Thread by @Doc_0

If you share Elizabeth Warren's paranoia about big companies, why should you be eager to give the largest employer, landowner, and investor in the country - with the worst accounting and least accountability - more control over your life?

Lefties constantly try to hide their statism by stealing the language of capitalism, most notoriously by referring to taxes as "investments," but then they pretend Big Government is somehow above all the sinful factors that make Big Business irredeemably corrupt in their eyes.

Most left-wing politicians scramble to insist they love and respect small businesses even as they rail against the corruption and greed of big ones. But if size leads to corruption, then why isn't the biggest business of them all, the U.S. government, also the most corrupt?

And of course it obviously IS the most corrupt. The U.S. government could never pass the kind of audits it routinely imposes on business enterprises. It routinely wastes and steals on a scale that would utterly destroy any private corporation and put its executives in prison.

The U.S. government has a nonsensical "business model" that insulates it from market pressures. It conjures money out of thin air to keep itself afloat. Its "customers" cannot refuse to do business with it or take their money to competitors. It has a monopoly on monopolies.

Unlike any of the corporations Warren and the other socialists rail against, the U.S. government can kill you for refusing to obey its demands. It yanks money out of your every paycheck without your consent and cares nothing for your opinion of how that money is spent.

Big Business can have pretty lousy customer service, especially when a single company dominates a market, but once Big Government takes over an industry, you're not even allowed to complain about it anymore. You'll be accused of hating the customers who get better service.

Every single criticism of Big Business - and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms, both in general and with respect to particular mega-corporations - is even more applicable to the most monolithic, unresponsive, and rapaciously greedy mega-corp of them all, Big Government.

And oh yes, you had better believe Big Government is greedy as hell. How can anyone with even a cursory awareness of politics possibly doubt it? Politicians routinely grab money on a scale that would make the worst old-time robber baron gape in amazement.

The core belief of socialism is that government is somehow noble and pure, a luminous respository of selfless virtue that floats above the grubby appetites of capitalism.

That is OBVIOUSLY NOT TRUE. You have to be utterly delusional to believe it.

Money does not become pure and sacred just because government seizes it. Politicians and bureaucrats are not magically purified of self-interest when they ascend to the Olympus of Washington. Government programs are less efficient and more wasteful than private business.

That's because reality is the exact opposite of socialist dogma: Big Gov shares ALL of the sins of Big Business - and then some! - but lacks its cardinal virtue, the fear of bankruptcy. The whole idea of laws against monopoly is to prevent Big Biz from becoming what Big Gov IS.

There's nothing a socialist like Warren or Sanders can say against corporations that doesn't apply tenfold to the massive centralized State they worship, and government is vastly more difficult to reform than even the largest corporation.

If you find any of the Left's anti-corporate arguments persuasive, then what you should really be pushing for is a government DISTINCT from business, rather than inextricably enmeshed in every private enterprise. You want honest referees, impartial enforcers of the law.

Most of the criticism flung at capitalism boils down to accusations of corruption. Only the most hardcore communists claim to have a problem with honest companies selling good products to willing customers. But Big Gov is clearly far more corrupt than any business enterprise.

What critics of Big Business should be working for is smaller, leaner, more honest government. If political power becomes a less valuable commodity, then the plutocrats you hate and distrust won't be willing to shell out so much money to buy it.

You're never going to reduce corruption by putting all power in the hands of a clique of professional liars who win elections by doing the most convincing impression of an honest man or woman. The remedy for monopoly is competition, not a bigger monopoly.

Vote with your dollars and you get a hundred votes a day instead of just a few every couple of years. That's the only way to reduce corruption and improve the general welfare. It's the only way to give the rich and powerful elite less control over your life.

I promise you, if someone like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders ever gains the power to impose their vision on America, the rich and powerful will have far MORE control over your life and you'll have less to say about it. They'll give you cancer to cure the flu. /end