A small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective have managed to get themselves elected with the help of a couple billionaires and have managed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as long as a small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective are in power, that government will be ineffective.
It's almost tautological.
Companies don't make money killing people, they make money improving the lives of customers and employees by offering them something they value more than their money/labor. If someone is working under poor working conditions, it's because their next best alternative is even worse.
No, they don't make money killing their CUSTOMERS. But they can make a lot of money by not giving a fig about people impacted by their operations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
This is why we have regulations, by the way. So when amoral idiots find themselves in a position to do serious harm, there's some external force to compensate (as much as possible) for their lack of suitable ethics and working moral compasses.
In a free market the initiation of force is not tolerated. The Bhopal disaster you cited is a perfect example of an initiation of force.
The government legitimizes the initiation of force on those who have done nothing to violate the rights of others -- similar to the disaster you cited. It seems you have a problem with companies initiating force, but not the government. Why is that?
Why does it seem that way? I don't know, it's your impression. You tell me.
I would be more scared about cozy relationships between government and corporations. That is when you get the most egregious offenses, eg. British East India Company + Great Britain vs. India and China, oil companies + US vs. the Middle East, Chinese government + Baidu in censoring their own people, Blackwater Associates + US in Iraq, etc. It is sometimes good to have the interests of corporations and government diametrically opposed, because that means they are not conspiring against the people they serve.
It sounds like a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare. And who better to lead us into the world of High Tech and Low Life than Silicon Valley Zaibatsus? I can never really tell when art and life are imitating each other.
Oh really ? Are you really so naive? I'm sure the people in Syria and Libya are certainly happy about what their government is doing for them. Oh, and in modern democracies, apart from raising taxes every year and making more debt for the future generations to come, I fail to see the "good deeds" provided by governements.
But it it makes you happy, I guess that's what matters.
What of the people on food stamps, you ask.
They are very important people. They matter. People in need of food and shelter are of deep concern to many people. It's good of you to ask such a fundamental question. Social welfare is critical in many areas. However, the means by which it exists is open to great evolution. Peaceful transitions are critical. Increasing the amount of care in the world and increasing the ways with which people can leverage their individual and collective power (not through violent systems) is critical. Likewise, it's critical -- to many people -- to reject systems and methods one cannot ethically abide by, and to not increase the size and scope of what one recognizes as the unbridled power of suited machines and ulterior, menacing interests.
If you actually care about what someone else thinks, you shouldn't make statements for him or her. For instance, at the very least, you could've instead asked, "Are you proposing that the state should wither away? Do you think the only other way food can be provided is by it trickling down?"
That would've still been a leap to conclusion from what I said, or possibly display a lack of understanding of what I said, but at least it'd be your asking.
I would've asked you to elaborate on what you mean by a state withering away. There's a difference between social safety nets in the context of free choice vs. involuntary constraint. There's a difference between "the state" at present vs. how "the state" can be reformed to justify itself to more humane roles. Finding major faults with [current state systems] is not the same thing as believing [all state systems] must vanish. I would've explained how I'm an advocate of peaceful, open systems wherever the public's trust is at stake. Territorial systems can have net positives in certain domains, such as in violent crime. However, the current system of US criminal law/code is devastatingly unethical. (I find nothing ethical about imprisoning human beings for nonviolent crime, especially when it's a state serving corporate law.) At best, the US system is a stepping stone best understood in historical context, for people of good conscience to step above on a path to something better.
I would've wondered why you're implying that the alternative to food stamps is food "trickling down" [from the rich]. The status quo of US taxation is very akin to "trickle-down" economics. Mass forced funding of a public -> flows into centralized pools governed by small bodies who have the capacity to serve personal, secret, and corporate interests in often closed contracts and closed courts -> devaluing and siphoning value and labor -> distributed fractionally to a public that waits for crumbs to flow back (hopefully) to people in need, pennies to the dollar. It's one of many forms of trickle down economics; it's a form that happens to overlook a great amount violence and corruption of the system by increasingly putting society at the mercy of the system. Nationalists, large corporations, prison systems, and warmongers love it though. The answer to your non-question here is that what I want society to aspire to is ultimately neither approaches -- for both are violent and narrow. We can do better. My aspiration for a freer, more peaceful society is not a switch I can flip on and off. It does, however, start with at least promoting peace and benevolence in culture, for people to begin to aspire to social problems solved by more directly open, fuller democratic (when democratic), voluntary, consensus-based models. Where there are pooled resources, I prefer that they be within a transparency that's more likely to arise when people are able to revoke funding, disassociate, and take part in reformation. The ability to assemble and disassemble is one area where a state can play a greater role in: preventing people from suffering the tyranny of involuntary systems.
