[karaburatoreror]

Sorry for the delay, I just noticed your response:

Make no mistake about it, some regulations out there are a corporation's friend, why else would there be such a thing as "lobbyists"? You think all these big corporations are contributing vast sums of money to politician's campaigns because they're feeling especially charitable? Now who's being silly?

Generally they lobby AGAINST such legislation. Against more environmental protections and standards. Against more safety oversights, etc.

But I will concede there are certain pieces of legislation that Corporations support - specifically - ones that RELAX controls on them. The "Right to Work" laws in the South are every CEO's wet dream. The way to undo over a hundred years of workers' rights in a single day.

My point is there are so many regulations out there today it's absolutely impossible to tell which ones have a tangible benefit and which are redundant, interventionist, and oppressive. Deregulate in one area and ten more take its place in others, which is why individual regulations are so ineffective. No one can realistically enforce them all, so nobody honestly tries too hard. I think you've been misled to believe (and I may be partially at fault for this) that it is the goal to strip away everything government and replace it with a sucking void. It's not entirely accurate. Yes I believe we need to hit the big reset button, but then to replace it with limited, effective, enforcible regulation, which is out to protect the individual rights and liberties of free enterprise through Constitutional authority and to let simple supply and demand function as it ought. Simply put, I never see any measure the government taking towards enforcing ethical commerce ever becoming more effective than the simple prospect of eventual Chapter 7/11 when corruption and malfeasance is discovered. It's time we started allowing it to happen, really, we've never experienced it in full force our lifetimes and part of it is simply due to the fact that we've consistently transitioned away from it from the moment of the idealogy's conception. Our market is free enough that we can see working examples of supply and demand functioning correctly, and in those markets specifically we experience the best prices for valuable, efficient services and products provided for trade. Since government cannot keep up with information technologies at the least we experience many principles of the free market from that specific field, and thus, considering the complexity and intricacy of many technological innovations, we get excellent prices and services for this hugely trending industry simply because it is a requirement for companies to stay on the leading edge to do so. The more government inserts itself the more the equilibrium becomes unbalanced, and the result is a trend away from best price. Even people with a freshman-level understanding of economics understand that principle, and I suspect your comprehension of the subject is much higher than that. And that's where we're going to have to disagree. Simply producing the "best price" is not the end-all most important thing in the universe. Manufacturing pencils might be cheaper if corporations used child labor, but that doesn't mean we should let them. True, these regulations make the cost of business more expensive, but if we actually cracked down on outsourcing, that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

Secondly, the major libertarian argument against regulation that I've heard - "common sense" - is just plain wrong. So according to this theory, if a corporation used unsafe practices, produced unsafe products, or unsafe work conditions, the "invisible hand" would come in and put them out of business. Doesn't work. The world's just too complex. What's in those pills you take at lunch every day? What went into that cheeseburger? Is that minivan safe? What minerals are in your tapwater?

We cry about the government and regulation - but we forget why all that was established in the first place. Wildjoker told me - completely serious - that he would like to live in the 19th century. He has been taught that everything was "better" before the evil progressives came along and established evil big government.

I know you're smarter than that - and you're right - there is a lot of redundant and excessive legislation - but that's not the root of our financial problems. We could quite literally fire every non-DOD government employee, and the budget still wouldn't be balanced. Our major problems are the broken medical system, foreign wars, and social security. The foreign wars will end when we eventually figure out they don't work. Social Security will fix itself as we pass on over the baby boomers. The major remaining problem is the broken medical system, which makes both government programs (medicare/aid/Tricare) more expensive than necessary, causes more bankruptcies, and makes people spend more than they need for basic coverage. This SHOULD be easily fixed, every other industrial power has a working system - our main problem is ideology. We're so scared of "death panels", "communism", etc etc - we refuse to recognize the systems that work better than ours.

Government intervention in the form of stimulus for the purpose of creating jobs is turning out to be swinging a bat blindfolded in a dark cave, it rarely ever connects and accomplishes little more than a brief upset in the balance of the system and actively enables the failed practices of failing businesses, many of whom happen to be political cronies of the people earmarking the fund, and the saving of any employment whatsoever is temporary at the long-term detriment of the company itself and it costs the government, and thus the American taxpayer, significantly. The reason the poor and the middle class feel so disparate from the very rich has a lot to do with the dillution of our own currency. Collectively we have all (and even a bit more) of the money that we had years previous, yet the incremental rise in costs throughout the years, practically outside of our direct notice contributes to the fact that we're beginning to feel what we do have is never enough, and sometimes that is accurate, especially coupled with extensive uses of credit to make purchases beyond our liquid capabilities, which is another subtle means to deprive ourselves of our wealth. Of course the money supply has grown so much larger, the wealth must have gone somewhere, for the rate of increase overall far exceeds our own cost of living increases provided by our own employers, which leaves realistically the very rich, due to the trickle down nature of inflation. The stimulus got the job done- inflating the economy - the problem is it went straight into the pockets of the banks and corporations - the people who caused the problem in the first place.

For any business to be successful, and add value for shareholders, it will be their eventual goals leading towards expansion, and thus job creation. The more government upsets the fluid nature of commerce the more it hampers their ability to do that. As the intervention forces those being intervened upon to move into self-assessment and survival mode which actively deters that very thing, much like a rise of a new competitor in their market. When the competitors rise, at least they create jobs, and the business being competed with is forced to innovate or give up market share. When government intervenes, neither of which occurs. None of this requires responsible long term strategy. Why would a CEO care if the company blows up in 10 years, after he's retired? Why would he care if it blows up in 1 year? If they fire him he'll get his golden parachute and get a new job somewhere else.

Responsible financial practices, both at a personal and business perspective, are never things a government can realistically enforce, even under the most strict communist practices. I see spending and borrowing as an addiction at a level or worse than anything chemical, and individuals and businesses need to learn to develop pragmatic practices where they more effectively control their assets. Once they do so they have the opportunity to save their earnings, and in the cases of businesses apply them towards expansion of their enterprises (which doesn't happen to work without creating a job for somebody, although it may be a position that has a market value lower than our own minimum wage or a union's concept of "fair wage". ) Okay - this one puzzles me. So our national wealth continues to be concentrated to the top 1%, yet you say our minimum wage is too high?