True or False

Wrong. Removing power from central government so there is less graft to sell and what graft there is becomes devalued because it would be limited to a single state, not nationwide is not a "fallacy." It's plain localist Jeffersonian democracy.

 

If the businesses own the politicians, don't you think they'll choose to keep the graft that helps them? One side is saying lets go deeper in debt, the other side is saying lets get rid of everything that doesn't help businesses. Until we reduce this private take-over of the public sector, there is no way the ideals you are striving for can occur. Weakening the government (under current conditions) directly empowers private interests to grow it in ways that are not in accordance with your ideals.

 

I agree with all of that, but what reg would you do away with the bigger outfits wouldn't take advantage of?

 

There's the rub. You actually don't even get to pick the reg to do away with anyway. You either get the choice to keep them all, or get rid of a few that someone else (who bribed a politician) says you can.

 

And be as abusive as they could possibly be.

 

Taxcutter says:
Rather than spewed ambiguitities why don't you spell out what you are talking about?

 

Taxcutter says:
Your Item #1 is the key here. Take away government's ability to manipulate the market and Items #2-5 evaporate.

You obsess over the symptoms and ignore the underlying disease.

 

How can they choose to keep something that doesn't exist or has been abolished? This is why the framers seated the legislative power in a legislature elected by the people, and limited enumerated powers reserving the rest to the states. It doesn't matter who "owns" the politicians so long as most legislative power is elected by the people and decentralized so that one bribe can't buy a whole 50 states worth of graft. Moreover, graft tends to flourish when in the dark and not subject to scrutiny by the people a legislator must live with every day, making it harder to exist in local governments. The framers also foresaw this issue and even the more statist did not want a permanent bureaucratic class. Your "other side" statement is a raw strawman, no one is saying "get rid of everything that doesn't benefit businesses." Your last sentence below is a non sequitur.

 

In good faith, I linked to a bureau list and a news story on the tens of thousands of regulations promulgated annually, also gave an anecdotal experience of a client's regulatory dilemma. I work with these regulations every day, and could definitely list out pages of them that could be either sunset entirely or vastly streamlined. Why would I want to do that here though?

Not saying you personally, but generally, have found that people either understand through experience or education what hyperregulation is doing to us, or they are going to repeat the strawman mantra "deregulation = anarchy," over and over like their leftblogs tell them no matter what reasonable regulation reductions are proposed. Then they are going to falsely blame "deregulation under the XYZ administration" for all our ills with no legitimate accompanying reasoning, also from leftblogs.

So where does this stock leftist fallacy/POV on regulations come from? It comes from bureaucrats and their families who sit in their do nothing jobs on taxpayer funded computers and pump out the propaganda about this or that new social problem or issue that demands regulation. Media, always looking for the next scare tactic, helps willingly. Guess who makes a higher paygrade depending on how many "clients" and regulations they oversee? Guess who gets cousin Sally a job if they can justify a budget increase next year? Guess who gets a fatter govt contract if the Dept of blabla adds 100 new employees next year? Most of the urban legends about regulation and deregulation are founded on nothing other than pure self-interest and bureaucrat/govt contractor greed.

We have a roadmap already of what federal govt powers are legit v illegitimate, it's the Constitution. Everything not enumerated in it should be sunset or left to the states.

Another pure non sequitur. When the legislative power is properly seated in and limited to the elected legislature, the voters get to pick representatives who act in accordance with their desires. When government power becomes to central and broad, it's up to us to elect people to remedy that. We haven't done that in "gimmeland" so far, and it may even be too late.

 

There needs to be a careful balance, OBVIOUSLY. Too much power on one side leads to corruption. The private sector needs as much control up until the point that they are able to abuse that control, which is where the govt steps in. They stop the corruption before it happens, prevent monnopolies and punish those abusing the people. The PROBLEM arises when the govt which is ONLY there is stop corruption, serve the people and enforce whats right, uses their own influence to profit or stay in power...meaning representatives pass laws to help doners or family members/friends. When the govt does their job, it works. But the govt doesn't know what their &$*#(#( job is anymore. The private sector shouldn't be able BUY OFF the govt and those in govt should be DOING THEIR JOBS, instead of looking out for their own self interests. Hello OBAMA, PELOSI and RIED!!!! Remove all private support. There should be no avenue where a private entity or person can influence a public employee through anything other then words and a vote. NOTHING. And a public official shouldn't be allowed to control ANYTHING that can financially benefit a family member. Remove all motivation to be corrupt and it goes away. Remove all motivation for a politician to do anything other then help the people and their ability to screw around goes away. They should have NO real power, which is the whole point in the first place. They're just a voice, thats all. The PEOPLE are the power.

