Some people think we need less government

The OP seems to not understand that you can be for less government control while still keeping corporations from taking over. But liberal propaganda never separates smaller government from corporate takeover.

 

The rich will always get rich, but, in a capitalist economy, the poor will get richer faster than the rich. The difference here isn't the fact that you need to be, equally or on some level, anti-government & anti-capitalist, you just have to be anti-mercantilist. Mercantilism is where capitalism meets with government and benefits only the select few. This isn't true capitalism, by any stretch of the imagination. We need to make sure we separate the two because they fundamentally don't go together.

I'd welcome you or anyone else with question marks surrounding capitalism to read How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present by Thomas J. DiLorenzo. He also wrote two books on Lincoln (Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know about Dishonest Abe & The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War). I believe his book on capitalism will shed a new light that is missing in everyday economics and history surrounding capitalism. It's not a very long or detailed book, mainly because of the vast amount of topics he covers. However, he does provide a good ending note that will help advance your future research in the area of 'true' capitalism, not mercantilism.

Believe me when I tell you, I definitely wouldn't promote something that I believed would go against my beliefs. Especially when it comes on trampling on me and anyone else who is simply trying to get ahead. I'm with everyone else in getting tired of being beaten up by big corporations & government. I definitely wouldn't support something that continues that same trend, I want to reverse it.

 

Government is mostly man's substitute for God.

If you don't have God, you need to have more government.
If you have God, you know that the individual can do it himself, hopefully though having a central govt. for military and national infrastructure.

This whole thing is about having God, or lack thereof.

I think it's the secular Dems who convince the mainstream religious Dems (who are the majority) that they should vote as if God won't help.

 

I have read a lot of books on capitalism, and I know that government intervention is a fundamental and ever-present component of capitalism. Almost all Austrian school people are ignorant of this fundamental and undeniable fact. I have nothing to learn from people of that sort.

You can make the argument that capitalism is great, I wouldn't agree, but is an argument which doesn't require enormous leaps in logic. What doesn't make sense is to talk about the evils of state intervention, while talking up the benefits of capitalism. It is double-think, it is counterintuitive, it is silly. You cannot separate government intervention from capitalism, if you rid the system of government intervention, a new system would be created, and it would require a new name. The name capitalism was given to a system, that government intervention was a vital part of, because as I said in my last post, capital relies on government intervention to promote and protect capitalist profit and capital accumulation. So the continued promotion of capitalism, without understanding what capitalism entails, doesn't make sense.

PS. Government is no less vital to capitalism than it was to mercantilism. It was simply that the role of the state shifted and changed, not that it receded or withdrew.

 

Government intervention in capitalism doesn't work. It goes completely against what true capitalism is. If you mix in government with capitalism, that's when you get the Koch's Brothers, the Rockefellers, the Bilderbergs, the JP Morgans, and all of the other fat cats. Government enables them to structure themselves so they trample on everyone else. That isn't what capitalism is all about because most folks can't work in those environments. Only those who wish to continue to put politicians into office that continue to make legislation that benefit them the most and then they want to label it as 'capitalism'. Sorry, I just don't buy it.

You are labeling government intervention is key to capitalism, I'm not. You're understanding of capitalism is what we currently have in America today, which isn't true capitalism. The government intervenes in every day economics, especially when it comes to the Federal Reserve. Centralized control of money only benefits the elite, not everyday individuals. In yet, government continues to interfere with economics and continues to impose their will onto the market. Again, what we have today isn't a free market, it isn't capitalism, it's corporatism or mercantilism, however anyone wants to word it.

Government is only needed, when it comes to capitalism, when it comes to protecting the rights of the individual. If two parties agree that they will accept payment for producing a good (IE: employee agrees to a set wage paid by the employer), government should be setup to protect those two parties rights, under the contract in which they both agreed to. The problem with government today, they tell the one party they have to pay an employee a certain wage, establish a centrally controlled bank to manipulate monetary policies, thus creating ripples in the economy that benefit the rich and very rich. When inflation and boom/busts occur within the economy because of government intervention and only the rich come out richer than ever, there is an issue with this and this doesn't have anything to do with capitalism. Corrupt politicians then chalk this up to the failures of capitalism and a free market and how they need to push more legislation & failed regulations that will only benefit their buddies. Rinse, wash, and repeat.

