Let's Analyze Government Regulation - @telos
So this @telos guy has been nagging me for some time on Steemit, whenever I post some article about criticizing Government regulation, he always comes and tries to make it look like I am talking nonsense or as if I don't know what I am talking about. Or maybe I’m some crazy hipster that is just bored….
Also he tries to portray libertarianism as something silly, as if only some edgy teenagers and or shady businessmen would like it, I guess in his mind only "evil corporations" exist and Government is always the good guy.
Well I am not even denying that some corporations might get nasty, or abuse their power, but to complain about that, and totally ignore the atrocities committed by Governments, and this pro-Government mentality, just in the 20th century, is totally out of line.
You know it wasn't the Libertarians/Anarchists that committed the Holocaust, it was actually the Libertarians/Anarchists who were actually one of the victims of the Holocaust.
So it kinda looks like to me, if I may say so, that this extreme pro-govenrment mentality always ends up in no good.
Now I am not saying @telos is a Nazi or anything like that, don't misunderstand me. In fact I think he has quite nice intentions, he is probably a good guy, but he is very confused. This is a friendly criticism, no offense is intended. I am a very calm person usually, but some of the nonsense he is been talking about just annoys the hell out of me.
From what I understood from his arguments, @telos believes that everything should be regulated, and that "evil corporations" have to be restrained. By whom? Well by the Government. And what if the Government will get evil, who will restrain that?
But then of course he never heard of the concept of "regulatory capture" or in plain called english "bribing", whereas the corporations just simply bribe the regulators, and then instead of the regulators keeping in check the corporations, they are turned against us, us the little guys.
Let me tell you how it works:
- Evil corporations
mustbe regulated because they doevilstuff... - The Messiah Government comes and sets up a bureaucracy to issue licenses and oversee evil corporations
- The license + insurance + other costs could cost up to 90,000$
- Shit, now little 11 year old girls can't sell lemonades anymore because license can cost up to 90,000$
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlfvnOCeAjU - Meanwhile big banksters still rape you in the asshole with bailouts, and regulators are laughing at you for the loser you are
By the way how did bank regulation work out? I am sure the banking laws are like 50,000 pages long full of complex regulations and instructions how to do things in finance. Yet that doesn't stop them from fucking over taxpayers for trillions....
By the way @telos is always accusing me of not citing sources, so I have plenty of sources here to show you how effective regulation is:
- http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/11/fed-gave-banks-trillions-in-bailout-bloomberg-reports/
- http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/06/news/economy/where_stimulus_fits_in/index.htm
- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/greece-9billion-bailout-cash-future-debt-relief/
- http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-15/eu-agrees-bailout-greece-once-again
So it's almost as if regulation is useless for the big guys, but what it does is just fucks over the small guy. You know they always go after the low hanging fruit. Like if you steal a banana from a store, you can easily get 2 years in jail, but if you steal billions, you just get a slap on the wrist, pay a few millions out of the billions you made in profits, how nice. That's like if you stole the banana from the store, if you return the peel of the banana, then you don't have to go to jail.
In reality regulation only achieves 2 things:
- Keeps out competition, and monopolizes the big corporations in an industry
- Grows State power, and hence tyranny
So yes the big corporations work hand in hand with the Government to fuck over the small guy, and the middle class people like me or you.
They never go after the big guy, but if you introduce a new regulation, you can bet your ass they will come after you. Like if you steal a banana, you can bet your ass you will be in prison 1-2 years. But if you steal a trillion $, you might become a central bank president.
This is the outrageous, yet so obvious truth that this @telos guy simply can't comprehend. He always looks at the benefits of regulations, but never looks at the costs.
There is something called cost-benefit analysis, like sure we need environmental regulations so that big corporations will not pollute rivers, but then expect 20-30 million jobs going to China and India. Oh an by the way if you drop a piece of trash on the ground, you get a 500-1000 EUR fine, meanwhile the big corporation will still pollute your river costing the society trillions of $ in health and environmental damage, but will probably only get just like a 1 million $ fine. Meanwhile if you drop a trash on the ground you get fined heavily. Oh an why not install surveillance cameras in the entire city to catch those evil people that throw trash on the ground, meanwhile getting bribed by corporations to just ignore the water pollution incidents.
