Comment by dragonwriter
7 months ago
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?
theres antitrust for that .
unfortunately, founders never envisioned a congress of career politicians, who would shy away from their duty to actually draft complete laws and enforce them , because politicians want to be friends with everyone.
Lack of term limits, lack of randomness, lack of income caps in government (and post government!), have eroded a sense of duty in our congressional leaders , and have gotten us a congress that is solely in it for its enrichment at the expense of the voters
4 replies →
The vast majority of successful monopolies are because of government regulation and tax breaks that favor big incumbent businesses. If we massively simplified tax laws and regulations we'd simultaneously kill this specific Intuit problem and several other problems at the same time.
2 replies →
> 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?
The US still taxes you. There's also an expatriation tax.
They do. US Congress has very low approval rating in general. However each member of congress (house or senate) has a high approval rating in their district / state.
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.
[flagged]
Define "best strategies". Best for whom? The rich to further snowball their wealth at the expense of those they bowl over?
Well, to quote the Appellate Court Justice Learned Hand from the 1930s (at the time, he was often called the “10th Supreme Court justice”):
“Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.” Gregory v. Helvering (2d Cir. 1934)
4 replies →