5 ms·

Because recent government conduct has been stellar, I really want more government regulation, government always knows best, government does an amazing job, is v

Because recent government conduct has been stellar, I really want more government regulation, government always knows best, government does an amazing job, is very fair, is very open and transparent, government is democratic and responsive to citizen concerns. What typical myopic bullshit.

scarmig 12y ago
Isn't this argument basically, "governments are prone to being co-opted by special interests, therefore we should go ahead and give away the farm to Comcast"?
- shit_parade 12y ago
  It is much cheaper to purchase legislation mandating people buy a product or mandating legal barriers to protect a business from competition than it is to convince people to willing purchase and engage with a business. Why are people so afraid of each other? Why are people so afraid of allowing their fellow humans to choose the services and products and businesses they want to choose? Why are people so quick to call upon the government to implement through force the ideas they think are best? Especially when they are faced with the reality that their government continually flaunts their own laws when it suits them? So many intelligent people so quickly willing to give away their rights to a government they criticize on one hand but call upon to protect them with the other.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- novalis78 12y ago
  Wouldn't it be: "governments are prone to being co-opted by special interests, therefore we rather allow companies to compete with each other freely in an open market and let consumers make the choice"
  - thoth 12y ago
    That would be the ideal, but infrastructure issues such as this can't be handled by a "free market" acting all by itself. That's because whoever owns the land the infrastructure runs through can block progress, and the free market solution of competing elsewhere doesn't work. Land access is inherently limited by real world access problems that don't obey free market ideology. A free market for public utilities would start from the public, i.e. government, OWNING said infrastructure outright and then allowing private corporations to lease the right to use it to provide service. Only the government has the legal right to eminent domain so it can build roads and public utilities and generally seize land for the common good - private corporations would have to negotiate with every landowner whose property needs to be crossed, and that is obviously unworkable in the real world. From the current situation - which is a hodge podge of municipal services, private corporate services, agreements that limit competition, coupled with land access needs only eminent domain can provide - the only way to arrive at this paradise of "free market competition" is for the government to nationalize the entire thing, void all contracts with private service providers, and recreate the rules to allow competition among service providers by renting/licensing the infrastructure that is owned by the public. Otherwise it would take decades for existing agreements to expire or be renegotiated, and any improvement still have to rely on access and easements and various forms of eminent domain anyway. I cannot imagine the unending howling of the libertarian-type crowd if this were to happen. They complain that various governments have created this situation (municipalities giving exclusive deals to cable providers) but government power had to be there in the first place or there wouldn't be any infrastructure at all.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Competition requires a "free open market", which isn't a thing that exists, and it depends on a knowledgeable and informed consumer base, which also isn't a thing that exists, and this all depends upon there being choice in the marketplace, which as has been demonstrated ad nauseum, also isn't a thing that exists. Hence regulation.
    - baddox 12y ago
      > it depends on a knowledgeable and informed consumer base, which also isn't a thing that exists There's a comparable argument against democratic government somewhere in there.
- baddox 12y ago
  The problem of government isn't simply that they can be co-opted by special interests. It's that they have a near-monopoly on the ability to implement policies using the threat of violence, and that ability can be co-opted by special interests. The guy who runs the gas station down the street could also be co-opted by special interests, but I'm not particularly worried about that, because he has very little ability to force people to, for instance, give him a portion of their income.
  - scarmig 12y ago
    Question: suppose a group of knowledgeable engineers and technicians in a city decided that they were going to run their geography's network infrastructure without the supervision of Comcast shareholders. They decide to stage a nonviolent sit-in overnight in Comcast offices to take over the extant and state-guaranteed monopoly of the network infrastructure in that area, and another group delivers food to them until Comcast gives up its claims. Does Comcast calmly decide to talk to them about them nonviolently, or does it call in mass State violence to get back control? You assume a separation between property rights and State power that doesn't exist. They're two sides of the same coin. Capital and property rights don't exist in opposition to the State, but in a mutually-dependent complex of institutions and learned practices. That doesn't mean you have to throw out one or the other, or both. But it's fair for people to try to change the norms that govern relations between them in a way that generates the social outcomes they prefer.
    - baddox 12y ago
      I suspect that Comcast would call the police. But imagine a similar situation happens in a hypothetical society with no state police, or better yet, in some area where there are no state police available in a reasonable time frame (plenty such areas exist, even in the USA). Don't you suppose that Comcast might have private security guards?
      - scarmig 12y ago
        Of course! I'd go so far as to say that's the case in most of the USA--Comcast almost certainly has some level of private security at most of its locations, even (or perhaps especially) in urban areas. I'm not sure, though, how that undermines the point that Comcast shares in the monopoly of violence with the government. It doesn't make its violence independent of government (at least in the USA): small matters can be dealt with most quickly by those private forces, but in more serious matters, Comcast would call on government violence to provide either a supporting or primary role. The people in conflict with Comcast could do the same, but the difference is that Comcast would actually get the government's help. Note that this isn't a claim of fascist corporatism or anything: it's part of a healthy society, and really the only way I can imagine a civil society I'd want to live in working. But there's no reason to say that Comcast doesn't have the ability to be co-opted by special interests (its shareholders and affiliated unions, to be explicit about who I'm talking about) and use state-guaranteed violence to impose economic policy in the small on unwilling participants.
Retra 12y ago
>Because recent government conduct has been stellar Recent government conduct has been the result of decades of deregulation.
- shit_parade 12y ago
  ? can you help me understand, I am curious why you believe this to be the case? By any metric I can think of US government regulation has increased dramatically. Size of US tax code, number of laws, number of regulations, number of government agencies, expenditures, population of washington DC, the # of people with security clearances. The only thing that has decreased is total work force, but if you add in the additional hiring of contractors that reduction is also thrown into question.