You see my friends, Libertarians/Anarchists are not the idiots! It's not an edgy extremist kind of idea, it's just the non-initiation of force. I guess it's very extremist to believe in the non-aggression principle, given that most people just love to do violence all the time.
Besides, don't talk about something you don't know, there are many intellectuals in this field, you might want to study their work:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Von_Mises
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner
And many more contemporary people:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Block
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe
- Or even people on Steemit like: @dollarvigilante , @kafkanarchy84 , @joshsigurdson, @adamkokesh (after all this is a contemporary philosophy right before our own eyes)
- There are women too, let's not ignore the liberty loving women: @dragonanarchist , @joanaltres (the biggest star of Steemit), and many more I guess
So are we all crazy for believing in the non-initiation of force and property rights, like you own your body and the fruits of your labor, and anyone trying to take that away is a thief? I guess it depends on the point of view from where people look at it.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
I'm not sure how much " the people" have regulated the government in the last 200+ years in this country anyway. For every 20,000 stautes passed when nobody is looking, you might get a half dozen referendums passed "increasing personal freedoms."
I'd like to believe in the existence of a limited representative democracy or constitutional republic, but I've yet to see any such creature exist.
tell that to @telos I already know that.
The people don't pay enough attention, I agree one hundred percent.
Yet pot has become legal in several US states and in Canada because people wanted it. Plenty of regulations have been changed based on public opinion. Gay marriage, interracial marriage, hell prohibition barely lasted 13 years it was so unpopular.
Here's the problem: If you depend on the free market to handle things, the same people who don't care enough to vote will have to care enough to give up products they actually want in order to affect change.
So yeah, I'll take voting.
The power of voluntary cooperation is not limited to boycotts.
The power of voting is limited to parameters of election cycles
●Such as available candidates, (what if they all suck).
●How often you can vote. (Dont worry if this guy really sucks he's gone in four years.)
●The power of million$ in campaign conteibutions your average person just doesn't have to pay now for tomorrow's favors and protections.
How many more property crimes have been stopped by door locks, security systems, fencing companies, and cyber security software than by police?
As a side note:
Police rarely stop any crime. They are usually there just to fill out the paper work scrape up the mess and do an investigation after the fact.
They will kick down your door, shoot your dog, (maybe you too), and confiscate your things for having a leaf.
Not to worry: If they misbehave they will do a full investigation of themselves, from a purely objective, and just standpoint serving only "the will of the people," cuz public servants do it like that.
If all your candidates are that bad you could run yourself.
Yes, as opposed to a warlord setting up a dictatorship and ruling for life. Seems a fair trade. Also there are impeachments and referendums.
Yes, campaign contributions suck. People should vote out candidates that passed laws allowing easier campaign donations from corporations. I hope we do next election.
All security systems do is call the police, which must be enough to stop any impending crimes.
Yes, I know you guys love your confirmation bias.
Cops sometimes overreach, and should be punished. Meanwhile in some cities cops are actively working on de-escalation and they are improving: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/salt-lake-city-police-de-escalation_us_591c9070e4b03b485cae1129
And I've been arrested twice. The first time they called me and asked me to drive to the station, and the second time I was pulled over and had a pleasant chat with the cop since he had gone to my school.
And again I've admitted the system isn't perfect. It's literally the least bad option.
Take 34 minutes of your time and listen to what the private sector's respones is to crime prevention. In Detroit Michigan no less.
Police seldom prevent crime. They enforce law there is a difference.
I get what you're saying but those things are the exception, not the norm. Yes, if you get literally "everyone" to agree on something they can most likely make it happen. But history has shown us that majority of the time it's big corporations who make the decisions.
http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4
A study done a few years back confirmed that a majority of US policy is dictated by the will of big money. Even if it goes against what the majority of the masses want.
Your argument swings both ways. If people don't care it's very easy to control things. You simply lie to the people, rig the vote a little, and turn minorities against each other to keep them under your thumb.
We don't really live in a democracy based on voting anymore. It's more a dictatorship in diguise.
