I hope mrjonno posts his opinions on this thread.  If I remember correctly his views upon the role of government are positively orwellian.

I'm just glad Matt's not here.

Democratic Socialist all the way. (Fuck any refernce to the Brown Shirts.)

All laws should expire every ten years. And I do mean every single one, including the big ones like murder and robbing banks.

Done that way, the really important laws (like the ones which I mentioned above) could be renewed on a simple voice vote. But only if they keep them simple enough that nobody really want to talk them up. Then too, if something does need to be discussed at some length, they can do that but they do so at the risk of taking time away from other matters that may need attention as well.

Also, administrative law needs to be severely curtailed. Those should expire every two years. Basically, no government agency should have the power to pass permanent rulings but rather should be required to decide how many rules they can manage while still doing the main job for which they were created.

Im for capitalism (mainly) but I do believe the government has the responsibility to provide food, shelter, water, etc. all basic needs to all those that cannot afford it, in here I would also included education. I don't like the idea of giving them money but rather a food stamp system and public taps etc. It is the governments responsibility that everyone can start off on a roughly level playing field. Maybe in America you are half way there but in poorer countries that is far from the case. 

Well, in my mind, 'the government' represents the strength of a collective enterprise at a national level as well as symbolizes the goals and values of the public through it's legislation. It's a precipitate of the social zeitgeist.

What 'should' it do? Well, I don't know; what premise are you hiding?

No, I imagine we don't need as many superficial laws as are currently employed. Now, on the other hand, if we want to protect those in diadvantageous positions and prevent those in advantageous positions from essentially seizing control of the collective, legislative controls are demonstrably an excellent tool to use (which makes their abuse so abhorrent).

Doomy, this is somewhat unrelated to this thread, but...

...Just wear the Goddamn seatbelt. It's not you I care about; it's the person your ricocheting corpse slams into.

...And how is this a socialist problem?

Haliburton is a private corporation that has, essentially (much in the same way as weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin), infiltrated the U.S. government due to their enormous amount of clout. Why did Dick Cheney give preferential treatment to Haliburton? Because it made him a ton of capital.

Legislation (that was actually enforced) against this type of infiltration and de facto control over government activity would arguably help to prevent it from happening, reigning-in situations of runaway success and practices designed to create markets that are hostile to any form of competition.

wait wait... wooooh... Pineapple, your saying that the whole Haliburton (and co.) debacle was a socialist problem?

Its was Capitalism at its BEST. A company rose up to the point where it litterally used the government as a fucking resource to secure its hold on the market, totally fucking capitalism, they won the game. (not that im against capitalism by any means)

The U.S. government under the direction of Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Haliburton.

It was in the best interests of Cheney (in terms of capital) to encompass the defeat of his company's competition. Again, it's not as if this was 3rd party intervention by the government; Haliburton had, for all intents and purposes, infiltrated the government. When we look at things from that frame, we see that it wasn't the government acting at all - it was Haliburton pulling the strings, with the government acting only as a proxy.

The U.S. has a capitalist market. Despite that, this scenario you describe did not occur.

...I don't get why you would think this is somehow a good argument in favor of capitalism?

Competition is terrific... right up until there is a clear victor, and to them go the proverbial spoils. Haliburton found and exploited a way to out-compete it's rivals. Saying that the government 'protected' them, again, is a stretch at best and a lie at worst. Haliburton took control of the government, using them as an asset to improve their competitiveness to the point where they essentially became the industry equivalent of a super predator.

...Ever hear the slogan, "The only good Jew is a dead Jew?"

Slogans aren't a terribly good foundation for a rational argument.

Government programs don't always 'fail' automatically. There are good programs (NASA and our constitution come to mind) and there are bad programs; an artifact of humans being imperfect but still desiring achievement.

What about Open Source projects? They don't always fail, yet they don't fiscally compete with other entities. The GIMP, the various Linux operating systems, Open Office, etc are all excellent programs that were created without any motivation created by competition for capital.

So if anyone has a more or less exclusive line of products, they won't care enough about them to ever improve on them? Have you ever, like, built anything, Alison, out of curiosity?

Verizon's engineers likely have plenty of motivation on their own to continue improving their products and adding new features. There is certainly an element of progress that is assisted by competition, but even at that, it only exists so long as the competitors remain relatively close to each other.