I'm fully aware of what capitalism is and I'm fully aware of what corporatism/mercantilism is as well. The only difference is, I don't confuse the two.

 

To your credit, it's a great post. But, not to down play what you just posted, all this is just common sense. If you were to dissect the mind of a liberal, which I am somewhere between libertarian and the left, most of us in that category would agree with limited government in that capacity.No one in their right mind wants government controlling everything.I think people from the right are convinced otherwise. It's just not true. But we do believe government should be working for us and our best interests. Not just one class of people. After all, we do pay taxes. All this is just common sense and most people are smart enough to know how it should work. But for the mean time our common sense voices in government aren't working for us. They're working for the other guy.

 

This is where your socialist ideology with its dependence on big government parts ways with we small government Conservative traditionalists. Find me a part in the Constitution where it states we the people should expect government should be working for us and for our best interests? Our Founders made it quite clear that perhaps government's sole function was to create and maintain a strong military for our defense. All these other social tidbits that have come to crisis proportions under liberal leadership and the liberal media should be labeled as nothing more than a non sequitur to the main function of government. That commerce clause has been taken out of context as well by these liberal politicians.

 

I want you to think about this for a second, because you are just reasserting what you already said, and what I know you already believe. Capitalism is NOT an ideology. It is NOT a philosophical framework around which we seek to build an economic system. It is a word used to describe an economic system already in place.

Seeing as how that is true, all we can look at is what were the characteristics of the system which the word capitalism was used to describe? Was there ever a period in the history of capitalism, basically the last 200-250 years or so, where government did not intervene to protect capitalist profit and to ensure and protect capital accumulation? The answer is NO!! If something is an ever-present characteristic of a system, how can a person then define that system in a way, which creates an oppositional relationship between that system and one of it's ever-present and fundamental characteristics? It is inaccurate and doesn't make sense.

 

I fully understand what you meant and it wasn't a downplay. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, common sense isn't so common.

I'm a libertarian while holding myself more to a classical liberal than of a traditional conservative. In such that I believe there are some social policies that are beneficial to the general public (IE: Entitlement programs). This goes against some libertarian mentality but I feel as though, through the century of massive amounts of government intervention, these type of policies are needed, for the time being. As true capitalism emerges, we can begin balancing out the scales a bit. For now, these policies are needed, regardless if I want to pay for it or not. Private organizations have been enabled by the government to control our lives. Government would rather sit on a pile of money than actually do something for the better of the general public. I just get tired of it and I know that you can't really stop private organizations from doing this, but you can stop the government from allowing them to do it.

That's why my focus has been on a governmental level versus movements like the 'Occupy' crowd. Private organizations control a good portion of the politicians and the politicians don't make our lives any easier. The difference, in my line of thinking, is we break down the grasp the politicians have put around us, that only benefit the top 1%, and allow the market to work. As it stands right now, there is no free market, there is no true capitalism, it's all corruption, corporatism, and mercantilism, all of which goes HIGHLY against any true form of capitalism. Government & corporations don't go walking hand in hand like some partnership (IE: Corporatism/Mercantilism), government is there to ensure that corporations aren't trampling all over people, not to provide corporations with ways of pushing us down and stepping on us to get ahead (Or richer).

 

You are arguing semantics here. Capitalism has come to mean many things. LibertarianForOurFuture has defined what he means when he uses the word capitalism. Rather than respond to the system he describes, you keep resorting to another definition of capitalism which describes a completely different system, and then you attack that system as if it were the same "capitalism" LibertarianFOF proposed. Its a strawman argument at best.

