How libertarianism helps the poor

[myrkul]

Rainingbitcoins, Corporations are themselves government creations. The limited liability allowed by the regulations which create corporations is what caused (and continues to cause) the problems you associate with 'lack of regulations'

[1714598267]

1714598267

[rainingbitcoins]

So the solution to corporations not following the rules is to abolish the rules?

I don't quite follow that logic.

At any rate, the libertarian viewpoints are unquestionably worse for the poor. If everything once provided by the government is privatized, you'll not only have these people struggling to pay for health care, which they do now, but they'll have to pay a toll on every road, pay to go to the park, and get nickled and dimed for every convenience that we take for granted - all on LESS than the current minimum wage - because libertarians don't like that, either. Have you ever tried to live on minimum wage as it is? It's damn near impossible. Apparently the same companies who worked our great-grandparents to death and currently pay workers in other countries as little as they possibly can will suddenly turn super generous and pay us more even though they don't have to! Does that really sound like something that would happen?

Even as tax rates have dropped over the last 30 years and corporate productivity has increased drastically, worker wages, adjusted for inflation, have remained completely stagnant. CEO salaries have increased exponentially over the same time period. In Europe and the entire rest of the world, CEOs make 10-30 times the rate of the average worker. In the U.S., they make 500-700 times what we make.

If you trust the companies that hire you to look out for your well-being (which you would pretty much have to under libertarianism, because who's going to tell them otherwise?), I don't even know what to tell you.

[Anonymous]

So the solution to corporations not following the rules is to abolish the rules?

I don't quite follow that logic.

The rules had no merit begin with. They only made an unequal playing field for business. Once everybody can play by the same rules, everybody gets a better experience. No longer is the new guy entering the game subject to trying to catch up with the big corporations that have played and had gained government approval for years.

At any rate, the libertarian viewpoints are unquestionably worse for the poor.

Nope, I would have many jobs open for me if there weren't tons of government regulation on my labor (under 18). I would be able to work my way up from jobs that wouldn't otherwise exist because of the minimum wage. The poor would be able to gain more skills and eventually more pay and employment overall if there was little regulation on how THEY can sell their labor. It's not a matter of corporations giving people a decent life but each individual in the transaction bringing equal benefit to the value they recieve. If conditions are bad enough, in a free market, unhindered nor overpowered Unions would be able to stand for those who are being taken advantage.

Anyways, if a job can only exist on a pay no larger than 5 dollars an hour and a minimum wage is set to $8, the pay doesn't rise. The job is eliminated. You just end up putting more people on the streets over working for some money in their pocket.

 If everything once provided by the government is privatized, you'll not only have these people struggling to pay for health care, which they do now, but they'll have to pay a toll on every road, pay to go to the park, and get nickled and dimed for every convenience that we take for granted - all on LESS than the current minimum wage - because libertarians don't like that, either.

No, what you would see is a passionate team of entrepreneurs building everything up again and probably for competitive prices and with far better and efficient infrastructure. The government wouldn't have a monopoly anymore. There would be a lot more innovation.

Have you ever tried to live on minimum wage as it is?

Yes, I've budgeted it out and I could live very sustainably on it, albeit no iPhone 4s and cable television, the 'needs' that seem to hold so many 'impoverished' back.

Even as tax rates have dropped over the last 30 years and corporate productivity has increased drastically, worker wages, adjusted for inflation, have remained completely stagnant. CEO salaries have increased exponentially over the same time period. In Europe and the entire rest of the world, CEOs make 10-30 times the rate of the average worker. In the U.S., they make 500-700 times what we make.

Welcome to corporatism enabled by the government's monopoly on force. These are only signs of an uneven playing field because the smaller guys have to pay huge taxes and they don't.

If you trust the companies that hire you to look out for your well-being (which you would pretty much have to under libertarianism, because who's going to tell them otherwise?), I don't even know what to tell you.

I trust that my fellow man has some basic instincts of human empathy and that we are inherently rational and can choose what is best for ourselves. Anyways, companies are no more powerful than the people selling their labor. They need each other. It inherently has to be a zero-sum game until people mess with the balance. That's what we wish to avoid.

[myrkul]

Your position is one often held by those who haven't yet learned the whole story.

I don't deny that corporations are evil. I don't deny that they're doing their best to screw us. Where we disagree is the cause.

A corporation is a fictional person created by the government. This fictional person acts as a shield for the CEO. Further, there is a limit on the liability that the fictional person can incur, so no matter what the CEO tells this fictional person to do, the worst that can happen is the fictional person dies.