I mean, let's take a look at home video gaming consoles. The video game crash of 1983 was caused explicitly by an over abundance of competitors and competition practices, and the influx of competing companies did not assist in making a greater number of high quality games - rather, it flooded retailers with a glut of mediocre or worse titles and alienated gamers. The Nintendo Famicon was created by a playing card company in Japan well after the crash, and not because they wanted to out-compete other playing card compnies: the owner simply wanted to take his company in a new direction. The 8-bit era and onward (where Sega, then Sony, then Microsoft entered the fray as competing bodies) was certainly, again, driven in part by competition, but that's not to say that we'd all somehow still be playing an 8-bit NES if not for Nintendo having other entities to combat (Look at handheld consoles. Nintendo dominsated that market for so long that they may as well have had it all to themselves. Yet the GameBoy still continued to see upgrades and new features added as the technology improved).

Capitalism entails competition huh?

A company gains (for all intents and purposes) direct control of a certain market, its powerful enough to have bought out / used governments to do it.

That is capitalism, thats the very endgame. Is it capitalistic for a government to step in and give formerly "nobody's" the power to direct oppose Hailburton as competition? ... no... that lil lady, is more socialist then anything else

Lets run this through an example

(H)aliburton

(S)omecompany

(i)diotcompany

H-S-i all fight the corporate game, the capitalist way

Haliburton is in the lead enough to spread its influence

Haliburtons influences allows it to then directs obstruct (S) & (i)'s business

Haliburton eventually wins out, destroys its competition.

(This is Capitalism, no holds barred, survival of the fittest, in the business world)

Now... say 5 years down the road company (N)oob pops up, and tries to gain its share of the market...

It can try, but its most likely gonna fail due to Haliburtons grip...

But say the government intervenes and places company (N) with extra funding, lax taxes, or even leeway laws. It can now compete more evenly with Haliburton. This is no longer capitalism...

So what was it, you supported again Pineapple? o_O?

 You keep saying stuff is illegal.

Who says it is illegal?  And how do they enforce that statement?

Frankly, a Capitalist society does not necessitate Competition, because once you've won, you've won until you stagnate or do something stupid.  A full Capitalist society would not have anti-trust laws, to the winner would go the spoils, and those spoils are obtained through any means necessary.

Halliburton gaining control over the government was Capitalism at its finest.  They found themselves with an advantage, and ruthlessly exploited it to benefit themselves as much as possible, screwing everyone else over in the process, and leaving the mess they made for someone else to clean up.  There is no higher form of Capitalism than that.  It was not socialism that gave Halliburton exclusivity.  Yes, if the government had been weaker, Halliburton might not have had as much of an advantage, but regardless, the Government was the one offering the job, so no matter how weak they were, Halliburton still would have profited.

In its purest form, Capitalism would necessitate humanity becoming a plague of locusts, ravenously devouring everything around us as we leave behind dead worlds and shattered lives, seeing any who stood before us weeping in the anguish of defeat.*

Also, from Wikipedia;

Don't cherry pick two examples to make it sound like they are just a bunch of incompetent morons sitting around on their hands going "Duuhuuhh We're good where we are thanks" because there aren't any soviets around for them to make funny faces from the moon at.

I'm sorry, but what exactly about 'the government' makes everyone working for it retarded?  Why are corporations or private businesses somehow immune to this?  When you get right down to it, the only difference between a Corporation and a Nation is scale, and that difference is shrinking rapidly.

*This paragraph is essentially just here to try to turn The Doomed Soul into a Capitalist.

It's easier to get rid of a corupt corporation full of morons, than it is to get rid of a government full of morons.

The Presidency lasts 4 years and it is extremely difficult to get a new one. It is far easier to switch corporations.

I'm not saying that corporations don't have morons or retards, but those don't tend to last as long as the government morons and retards.

What about them? Two accidents in a long history of incredibly risky business is one Hell of an achievement. Ejecting manned vehicles from the Earth's gravity well isn't exactly an easy task (or so I'm told).

If it's so easy to get rid of corrupt corporate entities, why hasn't Halliburton been dealt with? Or Lockheed Martin? Or Exxon Mobil? Or Union Carbide? What about the privately owned banks?

