> We don't have to make these changes all at once. I agree doing so would be somewhat disruptive. We can roll back the aid over a period of say 5 or 10 years, giving workers (and companies) time to figure out what to do.
We don't need to give companies time to figure out what to do. We already know their solution, because it's the same playbook they've always used: change no business practices, and spend a fraction of that cost on lobbying (bribes) and propagandizing for the change to be reversed. A tiered rollout just gives them more runway to do this. And more time when workers suffer.
Instead of trying to predict what will happen based on your ivory tower economic theory, try predicting what will happen based on what has happened, i.e., reality.
Your opinion continues to be a horrifying, compassionless take: you openly admit it would "be somewhat disruptive", but the suffering of workers is a sacrifice you are willing to make for your pet ideology.
More to the point: why would we even want to give companies time to figure out what to do? They have had plenty of time to do the right thing and they chose to do the wrong thing. I'm not for punitive justice, but I'm also not particularly concerned if the solution to the problem harms those who knowingly and intentionally caused the problem.
> I agree it may not be tenable in a representative democracy, but my point is that means the democracy is too powerful and encroaches on fundamental liberty. Government should not have the power to redistribute assets in pursuit of the "general welfare", and indeed it did not until US v. Butler (1936) gave the government sweeping power to do basically anything.
Fundamental liberty applies to humans, not corporations. Corporations do not have fundamental rights, period. And just as fundamentally, when government does not limit the power of corporations, corporations step into the power void, gain too much power, and take away people's rights and liberties. Being for corporate liberty is being against human liberty, it's as simple as that.
Yes, I understand that the SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people: the SCOTUS is wrong.
Yes, I understand that corporations are made up of people. But the actions of corporations are chosen by a small, small fraction of those people, and benefit that same small fraction of people. That small fraction of people disproportionately get to exercise any rights that are granted to a corporation, often at the expense of many more people lower in the corporate pyramid. Granting freedoms to corporations is effectively the pigs in Animal Farm saying "you're all free, but some of you are freer than others" because you're granting those rights to the decision makers in the corporation and not to the workers.
My argument isn't that corporations are people. My point is that the government should never have been given the power to redistribute wealth the way it does today. It has not always had this power. And had the constitution been slightly clearer, it would not have this power today. No amount of lobbying would change that.
I am looking at reality, namely the reality of the US before the aforementioned decision giving the government broad power over the "general welfare". Society more resembled a liberal ecosystem. People were individually responsible to negotiate for their own prosperity.
It is my fundamental liberty that is being violated by forcing me to contribute to the maintenance of strangers. I would like the freedom to opt out of this mandatory insurance scheme.
It's not compassionate to force your view of compassion on others. It's tyrannical. In the vein of "If you're against gay marriage, don't get gay married": if you want to help people, contribute to charity. Don't force your views on others.
> And had the constitution been slightly clearer, it would not have this power today.
When you say the government it seems like either you’re forgetting about the states, or you are not giving the tenth amendment sufficient weight in your calculation. Or something else?
I'm not! The nice thing about states is there are so many of them, and it's pretty easy to move state. Also as an American you have a right to live in any state you choose. None of these things are true at the national level.
I'm all for states experimenting with socialism or any other policy (eg. abortion rights), since these experiments are relatively safe (people can and will just relocate) and cheap (changing policy is easier on a small scale). That's the beauty of the American (eco)system. Government is fundamentally a local concern. What I am vehemently against is the federal government having any sort of broad authority in this regard.
> My point is that the government should never have been given the power to redistribute wealth the way it does today. It has not always had this power. And had the constitution been slightly clearer, it would not have this power today. No amount of lobbying would change that.
Half the founding fathers owned slaves, and all of them agreed to count humans as 3/5 of humans in order to grant slave states 5/3 the representation of non-slave states. I'm not particularly concerned with their intentions, and I also find it strange that you'd look to them as some sort of beacons of liberty.
