Farewell Democracy?

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

It's a matter of my world-view being based on the idea that rights are not good in and of themselves, but tend to be the most expedient way of guaranteeing that everyone gets treated fairly, but its not always the best idea that everyone gets rights. My thoughts on corporate rights are a history of robber-baronism of the worst kind, of ruined lives and ruined ecosystems, of shiftless money grubbers who contribute the least but reap the greatest rewards.

So you come to your conclusions based on myths? Why are you so skeptical of free trade when no nation in history has ever been ruined by too free a market; rather, all of them that have even relatively free markets have experienced an incredible rise in the standard of living for all? And why so unapologetic a statist when the history of governments is a history rife with ruined lives, ruined ecosystems, and shiftless rent seekers? The worst offenders invariably being those governments which are founded on the idea of enforcing "fairness".

Does it never give you pause when CEOs of huge businesses they started decades ago say that they would never have been able to do it under today's regulatory environment? Do you never think that maybe, just maybe, our overenthusiasm for regulations that are intended to keep the "fat cats" from raping and pillaging us all are only keeping smaller, more agile competitors from arising, which in turn ensures that existing fat cats just keep getting fatter and fatter?

You say that you believe in so strongly in the good that government can do despite all the evil it has done because you believe that in our civilized modern societies checks and balances will keep things from getting out of hand, and yet here is a teeny, tiny check on government power - the ability to appeal a law that may unfairly and unnecessarily impede the ability to do business, and which may in fact just be a protectionist boondoggle - and you reject it out of hand because teh corperashinz.

The other difference is that i hold onto the idea that things can be fixed. Government can be slim and efficacious (similar to the New Democrats' mantra from the 90s). Regulations need to be streamlined without actually being defanged; a leaner, meaner government that's only there to stop public bads from accumulating due to personal actions, and not actually play favorites with various industries or interfere in folks' personal lives (except where their personal lives are outwardly harmful).

Modernization is always going to be chaotic, but you never really see the benefits of modernization spread until the regulatory body steps in, like in America, where the gilded age of the late 19th century was followed by the universal prosperity of the 20th with the help of a growing regulatory docket. Obviously overreaction is going to be counter-productive (to speak nothing of the inherent systemic flaws of outright Communism), but reaction needs to be there. Free markets will always be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous, leading to widespread misery.