Poll and Discussion- Corporatism

[Mr. Purple]

Ok, I changed it. But note that there's a difference between neutrality and objectivity- it's not politically neutral to say climate change is real and caused by human activity, but it is objectively true.

I agree.

It's a broken system that lets the ignorant and hateful majority control the government based on irrational ideology and harm people.

No matter what government system you use, you are going to have to put in the grunt work of convincing and teaching people the truth about the world anyway. It doesn't matter if you are objectively right about all your opinions, If we renamed America to BrimstoneSalad land and put you in control as the dictator, to all the people who don't believe in your "so called facts", your government would become target practice. A democracy gives a much greater ability to coexist with drastically different worldviews while we work on the task of getting everyone educated. Once everyone is educated, democracy still is the better option.

I favor the constitution, and the rule of the courts. We see problems there too, but at least today (where the courts are thankfully mostly benevolent), rule by those forces is on balance usually acting to protect minorities and civil liberties

You make it sound like the constitution isn't democratic. I'm sure you know it can be changed and amended by the people without the courts. It sounds like you are just saying you want higher thresholds of agreement for matters of importance huh? I would agree with that as well, and this could probably be done with a more direct democracy.
The constitution is great, but it is only relevant inasmuch as it says things people already believe. Just handing a constitution to a country will do literally nothing unless they already agree with it's principles, which means there is that same educational grunt work you still have to do.

One on one, how long does it take you to change the mind of a fundamentalist Christian?

47 minutes.

The problem is ignorance and fear mongering.
These aren't simply people I "disagree" with. These are people who are objectively wrong, and advocating policies that are uncontroversially harmful.

I agree that a vast majority of our problems are because of ignorance. Once again you are blaming an issue that seems to me to have little relevance to which system of governance we pick. Do you know of a system that magically educates everyone? I would like to hear your arguments about how a different system would handle the ignorant masses better than democracy does if you think that is true.

I am a strong believer that the truth has a major advantage when it comes to winning arguments when presented well enough. You shouldn't be this worried as long as you are right and the playing field is even. The education will come, but only if we can minimize the corruption. To me, this makes money a more relevant threat systematically.

It's a trivial one, and probably one that has a greater good influence than bad.

We strongly disagree here, but even if money actually was helping my causes for now, i wouldn't want it to be a part of our system of governance. The tides could easily turn, and I have enough confidence that the good ideas will win as long as it's ideas that we are fighting with.

[brimstoneSalad]

No matter what government system you use, you are going to have to put in the grunt work of convincing and teaching people the truth about the world anyway.

If you're relying on corporate interests, maybe not as much. Of course, it has down sides too, I just think they're safer than what a direct democracy would result in now.

A democracy gives a much greater ability to coexist with drastically different worldviews while we work on the task of getting everyone educated.

No, it's people thinking we have one. So stop telling them we don't.

Once everyone is educated, democracy still is the better option.

If at some point in the future people are more educated and sensible, we can switch to a more direct democracy. Although you still have the threat of fear mongering to manage.

Our best bet may still be legislation by jury systems, as we discussed in the other thread. This insures the people are educated, and may provide a context to rationally dispel fear mongering tactics.
I'd have to see it in practice more against the worst examples to be more confident in it, but giving the rulings on teaching evolution in schools, I think it could be trusted more than anything else.

It sounds like you are just saying you want higher thresholds of agreement for matters of importance huh?

Bingo.

The constitution is great, but it is only relevant inasmuch as it says things people already believe. Just handing a constitution to a country will do literally nothing unless they already agree with it's principles, which means there is that same educational grunt work you still have to do.

It's not as much grunt work. In the courts, you're dealing with a much smaller number of influential people. My issue is the sheer numbers, not the concept of education.

One on one, how long does it take you to change the mind of a fundamentalist Christian?

47 minutes.

Can you do that a hundred millions times before the next election cycle?

Do you know of a system that magically educates everyone?

No, some systems just make it less important that people are educated, by shifting the power by default to others unless the consumers are educated.
Corporate rule is not ideal, but it's better than rule by the ignorant masses. If the masses are no longer ignorant, then they can take charge.

I am a strong believer that the truth has a major advantage when it comes to winning arguments when presented well enough.

Of course it has an advantage, but it's not that strong of one.
This is why I said it's better to have money in play: it gets the message out there.
I'd take a million dollars to get my message out there even if it meant the opposition got a million and a half to do the same.

Does the truth have an advantage, or doesn't it?

You shouldn't be this worried as long as you are right and the playing field is even.

The playing field doesn't have to be even. The trouble is, fear mongering gets propagated for free. Some messages are dangerous, and overcome sense if not opposed well.

It's a trivial one, and probably one that has a greater good influence than bad.

We strongly disagree here, but even if money actually was helping my causes for now, i wouldn't want it to be a part of our system of governance. The tides could easily turn, and I have enough confidence that the good ideas will win as long as it's ideas that we are fighting with.

Companies aren't going to just decide it's profitable to stone homosexuals. Corporate rule is a safer middle ground. At such a time that people are educated, they can boss corporations around at their whim: our system is a special one that keeps people powerless when they are ignorant (and need to be powerless), and gives them power when they are informed and responsible enough to handle it.

[EquALLity]

The trick is drawing the line between one and another.

The difference between giving someone a million dollars and talking to someone is pretty clear.

