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Mixing business with government is government. It takes the power from the customer and puts it into the hands of regulators.

• scarmig 12y ago
  Mixing government with business is business. It takes power from the citizen and puts it into the hands of capital. This is not a disagreement with you, by the way. But just as Rawlsian liberals can't postulate a government that's immune to corruption into existence, libertarians and market fundamentalists can't postulate businesses that don't co-opt government to entrench their market positions.
  • sseveran 12y ago
    The ability for a business to use the government to its own ends its directly proportional to the size and power of the government. One of the best examples I can think of is Gazprom. While technically a private company its really just an extension of Vladimir Putin's government. In the US you find the similar arrangements in the defense and intelligence sectors. The less powerful the government, the less power there is to be had by co-opting it.
    • ThomPete 12y ago
      But you are in that assuming that private enterprise wouldn't be able to establish a monopoly via the market, a monopoly that wasn't necessarily established via "fair game". The less powerful ANY organization the less power. It's not exclusive to governments.
      • eglover 12y ago
        Natural monopolies are near impossible, and have never harmed anyone. I've only heard of 2 in all of U.S. history. I don't remember which they were, but they didn't last long and they were entirely insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
        • ThomPete 12y ago
          Natural monopolies are indeed possible and they are indeed of course harming people. DeBeers being just one example of that.
          • eglover 12y ago
            DeBeers only has a 40% market share, bad publicity is a major driver for them. At their highest they only had 90% share, that means there were other choices. >.> Not a monopoly. No real harm either. If you want to complain about where the money went after the transactions were made, that's another subject. You're so set on arguing with me. I think it's best if you sat down.
  • eglover 12y ago
    Either way, government is evil. Remember, libertarian is a philosophy, not a political belief and the Libertarian Party gets a lot of flak for making compromises in order to be popular. There's nothing wrong with calling yourself libertarian and supporting some sentimentalized conservative version of government, but government by definition violates the "non-aggression principle". I don't disagree with you either, in fact you've really only restated what I said.
    • ThomPete 12y ago
      Any organization that have it's own interest is potentially evil whether government or private enterprise. You can't define your way out of that.
      • eglover 12y ago
        Potentially, but not by definition. That's an important difference. Only one has the potential to be good, and only one is controllable by the people who are truly effected by it.
        • ThomPete 12y ago
          Both have the potential to be both good and bad. If you are trying to promote some sort of ancap/libertarian approach lets just stop here that view is in my mind as naive as a communist view and there is no basis for those kind of moral claims.
          • eglover 12y ago
            By. Definition. That's all that needs to be known.