My views are not binary. Presume nothing. I ethically value systems that cut out corrupt interests and increase free choice. I like more bottom-up solutions. It requires time. I choose to be a part of increasing the amount of social support on an ethical, voluntary basis by showing people that their actions can have definitive, accountable results and real-world feedback. I strive for a continued cultural shift in how people can empower themselves. Nothing happens overnight. Like I said, I don't want to flip any switches on people most in need.
I want peaceful evolution.
Most of my time is focused tirelessly on a project in this area. I hope to someday help people act upon their better and freer instincts. The least of what I can say from my observations so far is the following. People are far more generous and kinder than most people can imagine. Love and social compulsion is deeply rooted even in this violent species that we are. Action, input, and output are severely dependent on access, information, awareness, and the architectures that form transparency and accountability. True change is best predicated on attitude and culture. Change happens most meaningfully when it's natural: not shaped through dictation. The systems of governance that exist today are neither the end nor the beginning of answering a timeless call to some people who want freer, happier lives for themselves and for the world. The internet is barely scratching the surface of a use for human potential.
http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-198...
Come back after reading.
That's not a strawman, comrade - that's called a logical conclusion.
I don't really know why you focus so much on food stamps (which I never mentioned - that's why I called your comment a strawman- i.e. "informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position" which is exactly the case here), and do not focus on any of the points I raised in my first comment above. If you don't even bother making a point...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-los...
Read the first paragraph. Executives are expressing concerns on their influence over Republican, primarily over the Tea Party. As TP is constantly fighting with the other Republicans, these executives see poor prospect in Republican's re-election.
Take immigration for example. Sure SV excutives have moved a bunch of people to start working on the immigration reform bill early this year, the group is broken. I believe all but one Republican is left in the group of 7 drafting the bill. Which means the bill will not get through neither House nor Senate in the next 6-12 months unless the seven congressmen sit together again.
Surely government is relying on the Internet to spread their agenda and is constantly working with new startup to make government operation "more efficient", but these people, IMHO, don't really make politicians move.
On the other hand, bankers continuously influence economic policy. This is an extremely specialized area (and since Federal Reserve board is made up of bankers around the country).
SV is still not close enough. They shake a President's hand, but that's pretty much it.
Where would such an interest come from?
tl;dr: Gov't isn't assumed to care about the people's needs "because it's chartered to do so", but rather because they have specific and explicit dependencies on public approval. By contrast, companies have an explicit dependency on their customers (and shareholders). Everyone else and the externalities that they face are completely irrelevant as far as incentive structures for a company.
I'm glad your argument isn't about how the government is supposed to represent The People "at least in theory", I find that one rather funny given how people of my stripe are usually accused of only thinking in theory.
As much as I want to, I can't convince myself of the aforementioned meme wholesale, there must be some counterbalance or we'd all be slaves. But I want people to break out of what at least seems to me to be the notion that while private companies are selfishly motivated, they can invent the institution called government that's free of perverse incentives and selfishness just because they think society needs it to function.
Your point about nationwide approval of the government versus specific approval of companies is a good one. Consider some counterpoints: 1) the politicians need not pander to everyone, only those who care to vote. 2) expanding on the reluctance to bother voting, there's reluctance to be informed, since your vote had miniscule chance of effecting your life. It's known as rational ignorance, Bryan Caplan has a lot to say about it if you're interested in looking it up. In contrast, choosing one company over another always has immediate effect.
A government defines a group of people who tend to have some sort of patriotic emotional bond with each other, much like the emotional bond that ties a family together. This is why people all across America felt the pain of the 9/11 attacks despite the fact that realistically the vast majority of us did not have family members or friends that died in the attack.
At a fundamental level this patriotic bond alone seems to make the majority of governments considerably more altruistic toward their citizens than a company would be towards their customers.
After all the leaders of government are also citizens with that bond of shared country and patriotism that they share with other citizens. In a company there is a much larger "us and them" divide between people in the company and people the company is selling to.
So in this light the grandparent's response of "We the People" though short is pretty meaningful and accurate. Governments tend to have interest in their citizens because of this patriotic bond which says that both the leaders and the ordinary citizens are "We the People".
In other words, we should be grateful for the gifts blessed upon us, rather than greedy children asking for a seventh or eighth serving of ice cream.
That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy.
The primary purpose of a company is to make money and as history has shown time and time again companies in general are all too willing to sell people dangerous products, work their employees to death, and do other unsavory things in order to make money.
Sure the US government is seeming ineffective, and in many cases less than satisfactory. But a system in which companies have the power definitely isn't better.