A private company can go out of business. They CAN be sued. People can be punished. They have motivation to NOT screw around. The govt however can NOT really be sued or held accountable anymore. People can easily get out of responsibility, plead the 5th and walk away unscathed. That's so screwed up.

 

Taxcutter says:
Even in its heyday, US Steel had competitors. They have competitors today.

 

Good luck with that. Everyone, including you will find some regulations that they like. Something like the nuk dump next to your house.

 

Taxcutter says:
Consolidation is a normal part of the business cycle. It was first commented on historians in ancient Athens but I suspect it occurred in Egypt and Mesopotamia long before that. It figures that efficient competitors will outcompete lesser competitors.

But equally so the ancient observers noticed that once consolidation had run to an oligopoly phase (true monopolies are very rare), somebody got a new angle on the market and broke into the market. Kodak's market dominance is gone, not because of government regulation but because the technology of photography passed them by. US Steel is still around but it is a niche player now because of the mini-mills. Getting passed by is a distinct danger of being an oligopolist. You get so invested in something that has been successful that you resist the new technology coming on.

This is one thing that made Steve Jobs remarkable. He had a major cash cow in the iPod, but he autocannibalized his own dominant product because he saw the smart phone could do everything the iPod could and much more. Do you realize how rare that degree of prescience is?

Permanent oligopoly comes from an externally(almost always by government) constrained market. Oligopolies do exist, but they are necessarily ephemeral. the time frame may be decades but they are almost always supplanted by something else. Even that most durable of corporations - DuPont - has survived by radically changing its product segment. To my knowledge DuPont no longer makes explosives.

No, the markets do not instantly oust oligopolists. If they did, why would anybody strive to be an oligopolist? GM was dominant from the 1920s to the 1970s and now they are a mendicant. Wal-Mart came from nowhere and without another Sam Walton, they will go the way of Sear, Roebuck or J.C. Penney. Parenthetically John Cash Penney once publicly dumped on a young Sam Walton. Sam got the last laugh.

Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't fall ina single day. Much the same can be said of corporations.

 

Taxcutter says;
New competitors prosper by giving the consumer a better deal.

Wal-Mart blew its competitors by giving the customer lower prices on a consistent basis. Back in the 1870s John D. Rockefeller got dominant by offering his customers high-purity kerosene that didn't blow up their lamps and cause fires, and doing so at a lower price level.

 

Don't be foolish. Private interests would still manipulate the market without a government. Those that didn't would fall to those that did, until you had a lot of power condensed into a few peoples hands. No different, no matter what they tell you.

 

Taxcutter says:
Completion of the consolidation phase of the business cycle always carries the seed of the next beginning. When an oligopoly abuses the customers, dissatisfaction grows and an opportunity for a new competitor is opened. Kodak was dominant in photographic film and charged too much for film. That made it economically viable for development of the CCD and electronic photography.

Market dominance exists but it is ephemeral in a market not distorted by government.

 

And I have beach front property in Arizona to sell you.

 

Dude that's how government forced their way into our lives. A bunch of businessmen were all behaving in ways that promoted the good of all their fellow human beings and then the government said they needed to make rules that people weren't even breaking. They forced it upon us with guns, and then made us pay for those guns with tax dollars. The End.

 

There's some truth here, but why live through such vicious depressions (due in large part to panic) when we have tools to curb this panic element to a bust cycle.

 

Taxcutter says:
Because there is little that government can do (beyond protect small depositors with the FDIC) about periodic but temporary losses of confidence among the business community.

Losses in confidence are not necessarily caused by consolidation. Even in 2008-9, many heavily consolidated segments of the US economy slid through unscathed.

 

until they grow to the size of mini-governments like some mega-corporations

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