Remember, much of the worst lobbying activities these groups have done is based on disinformation, and making dishonest studies that try to create doubt about global warming.
Mr. Purple's point was good too: Lobbyists can also just take advantages of lawmaker's laziness, and write bills for them that mostly seem acceptable, but may have subtly biased in them without a penny changing hands.

I agree that that's an issue also, but it's a separate issue.

It's not just about giving money directly to politicians. Eliminate that without addressing the propaganda and disinformation, and we'll only be back where we were in the days before Citizen's United, which was pretty much the same status quo.

How do we ban one idea or kind of "research" without imposing on others?

It's not only about bribing politicians, but that's a large part of the problem.
Citizens United made the situation of campaign finance much worse, but other Supreme Court cases in the 70s created the problem.

And we can see very clearly how it has impacted our policies, see this informational video about a Princeton study:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

Remember, I'm the one who doesn't have a problem with imposing on religion, and I think that's the root of most of this, so I'm not against what needs to be done, but it's still a difficult subject.

Translation: Discriminating against and persecuting religious people.

Even if this were ethical, it can't happen in practice with the current state of the country.

Direct campaign contributions are a red herring. Real lobbying is about information, or disinformation, and stirring up political support and opposition through advertising and grass roots campaigns.

Not at all, they are extremely relevant. See the video.

Also, why do you think that corporations bother giving millions of dollars to politicians if it's barely relevant? For the fun of it?
We're talking about corporations- the purpose of corporations is to make as much money as possible. If a corporation does something, we can reasonably assume that it's for monetary benefits.

You don't need to bribe them. Look at the history with cigarette companies. Conservatives already want to believe these things; you just need to provide them with enough misinformation to secure their confirmation biases.

Speaking of cigarettes, did you know that Bernie Sanders questions whether or not they should even be legal?

Perhaps conservatives have these predispositions, but it doesn't help when politicians are given millions of dollars from companies who have a financial interest in the War on Drugs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/washi ... ml?hp&_r=0
I think there have been a couple of documentaries on this, and vice may also have a piece on it.

Yep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PLIWZj5Buk
That's not the whole piece. You should find the segment if you can.

It's far less scary to think this is all about money and secular corporate interests.

That's pretty crazy, but it seems like a fringe thing, and it doesn't explain why so many democrats have supported unnecessary conflicts in the Middle East. It also only really explains the situation with Israel, which isn't the entire story.

They don't really need that money to get elected. Citizen's united didn't provide a massive shift in American politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_ ... cal_impact
The vast majority of contributions are still not from companies, but from individuals based on ideology.

In terms of corporate contribution, they give to democrats too. The margins are not what you may assume they are.

There are year by year breakdowns here:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/sta ... o-raise-m/
Sometimes Democrats lead, sometimes Republicans do; Republicans have a small edge on contributions.
Here are some of the biggest:
http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/10-c ... ?a=viewall

The ideology that they should get tax cuts, and businesses they may own should be helped financially.
This is the link Wikipedia gave about individuals being the primary donors based on ideology: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/featu ... -ted-cruz-

I know that they give to democrats also, like Hillary Clinton. I think this is why many democrats are very pro-corporate.

Tech firms tend to like democrats more, but most companies are pretty evenly divided, the worst probably being Koch and Chevron.

I'm not surprised by that at all. They buy the democrats and republicans so that, regardless of who wins, they have them in their pockets.

I said it's not as much of an issue. Prisons mainly want to lobby for cost savings and keeping prisons private institutions, which isn't as big of a problem as people assume it is.
There are some benefits of private prisons too, so you have to compare that against the drawbacks.

It's a very important issue for the reasons I explained, which you seem to have completely avoided addressing.
Of course private prisons are going to want stricter laws when they make money off of it. We're talking about corporations, again.

It's a system that's bound to become corrupt, because it creates a profit motive in locking people up.

I'm sure they want to stay in business, but that's not necessarily where the strict drug policies come from.

It plays a significant role, because the strict drug policies make them money.

It could, but it doesn't mean it has, and it says nothing about the degree or extent of the influence.

It pretty clearly has. We have the highest prison population per capita in the entire world.

We invaded Iraq because Bush managed to convince himself that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

That's part of it, but people in his administration knew we didn't really have evidence for the WMDs, and they had connections to oil companies.

A large part of that is that loopholes are very difficult to close.
Closing loopholes sounds great in theory, but it's not an easy task, and as fast as you can close them, others open up or end up being exploited.

We can start by not creating trade agreements designed so that the rich have tax havens (that Hillary Clinton supported, but Bernie didn't).

The money that was paid back with interest?
What are the costs?

Again, these things are complicated to regulate.

The money we used to bail them out may have eventually been payed back, but the total cost hasn't, and it's still costing us:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/bus ... s/2812691/

"By one Federal Reserve estimate, the country lost almost an entire year's worth of economic activity – nearly $14 trillion – during the recession from 2007 to 2009."

"Turmoil in the housing market has already reshaped the makeup of households nationwide. Homeownership rates among people with children under 18 fell sharply during the recession, declining 15% between 2005 and 2011, according to Census Bureau data.

In some states it was far worse. For Michigan, the decline in homeownership was 23%, and in Arizona and California it was 22%."

"But the last five years wiped out even those modest gains—the study found wages declined for the bottom 70% of all workers since the recession began."

