What kind of worker benefits from increased government involvement in private businesses?

Geoist said:

And you still conveniently ignore the consequence of the capitalists controlling the legislation our government passes

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They don't "control" it. The state passes economic laws which benefits certain groups at the expense of the general population. That has nothing to do with private property in the means of production.

This is a clear knock on capitalists who wouldn’t be where they are if not for the perverted marriage between business and government.

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That's right, and I completely agree, that's why government power should be minimized. Do you support complete separation of economy and state?

Geoist said:

You confuse state socialists and anti-state socialists.

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That's like confusing a horse with a unicorn.

Several things you get wrong here:

1. The idea anti-state socialists, or even state socialists, are 100% against private property.

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I didn't say he supported private property, I said he supported private property in the means of production. No socialist, using the modern, accepted definition, supports private property in the means of production.

4. Socialists are not ‘anti-entrepreneurship’ or against hiring workers.

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If you don't, then you are one in a million. Every socialist I've ever come across views the employer/worker relationship as exploitation, because the employer pays the worker much less than the value the worker creates.

Gimmesometruth said:

Bumper sticker nonsense, a reliance on business to self regulate is akin to expecting sharks not to bite you because they should respect you. When the basic idea is to maximize profit/shareholder returns, humans abandon self restraint. This is a fact of life.

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Government regulations to minimize profits and returns are what contribute to economic slowdowns.

Gimmesometruth said:

"The kids get no pay for their work, slavery is an essential step to success!"

insane.

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How much should a poor farmer with barely enough income to pay rent and buy food pay his kids to help him in the field?

Glitch said:

Why does the fascist left always seek to deprive individuals of their liberty? Is it some sort of mental disease convincing them they must dominate and enslave all life on the planet? Your desire to subjugate the masses and your complete disregard for the founding principles of the United States which you quaintly describe as "idealism" is what makes the left anti-American and the enemy of all Americans. You spit out "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" as if it offended you personally. Such vehement hatred for life and liberty is why the insane left will always lose.

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I think we're operating under a misunderstanding here and it is fairly possible that I did not express myself sufficiently clearly.

To be entirely fair, I understand why my comments might be read in the way you did. It's not the most charitable way to read them, but given the kind of comments that come out of the media or from some top figures in the Democratic party over the last few years, it's not completely unfair either. The thing is that you're missing some information about the views I hold on the founding principles of the United States of America. You're operating here on the presumption that I am attacking those principles head on in large part because this is usually how people on the left proceed. So, instead of letting you make assumptions about what I think, let me clear things up: I profoundly admire the Declaration of Independance and the American Constitution and one of the most beautiful statement ever made about the purpose of government probably is the second sentence of the Declaration of Independance.

So, no, I do not spit on those ideals, quite the contrary. The essence of my comment is that we might have to concede limited violations of those ideals in order to secure them. Throw some crumbs at people who might want some intervention to preserve peace and faith in the system. You have to realize that this argument treats the power we use to do just that as a necessary evil, as something dangerous that we have to use with care. Some people think we should use the power of government to alleviate some problems and giving them some leeway means they stand to loose something if they overreach. I don't think you can do away with this dispute over the role of government and I think it's more productive to think about a suitable compromise than about holding a hard line you will never be able to get.

You can disagree, but you can't call me a fascist over it. I'm really not saying we should condone a unique social vision and use all the might of the government to enforce it -- that is fascism proper. I'm clearly biased toward using the least invasive methods possible. Ideally, I'd prefer private organizations to solve problems, but if the population is too disatisfied and we need to give up some ground, I'd rather give authority to local governments instead of state governments and to state governments instead of the federal governments.

Glitch said:

Depriving people of their liberty never works, in any degree, and is always morally wrong.

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First of all, "working" is far too vague because it does not lend itself to measurement. You need a clear statement of the objectives of a policy so that unambiguous measurements can be taken. Second of all, you're taking stance about the causal impacts of all policies involving some measure of coercion that have ever been implemented everywhere and at all times. That is an awfully radical statement to make. Did you even bother looking into the massive empirical litterature on economics that seeks to estimate the causal impacts of those policies?

You might have anecdotal evidence on problematic governmental programs and agencies and you certainly hate them, but this is not the same thing as carefully looking into the fine details and combing through heaps of data to check if your statement holds up. The real world is always considerably more subtle and messier than what you have in mind. Often, the advantages of a policy are mixed in with disadvantages. For example, Quebec (Canada) introduced a low-cost daycare policy in 1997. Since other provinces did not have it, we can exploit the difference to look at how it influences outcomes for children, parents, etc. Here is one of a few paper dealing with this issue: Brodeur and Connolly (2013). It's behind a paywall, but the results are in the abstract. Essentially, it seems to be helping out less educated parents at the expense of more educated parents.

Gimmesometruth said:

Bumper sticker nonsense, a reliance on business to self regulate is akin to expecting sharks not to bite you because they should respect you.

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The idea is not that social norms concern business ethics will align the interests of businesses with those of other groups of people. The idea is that there are pretty general circumstances where you can pit businesses against each other to force their interests to be better aligned with those of other groups of people. THAT is the intuition behind Smith's comment about butchers and bakers. They don't serve you well because they care about you. They serve you well because they care about themselves: if the goods they sell and the customer services they offer is not up to par with what their competitors offer, they are the ones who stand to loose because you have the freedom to buy your bread and your meat elsewhere.


Now, you can try to make the point that it does not always work if you want. We certainly have a long list of issues that can arise in practice and which matter more or less depending on the specific circumstances. However, you have to keep in mind that even if market concentration fluctuates up and down across time and some circumstances might be impoved by ideal policies, it is by no means obvious that it can be improved by real world policies. Markets tend to diffuse decisions across a lot of people and to dissociate the consequences of their mistakes. When you argue that the government should step in, you're arguing that a usually much smaller group of people should use a lot of power to force their choices on everyone else. Because those people seldom suffer the consequences of their policies and because political competition is somewhat limited, this seems to be much more liable to the argument you make than markets.

You don't need Bill Gates to be an extraordinary person, although he does seem to do quite a lot without anyone twisting his arm. What you need is other people pressuring Microsoft to improve their products and services. However, if you have the Speaker of the House enforce a party line on a vote for a bill, you better hope that the House Speaker is peculiarly enlightened. They're a handful of people and they can almost always spin their way out of a bad policy... If Pelosi is more interested in her career than in the best interests of the nation, you're in big trouble.