When you cut out middle man government and go directly to the source, corporations, while leaving law enforcement and infrastructure to private companies?
You are talking about anarcho-capitalism. A pure and simple form of governing. In my personal opinion anarcho-captialism takes the good points of both capitalism and anarchism pretty seamlessly. Anarcho-capitalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eh, governments have some incentive in seeing that their population/enrivonment is handled properly, where as greed inevitably leads to companies exploiting the public (as we see with these banks now keeping astounding bonuses despite the public struggling, and how Chevron has dumped so much waste in a particular inlet that an endemic species of whale is in decline).
You're conflating corporatism with true markets based on voluntary exchanges. Perhaps you should read up on it a little more before making such an abrasive (and wrong) declaration.
Don't be ignorant. What incentive do governments have to serve the people? They aren't bound by laws and are much harder to overthrow than private business. The only thing the people get are campaign promises every election cycle. Companies cannot exploit the public unless they have the forceful hand of government on their side. In a voluntary society why would consumers choose to be exploited? Provide an example of a private greedy company that ripped off the public without the use of the state. The finance and energy industry are perfect examples of Government Sponsored Enterprise.
I happen to agree that privatization is the way to go, but Enron is a great example of a private company screwing the public. They raped California for energy costs by choking out our supply and driving up the price of energy. I think the FED should be disbanded. It is a great idea in theory, but like most government ideas, too many unintended consequences. Greenspan's lack of control with respect to the interest rates was a contributing factor to our overheated economy. If money is cheap, people borrow too much of it. In my opinion; privatize the police, fire dept, schools, border patrol, basically everything except infrastructure, and here's why. If they screw up, then we can fire them and hire someone else. Try to fire the Detroit school district for having the lowest test scores in U.S. history, see how that goes.
Capitalism only works as long as there is transparency in the system. Without transparency - such as requiring businesses to make all of their records public - there is no way for the consumer to judge whether or not a business is acting responsibly and to take their money elsewhere if businesses are not protecting the consumers values. Capitalism in any form is as Utopian an ideal at Communism. It works great in theory, but businesses figure out how to game the system and make profits off not protecting the interest of the consumer. Without a responsible Government to act on behalf of consumers, there is no way to force private companies who keep everything they do a secret from overstepping their bounds. Once they get an overwhelming share of the market, they can block out all competition and do whatever they want - like exploit workers and consumers. And nobody in the political sphere - well almost nobody - talks about accompanying deregulation of business with laws that require businesses to make all of their records public. So the companies get to have their cake and eat it too. They can act irresponsibly without the Government stepping in to stop it, and they can keep what goes on behind the scenes secret from the consumer. Take for example the AIG debacle that started this whole mess. AIG was able to market, sell, and profit off of incredibly irresponsible products (Credit Default Swaps). But AIG isn't a consumer based business. They make most of their money by selling their products to other banks. So in order for the consumer to vote against the bad actions of someone like AIG with their dollar, they would have to know: A. who the consumer bank they invest in is doing business with. B. if those companies that the bank that they are investing in do business with is acting responsibly. The consumer has no direct influence over what AIG does. They can't punish AIG for bad actions. AIG is protected from the will of the consumer by two levels of corporate secrecy - the local bank's secrecy and AIG's own secrecy. As a result, there is no invisible hand of the market to make sure that AIG is acting responsibly. But most people can't micromanage their 401K or their Mutual Find close enough to make sure that every investment the 401K manager or the Mutual Fund manager is investing in is acting responsibly. All Corporations, by their very nature, have a Corporate Charter that list what their goals are. Their number one goal is to make money for their shareholders. Acting responsibly is much further down their list. So when something pops up that sounds too good to be true - like buying Credit Default Swaps - it doesn't matter if it's irresponsible - as long as it makes money. So in order for you to think that anarcho-capitalism is better than what we have now, you have to assume that business really has your best interest in mind in everything they do. That's as asinine as assuming that Government has you best interest at heart. But the Consumer does - or is supposed to anyway - have a direct way to hold Government responsible. It's called voting. And if you find out that not only did the Government not protect your interests, but indeed changed regulations at the behest of business to make it easier for businesses to act irresponsibly in the pursuit of more profit - you can kick those people out of Government. But again, this requires transparency and vigilance by the voters. Vigilance by voters and consumers is at an all time low in this country. Corporate and Government secrecy is at an all time high. It would be a bad time to privatize things like law enforcement, because if companies decide that keeping people in jail is good business, then they will come up with all sorts of stupid laws about what people can buy, sell, grow in their own home, put in their own body, just to swell the ranks of the incarcerated and ensure their own continued profit. We don't want to live in a country like that. Do we? Oh yeah, we already do. And at this point, a corporate law enforcement state would find MORE reasons to arrest people, so they can throw then into more privatized prisons. Do we want to increase the scope that model so that it happens in all aspects of out lives? And did you know that when this country started, that corporations were much more highly regulated than they are today? When this country was founded, corporations had to have a stated goal - like building a bridge or a road, and when that goal was accomplished, they were disbanded. There was none of this "This Corporation is founded to make money, and will run indefinitely making money however we can." Indeed one of the concerns of the founding fathers was stopping the British from ruling North America like the did with India through the East India Company. They were fighting in part to stop America from just becoming another slave colony for what today we would call a Big Multi-National Enterprise. So the argument that the founding fathers fought for freedom for businesses to act however they want for as long as they want in pursuit of money is revisionist history. Not that anyone in this thread made this argument, but it comes up a lot in this type of debate.
Sorry, but as an ex-governement regulator who used contract firms who is now in the private sector, I have to disagree with the "private is always better" set. - I've been on both sides of the fence. Can the private sector do it better than the government? Oftentimes, yes. Can they do it cheaper? Absolutely not. Once you toss in the profit motive, it's corner-cutting-palooza. At the very least, government employees take shitty pay, political attacks, meddling, etc, but they continue to do the job because by and large, they believe in what they're doing. The private sector is in it for a buck, period. To a large extent, YOUR satisfaction over the job they did is a distant third or fourth place to getting their fee into the bank. Give the public sector the same training, facilities, equipment and pay, and there will be a negligible difference in the end result. Of course, when tax revenues don't keep up with costs, the public sector falls behind with outdated technology, unpaid furlough days, benefit cuts, all of which equals low morale, which equals a decline in services delivered. I do, though, think that there needs to be a more efficient way of getting rid of dead-weight union employees. Not getting rid of the unions, there's a place for them, but getting rid of consistent non-performers.
Exactly. Apparently people like aaronman and Kylesa thing of companies as benevolent entities who are only in it for the customers. No no no, in a true free market world, human greed vanishes. How they explain that, I don't know.
First on the mind of ALL business is profit profit profit. Shareholders are second, but if profit is good, shareholders are happy. If they are unconcerned for the quality of work they produce, it will show in the finished product and the market will move to another company who will provide the quality they want........unless, of course, the market wants cheap, not quality.
Obviously you're having a poor time understanding, because nobody ever said greed vanishes. Greed simply has less power in the free market, where the consumers are the final deciders rather than Congressmen John Doe. The state is legalized theft, and once you allow a private company to reap the benefits of this theft you have severely distorted the market. Enron, for example, received BILLIONS of dollars in taxpayer subsidies from the Export-Import Bank and OPIC. However, the fact that they went out of business further underlines my point that private entities have a greater incentive to perform well for the consumer than the government. It's not that they are benevolent, they just have a greater incentive to provide a lasting and sustainable service to its customers.... unlike the government, who holds a monopoly over almost everything and we are forced to be content with it. To the guy who is an "ex-government regulator", this "cost-cutting-palooza" is a myth, as I work in the private sector. True, we don't have deficit financing capabilities, but keeping the customer returning to our business is the bottom line. I'm not sure what industry you're talking about where the consumer will willingly be ripped off, other than finance, which is a GSE.