"Education comprises a significant portion of state budgets. In the 2012-2013 school year, for example, 35 states had K-12 funding that was below pre-recession levels when adjusted for inflation, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a left-leaning think tank. Some states reeled from spending cuts% of almost 22% compared to 2008."

"Higher education funds fell too. Nationally, states cut spending by more than 28% per college student from 2008 to 2013 when adjusted for inflation, according to the center. Arizona's reductions topped 50%; 36 states cut by more than 20%. Only two states, Wyoming and North Dakota, didn't reduce higher education funding.

Those cuts had different consequences for students. In colleges, it meant skyrocketing tuition, while in K-12, it often meant cuts to programs such as summer and after-school programs, along with bigger classes sizes. Some states cut enrollment for pre-K as well.

Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research at CBPP, said both had the effect of stripping state education systems that are vital in preparing students and building feeders to the economy."

"The reductions also significantly shrunk public workforces. State and local cuts to public employees outlived the worst of the layoffs in the private sector.

State and local governments have shed 681,000 jobs since their peak in August 2008, by far the largest drop of any recession in the past half century, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government."

"The unemployment stampede crushed unemployment insurance funds. Jobless claims grew from an average of 321,000 per week in 2007 to almost 670,000 at the peak in March 2009.

States' unemployment insurance trust funds were forced to borrow nearly $50 billion from the federal government to cover costs.

Many states have repaid those debts, but 17 still owe the federal government almost $20 billion and others have debt on the private market. Even those with less or no debt are still reeling: Some have razor-thin balances even today (Rhode Island's is just over $500,000 with more than $162 million in debt)."

This article is from 2013, so it might be slightly outdated, but I think it demonstrates how immense the problem is.

It can be clear that one company shouldn't, or that one company is bad, but less clear that the outcome of the entire system is bad, or that it's not better than the alternative. It's very hard to stop one company without stopping the others, and undoing a very complicated system that at least for the most part works.

A complicated system that for the most part works? Where did you get that from?

It doesn't work at all. It's a major reason why we have a party that won't even acknowledge the reality of climate change.

I could say the same about Sanders, for wanting to shut down essential nuclear power services -- and yet he's not backed by any big corporate interests at all. People can easily be dumb without being biased by corporate interests, and that's the problem. This does nothing to solve that.

They're just getting their names out there: Christians are electing them because they're fundamentalists.
They're under no contractual obligations to those oil companies: we need to step in and educate them on nuclear power.

I don't agree with you about Bernie, but of course politicians can be bad for reasons besides corporate bribery. But why add corporate bribery to the mix?

If the oil companies lobby hard, we have to lobby harder.

We can't lobby harder than hundreds of millions of dollars.

[brimstoneSalad]

The difference between giving someone a million dollars and talking to someone is pretty clear.

How about spending a million dollars to create corrupt studies, and documentaries/movies about how climate change is a scam?

Where do you draw the line in expenditure? Can we stop companies from making independent propaganda?

I agree that that's an issue also, but it's a separate issue.

I don't think it is. Where there's a will, there's a way. They'll find some way to spend that money to influence things; better it be direct so we can keep track of it better.

And we can see very clearly how it has impacted our policies, see this informational video about a Princeton study:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

I'm not sure if that addresses my question about how we stop these companies from making corrupted studies and creating propaganda.

I'll try to watch it later.

Translation: Discriminating against and persecuting religious people.

Discriminating against objectively false ideas.

Also, why do you think that corporations bother giving millions of dollars to politicians if it's barely relevant? For the fun of it?

It creates beneficial laws that make them more money, but that's doesn't mean that on balance those laws are bad and harmful to others. Many are win-win. And as I explained, when corporate interests go against private fear mongering, that can also be a good thing.

We're talking about corporations- the purpose of corporations is to make as much money as possible. If a corporation does something, we can reasonably assume that it's for monetary benefits.

Sure, but that could be making a law that improves the economy for everybody, or keeps (or allows) a good product on the market. Corporations don't act on a policy of evil.

Perhaps conservatives have these predispositions, but it doesn't help when politicians are given millions of dollars from companies who have a financial interest in the War on Drugs.

No, it doesn't help when those companies give money, but it's also not clear how much it hurts (if any). And some companies have an interest in people not going to prison too, or in legalizing drugs (rehab lobby).

You're looking at only the bad. There are good influences from corporate money too. You can't just assume that the bad is worse than the good.

That's pretty crazy, but it seems like a fringe thing, and it doesn't explain why so many democrats have supported unnecessary conflicts in the Middle East. It also only really explains the situation with Israel, which isn't the entire story.

Many Democrats are Christian too, or Jewish.
There's a lot of ideological investment in the middle east.

The ideology that they should get tax cuts, and businesses they may own should be helped financially.

I don't have a big problem with that. I have a problem with environmentally harmful policies, and harm to gays and the non-religious through civil rights violations.

I think this is why many democrats are very pro-corporate.

Maybe, or maybe it just makes sense to support the economy by lowering taxes.

IF you have free trade, you HAVE to have low enough tax rates to be competitive with other countries, otherwise the corporations and the jobs will leave.
It's a complicated issue.

Sanders has a different perspective, in that he wants to end free trade and put the workers of the U.S. first, raising corporate tax rates (which is fine if you stop free trade, companies can't go anywhere) and increasing welfare.

