Comment Re:Advantages of Authoritarianism (Score 1) 202
Why are we speaking of monopolies of all things?
Keep in mind that the largest monopoly is the government which supposedly is keeping these from being created! And that monopoly prevention is a relatively small task for a government to have. It doesn't need a lot of power or resources to enact narrow functions like that.
Nope. Government is not a monopoly as long as the voters can vote for it to no longer be one. A true monopoly is beyond reach of basically everything and becomes a state within the state.
Plus, you can sue a business while governments typically can hide behind sovereign immunity.
Wrong. It is quite common to sue governments. And win, too.
In what cases can they hide?
Why do you think the U.S. has some of the most strict laws in the world regarding this?
Because the US has long desired and supported relatively free and competitive markets. For example, one of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the British government passing a tax on tea so that the East India company could have a market advantage in trade in the American colonies. That lead in turn to the Boston Tea Party, the illegal dumping of a bunch of East India tea into the Boston harbor.
Your point being what exactly? You are making my point.
And with the case of microsoft, almost an international level.
Microsoft has never been a monopoly. It's had market dominance for a time, but there's always been substantial competition.
Well, I'd say that could be debated. There was a long time were it was almost impossible to choose anything else and the acted like complete assholes if one did. Actually it was often worse in other countries, which is not very well known in the U.S.
Anyway, the market was saved by those laws.
In practise, it is far easier to guard secrets in a small organization.
Sure it is. Now even if we grant that unwarranted assertion, consider that there are a zillion such small organizations in the US government and some of these are probably so secret that even their current names are classified.
The ability to evade oversight is the biggest issue with large and complex governments. But you also have the problem of various forms of unintended aggregation of power. A government tasked with health care has a new avenue for accessing personal information about you and a lower threshold of risk for those in power who break the law. Rather than having to break into a doctor's office, they can just tap into a national data base, a far less risky approach.
Yeah, well now that is a totally different matter, and not a part of the discussion as I understood it.
Anyway, companies be just as omnipresent.
Because reducing it doesn't change much, especially when the companies taking over the (often huge) job typically becomes huge monopolies after a while.
Government does a lot more than just prevent monopolies from forming (well monopolies other than the government itself). We can cut the parts that government shouldn't be doing and well, keep the itty bitty parts you want, like the ability to prevent monopolies.
Well, the problem is that the this that it is not itty bitty things that I wan't.
Simply because there are huge things that cannot be entrusted to other entities.
So many things work like crap because people think that the same ideology can be applied to every area of society.
Anyway, most people tend to not act on their own initiative. Nor should all have to.
So what? There are consequences both positive and negative to such choices. One shouldn't expect a government to play a hand in such choices.
So what?? That is where we part ways, I think.
"Does everything for you" is just straw man-y. No one calls for that kind of government.
Well, that was a bit of rhetorical puffery on my part. It does remain that there doesn't seem a natural limit or extent to what government could allegedly be doing for me. The same people who argue that government should be interfering in my work, my health care, my education, my retirement, or any of a bunch of things that have at best minor relevance to society probably will probably find new needs for government action down the road.
And the general justification for government intervention is pretty open-ended. For example, the "safety net" concept is based on the fact that bad things happen to us. But most such safety nets go well beyond anything that addresses the original problem, such as mandatory pensions and health insurance coverage.
As well as it is very easy to go too far the other way. And probably it will. But likely, it then will go back a bit, then the other way.
That is how stuff works. It is about finding an equlibrium. Not some be-all-end-all ideology like small or large government.
I'd like people to just calm down a bit.
Most just want to work to live and love and for that reason they want to contribute to a society.
Why does "contributing" to society involve taking from society?
Negative "contributions" usually result in jail time.
Society is usually not very forgiving when it comes to that.
I would advise you to reconsider your interpretation of that word.