Removing this fictional person from the equation exposes the CEO to the liability of his actions. So if you want more corporate accountability, all you have to do is abolish the concept of 'corporation'.

A similar situation has resulted in the spiraling health care costs. Government subsidized insurance covers more and more things, which, because the customer doesn't have to pay, the Doctors naturally increase the prices to the level the market will bear. This causes premiums to rise, which in turn causes the customers to demand more services for their money... See where I'm going there? When you add in the fact that the AMA restricts the number of doctors available, supply/demand kicks in, and prices are further increased.

Minimum Wages! The worst thing to happen to the American worker, ever. Ask yourself, Which is more pay, $2.50/hour, or $0.00/hour? If you have more than two brain cells to rub together (Which I assume you do), you've come up with the same answer I did: $2.50/hour. When the minimum wage is increased, it drives up costs to employers, who are forced to cut back. And guess who's the first to go? That's right... The worker who was getting the previous minimum wage. Every minimum wage increase puts more people out of work.

Add all these together, and you get this: Without the government protecting the employer from liability and enforcing a minimum wage, the worker is free to negotiate with the employer for whatever his skills are worth.

[rainingbitcoins]

I tried to post this earlier, but the site wasn't responding at all:

The rules had no merit begin with. They only made an unequal playing field for business. Once everybody can play by the same rules, everybody gets a better experience. No longer is the new guy entering the game subject to trying to catch up with the big corporations that have played and had gained government approval for years.

With a completely powerless small government, how could you ever expect everyone to play by the same rules... or even do anything but laugh at those rules? Anyone with any familiarity with the last several hundred years of capitalism - from the brutal, murderous colonialism of the 17th through 20th centuries, to the wage slavery and Third World exploitation of today, would find such an idea hopelessly naive.

Nope, I would have many jobs open for me if there wasn't tons of government regulation on my labor (under 17). I would be able to work my way up from jobs that wouldn't otherwise exist because of the minimum wage. The poor would be able to gain more skills and eventually more pay and employment overall if there was little regulation on how THEY can sell their labor. It's not a matter of corporations giving people a decent life but each individual in the transactions bringing equal benefits. If conditions are bad enough, in a free market, unhindered nor overpowered Unions would be able to stand for those who are being taken advantage.

Yes, I've budgeted out and I could live very sustainably on it albeit no iPhone 4s and cable television.

Look, no offense, but you're a kid. You may think you could live on less than minimum wage, but you've never had to. You've never had to live on your own at all. There are plenty of places in the U.S. where you can't even find a studio apartment for less than $700 a month. Add in electric bills, gas bills, food, phone (you need at least some kind of phone for your employer to contact you), transportation to your job, and you're looking at another $500 at the very least. Minimum wage without any taxes is barely over $1000 a month. Even if you could barely manage to scrape by, what happens when an emergency comes up? There's no way you'd actually be able to save any money to pay for it.

No, what would you see is a passionate team of entrepreuners building everything up again and probably for competitive and better prices.

You know, if the private sector is so much better than the public, why have so many of the most important inventions of the 20th century come from the public sector - space travel, the Internet. Even some of the ones that didn't (the transistor, the microprocessor) wouldn't have been possible without the companies involved receiving massive government grants. And even today, so much of the important research in medicine and technology comes out of public universities, and then is later sold by private companies.

Competition isn't as big a factor as you think it is. Our screwed-up private insurance-based health care system should tell you that much. We pay 2-3 times what any other country does for health care per capita,  yet we still have 50 million people with no insurance, and millions more with terrible insurance because it's all they can afford. Europeans are so used to their quality nationalized health care that the situation here shocks and appalls them. Wouldn't you rather live in a country where "medical bankruptcy" is a term that doesn't even exist? And hell, 75% of the people who do end up filing for medical bankruptcy here had insurance to begin with, but either the insurance didn't cover needed procedures or it dropped them because they were too expensive. When it's more profitable to deny claims and profit is all you care about, you end up with the situation we have here.

One thing you'll see conservatives do again and again to "prove" that public services don't work is to starve the beast - that is they keep defunding public agencies more and more, and then when these agencies are so broke that they can barely operate and their efficiency goes down, conservatives point to that as an inherent failure of the very concept of public service. Neat trick, huh?

Welcome to corporatism enabled by the government's monopoly on force. These are only signs of an uneven playing field because the smaller guys have to pay huge taxes and they don't.

See, you seem to think that the government owns the corporations instead of vice versa.  Like the people who blame the Community Reivestment Act for the subprime crisis instead of placing the blame on the banks where it belongs ( http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinvestment_act_had_nothing_to_do_with_subprime_crisis.html ).

