I Totally Support the Occupy Movement...Follow

The student population has the least to worry about out of the last 3 generations when it comes to future jobs. They can suck it up for a few years, which is less than those before them.

depends on how much you make obviously but the base rates for most provinces are in line with or less than a lot of states. I think Alberta is the only one that is a flat rate everyone pays regardless of income.

get rid of money, and go back to trading services for services.

Elected dictators?

*Wink*wink*

Both of them want to take your money, but only one of them actually has to provide a competitive, valuable service in return (ignoring the larger systemic dependencies of both, of course).

You obviously find this a bigger issue than I do, but I don't think the answer includes "24/7 drum circles", "unlawful occupation of public property", or "defacement and destruction of private property".

Upon further reflection, "adorably idealistic" might have been nicer, but "willfully naive" more accurate.

Can we agree that the problem is that you have a government with power, but no inherent profit motive, and private business with profit motive, but no power, but when the two interact the business world will attempt to sway government to rig the rules to make them more money, and the power motive of those in government will take that money if it helps them gain/keep power. Assuming that's more or less the problem, then there's basically two approaches to this:

1. Get the government out of managing the private businesses (ie: free market). If government isn't in a position to regulate in ways which benefits the bottom lines of businesses, then businesses have no profit motive to involve themselves in government.

2. Get the private businesses out of private business (ie: socialism). Take the profit motive out of industry via heavy regulation (or outright direct control). Have government set salaries, cap CEO pay, and otherwise control business to the point where those in the decision making positions no longer have a profit motive to operate on.


Both in theory can eliminate the sort of private/public corruption we're all so aware of. But honestly, I think I'd rather lean towards the first option rather than the second. For a whole slew of reasons.


Isn't this really what this is all about?

No, I don't remotely agree that we have a system in which we have businesses with profit motives and no power. I think we have a system in which businesses, with profit motives, have entirely too much power.

Leaning towards. Obviously, neither can (should) be taken absolutely. However, I would hope we can agree that this is a pretty clear demarcation in terms of approach to public/private corruption. A liberal will say that the solution is more government regulation. A conservative will say that we need less. Frankly, while I'll freely admit I'm biased here, I just think that it makes a hell of a lot more sense to work to minimize the degree to which government regulates business and thus the degree to which business can profit by lobbying the government than the other way around. It just seems to me that you will only make the problem of businesses using government as a profit methodology worse as you increase government regulation until/unless you push that regulation to a point beyond where I believe most people are comfortable.


I just don't see this as being two equivalent halves of a whole. It's more like a scale with a small amount of government regulation and public/private corruption at one end, with increasing amounts of both of those as you move towards the other, until you reach a point where government regulation effectively destroys the private profit motive and then public/private corruption ends (but you now have a nearly completely government run economy). To me, it's quite obvious that unless we're willing to go that far with government regulation than any increase is simply a step in the wrong direction. We will only make things worse, not better.

That's it? "Stop regulating businesses and they'll stop bribing politicians!"?

HAhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Perhaps if you stopped the Pavlovian laughter and actually thought about it, you'd find that it's not such an absurd idea. Why would businesses spend any money lobbying government if the government couldn't/wouldn't act in some way to benefit them in return? I'm not joking here.

Here's a neat test: Quick! Think of a monopoly. Baring that, think of a company which we have to regulate to prevent becoming a monopoly (or had to in the past). Got one? Got five? Write the name(s) down.



Now... Did that company operate in a way which required government licensing, land use, application of eminent domain on their behalf, etc? I'm quite sure that you'd have a hard time thinking of any monopoly or near monopoly in the history of the US that wasn't created because of government intervention itself. Either land rights for railroads, licensing/easements for utilities, broadcast licenses for telecoms, or some other similar arrangement. It's hard to look at the history of "bad business" and not see that overwhelmingly it's not a free market which creates such problems, but government intervention which does. Now in some cases, we have no choice. Can't have 50 companies ripping up the street every week to run stuff into people's houses, so we have to grant licenses to companies via geography to operate such things.

And that's why we should do this only to the minimum degree necessary. Going in the direction of more regulation and thinking that it'll somehow reduce the amount of corruption is just insane. It's *because* of the regulations and the profit motive of working around them that the corruption exists in the first place.

Are you saying that it did? So we had no corruption between businesses and government until after 1981? Love to see the argument for that one.

Ok. Microsoft.


No.


So, is there a prize I win or something?