The problem is, the consumers don't know everything, and without regulation, companies could lie their asses off about their services/products. Without regulation, how would the public know if a product can impact their health? Without regulation, who makes sure that wastes are disposed of properly? And I also work in the private sector. Where I used to work, they cut costs with inferior materials like crazy, and made an enormous profit relative to the shit we supplied. Without regulation, how would the public be aware of this?
The free market has ways of regulating itself. And in a liberty-minded, free-market society, desired information would be easily attainable for everyone who wanted it. Underwriter's Laboratories is a good example of market regulation. Aside from that, common law would also still exist to prevent things like fraud. So, yes, companies could lie their asses off (just as they could now, if they wanted to). But they would suffer because of it, if that's the route they chose to go down. If the public wants to be aware, companies will have to comply. This in itself is a form of market self-regulation. If companies do not satisfy the needs and desires of the consumer, they go out of business. Plain and simple. I've been highly interested in anarcho-capitalism for a while now. I'm still reading and studying some of the most renowned philosophers and economists on the subject. But really, my only issue with the idea of anarchy at this point is the tendency for order to come from such 'chaos', so to speak. Anarchy doesn't seem to be sustainable. It seems like a government of some sort will eventually spawn from anarchy as we have seen in the past. Other than this, though, I tend to identify fairly well with the principles and ideas behind anarcho-capitalism as I understand it.
Jesus, you guys and your mythical "free market". There IS no "free market". You've got elections on EVERY level of government that are bought-and-paid for. You've got taxpayer-funded industry subsidies. In the case of the oil/gas industry, subsidies going to an industry making record fucking profits. You've got a deregulatory culture that, despite the obvious trainwrecks littering our recent history (think Enron, manufactured California electricity "crisis", Madoff, Arthur Anderson, another financial services industry bailout) is still being touted by dishonest, ignorant, right-wing greedheads who think tax cuts for the wealthy and business are the panacea to every societal ill. Despite the dismal failure of Bush's '01 and '03 tax cuts in doing what they were so vehemently promised they'd do, not 10 years ago. Related to the deregulatory culture cited above, you get anti-competitive behavior designed to do nothing more than crush competition. Lets see, we USED to have at least two satellite radio choices, and now we have "XM/Sirius". We have two satellite TV options, and how long will it be before THEY merge into a bastard prick of a sheister, bending us all over the table? As if they're not bad enough now -and anyone w/satellite TV will attest to their criminal nature. Rupert Murdoch is buying up as many media outlets as current law allows him to do so he can turn them into more mind-numb, conservative preach-fests, and will push for any law that will allow him to buy even MORE, if he possibly can. What in THE fuck is "free market" about ANY of this? You righties like to talk about the "Founding Fathers", but have no idea who they really were and what they were really about. I swear to Christ, some people have their heads shoved so far up Saint Reagan's trickle-down-economics-stretched ass that they can't see the forest for the trees. You think you're going to get educated, or reminded of this stuff listening to Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly? Shit, man, there are legions of people trying to crawl out of the rabbit hole but assholes like O'Reilly and Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh and Palin are all standing around that hole stepping on their goddamned heads, looking to keep them right where they're at - heaven forbid they should be exposed for the lying snake oil salesmen they really are and they lose those 400 million dollar a year contracts. You think they're making that because they're honest? They're doing one thing, and one thing only: exploiting ignorance. When you see that next Teabagger holding the sign that says "No socialized medicine! AND DON'T TOUCH MY MEDICARE!", you'll know what the hell I'm talking about. Jesus, Google the fucking word "schtick" and wake up. Or, alternatively, I suppose they just could be so extremely twisted and out of shape that they really do believe half the shit they say...... And another thing: what is it with the right wing and their infatuation with following in lockstep behind alcoholics, drug addicts, felons and quitters? You fuckers have some strange icons that you follow, I'll tell you that. Y'all teach your children that these types are the best roll models to follow? And you fancy yourselves the "party of family values"? Sheeeeit.