The U.S. just exchanged governments; how long has it been since they exchanged their major corporations? Most of these entities are old timers; Union Carbide was founded in 1917.

I don't understand your argument. Because corporations can seize control of the government in order to beat the snot out of their competitors (a la laissez faire capitalism)... the government is at fault?

As pointed out by Jormungander, I wouldn't call that Capatilism.

At any rate it shows the government has far too much power. And yet socialists want to give it MORE power.

Read my OP

Also ironically the corporations you mentioned are *ahem* well connected within the government.

That's called cheating.

I'm not saying that it's the only way to cheat, but if you don't want to get punished, then you cheat with the people who enforce/make  the laws.

Enron cheated, but they got caught and charged because they weren't in bed with the government

Haliburton is cheating, but they don't get punished because their in bed with the government.

I have no idea why this is a hard idea to grasp. The government shouldn't have that power and the executives and at Haliburton and the government officals involved should be in prison.

.... i dont think i und... Oooooh

You want me to mercilessly take over rival corporations instead of countries... ok, gotcha.

How does it show that? How does it not show, instead, that the corporate entity inquestion attained far too much clout?

Again, you're still treating the government as though it was a separate entity from Halliburton. It was not. Cheney was not 'in bed with' the government; he was the government.

I'm pretty sure all that I said was that the government's job, in my view, was to serve as a protective agency for disadvantaged individuals. As you might guess, the uppermost spectrum of society taking control of the government illegally largely prevents it from doing that job.

Cheney did not establish a socialist system; he established a largely fascist aristocracy (to his credit, I think perhaps he did this after having a mental meltdown. He was a perfectly fine politician for a while... and then he had a nearly fatal aneurysm that I think made him psychotic). Arguing that he would not have been able to do this had the government been weaker is absurd; if the government had been stronger it perhaps could have enforced it's laws and prevented the infiltration. I imagine a much weaker system he could've warped into a much more grotesque parody of it's former self, much in the same way Chancellor Hitler did.

Yes; and it's the government that establishes what is cheating and what isn't. So if we both agree it was cheating, isn't the problem that the government could not/would not stop the cheaters, rather than that, "The government has too much power"

EDIT: I should clarify, just so it's plainly obvious, that I'm not advocating for lending 'more power!!!!' to the government. I do advocate for large changes to how governing is done, but I do not think that simply layering on law after law after law will solve the world's problems. As an example, I would love to see speed limit laws changed so that rather than posting legal limits on roads for drivers to obey or ignore at their own discretion at the risk of possibly receiving a fine on the wrong day, manufacturers of vehicles are targeted instead and simply told that they cannot make cars that are capable of going more than 60-ish mph (obviously an actual such law would have to take into account exceptions for emergency service vehicles and perhaps a few other areas, but I imagine it would wind-up cutting back far more accidents than the roadside signs that are regularly ignored).

Yes, it would need legislative power to do that (That is, all parties would have to recognize the government as the arbitrator; else it could not arbitrate).

Well, in your hypothetical, why is it that Hamby's restaurant has better food, faster service, prettier girls ( ), etc? I would imagine it's because Hamby has had more experience than you running a restaurant and is therefore more educated in working the system, yes? I don't see asking for help from the arbitrator as 'whining'; I see it as asking for help. It's not logical to me that if you really want to run a restaurant, and if running that restaurant provides something that other people want (in the case of the hypothetical, food that has been prepared for them), you shouldn't be able to do that without worrying about what Hamby is or isn't doing. Perhaps the government could run a program where you are taught how to run your business effectively; perhaps you could be forgiven your debts while you're getting used to running the business; perhaps they could give Hamby incentives for assisting you in getting your business up and running and acting cooperatively instead of competitively; perhaps a fundamental change could be instated where debt and ownership are abolished concepts.

I'm not saying that any of that is the guaranteed solution (I'm not exactly the go to guy for business ideas), I'm saying that it doesn't jive with me that a person should necessarily be cut out of what they want to do with their life just because they cannot make capital while doing it.

No. The government has been usurped, remember?

