Thread by @mhbx

@RKBower1 You make my point. It is the unholy alliance of 'producers' & government that creates the problem. When Gov is used as a function of power to get personal gain vs the Gov functioning out of basic founding principles. Most foundational, for me, is the preamble of the Constitution.

@RKBower1 There is a similar event where car dealers, being threatened by Tesla, made up rules that you can only buy a car from a dealer. The list is endless. Oil companies, the most profitable organizations of all time, getting billions of $ in 'subsidies'.
All of it illustrates my point.

@RKBower1 3/ Where I think your burden is to demonstrate, against all logic, historical example, and human nature, that abolishing gov, or reducing it to a powerless, subordinate state will somehow introduce a time of millenial progress and general happiness.
There simply is no example of

@RKBower1 4/ this being true. When companies, and esp in the form of corporations, get the upper hand, they become a government function unto themselves. But, far from having the American values as their purpose (and they are not supposed to) they are driven by their own needs and greeds

@RKBower1 5/ If corporations have their way they are secretive, lying, self serving, and will take any and everything that is there to be taken for their own.
Child labor. Slave labor - now mostly farmed out so we don't see it. Astonishing destruction of the ecology...all for private

@RKBower1 6/ purposes. In Brazil, for ex, you may have heard about the increase in an already idiotic policy to allow the rain forests to be destroyed...for cattle.
The life of the planet depends upon a few major functions. Oceans & these forests are central.
Yet they are trashed without

@RKBower1 7/ regard...why? Tragedy of the Commons. There is no principle in corporations/business that requires them to tend to such things as human well being, the general well being of all life, or even the fundamentals of survival.

And that is the essential point.

@RKBower1 8/ You can multiply examples of government malfeasance, also endlessly. Many, if not most of them will be some form of corruption of power. The reason why there is an America is due to the core principles that separated the powers & distributed them in a way that served

@RKBower1 9/ life & citizens.
I find it astonishing that you, & not just you but your libertarian friends, think unrestrained business will naturally be benign & change their purpose for being from one go growth & getting to one of serving the people.
Its kinda laughable. A cynical laugh.

@RKBower1 10/ On the other hand. The extraordinary abuses that infect a government that has become subordinate to the interests they are meant to contain, regulate, as well as provide the context for being able to do business in the first place... When that apparatus is corrupted, as it

@RKBower1 11/ certainly is, and even moreso under the administration of Trump, then you are right, government itself no longer is a function of the will of the people, working for the commonweal, but a facist force of control and domination.
The individual has no standing.

@RKBower1 12/ Maybe I made the point in a way that you can get it, probably not. It is a complex argument that needs to be aired in a different forum.
At root we may agree, who knows. probably not.
My arg is not For Gov in & of itself. But as a function that we want & need: **Good** Gov.

@RKBower1 13/ I'll close w this: What is Good Gov? "That gov that governs least governs best".
The question is What is Least?
I say it is a gov firmly in congruity w its core principles, worked out in wise application, in charge, but out of the way. Working for the good of society, with

@RKBower1 14/ proper distributions of power to the lowest level in the society as is possible. Or rather, that a thing is engaged & executed at the right level.
Having set the rules & the context for the citizenry as well as business to prosper.

And etc.

@RKBower1 15/ One foundational error that we may agree on, is the absolute error in conflating "corporations" as "people".
And further "money" = "speech".

These two principles are the gateway to much, if not most of the mayhem, and ultimately the corrosion of the American experiment.

@RKBower1 It is a synthesis of your argument.
That because businesses will have to compete for "your" business they will self regulate.