I would ask that you become more familiar with the history of this country, especially the last hundred years. Our armed forces and intelligence agencies have had a hand in toppling literally dozens of democratically elected governments around the world, all for the sake of American business interests.

Check out this list and start reading around 1900:
http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm

Every time the reason given for the military operation was "protecting American interests", that means they did it for big business.

Here is one of the best known examples, though there are so many others, it would take me hours to list them all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_in_Central_America

(The United Fruit Company is what's now known as Chiquita Banana)

I trust that my fellow man has some basic instincts of human empathy and that we are inherently rational and can choose what is best for ourselves. Anyways, companies are no more powerful than the people selling their labor. They need each other. It inherently has to be a zero-sum game until people mess with the balance. That's what we wish to avoid.

With all due respect, I believe your trust is severely misplaced. Look at... well, look at all of human history. People are horrible, and the ones who strive for riches above all else don't give a damn about empathy. What would have ever made you think they did? Their PR departments?

[Anonymous]

With a completely powerless small government, how could you ever expect everyone to play by the same rules... or even do anything but laugh at those rules? Anyone with any familiarity with the last several hundred years of capitalism - from the brutal, murderous colonialism of the 17th through 20th centuries, to the wage slavery and Third World exploitation of today, would find such an idea hopelessly naive.

If nobody respects life to begin with, everything falls apart. It's in everybodys best interest to follow the rules. If people in general can't respect life, I don't know how the people in power can either.

The 17th through 20th centuries were not pinnacle points of free-market capitalism. Heh, far from it. There was very much a tyrannical reign during those times. The third world exploitation we have today is very much caused by large bodies of force. The closest we have had to a voluntary market was America's industrial revolution and contrary to popular belief, people were thriving. They may have had cramped quarters and tough jobs but it was far better opportunity than what they previously had. It was the precipice of American development and fortunately it wasn't hindered fully until later by the progressive new deal policies. If left alone, I believe things would be far more prosperous today.

 

Look, no offense, but you're a kid. You may think you could live on less than minimum wage, but you've never had to. You've never had to live on your own at all. There are plenty of places in the U.S. where you can't even find a studio apartment for less than $700 a month. Add in electric bills, gas bills, food, phone (you need at least some kind of phone for your employer to contact you), transportation to your job, and you're looking at another $500 at the very least. Minimum wage without any taxes is barely over $1000 a month. Even if you could barely manage to scrape by, what happens when an emergency comes up? There's no way you'd actually be able to save any money to pay for it.

The reason apartment living and housing in general costs so much is because of excessive government regulation in the first place. That's why homelessness and debt is so much of a problem. You can no longer find small, minimalist houses because pompous liberals think everybody should be too good for them.

In addition, I could easily budget that out to less than $500 a month. I'll shoot a deer and keep it in my freezer if I have to. There won't be starbucks or overpriced niche foods but I will survive. If there was less regulation, I bet things would be much cheaper.

I would just have to save a little at a time. What do you recommend? Enslaving people to give me a higher wage? Fuck you.

You know, if the private sector is so much better than the public, why have so many of the most important inventions of the 20th century come from the public sector - space travel, the Internet. Even some of the ones that didn't (the transistor, the microprocessor) wouldn't have been possible without the companies involved receiving massive government grants. And even today, so much of the important research in medicine and technology comes out of public universities, and then is later sold by private companies.

We may not of seen identical innovations in a non-public environment but you cannot say innovation would cease to exist in a free, voluntary environment. I don't think a micropressor or a trip to the moon justifies slavery. In addition, medicine is mostly hindered today by big pharma granted monopoly powers by the government. Technology as of now is doing just fine without the government.

Competition isn't as big a factor as you think it is. Our screwed-up private insurance-based health care system should tell you that much. We pay 2-3 times what any other country does for health care per capita,  yet we still have 50 million people with no insurance, and millions more with terrible insurance because it's all they can afford. Europeans are so used to their quality nationalized health care that the situation here shocks and appalls them. Wouldn't you rather live in a country where "medical bankruptcy" is a term that doesn't even exist? And hell, 75% of the people who do end up filing for medical bankruptcy here had insurance to begin with, but either the insurance didn't cover needed procedures or it dropped them because they were too expensive. When it's more profitable to deny claims and profit is all you care about, you end up with the situation we have here.

We don't have private healthcare. It's very much limited by government. If you look back at the 1920s, you will see we had the pinnacle of healthcare before the doctors started lobbying everything up. Healthcare was just fine before the government stepped in.