And if there were no government, that would still be true... but with less accountability.
I agree. In fact I think some of the influence towards anarchism may come from big companies, as it tends to get people to self-select themselves out of voting. The biggest problem with our democracy is that less than half the people vote.
Not really. For all his faults Trump was a very populist candidate and he certainly beat the establishment...
"And if there were no government, that would still be true... but with less accountability."
The last 50 years of the USA say otherwise. Though I don't advocate for no government at all people like a governing body. But I do want a very reduced and restricted one. If anything the govermnent is what allows for no accountability. Consumers and free market need to keep corporations in check.
"I agree. In fact I think some of the influence towards anarchism may come from big companies, as it tends to get people to self-select themselves out of voting. The biggest problem with our democracy is that less than half the people vote."
That's a problem but not the biggest problem. Saying that ignores things such as voter fraud, vote manipulation, mass corruption or one of any other million things.
"Not really. For all his faults Trump was a very populist candidate and he certainly beat the establishment..."
Yes and no. Trump wasn't the rich pick (far as we know) but he hasn't really changed much. He's made some changes which aren't popular among the elite. But overall the status quo hasn't truly changed a whole lot. The same people who are in power are still power. Corruption still runs pretty rampant, etc.
The problem with central power is the power doctrine. "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" And in this day and age there is no one more powerful than the Federal Government. Except maybe the Federal Reserve. That and perhaps the elite behind the scene pulling the strings.
I'll have to deal with this later. You're attempt to vilify me only shows your fanaticism.
Government needs to be restrained by the people. I've said this before. You don't pay attention, half-read my arguments, ignore my citations and then provide literally nothing of substance in return. You make utterly specious claims and blame everything on government, even when a private citizen is causing the problems.
I've brought up things like managers raping employees in sweatshops to you several times, and you ignore it to rant about government instead. You preach the free market would solve everything while utterly ignoring the very real harm it can do.
There is no "fanaticism" here, again if you use words like that by referring to me as some kind of fanatic you just prove my point that you try to make me look like I am some kind of crazy person, which I am not. And there is no vilifying here, I have just respectfuly debunked the nonsense that you have been talking about.
Yes. So then who regulates who? The government regulates the people, but then the people regulate the government? That's like saying the sheep can eat the leg of the wolf after the wolf ate the sheep. It makes no sense man.
Besides how did the wonderful "restrained government" worked out in Weimar Republic, before Hitler rose to power?
So what? I never said that I condone those horrible things. In fact from the entire beginning I am saying that all agression that is initiated is bad. That is all I am saying: the initiation of force is bad, yes and that includes employers abusing employees as well.
But that also extends to Government, and it's simply a numbers game, you can only see the corporate evil, but you almost like ignore the evils committed by Governments, just in the 20th century, that is of orders of magnitude worse.
I mean some manager beating and raping their employees is a horrible atrocity, but it pales in comparison to the Soviet Gulag system, how many people were raped and murdered there? Hundreds of millions.
So just put things in perspective.
Guess I'm right on the crazy train then. Sorry, but anyone who doesn't see that big Gov is a big source of corruption is fooling themselves. People don't seem to realize that the reason why crony capitalism exists is because big companies can pay big goverment to do things for them.
Exactly, no regulations will not be a paradise, but it will bring considerably more social equality.
You know like not having to pay 90,000$ to open a lemonade stand would be a good idea. It can help poor people for example.
The finacial power of corporations, the control of the money supply (banksters), joined with the force of the state make for quite a cartel indeed.
It's ironic though, probably banking and financial regulation laws are like 50,000 pages long, in fact just general commercial laws could be like a full bookshelf of law books. Not to mention the costs of licenses and permits and insurance..... But it still doesn't stop the banksters commiting massive fraud.
Bitcoin is like 300,000 lines of code which is like 2600 pages of an A4 size book, and it already solves many of the most important problems in finance, including systematic risk, fractional reserve banking, etc....
Of course it doesn't stop theft and scammers, but that is just up to the market to figure out solutions for, it can't do everything.
Yet Bitcoin itself is more efficient than 200 years of banking regulation combined, and it doesn't require the initiation of force.