However, this kind of perspective (ending free trade) is harmful to people in developing countries, and can be to international peace (when countries are engaged in trade, they are less likely to go to war because war becomes very bad for business).
I've said before, I think, that the best way to establish peace and prosperity in North Korea would probably be to open up trade with them; with economic exchange comes cultural exchange too, and the dictatorship would erode and become more symbolic over time like the Queen of England.
Capitalism LOVES rule of law, and it can actually be a strong force for peace and stability. So, there's good to come out of it.

You have to look at it from multiple perspectives, and not just assume politicians believe certain things because they're paid off.

It's a very important issue for the reasons I explained, which you seem to have completely avoided addressing.

I didn't say it wasn't an issue, but that doesn't say anything about magnitude.

Of course private prisons are going to want stricter laws when they make money off of it. We're talking about corporations, again.

We're also talking about human beings.

It's a system that's bound to become corrupt, because it creates a profit motive in locking people up.

Maybe, but again it has advantages too.

Hillary has pledged to end private prisons, which is probably a good idea, but I'm not willing to say it's certainly a good idea.

It plays a significant role, because the strict drug policies make them money.

How significant? Do you have numbers?

It pretty clearly has. We have the highest prison population per capita in the entire world.

That says nothing. This is a single data point with no controls.

That's part of it, but people in his administration knew we didn't really have evidence for the WMDs, and they had connections to oil companies.

I don't give credence to conspiracy theories.

We can start by not creating trade agreements designed so that the rich have tax havens (that Hillary Clinton supported, but Bernie didn't).

Have you looked into how these trade agreements work?

The money we used to bail them out may have eventually been payed back, but the total cost hasn't, and it's still costing us:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/bus ... s/2812691/

"By one Federal Reserve estimate, the country lost almost an entire year's worth of economic activity – nearly $14 trillion – during the recession from 2007 to 2009."

That's a fair criticism of the banks, but was also more of a domino effect. Now that we know about this problem, we have regulated these industries better.
We can learn from every crash and improve.
I don't think any system is immune to a bit of trial and error in this regard.

A complicated system that for the most part works? Where did you get that from?

It doesn't work at all. It's a major reason why we have a party that won't even acknowledge the reality of climate change.

Right now I am using the internet, which was paid for, and the service rendered. If there's a local problem I can call the police. I have power, running water, a roof over my head.
We enjoy the fruits of society that many take for granted. And the vast majority of people in our society enjoy these things, often with only having to work eight hours a day five days a week.

This is amazing.

I don't agree with you about Bernie, but of course politicians can be bad for reasons besides corporate bribery. But why add corporate bribery to the mix?

Corporate influence can also do good. Why remove it if we have yet to prove it does more harm than good, and that the alternative is not worse?

If the oil companies lobby hard, we have to lobby harder.

We can't lobby harder than hundreds of millions of dollars.

I disagree. Collectively, we have far more power than these companies if we can coordinate to use it.

[Mr. Purple]

Companies aren't going to just decide it's profitable to stone homosexuals. Corporate rule is a safer middle ground.

Your trust in the blind pursuit of money is astounding. How do you know they aren't going to decide this? Pursuit of money decided factory farming was a good idea after all. You really think the public would have created a monstrosity like that? (hence the need to keep the public ignorant about it through advertising and ad-gag laws).

You said before that you don't want unfettered capitalism, but then you say corporate rule is a safer middle ground? Corporate rule wants unfettered capitalism. Those of us who want money out of politics aren't fighting to restrain a specific policy point that we disagree with corporations on, we are fighting for that regulatory ability to restrain corporations at all.

If you know about monopolies in unfettered free markets, you know that corporations would literally enslave us all if they had the opportunity(that is where the incentives lead). To the extent that they fail to enslave us all is the extent to which the people you are trying to disempower stop them.

This sounds hyperbolic because of all the safeguards we now have, but that is that is the whole issue. Money in politics is eroding our ability to establish those safeguards in the first place. There has been massive bipartisan support for getting money out of politics for a while now with nothing to show for it. The lever of control seems to have been sawed off. I think it's fair to start worrying.

In the other thread, you said you were taking part in this argument because you thought anarchism makes veganism look bad, then you go on to argue for crony capitalism. Oh, the irony.

That's a fair criticism of the banks, but was also more of a domino effect. Now that we know about this problem, we have regulated these industries better.
We can learn from every crash and improve.
I don't think any system is immune to a bit of trial and error in this regard.

It's funny how understanding you are in working with people through some MASSIVE blunders from corporate abuses, but not for blunders made by the people through a more democratic process.

Corporate rule is not ideal, but it's better than rule by the ignorant masses. If the masses are no longer ignorant, then they can take charge.

More democratic control helps with ignorance by giving people greater responsibility and a feeling of accountability in their own governance. It gives them reasons to become engaged knowing that their vote matters. Like in any system involving people where you want a certain outcome, it's all about incentives. We need to build the incentives for the education we want to see in people.

Your solution seems to be to give our government over to the very people who have the largest interest in keeping the people ignorant in the first place. In A world where people would have to make decisions for themselves instead of being infantilized and spoon fed by corporations and money controlled representatives, we may actually get somewhere with the education you profess to value. Telling people to let the grown ups handle it isn't doing anyone any favors in the long run.

[brimstoneSalad]

Your trust in the blind pursuit of money is astounding. How do you know they aren't going to decide this?