With all due respect, I believe your trust is severely misplaced. Look at... well, look at all of human history. People are horrible, and the ones who strive for riches above all else don't give a damn about empathy. What would have ever made you think they did? Their PR departments?

If people are inherently horrible, then I can only imagine how horrible governments are.

[rainingbitcoins]

Minimum Wages! The worst thing to happen to the American worker, ever. Ask yourself, Which is more pay, $2.50/hour, or $0.00/hour? If you have more than two brain cells to rub together (Which I assume you do), you've come up with the same answer I did: $2.50/hour. When the minimum wage is increased, it drives up costs to employers, who are forced to cut back. And guess who's the first to go? That's right... The worker who was getting the previous minimum wage. Every minimum wage increase puts more people out of work.

That's adorable that you think companies aren't hiring because they can't afford it, but the fact is, corporate profits are sky high and they still aren't hiring.

Our minimum wage is about $14k a year and we have 9.1% unemployment. Really, due to the screwy way we calculate that number, it's closer to 20%. Norway's minimum wage is $48k a year and they have 3.5% unemployment. How would you explain that?

Add all these together, and you get this: Without the government protecting the employer from liability and enforcing a minimum wage, the worker is free to negotiate with the employer for whatever his skills are worth.

That's great that you think a single person has any leverage at all in negotiating with multi-billion-dollar transnational corporations, but they really don't.

[myrkul]

Minimum Wages! The worst thing to happen to the American worker, ever. Ask yourself, Which is more pay, $2.50/hour, or $0.00/hour? If you have more than two brain cells to rub together (Which I assume you do), you've come up with the same answer I did: $2.50/hour. When the minimum wage is increased, it drives up costs to employers, who are forced to cut back. And guess who's the first to go? That's right... The worker who was getting the previous minimum wage. Every minimum wage increase puts more people out of work.

That's adorable that you think companies aren't hiring because they can't afford it, but the fact is, corporate profits are sky high and they still aren't hiring.

Fuck you. i lost my shit job at McDonalds to the minimum wage hike, So I think I know a thing or two about this.

[Anonymous]

You see, he perceives his whole doctrine as helping the impoverished and if you question that, it can only create severe cognitive dissonance. My family on both sides came from 'poverty' by the liberal's standards, yet they felt very wealthy in their lives. Sure they had to reuse bathwater and never had many luxuries but they were god damn happy people and it seems most cannot imagine it.

[rainingbitcoins]

The reason apartment living and housing in general costs so much is because of excessive government regulation in the first place. That's why homelessness and debt is so much of a problem. You can no longer find small, minimalist houses because pompous liberals think everybody should be too good for them.

By "small, minimalist houses", I can only assume you mean tin-roofed shacks.

In addition, I could easily budget that out to less than $500 a month. I'll shoot a deer and keep it in my freezer if I have to.

Oh, good lord.

We may not of seen identical innovations in a non-public environment but you cannot say innovation would cease to exist in a free, voluntary environment. I don't think a micropressor or a trip to the moon justifies slavery. In addition, medicine is mostly hindered today by big pharma granted monopoly powers by the government. Technology as of now is doing just fine without the government.

Taxes are not slavery, guy who never had to pay any.

We don't have private healthcare. It's very much limited by government. If you look back at the 1920s, you will see we had the pinnacle of healthcare before the doctors started lobbying everything up. Healthcare was just fine before the government stepped in.

Of course health care was cheap in the 1920s! There was no radiation treatment for cancer, no bypasses for heart disease, none of the stuff we have today. If you avoided every advancement made in the last 90 years, health care today would be affordable, too. That doesn't mean it would be good.

Again, I have to ask, if government interference in health care is what drives the prices up, why does every country with government-provided health care pay a fraction of what we do to cover a higher portion of the population with a better standard of care?  By your logic, they'd be paying several times more than we do for terrible care.

[rainingbitcoins]

Fuck you. i lost my shit job at McDonalds to the minimum wage hike, So I think I know a thing or two about this.

And you believed them when they told you that? That's pretty gullible.

[Anonymous]

Fuck you. i lost my shit job at McDonalds to the minimum wage hike, So I think I know a thing or two about this.

And you believed them when they told you that? That's pretty gullible.

Look, if I could make my workers work harder, rather than kill my profit margin by keeping another person hired, I rather fire the person. In addition, if I was hiring someone to scrape gum off the sidewalk for 2 dollars an hour and then a minimum wage came up, I'd fire them. It's that simple. Businesses don't hire just for the sake of hiring. They hire for benefit and need. When the job overshadows the benefit, it goes away.