 

It is fundamentally important actually!! Using an inaccurate definition of what you believe a phenomenon to be, leads to faulty conclusions. It leads one to think that they can advocate for capitalism as an alternative to government, but that is faulty. Capitalism reinforces government power, and so to perpetuate that system is to perpetuate interventionist government. Therefore for people to be anti-state, while seeking to perpetuate capitalism, they are actually working towards contradictory goals!! That is vitally important. Without question. I want to limit the state, so does libertarian. We are on the same page. He also seems to want basic welfare functions as part of those limited state functions, so do I. However, the path to that place is important to know, and to choose a path which reproduces interventionist government, undermines our ability to achieve our shared goals!! Limiting the power of capital, is just as important to undermining government power, as limiting the power of government. They are actions which need to be taken simultaneously in order to create a truly limited government!!

 

Our Founders made it quite clear that perhaps government's sole function was to create and maintain a strong military for our defense. All these other social tidbits that have come to crisis proportions under liberal leadership and the liberal media should be labeled as nothing more than a non sequitur to the main function of government. That commerce clause has been taken out of context as well by these liberal politicians.

 

For the sake of accurate logic and critical thinking, you just killed this thread for me. I will go back in my hole now for a lack of something that counters your post. LOl! Well said!

 

What system would you replace capitalism with, and who would make the decisions? That is where all this falls down and we end up with pure capitalism is the best form. Socialism and liberalism inevitably leads to more of this, not less.

 

Now I'm finally seeing what you are seeing. As I tell people, the way I see things isn't always how others see things. As such, you need to show folks what you see in order for others to see what you see. Now, let's get to the crux of your argument.

Assuming, please correct me if I'm wrong, capitalism, in your eyes, is centralized power. Coming from the forms of centralized power, you will have a centralized government. In with the centralized government, you harness powers over the market and gets into the corrupt policies that we see today. Am I in the ball park?

If so, what I've been getting at is the limitation of the government. If we limit the power of government, it doesn't matter how powerful capitalism becomes. We all know capitalism breeds wealth, within that wealth becomes power. The difference is, with the form of 'corporatism' (IE: BS capitalism) that we see today, the power is only targeted to the select few that are in the top 1%. This has become to be because of the power the government has given to these corporations through poor regulation & legislation. So rather than having the rich get richer and the poor get even richer, we have the rich getting stupid rich and the poor eating from the scraps the rich gives us. That's not what I want to see in the market.

I get the point you're getting at. My overall issue is that government has allowed this to occur. Government does need to be there, to provide a structure for capitalism to work. What I'm HIGHLY against, as I'm sure you are as well, is when government intervenes in with the market and creates the corruption. We can't control the private organizations, we can control the government. If we limit the power of government, true capitalism can emerge. The problem with how the government has structured itself is that it allows a plateau for these companies to leap frog, by leaps & bounds, over their competition. Thus crushing everyone else out of the market and allowing only the [rich] to survive.

Trust me, this isn't something that I believe can/will occur overnight. We've been pushed into such a deep rut that it's going to take some serious thought & planning to get us out of this hole. I don't blame Obama, I don't blame Bush, I blame every single one of them for doing this crap to us. We can't control private organizations and we can't control the capital in which they get, what we can do is stop allowing the government to define policies that only works for their friends and the elite. If we start up a business and go bankrupt, government isn't going to bail us out. But let it be someone that helped get them into power, that's when bail outs will come to them. That's where the crap has to stop. Only by limiting government can we see true capitalism emerges, capitalism is the means that I defined, not corporatism or mercantilism.

 

What is socialism then? The answer to government and corporations are in collusion, we need more government taking from some people and giving the fair share to others etc...

 

You are using what many would call an incorrect definition of capitalism. If you can't agree with what the concept is called, then argue against the concept. But the definition of capitalism being used is different from the one you hold, and conflating the two is simply avoiding argument on your part. It is as simple as that.

 

Man, it's posts like this that absolutely cement my belief that America is doomed. When one complains that large government is is a problem yet simultaneously argues that large corporations essentially need to be given free reign, it's pretty much all over but the shouting IMO. Large corporations have literally destroyed this country when all is said and done, and we can't even get people to agree that they're a problem. Somehow though, poor people "living on the dole" are the begin and end all. How sad is this? Pretty sad.