And here you go with the straw manning and exaggerations.

It's not a blind pursuit of money, these are also human beings.
Inherently, they would prefer to hire and sell things to gays. Rational agents do not necessarily behave generously or altruistically, but neither are they out to destroy the population they rely on (and are made up of).

Your absurd extremism is pushing me into the uncomfortable position of defending anarcho-capitalism, which I have no interest in doing since I don't support it and think regulated markets are better.

Pursuit of money decided factory farming was a good idea after all. You really think the public would have created a monstrosity like that? (hence the need to keep the public ignorant about it through advertising and ad-gag laws).

We already addressed this. Ag-gag laws are being challenged and overturned in the courts. This is an example of regulation working.
Animal welfare is advancing because of public interest (because we're educating): fines and even farms getting shut down are happening slowly.

Keep in mind: it's also more profitable for corporations to move to in vitro meat. They have no interest in animal suffering. Some vegans claim they intentionally inflict cruelty to animals, or that it's the worst torture imaginable -- that's absurd, and makes us all look like lunatic conspiracy theorists. Workers may sometimes be intentionally cruel, but that's a problem with human beings; companies don't profit from that.
It's terrible suffering, but it's inadvertent in pursuit of profit margins.

The difference between corporate interest and the rule of the masses is that the masses will inflict suffering intentionally and maliciously based on distorted religious values and sadism resulting from fear mongering.

Corporate rule wants unfettered capitalism.

No it doesn't. This is your ignorance speaking.

If you know about monopolies in unfettered free markets,

Correct, so stop straw manning my argument and saying I support anarcho-capitalism.

you know that corporations would literally enslave us all if they had the opportunity(that is where the incentives lead).

Oh, I understand now. You're a crazy person. You completely misunderstand market forces and game theory, all you're doing is straw manning my position and making crazy/conspiracy theory level claims, and you failed to respond to any of my main points.

Understand this clearly: YOU are the one making the claim that there is a problem that we need to "fix", and YOU are the one making the claim to know how to fix it: it is YOU who has the burden of proof here. I am expressing skepticism. This is why I hate politics: it's all dogma, no evidence.

Can a sane representative of these positions please step up to discuss them rationally?

[Mr. Purple]

We are finally reaching that breaking point we tend to reach huh brim?

I obviously am aware that corporations have people in them. I don't know why you keep insisting i'm attributing evil intentions to a corporation when I've repeatedly framed the discussion in terms of incentives. When I say "a corporation wants X" I am saying the corporation is structured in such a way that X is incentivized. I figured you would have picked up on that by now.

Your absurd extremism is pushing me into the uncomfortable position of defending anarcho-capitalism, which I have no interest in doing since I don't support it and think regulated markets are better.

As I understand it, your view is that the market isn't likely to do terrible things because the people regulate it, yet the whole point of getting money out of politics is to ensure we can continue to apply those regulations. It seems inevitable to me that that corporations gaining too much influence in government(self regulation) will lead to the anarcho capitalism that you are against or worse. Is that a straw man? Please don't give me anymore nonsense about how we can't really know what a corporation would want because they are just made up of normal people. Talk about systematic incentives like I have been this whole time.

We already addressed this. Ag-gag laws are being challenged and overturned in the courts. This is an example of regulation working.

I'm not saying we live in a failed state. Regulation obviously is working right now for many things. The point of getting money out of politics is to keep it that way.

Corporate rule wants unfettered capitalism.

No it doesn't. This is your ignorance speaking.

Then please define what you mean by corporate rule. If in your state of corporate rule, people can still regulate corporations(through government), then we aren't using the same definition. If you are using it similarly to me to mean a state where people can no longer regulate corporations, please educate me on how that would that not lead to whatever it is you fear about anarcho-capitalism.

Oh, I understand now. You're a crazy person.

I guess you can declare me insane and bail out... This is becoming a trend. It may be more productive to find the point where we have the disagreement and focus on it rather than assume malicious intent or insanity. (unless you legitimately think those are more likely than simple miscommunication...)

[brimstoneSalad]

I don't know why you keep insisting i'm attributing evil intentions to a corporation when I've repeatedly framed the discussion in terms of incentives. When I say "a corporation wants X" I am saying the corporation is structured in such a way that X is incentivized. I figured you would have picked up on that by now.

1. You can't make strong predictions based on a narrow subset of theoretical financial incentives without the human part of the equation.
The corporations shareholders and their CEOs are human beings who live in societies, and apply their own (limited, but not non-existent) ethics to their decisions too.

2. You completely missed the point that not all financial/profit incentives are bad. Companies are also incentivized to make good products in order to make money, and to clear the way to market for those products. There are good and evil companies, based on the products and services they turn out.
Even if you could make strong predictions based on theoretical financial incentives, you have only cherry picked a few BAD incentives, and ignored a wide range of good ones. The market doesn't want to be completely unregulated; some regulations help everybody. Study game theory.

3. There ARE other dark forces at work, and you dismiss them very casually. On average, corporations are not as good as the best of the altruistic civilian pressures out there, but they're also not as evil as the worst of the civilian pressures.
Corporations are the devil we know, and it's one we've been working with and regulating for a long time.
When you remove corporate influence, you take that moderating force away, and you create a huge unknown.
You're willing to do that based only on your faith in humanity and the right message to win out over the fear mongering. This is a non-argument on your part, and you can not use "faith" as a reason to argue that others should agree with your policy choices here.