[rainingbitcoins]

You see, he perceives his whole doctrine as helping the impoverished and if you question that, it can only create severe cognitive dissonance.

Yeah dude, you're really blowing my mind with these awesome new ideas that you got from reading blogs written by other high school kids on Von Mises's site.

The thing is, they only work in reality if you have a very loose definition of that word and make up facts as you go along.

Look, if I could make my workers work harder, rather than kill my profit margin by keep another person hired, I rather fire the person. In addition, if I was hiring someone to scrape gum off the sidewalk for 2 dollars an hour and then a minimum wage came up. I'd fire them. It's that simple. Businesses don't hire just for the sake of hiring. They hire for benefit and need. When the job overshadows the benefit, it goes away.

Is that McDonald's still in business? If so, I guess they didn't need you and picked the most convenient excuse they could think of to let you go!

e: whoops, I thought you were the other guy

[myrkul]

You're an idiot. There's no use trying to pound sense into granite. I give up.

[Anonymous]

By "small, minimalist houses", I can only assume you mean tin-roofed shacks.

...and there is not a god damn thing wrong with living in a tin-roofed shack. It seems you are too proud to settle for what is sustainable.  

Also, check these out: www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

Regulations and overzealous zoning commissions have phased housing like this out only to the detriment of people.

Oh, good lord.

Too proud to hunt it seems. It's what most of our ancestors did.

Taxes are not slavery, guy who never had to pay any.

It's a part of MY labor that's taken from me. That is slavery.

Of course health care was cheap in the 1920s! There was no radiation treatment for cancer, no bypasses for heart disease, none of the stuff we have today. If you avoided every advancement made in the last 90 years, health care today would be affordable, too. That doesn't mean it would be good.

Still, that doesn't excuse the high wage mandates, the destruction of the healthcare groups that were managed by the poor and for the poor and the dismantlement of charity hospitals.

Again, I have to ask, if government interference in health care is what drives the prices up, why does every country with government-provided health care pay a fraction of what we do to cover a higher portion of the population with a better standard of care?  By your logic, they'd be paying several times more than we do for terrible care.

Corporatism is more rampant here and our quality of care happens to be higher for the people who have better means. We have the highest quality of care but not for people who aren't upper middle class. Also, their care sucks when it comes to urgent surgeries. Long waitlists. My mother would of probably died of her rare lung collapse if she was elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

You see, he perceives his whole doctrine as helping the impoverished and if you question that, it can only create severe cognitive dissonance.

Yeah dude, you're really blowing my mind with these awesome new ideas that you got from reading blogs written by other high school kids on Von Mises's site.

The thing is, they only work in reality if you have a very loose definition of that word and make up facts as you go along.

They have never worked in reality because they have never been achieved. Civilization has always been mostly tied to a ball and chain.

[rainingbitcoins]

Still waiting for someone to tell me why Norway has such a low unemployment rate and high minimum wage compared to us if these universal truths you guys are laying down on me are, indeed, universal. Or true.

Also, their care sucks when it comes to urgent surgeries. Long waitlists. My mother would of probably died of her rare lung collapse if she was elsewhere.

This is a myth. Wait times in UHC countries are comparable to our own - some slightly higher, some slightly lower. You know that thing about people from Canada coming here for health care? It doesn't actually happen.

And you don't get to pretend that corporations aren't part and parcel of capitalism, and are some horrible government experiment run amok. That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. What, exactly, would replace them with in your libertopia?

They have never worked in reality because they have never been achieved. Civilization has always been mostly tied to a ball and chain.

This sounds a lot like a Marxist who claims that the reason communism never worked is that no country ever had pure, true communism.

[rainingbitcoins]

Oh yeah, and good luck hunting those deer when two hundred million other Americans with below-minimum-wage jobs get the same idea.

[Anonymous]

I don't care about Norway. It offers me little opportunity and freedom. It looks like a hostile place to start a business.

Companies do not become supermen just by having huge profit-margins. Their life support is solely in their consumers. A company only becomes a corporation when it becomes exempt from liability and can be bailed out by its government benefactor on a whim. Businesses are on a equal playing field with individuals in a free environment; subject to the same liability and failure.

They would be replaced by many competitive companies without unfair restrictions on how they can serve their consumers.

Also, we have lived off hunting animals for most of our history. I doubt we would throw the ecosystem off that much. We are not above nature.

[Anonymous]

Also, you negate the fact that Norway is puny. Of course whatever they do works for them. They probably import most of their working-class labor.