 

Which corporations? One for now will suffice No offense but I think you are falling for the every time government fails it is because of evil corporations. How big is too big, how can a small firm make planes like Boeing, tractors like caterpillar etc...

 

Hey bwk, you didn't leave me with the option to respond to your post. Anyway, you mentioned something about seniors enjoying their SS checks and their medicare bennies. Look, these people have paid into these entitlements throughout their entire working lives, so yes, they're entitled to receive monies or bennies for their sweat. Although I would prefer they do away with SS and adopt private medical and savings accounts, for the time being of course they're entitled to these particular forms of retirement bennies. My concern as to why we should lessen our dependency on government to trim out the fat if you will has to do with the almost 50% of people now signed onto foodstamps under this foodstamp president, and to the almost 50% of our people receiving some type of government handout. And yes, I believe (as was stated in our Constitution) that the main and perhaps only function of our government is to maintain a strong military. You seem to have a problem with our Founders' wishes. These roads and bridges you speak of getting built by our govt tax monies need not be since I believe in federalism where the states have their own tax monies to use to supply the jobs of the state workers. So the only taxes the govt needs in order to fulfill its responsibility are those monies collected to fund our military and natural disaster relief--everything else can and should be left to the states.

 

You do know that a huge number of those food stamp recipients have jobs, but only make enough to pay for the light and the rent right? And that's because of the income disparity we created for this country. That is why so many are on food stamps. " So only the taxes the gov't needs in order to fulfill its responsibilities are those monies collected to fund military and natural disaster". In your original post it was just military according to our founding fathers. They must have forgotten about the natural disaster responsibility. You seem to change the responsibility requirements as we go along. This is why your post is ridiculous. The Constitution means different things to different people. For you, whatever pops up that is convenient at the time, is also stated in the constitution to fit your particular desires. I also picked up on one of your posts where you said that it seems the Founding Fathers. I take that as you really don't know what they exactly meant. And I doubt seriously they were including natural disaster relief at that time. That proves you haven't a clue what they meant.

 

Banks to big to fail, Walmarts that strongarm their way in and run over everybody else, Verizon would be another (one choice...woohoo!). Directv, pick your own monopolist. There are many.

If I asked you "how big is too big"" back at ya regarding government, what would you cut? Who would go on the chopping block? See, I think corporate monopolies that dominate the lobbyist scene, who literally write the laws they pay to have passed are the true cancer of the nation. Monsanto would be another biggie. Can you not see inherent problems with "too big to fail", and yet simultaneously criticize "big government"? You don't see a conflict of interest there? Seriously?

 

Wind down government, but let corporate entities do whatever they like and get as big and as bad as they wanna be huh? Doesn't make good sense to me. If you limit the sheer size of corporate conglomerates, you reintroduce "competetion" back into the mix (you know, that famous right wing talking point they're so fond of?) Truly allow others to compete and let consumer drive the profits of good business. More choices. LESS MONOPOLIES.
But if you can't buy any of that ideology, then neither should you demand smaller government. Remember when Romney said "corporations are people, my friend?"...well..government is people too, my friend. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

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Wind down government, but let corporate entities do whatever they like and get as big and as bad as they wanna be huh? Doesn't make good sense to me. If you limit the sheer size of corporate conglomerates, you reintroduce "competition" back into the mix (you know, that famous right wing talking point they're so fond of?) Truly allow others to compete and let consumer drive the profits of good business. More choices. LESS MONOPOLIES.
But if you can't buy any of that ideology, then neither should you demand smaller government. Remember when Romney said "corporations are people, my friend?"...well..government is people too, my friend. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

Big corporations require the protection of big governemnt to survive. FDR laid the ground work for the mdern coproate state, Democratic congresses for the next 40 years set it in concrete to the extent that they could aided and abetted along the way by various court decsions.

It is interesting to note that the only people the federal government when in Democratic hands ever launches anti monopoly strikes are those businesses that shun politics. Believe me when I say that his lesson is not lost upon Americans business leaders.

 

I think that is only right. People do need food stamps with all these companies paying so little.A person or family shouldn't be punished when they are trying.