I'm not saying the world would be worse if we removed corporate influence from politics, but I'm not saying it would be better if we did (like you are).
It might be better, it might be worse, it might stay the same.
I'm not making a claim here; I'm bringing up the complex issues that you're ignoring, and showing you why you have not demonstrated why it will be better.


All you have done is cherry picked a small number of bad incentives. Of course the world would be better off without a narrow selection of harmful incentives we can identify.

You want to ban oil companies, and only oil companies, from making campaign contributions or advertisement to the general public?
I'd be with you on that. It's a very specific harm we can identify and block. There's very little good to be had from the activity of these companies.

Saying you want to block all corporate lobbying is like saying you want to end free speech for all people because some people say harmful things.
I need to see evidence that the TOTAL effect is negative RELATIVE to the immediate alternative (which is turning the battle over to the fear mongers and the educators).
I don't have the faith you do in the ability for the educators to defeat the fear mongers so easily.

Look at the anti-vax movement, and how long that's taking to put down. How much money has gone into each side of that conflict?
This is a case where industry was in the right. Did education solve it? NO.
The only thing that's turning the tides is the resurgence of disease and the deaths of children.

Parents stopped vaccinating because they were afraid of the vaccines, and they started doing it again because they became rightly afraid of the diseases.
The problem is, those children had to die, and the diseases resurface, in order to finally create enough rational fear of the diseases to turn the tide back.
One monster, Andrew Wakefield, catalyzed all of that with one dishonest study.

Fear spreads like fire on naphtha soaked kindling.



The burden of proof is on YOU.

If you want me to agree with you, you will need to provide some.


1. Prove to me that education will beat the fear mongers, and that we aren't just taking the keys from relatively sane corporations and handing them over the the Wakefields of the world.

2. Give me a means to control and limit the damage of the fear mongers. A legislation by jury system where people spend weeks under education may be able to achieve this. If you want to retain something like the system we have now, though, you have to first promote something like a law that lets government keep these people off the air and shut them up. Make sure the law makes a clear distinction between the irrational fear mongers, and sensible free speech (how do you even do this?).

3. Prove to me that you're not just cherry picking the bad influences of companies. Show me that, even without fear mongers, corporate influence actually does more harm than good.


You can't do any of those things, so as far as I'm concerned, you're just playing a big game of roulette with all of our lives based on your personal faith.

If we have the option to:

A. Spend all of our time on outreach and education on veganism and environmental issues (which we know is good)
or:
B. Spend any amount of time on politics (and less on vegan outreach) which could very well turn out better or worse because of it

We should choose A every time.
This is why I have no interest in political B.S. It's all rhetoric and anti-scientific, drawing wild conclusions from exercises in cherry picking.

Your defense as I understand it is that the market isn't likely to do terrible things because the people regulate it, yet the whole points of getting money out of politics is to ensure we can continue to apply those regulations.

There's no reason to believe that current regulations are going anywhere, or that new regulations will no longer be passed (whether corporations agree with them or not).

The point i'm making is that corporations gaining too much influence in government will lead to the anarcho capitalism that you are against.

That's nonsense.

There's no reason to believe that corporations want an anarchocapitalism. Companies benefit from a certain amount of regulation.
They typically want lower taxes, but that's another matter.
And even if they DID want it, there's no reason to believe they'd get it.

You're living in a land of conspiracy theories, apparently.

Talk about systematic incentives like I have been this whole time.

That's useless, because there's no way we could cover all incentives present in this thread, and even if we could, a limited subset of financial incentives don't dictate the course of our country.

You need to read up on the reason companies are incentivized to promote regulation in their industries. Look into consumer confidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_confidence

The effect of consumer confidence upon the market means corporations want regulations that improve consumer confidence. As long as ALL of their competitors are also regulated, they can accept the regulations themselves, because the higher consumer confidence benefits everybody.

The FTC is the best example of a strongly regulating body that is essential for most businesses to obtain trust from consumers.
The most recent laws you'll see with broad support from corporations that ALSO help consumers are with regard to online transactions: protecting that market and making it safe to buy online means consumers will be more active.

If companies are cheating, mislabeling products, and harming or killing consumers, consumer confidence plummets and that harms everybody.
It's to all corporations interest to agree on certain behavior standards to make the market healthier.

Corporations are also motivated to reduce crime and extreme poverty: they want rule of law, and to maximize the number of people who can buy from them.

Not everything that's good for corporations is good for people, and not everything that's good for people is good for corporations, but there is a significant amount of overlap that you're completely ignoring.
Corporations don't want people dropping dead from easily preventable diseases; that in no way benefits business for most companies (except maybe funeral homes, but they don't represent the majority of the lobby force). Anti-vaxxers will promote policies to this end that corporations would oppose on grounds of that shit fucking up their profits.

I'm not saying we live in a failed state. Regulation obviously is working right now for many things. The point of getting money out of politics is to keep it that way.

There's no reason to believe any of these things will stop working no matter how much money is in politics.

Then please define what you mean by corporate rule. If in your state of corporate rule, people can still regulate corporations(through government), then we aren't using the same definition. If you are using it similarly to me to mean a state where people can no longer regulate corporations, please educate me on how that would that not lead to whatever it is you fear about anarcho-capitalism.

I hope I already did above.