Well, okay: We're playing this card game, and there are three people at first:

- Me (Opponent)

 - You (Opponent)

 - The Judge (Arbitrator)

The Judge lays down the rules for the game, and they're more or less fair, but you're just plain better than me so you wind-up really taking away my money. The rules as they exist do not prevent any kind of runaway leader problem, so you more or less clean me out and send me packing - and hey, them's the breaks, right?

Now another player sits in to take my place, and (having watched our game) she's proving to be a much more capable opponent. So, you decide you need a new strategy; you pay off The Judge so that he passes his position over to you and leaves the table. So, now it looks like:

 - Opposing player (Opponent)

 - You (Opponent/Arbitrator)

...So, is the problem that The Judge had too much authority over the game (which was needed for the game to exist in the first place)? Or is it a much different problem?

That won't work Kevin. Now say you want to open a resturant. Now Jill. Now Thomathy etc... now there are far more resturants than needed, and now none of us are making money.

and either:

1] Some of us have to close down

or

2] The government has to intervene and play all nice with all of us.

You just brought up the video game crash, do you think they would have done that if they knew it would crash?

You're programs would encourage MORE people in the business and soon we another crash will happen.

Why the hell do we need a judge?

Imagine this, instead of a judge, we come up with our own rules. Now you are not going to agree to a rule I propose that gives me an unfair advantage right?

But what if you HAVE to? Do you know how long current legislation is? All a company has to do is higher high class lawyers, read the ins and outs of the law and boom, they have massive leverage against say you or me who can't understand the pages upon pages of the law. That way, I'm sure if the corporations wanted, they can pick an instance in which we broke the law [whether the action was moral or not is irrelevant] or didn't follow it properly, while we struggle to understand the damn law, the corporation effectively put us out of business without having to out perform us.

Like I said why do we need a judge? We need an enforcer. We come up with the rules, and if any of us breaks the rules, the enforcer can penalize us.

You said the judge lays down the rules. Why do we have to let a judge do that?

If I influence the judge, then I can get him to pass a rule in my favour and you would have to agree to it. But if we collectively make the rules, than you would never agree to the favourable rule.

If there is an enforcer rather than a judge, then we are both more likely to benifit and it's going to be fair.

If Bill Gates runs Microsoft into trillions of dollars of debt, do you think his company would still be standing?

Bush ran the U.S into tirllions of dollars of debt, yet now he just asks for MORE money, from the taxpayers. He doesn't have to change the way he spends money, he can just ask for more.

Bill Gates on the other hand cannot demand your money, you have to give it to his company. He can't force you to give it to him.

Wow the clearist form of projection evar.

You seem to have the kinks of the government assistance program worked out you get a cookie.

It's not within it's rights. Nobody bid on those contracts as per free market, but the government handed it to them.

As for you going to my resturant instead of Hamby's, the reason doesn't matter seeing as you had a CHOICE to go to mine. You did not HAVE to. You could have gone to Hamby's.

The government had no other choice.

read Jormungander's post.

And said contractors have to bid for business. If one company does not meet the government's expectations, then they can find a new one. Just like you and me.

They outlawed the competition with respect to Iraq. No other company could bid on the contracts, ergo Haliburton is in Iraq with no bid contracts and no competition.

The way to do it is to make laws that all government contracts have to go up for bid.

Look at it this way: People rag on private companies for showing favortism. For example, say a company ditches it's stock holders and pays of their buddies in no bid contracts. How long before those involved are in prison?

How many government officals are in prison because of them screwing over the people and paying off their buddies?

I think that whatever we can charge private corporations with we can charge government officals with.

And get rid of the cruel efficiency of the free market? We are trying to do that now with the auto bailouts; and I think that is hurting us and misallocating resources. I think that 'brutal economic war' leads companies to strive to please their customers in whatever way they can. If you want to bring government enforced stagnation, get rid of economic struggles for company survival.

Though these struggles don't work once a company gets the government to outlaw competition. Not allowing competition to happen out of a desire for fairness or cooperation is bad. Not allowing competition out of a desire for government sponsored wealth and a desire to use legal measures to harm competitors (Haliburton) is worse.

Pineapple -

The U.S. is a capitalist market, in which Haliburton operated. So I'm having a hard time following your point. Are you saying the U.S. isn't really a capitalist market, and is therefore too socialist?