Comment by astrange
7 months ago
Because that's not why it happened. There's just an assumption in American politics that whenever anything bad happens it's because of "corporations" and not ideology.
Republicans are against easy tax filing because Grover Norquist makes them all sign pledges against it, not because of lobbying.
Corporations and ideology are not orthogonal concerns. The Republican small government ideology is about moving power out of democratically-accountable public institutions into accountable-only-to-their-owners private ones.
Private businesses are accountable to their customers, not only their shareholders. A business that loses all of its customers ceases to operate. A business that loses 10% of its customers will be held accountable by its shareholders.
Government is far less accountable than that. Government can have the disapproval of over half the population and continue to operate.
LOL good one. As if customers care about the ethics of the faceless mega megacorp behind the scenes.
I’m sure all the workers enslaved in company towns will be happy to know they are free from government meddling.
If this is to be true, then there needs to be stronger protections against collusion and monopolies, otherwise things will end up in a very bad place.
How do you escape a private business that is (a) big enough to buy up all the competitors, (b) uses IP law to prevent competition, (c) gives it's customers worse service and high prices?
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> Private businesses are accountable to their customers
Lol no, not at all. They actively try to deceive consumers through propaganda campaigns (marketing) and deception.
For example, did you know J&J knew about the asbestos problem in their baby powder in the mid 70s? They decided to just lie about it, because they knew cancer agents in their baby powder makes it unappealing to mothers and fathers. We didn't find out about this until 2020. That's 50 years of cancer baby powder.
You don't have any insight into how companies operate. You don't vote on anything. You have zero guarantee they have your interests at heart. How, then, are they accountable? They can do whatever they want, whenever they want.
> Government can have the disapproval of over half the population and continue to operate.
Yeah, until the next election.
I mean, how many people "approve" of the CEO of their company? Surely way fucking less than 50%. Most of the time these CEOs are blatantly evil and stupid. But they call all the shots and you don't get any vote at all.
> Government can have the disapproval of over half the population and continue to operate.
Why don't citizens just move to a different city/state/country when they disapprove, like they do with businesses?
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No; the Republicans argue that it is not in the IRS’s interest to do a good job, or offer the best tax strategies with their own tools. (Additionally, should the IRS tool contain a bug, does the IRS have the right to collect against their own mistake?)
This is a particular sore spot, as Republicans have still not forgiven the IRS in 2013 for admitting deliberately harassing conservative nonprofits without cause.
Call it a stupid argument, but at least it’s not a strawman like the above comment.
> the Republicans argue that it is not in the IRS’s interest to do a good job, or offer the best tax strategies with their own tools.
Yes, the rationalization offered to those who don't already subscribe to the ideology of privatization as an a priori goal to get them on board is usually that democratically-accountable public institutions lack a motivation to serve the interest of the public to whom they are accountable, while accountable-to-their-owners private interests do have an motivation to serve the public interest.
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Define "best strategies". Best for whom? The rich to further snowball their wealth at the expense of those they bowl over?
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I had to google this name and I found that he "makes" them sign a pledge to not raise taxes and to simplify tax laws, not to a pledge to oppose easier tax filing.
Well, there are two things going on here.
Norquist does oppose efforts by the IRS to (partially) obviate TurboTax by having the IRS do your taxes [1].
Separately, he has the anti-tax pledge you mention. The former is not entailed by the latter, at least in any obvious way.
So the parent is right about Norquist opposing filing simplification, but wrong about it being related to the infamous pledge.
[1] For those asking for a citation, here's a recent tweet: https://x.com/GroverNorquist/status/1912592196894630291
They're specifically against automatic tax calculation because they think making everyone do the work themselves encourages keeping it simple.
I've seen this cited on HN a bunch but haven't seen anyone link to a source and nor have I found one. Is there a source for this claim, or is it just inference from their behavior?