4 ms·

US has a market for regulation: lobbying is legal and elections are funded by donors. So I'd say problems caused by the regulation are pure capitalism: it's jus

by pornel 9y ago

US has a market for regulation: lobbying is legal and elections are funded by donors. So I'd say problems caused by the regulation are pure capitalism: it's just a new, more cost-efficient way of beating the competition.

indubitable 9y ago
It's not really new. Lobbying the government, or whatever group has the monopoly on 'enforcement', to benefit private interests goes back to the beginning of civilization. The interesting thing is that this is one of the most ideologically divisive issues when framed as it typically is, yet really I think it's something most people could really agree on. People pursuing a "small government" certainly have little love for corporations, but the idea is that when the power and breadth of government is strictly limited then their role as a corrupting force, which is certainly by far the most efficient way of beating the competition, is minimized. Going the other direction you can have a big government with extensive powers that tries to force fair play through extensive regulation, as ours does. But this has been tried over and over again, and it invariably trends towards corruption. I think that particularly in a democracy, this outcome is going to be quite difficult to avoid. It seems that these basic facts should be the starting point of discussion, as opposed to the point where people have long since splintered off and polarized themselves towards opposite extremes.
valuearb 9y ago
It might be capitalism in that trade and industry are controlled by private entities (that's still debatable because in the US nearly 30% of GDP is controlled by government entities, and most of rest is tightly regulated). But it ain't "free enterprise" whenever regulation limits consumer choice and market entry by competitive participants.

4 ms·

US has a market for regulation: lobbying is legal and elections are funded by donors. So I'd say problems caused by the regulation are pure capitalism: it's jus

by pornel 9y ago

indubitable 9y ago
It's not really new. Lobbying the government, or whatever group has the monopoly on 'enforcement', to benefit private interests goes back to the beginning of civilization. The interesting thing is that this is one of the most ideologically divisive issues when framed as it typically is, yet really I think it's something most people could really agree on. People pursuing a "small government" certainly have little love for corporations, but the idea is that when the power and breadth of government is strictly limited then their role as a corrupting force, which is certainly by far the most efficient way of beating the competition, is minimized. Going the other direction you can have a big government with extensive powers that tries to force fair play through extensive regulation, as ours does. But this has been tried over and over again, and it invariably trends towards corruption. I think that particularly in a democracy, this outcome is going to be quite difficult to avoid. It seems that these basic facts should be the starting point of discussion, as opposed to the point where people have long since splintered off and polarized themselves towards opposite extremes.
valuearb 9y ago
It might be capitalism in that trade and industry are controlled by private entities (that's still debatable because in the US nearly 30% of GDP is controlled by government entities, and most of rest is tightly regulated). But it ain't "free enterprise" whenever regulation limits consumer choice and market entry by competitive participants.