scarmig 12y ago

Isn't this argument basically, "governments are prone to being co-opted by special interests, therefore we should go ahead and give away the farm to Comcast"?

shit_parade 12y ago
It is much cheaper to purchase legislation mandating people buy a product or mandating legal barriers to protect a business from competition than it is to convince people to willing purchase and engage with a business. Why are people so afraid of each other? Why are people so afraid of allowing their fellow humans to choose the services and products and businesses they want to choose? Why are people so quick to call upon the government to implement through force the ideas they think are best? Especially when they are faced with the reality that their government continually flaunts their own laws when it suits them? So many intelligent people so quickly willing to give away their rights to a government they criticize on one hand but call upon to protect them with the other.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
novalis78 12y ago
Wouldn't it be: "governments are prone to being co-opted by special interests, therefore we rather allow companies to compete with each other freely in an open market and let consumers make the choice"
- thoth 12y ago
  That would be the ideal, but infrastructure issues such as this can't be handled by a "free market" acting all by itself. That's because whoever owns the land the infrastructure runs through can block progress, and the free market solution of competing elsewhere doesn't work. Land access is inherently limited by real world access problems that don't obey free market ideology. A free market for public utilities would start from the public, i.e. government, OWNING said infrastructure outright and then allowing private corporations to lease the right to use it to provide service. Only the government has the legal right to eminent domain so it can build roads and public utilities and generally seize land for the common good - private corporations would have to negotiate with every landowner whose property needs to be crossed, and that is obviously unworkable in the real world. From the current situation - which is a hodge podge of municipal services, private corporate services, agreements that limit competition, coupled with land access needs only eminent domain can provide - the only way to arrive at this paradise of "free market competition" is for the government to nationalize the entire thing, void all contracts with private service providers, and recreate the rules to allow competition among service providers by renting/licensing the infrastructure that is owned by the public. Otherwise it would take decades for existing agreements to expire or be renegotiated, and any improvement still have to rely on access and easements and various forms of eminent domain anyway. I cannot imagine the unending howling of the libertarian-type crowd if this were to happen. They complain that various governments have created this situation (municipalities giving exclusive deals to cable providers) but government power had to be there in the first place or there wouldn't be any infrastructure at all.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Competition requires a "free open market", which isn't a thing that exists, and it depends on a knowledgeable and informed consumer base, which also isn't a thing that exists, and this all depends upon there being choice in the marketplace, which as has been demonstrated ad nauseum, also isn't a thing that exists. Hence regulation.
  - baddox 12y ago
    > it depends on a knowledgeable and informed consumer base, which also isn't a thing that exists There's a comparable argument against democratic government somewhere in there.
baddox 12y ago
The problem of government isn't simply that they can be co-opted by special interests. It's that they have a near-monopoly on the ability to implement policies using the threat of violence, and that ability can be co-opted by special interests. The guy who runs the gas station down the street could also be co-opted by special interests, but I'm not particularly worried about that, because he has very little ability to force people to, for instance, give him a portion of their income.
- scarmig 12y ago
  Question: suppose a group of knowledgeable engineers and technicians in a city decided that they were going to run their geography's network infrastructure without the supervision of Comcast shareholders. They decide to stage a nonviolent sit-in overnight in Comcast offices to take over the extant and state-guaranteed monopoly of the network infrastructure in that area, and another group delivers food to them until Comcast gives up its claims. Does Comcast calmly decide to talk to them about them nonviolently, or does it call in mass State violence to get back control? You assume a separation between property rights and State power that doesn't exist. They're two sides of the same coin. Capital and property rights don't exist in opposition to the State, but in a mutually-dependent complex of institutions and learned practices. That doesn't mean you have to throw out one or the other, or both. But it's fair for people to try to change the norms that govern relations between them in a way that generates the social outcomes they prefer.
  - baddox 12y ago
    I suspect that Comcast would call the police. But imagine a similar situation happens in a hypothetical society with no state police, or better yet, in some area where there are no state police available in a reasonable time frame (plenty such areas exist, even in the USA). Don't you suppose that Comcast might have private security guards?
    - scarmig 12y ago
      Of course! I'd go so far as to say that's the case in most of the USA--Comcast almost certainly has some level of private security at most of its locations, even (or perhaps especially) in urban areas. I'm not sure, though, how that undermines the point that Comcast shares in the monopoly of violence with the government. It doesn't make its violence independent of government (at least in the USA): small matters can be dealt with most quickly by those private forces, but in more serious matters, Comcast would call on government violence to provide either a supporting or primary role. The people in conflict with Comcast could do the same, but the difference is that Comcast would actually get the government's help. Note that this isn't a claim of fascist corporatism or anything: it's part of a healthy society, and really the only way I can imagine a civil society I'd want to live in working. But there's no reason to say that Comcast doesn't have the ability to be co-opted by special interests (its shareholders and affiliated unions, to be explicit about who I'm talking about) and use state-guaranteed violence to impose economic policy in the small on unwilling participants.

Retra 12y ago

>Because recent government conduct has been stellar Recent government conduct has been the result of decades of deregulation.

shit_parade 12y ago
? can you help me understand, I am curious why you believe this to be the case? By any metric I can think of US government regulation has increased dramatically. Size of US tax code, number of laws, number of regulations, number of government agencies, expenditures, population of washington DC, the # of people with security clearances. The only thing that has decreased is total work force, but if you add in the additional hiring of contractors that reduction is also thrown into question.