I call that something magnificent.
It doesn't require the initiation of force because everyone just turns a blind eye to the people that get scammed.
Brilliant!
No they don't, they go out and find ACTUAL solutions that REALLY work.
Like for example a public shame list of scammers, although I am not sure if that is legal since it could violate privacy laws, which is pretty stupid because it turns out that ostracism and shaming is a more effective method to deterr crime than jail.
I fact I bet you 1 million $ that if a burglar get's shamed on Facebook just for like 1-2 days so that the entire world would know what he did, that would deter him more from breaking into people's houses than 10 years of jail.
That's a great idea! No one's life has ever been ruined by someone spreading false rumors!
Maybe we can also go back to mob justice.
Screw the whole trial and innocent until proven guilty thing, let's just go back to shaming or killing people based on wild accusations.
That's a fucking great plan!
I meant after a trial of course. The victim of a crime would go to trial with the perpetrator, then some kind of decentralized jury system would convict the perpetrator if guilty, and instead of sending him to prison, we would find other methods to make him pay for his crimes.
Of course ,non violent methods is what I mean, so don't put words in my mouth.
Methods would be:
I would guarantee you, that would be a much more effective method for "small criminals".
For serious violent criminals, it's debatable, "an eye for an eye" might be justified here, I don't know, there are many ways to deal with this, it's up to the community to decide.
You're absolutely right, I hate his bloody politicians. I will follow you because you are intelligent. Good job.
At least you didn't let it get personal, LOL
STEEM On!!
None of those have anything to do with regulation. In fact, the crash addressed in all those articles was largely due to (deregulation)[https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused-2008-global-financial-crisis-3306176].
The articles you cited are entirely about bailing out the banks because they had become so large they'd take down the world economy with them. It was controversial, sure, and I'm not sure what the right answer was... but it was caused by getting rid of the regulations you claim do nothing.
Thanks for proving my point.
Again, bullshit as usual. You are probably referring to the Glass-Steagall Act, which I have actually researched.
It turns out it had nothing to do with the 2008 financial crisis.
Again you ignore my source, which explicitly talked about Glass-Steagall. Again you show your fanaticism. You utterly ignore any information inconvenient to your beliefs.
As for The Corbett Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-corbett-report/
And since I know you can't be trusted to click a link here's a screenshot of that page:
The fact is that people follow regulations. It is a very simple fact which you would know if you worked a real job.
I work for a bank, and we spend a lot of time and effort following regulations. The investment side of our bank actually asked us for donations to a PAC because they wanted to lobby for a reduction in regulations... because they are following them.
I just talked to two property managers for my new property. Both of them made it clear they would not work with me if the property were not up to code.
I also would be more likely try drugs like mushrooms if it were legal, but since it is not I haven't taken the risk of getting caught.
When you say regulations do nothing it is pure, fanatical delusion.
Oh man, this is getting boring already.
First of all why is your source better than mine? In fact if you would just categorize news sources through that website and put a "badge of shame" on them based on what people thing, actually it looks like that website is voting based, so people who vote for a website to be a "tinfoil hat" level are actually no better than those who might look like tin foil hats.
Or in other words, "exposing" websites like that is pure bull. They don't give any evidence why a website would be more honest then the other, so it's also opinion based, just like you.
You are opinion based as well, if we research the Glass-Steagall Act, which you can do on your own, and not rely on other sources, it clearly shows that it's not that much related to the 2008 events.
In fact I have spent a lot of time analyzing the 2008 events, since I lost a lot of money there in the stock markets, so i was very curious about it.
It had all to do with the mortgage derivatives, banks took risky loans because they were guaranteed by the government, they securitized them, something triggered the crash, maybe a critical threshold of risk, then it all went south, the houses were foreclosed, this made the real estate system oversupplied, so thos markets collapsed as well, and one thing led to the other, it triggered a cataclysmic reaction throughout the entire financial sector.
If 1 thing is to blame here is the fact that banks overleverage things, what was it like 100:1 or things like that. And this relates more to fractional reserve banking than anything else.
But a better solution other than regulation would just the be segregation of financial markets. Blockchain technology is the key.