I was also using corporate rule tongue-in-cheek as the worst possible case (reflecting the false claim that we are ruled by corporations already).
I don't believe we have corporate rule, or will ever. They have some influence, but they are not in charge.


EquALLity: I watched the video, and it was well made, but the study was not well done and the argument is very misleading.

Ideas like "we should kill all of the Jews" would be very unpopular with the majority, and also have a 0% chance of passing.
The study fails to account for how opposed to laws people are. 0% support can also mean more or less indifference. If you took into account negative opinions on a law, that graph could look very different.
The laws that are passed with 0% support are certainly not comparable to a law requiring mass extermination of Jews.
This is a graph that shows how easy it is to lie with statistics: how you ask a question can have a big influence.

There is a basic litmus test of non-revulsion that the public very much has an influence on, and has biased these laws before they even reach the point of consideration (and showing up on this graph). It is within the margins of public indifference that these unsupported but not necessarily hated laws get passed.

Also keep in mind, support by the rich is a correlation: statistically, it's also support by the best educated. It's very likely that many if not most of these laws are more likely to get passed because they're just better laws. Some of them may benefit the rich, sure, but it is in no way clear what percentage that is or what the net effect of this system is (good or bad) compared to the alternative.

[Mr. Purple]

1. You can't make strong predictions based on a narrow subset of theoretical financial incentives without the human part of the equation.
The corporations shareholders and their CEOs are human beings who live in societies, and apply their own (limited, but not non-existent) ethics to their decisions too.

I can't yet see how CEO ethics is that relevant to most of what i'm saying. Even if all the CEOs were personally saints, I don't think it would change the lobbying, revolving door practices, and campaign finance. It might effect Super PACs

2. You completely missed the point that not all financial/profit incentives are bad. Companies are also incentivised to make good products in order to make money, and to clear the way to market for those products. There are good and evil companies, based on the products and services they turn out.
Even if you could make strong predictions based on theoretical financial incentives, you have only cherry picked a few BAD incentives, and ignored a wide range of good ones. The market doesn't want to be completely unregulated; some regulations help everybody. Study game theory.

I'm open to the possibility that I only have been exposed to the bad examples, But treatment of animals and environmental damage alone would vastly outweigh all the examples you have given so far, even if I were to fully grant them. I would need a decent list of positives to start to change my intuition here.Talking about game theory or incentives is far more compelling to me when comparing systems than the personal convictions of CEOs.

3. There ARE other dark forces at work, and you dismiss them very casually. On average, corporations are not as good as the best of the altruistic civilian pressures out there, but they're also not as evil as the worst of the civilian pressures.
Corporations are the devil we know, and it's one we've been working with and regulating for a long time.
When you remove corporate influence, you take that moderating force away, and you create a huge unknown.
You're willing to do that based only on your faith in humanity and the right message to win out over the fear mongering. This is a non-argument on your part, and you can not use "faith" as a reason to argue that others should agree with your policy choices here.

Not having lobbyists, the revolving door, and super PACs can't be that huge of a unknown can it? There was plenty of time through america's history where corporate interests weren't this intertwined with the government, and we did fine. If we had been on the brink of destruction before lobbyists and campaign contributions came to our government's rescue, then maybe this argument would make more sense. It seems like the movement towards this recent, previously unseen level of corporate involvement, would have to be justified more than the alternative of simply keeping things where they have been for the majority of our history. The rapidly increasing corporate involvement seems like the "HUGE" unknown here.

Saying you want to block all corporate lobbying is like saying you want to end free speech for all people because some people say harmful things.

We don't even need to block "all" corporate access to government, I just want it balanced. Right now the imbalance is ridiculous by any(non brimstone) standards. I thought this was useful overview of the problems: http://www.vox.com/2015/4/20/8455235/co ... -statistic
Do you disagree with the points made in that article?

My uninformed Mr. Purple suggestions would be to have a spending cap on how much an interest group or corporation can spend on lobbyists to keep competing special interests balanced, and\or have a requirement for both sides of an issue to be represented in each lobbyist sitting. If you can only get one side of a proposed bill, then you don't have the meeting.

Fear spreads like fire on naphtha soaked kindling.

I think I would advocate for something like the deliberative democracy system over a more direct system now.

A. Spend all of our time on outreach and education on veganism and environmental issues (which we know is good)
or:
B. Spend any amount of time on politics (and less on vegan outreach) which could very well turn out better or worse because of it

We should choose A every time.

To me, Balancing corporate interests with public interests in government seems like it could go a long way towards animal rights and helping protect the environment since those are things corporations have a monetary interest in making worse and hiding from us.(yes, I recognize if people were all knowing that this wouldn't be a problem...)

There's no reason to believe that current regulations are going anywhere, or that new regulations will no longer be passed (whether corporations agree with them or not).

Maybe not, but I would prefer to not risk it since I don't see a positive from letting corporations flood our government like you do.

I'm not saying the world would be worse if we removed corporate influence from politics, but I'm not saying it would be better if we did (like you are).

The burden of proof is on YOU.

That's fine if you want to frame the argument that way, but I don't think it helps much. Once again, I will remind you that I am perfectly comfortable with an implied "in my opinion" or " it seems to me" in front of everything I say. I'm here to learn through argument, not to convert you to my beliefs. I am a layman, and I only have a Google\Wikipedia level understanding of most of this stuff, so I can only be so confident.

