| largedarryl said: I think some people confuse you as an ultra conservative because your stance often contradicts several left wing ideologies without the understanding that you are staunchly on the side of deregulating/downsizing government (something most liberal/labour/green view as the other side of the left-right spectrum). I have come to respect your political viewpoints because they have offered something I haven't thought about previously, although I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with you at the same time because I've been unable to come up with a proper way of deciding where government should stand on these issues. I do have a question for you though, do yo feel that government should hold corporations or businesses to the same freedoms that individuals should have, or should corporations and businesses be held to different set of ideals than individuals (as I'm mainly alluding to restricting the rights that corporations and businesses have/should have).
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Thank you very much.
To answer your question about rights businesses should have, I don’t think businesses have rights, only people. Laws in this country should only exist to protect you from others (never from yourself).
Businesses are owned by people however, so at some level, restrictions on businesses impact the people who own them. I am against those kinds of restrictions. On the other hand, a business should not be allowed to act in a manner that harms other people.
So for example, I am for regulation that protects the consumers from businesses, things like the FDA putting restrictions on items for consumption. I am for environmental restrictions so a company cannot pollute ground water that someone else might drink. Things of that nature.
Regulations like limiting what a CEO can make I am against. If the owners of a company decide to pay someone more money than the individual is worth, then that’s their fault (and a law to prohibit this is to protect people from themselves).
As for the question about what freedoms Liberals take away, they always tend to be finical, and most people who make that choice do not consider what money really is.
I work 12 months a year. Today I work 4 months a year for government. If that’s how much money was needed to provide laws that protected me from others, then I am fine with it. But let’s say 50% of that money is for entitlements (and I made that number up to illustrate my point, I have no clue what it really is), that means I work 2 months a year in the service of others.
The government has deemed that I must labor so others can benefit. I am no longer given the right to use that time to better my family, community, or self. My freedom to choose how those eight weeks of my life are to be used has been taken away from me.
Most liberals feel it’s the duty of the country to make sure people cannot fail at life. If there was a magic way to do this without stepping on the freedoms of those who choose to succeed, I would be all for it.
The problem is in a truly free country, there is no safety net, but there should be nothing in your way of succeeding either. I believe the way to make the country better is to remove roadblocks to success (like the civil rights movement), not to strengthen the safety net at the expense of others.
Just my way of looking at the world. Many people think I am wrong. :)
