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Amusing you seem to have some idea of consequences of politics movements - however, so-called conservatives (and libertarians), by unseating government power (w
by r00fus 5y ago
Amusing you seem to have some idea of consequences of politics movements - however, so-called conservatives (and libertarians), by unseating government power (which is the only organization large enough to challenge corporate power) leaves a power vacuum for wealthy/corporations to usurp that power.
So anti-government-reguluation leads to a different flavor of fascism by corporate elites (all owned by the very wealthy).
- sreque 5y agoI'm glad you find me amusing, but I actually agree with you that the concept of power decentralization needs to be applied to corporations as well. I definitely don't claim to have the answers to how to accomplish this, nor did I think the U.S. founders would ever imagine the power that corporations would eventually wield.
- r00fus 5y agoWell, perhaps your considerations should take that into account. Many (not all - there are some authoritarian ones) leftists are about seeing the threat to any centralized power. As the saying goes, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely". Currently, the USA in an oligarchy and that power is actually vested in corporations who essentially control the government because they've infested all the regulation agencies. The best way to fight that is with protests, strikes (there are dozens going on right now - tens of thousands at picket lines) and transparency (FOIAs and investigations to see where corporations control the government and vice-versa). If the founders never understood the power of the uber-corporation, then they must've been blind. Dutch East India Company was a complete powerhouse in that era that controlled many countries.
- wrycoder 5y agoIt's great that there's a lot of activism. But leftists vote Democratic (to the extent they vote for one of the two major parties), and I don't see the Democratic party doing anything whatever to rein in either big government or big business. In fact, these days the Democratic party is the party of big government and the Fortune 500, as is surely obvious. Lots of activity, but little action forthcoming, I'm afraid.
- wrycoder 5y agoSomehow, I don't think that the best solution is to promote a governmental and economic structure where a massive central government spends much of its energy battling massive corporations, while they both collaborate to surveil, regulate, and control the citizens.
- r00fus 5y agoSure, just let the corporations win. Lots of them already get 0% effective tax rate, some get billions in subsidies. But they will always want more.
- wrycoder 5y agoBig corporations lobby big government to get big subsidies. I'm for small, local government and small business. And to get all the corporate money out of politics. But the trend is always to go big, if the law allows. It seems to be very difficult to reverse that trend.