself, don't see the advantage to me personally. I just don't like it when people start saying they're useless/abusive/evil, as they've done good in the past and continue to help people. Usually people in low paid and less skilled jobs, who need help more than me and my software engineer buddies.
Funny how Unions are also the reason that we have safe working conditions and a reasonable minimum wage in the UK.
I'm not denying that unionisation can bring downsides - strikes, unreasonable pay demands, political grandstanding etc - but without it we wouldn't have a lot of the benefits of collective bargaining that we have now.
I also find it odd that so many americans find the very idea (of workers gathering together to form a stronger position for bargaining with employers) somehow offensive. It seems in the US that the party with more power (the employer) should be allowed to tread all over the weaker individuals in society (employees) because every last one of you is going to be that guy next.
You aren't. You're turkeys voting for christmas. Just to bring a seasonal theme in :)
"Next time I'll buy a nice faeces-colored Zune and I'll be squirting with the jetset!"
You, sir, disgust me.
Back OT, personally I prefer archos players because they don't insist on iTunes.
I fancied the 109 as it doesn't have a fan and it's small.
The slug just about runs torrentflux-b4rt and ushare successfully, but I wouldn't want to try anything more. That's why I have the second one for web/mail/ssh.
Actually there are a bunch of accounts available in the UK that work just like that. Effectively you have a mortgage/current/savings account which is at a large negative balance. You are charged a mortgage style (i.e. fairly low) rate of interest on the actual balance, on a daily basis, so your mortgage interest is offset by what you keep in there.
Presumably there's some sort of credit limit that ticks upward toward 0 over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_account
Great little debian server, really bad performance as a NAS. Even with Debian on there.
I like the idea of the QNAP Turbo stations - effectively a modernised NSLU2 with 256 MB of RAM and a 500MHz chip, but then I want another server rather than an actual NAS...
Some people only understand the utilitarian aspect.
Some folks would gladly have the government torture a "goddamn terr'st" because they are not people. And of course these same folks are usually more than happy with the idea of suspending due process because they're "terr'sts".
This seems to come about due to a mix of racism, fear, faith in the government, a desire for some sort of revenge and a genuine lack of understanding of modern justice systems. What's more disturbing is that a lot of folk are willing to put up with a few innocent individuals being imprisoned, tortured and killed (in good faith, of course!) if it the government says it's doing it to keep them safe.
The worst aspect of this (for me) is that I occasionally hear these opinions espoused by my own mother. Then I feel compelled to remind her that since Dad married an Iranian woman, that wrongly accused suspect could be me next.
Flippant though you may be, I can only see two outcomes for this -
1. Advertisers realise exactly how much they have trained people to ignore everything around them, no matter how bright or annoying.
2. Advertisements quickly become even more completely based around naked female flesh, because that's the only way they get any attention at all.
"Or he'd do what he needed to do in order to survive because there'd be no one around to ask for a handout. I suppose you think it's impossible for people to hunt for food, make clothes from animal skins, and build their own shelters?"
Perfectly possible. Enjoy your life expectancy of 30.
"And then if there's other people around, you can trade for other stuff you might need."
Oh yes, true, but what's to stop those people banding together and taking what he's hunted/made?
What's to stop them selling him poison as food?
Government and regulation are useful.
"As taxes go down, charitable contributions go up"
History does not point to this outcome. History points to misery and poverty.
"As taxes go down, people are better able to afford private schools which give a far better education than the public school system."
Again, historically, this is not the case, poor families get stuck in a cycle of little education and no earning potential. Crime and social dissatisfaction arise.
So by allowing people to keep the money they've made, they're more likely to help their fellow man when he's "down on his luck" and better able to educate their own children.
Wrong. FAIL.
Everything does not flow from the government."
Of course it doesn't, but without a form of government we'd not be anywhere near where we are today. We'd have war lords and private armies, robber barons and mafia organisations that make everything we currently have seem amateur.
"Yes and as the group advances, without a damn central government, so would the individual."
What's a tribal leader or a group council if not a government? Your concept of what a government is (something thrust upon an unwilling population) amuses me.
"The governments one job is to enforce the laws of the land and provide national security."
That's your opinion, it's not shared by very many people.
"If you want anything else, please find another country to live in."
Where are you proposing I move from? I'm already not living in the US. BTW, the US is not going to buy into your crap either.
"Actually, if we were totally alone with no people, we could work the land we wanted, hunt what we wanted, and maintain ourselves, with no other responsibilities or consequences.. Nobody would starve in that situation. Quit trying to spread that fallacy."
If you could hunt you wouldn't starve. Humans tend to hunt in groups though. Also, totally alone, you wouldn't have the benefit of modern medicine, you wouldn't have cars or guns, you'd have a life expectancy somewhere about 30....
Good luck with that.
"I fail to see how giving away money to people whose very existence raises the cost of living for everyone, and contribute NOTHING back to society, can be considered "contributing back" to said society."
Well, there are two ways to look at this. One is to be a humane individual and decide that paying taxes is better than having people literally starve to death around you, as well as the fact that not only well-off people give birth to Einsteins, so providing sustenance and education to people's kids does help. In your libertarian utopia you'd have families forced to send children to work and with no money to educate them.
The other is to look at it as a way of keeping down crime and ultimately revolution.
"And don't even get me started on the people who purposely stay below the poverty line to avoid having to work for a living. If you don't think they exist, come to Michigan sometime"
Of course they exist, and of course I recognise the difference between the genuinely needy and the abusive scum. I'm not just some bleeding heart "you've got money you pay for everyone!" moron.