I read your comment about wanting states to have more power and I agree with that, but that's not the reality we live in. If we're looking at policies that are a way forward, realistic support for the poor is going to have to come from states first before we remove federal support. Meanwhile, it seems you're just fine with letting poor people starve to death, so maybe state's rights isn't your opinion that's most concerning at the moment.
> It is my fundamental liberty that is being violated by forcing me to contribute to the maintenance of strangers. I would like the freedom to opt out of this mandatory insurance scheme.
Well if you don't think you benefit from society, then you lose nothing by removing yourself from society. There are plenty of right-libertarian paradises like checks notes Sudan where you can go live out your self-reliance fantasy without having to persuade the rest of us to participate. I'll welcome you back when you need old-age care and want to rely on our tyrannical medicare.
It's a bit strange that the largest forms of welfare are corporate welfare, yet people concerned about welfare redistributing wealth always seem to target redistribution to poor people. You're concerned about food programs for minimum-wage Walmart workers taking your hard-earned money when the entire SNAP program cost about $57.1 billion in 2018, while the corporate benefits to the GM corporation alone ran between $50-80 billion and we can't get a more exact number because that's not even transparent.
> It's not compassionate to force your view of compassion on others. It's tyrannical. In the vein of "If you're against gay marriage, don't get gay married": if you want to help people, contribute to charity. Don't force your views on others.
You're trying to present it as if any law that isn't unanimously agreed upon is tyranny, but that's just unavoidable--any attempt to influence the laws is enforcing your will on others. That includes your wanting to remove welfare programs. Other people want those programs, you want to enforce your will on them by removing them. Tyranny!
Tyranny is when a single person or small group of people have absolute authority. You don't get to expand that words meaning to use as a scare word for any policy you don't like. When a representative democracy chooses laws, that's just what the beacon-of-freedom constitution you like intended.
I tend to think that corporations holding people's basic needs like food and shelter ransom unless they do what the company wants is a more obvious form of tyranny than the miniscule portion of your taxes that go to feeding people.
We don't need to give companies time to figure out what to do. We already know their solution, because it's the same playbook they've always used: change no business practices, and spend a fraction of that cost on lobbying (bribes) and propagandizing for the change to be reversed. A tiered rollout just gives them more runway to do this. And more time when workers suffer.
Instead of trying to predict what will happen based on your ivory tower economic theory, try predicting what will happen based on what has happened, i.e., reality.
Your opinion continues to be a horrifying, compassionless take: you openly admit it would "be somewhat disruptive", but the suffering of workers is a sacrifice you are willing to make for your pet ideology.
More to the point: why would we even want to give companies time to figure out what to do? They have had plenty of time to do the right thing and they chose to do the wrong thing. I'm not for punitive justice, but I'm also not particularly concerned if the solution to the problem harms those who knowingly and intentionally caused the problem.
> I agree it may not be tenable in a representative democracy, but my point is that means the democracy is too powerful and encroaches on fundamental liberty. Government should not have the power to redistribute assets in pursuit of the "general welfare", and indeed it did not until US v. Butler (1936) gave the government sweeping power to do basically anything.
Fundamental liberty applies to humans, not corporations. Corporations do not have fundamental rights, period. And just as fundamentally, when government does not limit the power of corporations, corporations step into the power void, gain too much power, and take away people's rights and liberties. Being for corporate liberty is being against human liberty, it's as simple as that.
Yes, I understand that the SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people: the SCOTUS is wrong.
Yes, I understand that corporations are made up of people. But the actions of corporations are chosen by a small, small fraction of those people, and benefit that same small fraction of people. That small fraction of people disproportionately get to exercise any rights that are granted to a corporation, often at the expense of many more people lower in the corporate pyramid. Granting freedoms to corporations is effectively the pigs in Animal Farm saying "you're all free, but some of you are freer than others" because you're granting those rights to the decision makers in the corporation and not to the workers.