And about needing to justify moving into the "HUGE" unknown. As I mentioned before, It's only been around 40 years that corporations have even started becoming involved at any significant level in our government. Our government is fully capable of functioning without them. To me, the long term effects of handing more and more of our government to corporate influence via super PACS, lobbyists, and the revolving door is the greater unknown.

[brimstoneSalad]

Even if all the CEOs were personally saints, I don't think it would change the lobbying, revolving door practices, and campaign finance.

It wouldn't eliminate the existence of those things; if anything it might make them stronger, and they would be benevolent in nature.
I wouldn't claim that corporate lobbying is benevolent inherently, but neither do I think it is more evil than the alternative.

Not having lobbyists, the revolving door, and super PACs can't be that huge of a unknown can it? There was plenty of time through america's history where corporate interests weren't this intertwined with the government, and we did fine.

Then is not now. Think about it: What has changed in the last few decades?

How has our media changed? Have you ever heard of this program called "Fox News"?
What once was (at least more so than now) information paid for by the consumer is now entertainment paid for by advertisers.
The reason the public will remain ignorant of many important issues is not corporate hands in politics, but in the media.
Journalists fear monger now as ever, but now they do it in a one sided way which favors their advertisers (meat being one of them).

Most journalists today are morons, and our politics has become more stratified than ever: they take either regressive leftist or regressive right stances most of the time (there are a few independent journalists who are doing good work, but they're being drowned out).

We need to address bias in the media -- they fueled this whole anti-vax thing by giving these people press. And that's something deeply entangled in first amendment issues.
Less polarized media and politics may have been why things worked as well as they did (which was not very well) in the past.

And anyway, big business has had immense influence in the past too, so it's kind of moot.

It seems like the movement towards this recent, previously unseen level of corporate involvement, would have to be justified more than the alternative of simply keeping things where they have been for the majority of our history. The rapidly increasing corporate involvement seems like the "HUGE" unknown here.

This supposed movement (and there's no reason to believe it will continue to increase) is what happens when we keep our hands off and focus on vegan activism.
I'm not saying we should help it. I'm just saying because it's not really clear to anybody whether it's good or bad, we should leave it alone.

Animal agriculture is clearly bad. Let's put all of our attention into that, and effective ways to end it (using money from other corporations if we need to), or at least massively improve welfare. Let's avoid unclear topics and controversial issues like this. If we vote as a group, let's just vote against the people making "machine gun bacon"; obvious enemies to animal welfare, and leave it at that.

We don't even need to block "all" corporate access to government, I just want it balanced. Right now the imbalance is ridiculous by any(non brimstone) standards. I thought this was useful overview of the problems: http://www.vox.com/2015/4/20/8455235/co ... -statistic
Do you disagree with the points made in that article?

I have no problem with paying politicians and their staff more. That's not very expensive. More informational resources can probably only be good, and the higher paying jobs will attract more intelligent and honest people.

My uninformed Mr. Purple suggestions would be to have a spending cap on how much an interest group or corporation can spend on lobbyists to keep competing special interests balanced, and\or have a requirement for both sides of an issue to be represented in each lobbyist sitting. If you can only get one side of a proposed bill, then you don't have the meeting.

None of that makes any sense to me. You get the same journalistic bias that tries to balance sides that have no reasonable opposition -- making something appear to have credibility when it has none. The doctors and the anti-vax getting equal time/representation is not reasonable.

Caps also don't make sense, and have serious constitutional and regulatory issues. Paying congress more makes sense.

I think I would advocate for something like the deliberative democracy system over a more direct system now.

That's good to hear. If we achieved that, I don't think there would be any need to deal with the corporate influence thing. That is at least a sensible perspective on governance.
Whether it is effective altruism is another issue.

Should we be wasting time advocating for that, or spending our time just advocating for the animals?

To me, Balancing corporate interests with public interests in government seems like it could go a long way towards animal rights and helping protect the environment since those are things corporations have a monetary interest in making worse and hiding from us.(yes, I recognize if people were all knowing that this wouldn't be a problem...)

This is not effective altruism, though, because you're just guessing. We know the efficacy of spending time and money directly on plant based outreach and animal welfare.

We need to deal with the USDA, since it does have a clear conflict of interest, we need to continue tackling these ad-gag laws in the courts (and defeating them), but aside from that we need to hit these enterprises where it hurts by going after the consumer to reduce demand.

If we can get in there and lobby too, against animal agriculture, without any spending caps or limitations, all the better (but we need to keep track of our ROI). The animal agriculture industry is not that big, and they have tight margins. They don't spend (and can't spend) that much on lobbying.

Big oil is a little harder to take down, and the only way we'll do it is if we go nuclear and we have another option for power.
Solar and wind are not realistic power sources. Thankfully we have allies in industry on that one.

Maybe not, but I would prefer to not risk it since I don't see a positive from letting corporations flood our government like you do.

It's a risk to try to do anything, because undoing it may do more harm, and you may be ineffective even if it would have helped had you succeeded. It's a waste of time and resources which could have been spent advocating for animals instead of fringe anarchist causes.

To me, the long term effects of handing more and more of our government to corporate influence via super PACS, lobbyists, and the revolving door is the greater unknown.

Unless you're saying that you actually KNOW the effects of not doing it, then it's not a greater unknown. They're both just unknowns. We should leave it alone, and focus on knowns.