I'm talking about the recipe for a practical and decent society, the recipe that every democratic state is currently pursuing. They're pursuing it badly, and there is far too much bloat/pork. But libertarianism is far too far the other way.
I don't respect your right to hang on to every penny you "earn" when others are starving around you. And I'm in the majority here.
I still have yet to hear how libertarian states will deal with the question of poverty, other than by ignoring them, letting them rot and starve and all the while assuming that "It won't be me! It won't be anyone I know!". The American Dream taken to its logical conclusion. Don't tax the rich for the benefit of others! Don't regulate companies to stop them fucking everyone and everything around them! It'll be me next! Soon it'll be my turn to step on everyone else!.
It's a lie.
"But not giving away your money to poor people is stealing? Your logic is so circular I could play baseball with it."
1. Please point out where I said "not giving money to poor people is stealing". I said that a society which stands by whilst the poor starve, because it respects property rights above human lives, is not a moral society. Your morals seem to point you in the other direction.
2. If logic dictates that you should stand by and watch people starve rather than pay taxes and help those less fortunate, then fuck you and your logic.
"I'm not seeing the difference"
Then you're an idiot.
"But that's not what you've been arguing. You've been claiming all along that we should be giving handouts to people who haven't been providing a benefit to society."
No, I have been saying that you must contribute back to the society without which you would not be making that money, and that it is our, collective, choice what to do with it.
"What benefit are the poor providing that we should be paying them for?"
They are not ganging together in great numbers to overthrow you, steal your stuff and kill your family.
Also, I don't think it's a given that I would have starved by now. I suppose it's possible, but you haven't really provided any evidence as to why you're so certain of it.
Starved? Maybe you're the hunting type, but you sure as crap wouldn't have a car, roads, a variety of foods or most of your possessions and wealth. You wouldn't even have language.
"Try to grasp the difference between the rule of law, and the government intervening to reward some people at other people's expense."
I know the difference. I also know that the latter is not an absolute consideration. You object to your taxes going to schools, healthcare, food/shelter for the poor etc. etc.
I object to the idea of a society without these things being funded collectively, through taxation, because YOU directly benefit from the society around you having these things, whether you use them yourself or not.
"Taxing anyone for any purpose other than performing the powers delegated to the government by the constitution of that government is wrong."
So now absolute morality is enshrined in the constitution? I wasn't aware of that. Was it handed down by god himself?
How very American.
I wish.
By that I meant "only in America" are there people both dumb and selfish enough to seriously propose this stuff.
What extra rights rights would those be?
Are we not discussing government bailouts of massive corps here? How about governments of the world overlooking lawbreaking because of the money these guys bring in?
"WTF? That's very nearly the stupidest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. Let's pretend I build a website and charge $1000. I have in my hand 10 hundred dollar bills. Then April 15th rolls around and I have to send 4 of those hundred dollar bills in for taxes. Now I only have 6 hundred dollar bills. How in the world do you not consider that taking my possessions?"
That's you paying your fee for operating in our society. Not "taking your possessions". There is a difference. Grow up.
Do I think everything government does is good? Hell no. But your "what's mine is mine and nobody can take it from me!" attitude is immature and doesn't take into account that if you were alone in an undeveloped land you'd probably have starved by now. You have benefited greatly from our collective actions (government) and are required to give some back.
"Guess again. Prosperity correlates directly to the amount of freedom we have."
Are you going to back up these assertions or are you going to just re-state these fallacies over and over again?
Without regulation people are free to abuse others however the hell they feel like. We already see things like this in countries without environmental regulation - Coca-Cola polluting water supplies for entire towns, Nike using child labour.
Unless you think these are somehow good things then your system is bollocks. The truth of the situation is that this is the best and quickest way to make a profit, but the few benefit, not the society as a whole.
Look at the industrial revolution - industrialists getting insanely rich whilst their workers died in mines and mills. I don't want to go there again, thanks, we have fought damn hard to get workers rights, environmental controls etc. Getting rid of them is retrogressive idiocy.
"Freedom" is a nice word. Absolute freedom is a lie.
"Nobody abuses the weak more than governments, and government is the ultimate monopoly."
Please demonstrate how modern governments abuse the weak in comparison to the relatively unregulated earlier times that allowed slavery, indentured servitude and mass starvation. Extra points for explaining why situations like occur in Somalia and other places with a power vacuum could never happen in the west.
Face it, the powerful have abused the weak throughout history. Democratic governments mitigate that.
The more power you cede to government (to save you from the scary rich people!) the less freedom you will have.
the rich are not scary. But they are human like anyone else, and history has shown us that humans are short-sighted and (as a group) sociopathic.
Not only are your points above utter bullshit, but you neglect to consider that without government supplied education the country becomes stupid. If you allow corporations to provide education then they will do it for their own advantage and in order to gain more power and profit. Without government restrictions on pollution then manufacturers are free to poison water supplies.
There are many more, I shan't list them all. Needless to say, libertarianism necessarily results in extreme poverty and deprivation, and unregulated abuse. At least in a capitalist democracy there are safeguards.
BTW, I love how you think government is forced upon us but that corporations are "just groups of people". That's class-A comedy. Government is all of us, deciding how our society should be run. The current systems are far from perfect, but they're nothing compared to the abuses that would happen in a libertarian society.