ext_284991 ([identity profile] gunslnger.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] talkpolitics 2013-11-23 07:39 am (UTC)

Just yesterday, I read that the belief "that we could have utopian prosperity if we got rid of private businesses and had the government run everything" should be marked down to "stubborn stupidity." Fair enough. As hyperbolic and Straw Manned-up as that statement is

Of course it was, since that was the point of the statement, as it was a parody of the hyperbolic and straw manned-up statement it was in response to.

Don't these folks know that given enough size, a corporation today has—via the power granted by over-reaching trade agreements—greater legal right than most countries?

Uh, via the power granted to them by governments, actually. So, where is the source of the problem there? That's right, governments. The concentration of power in government is what allows for the concentration of power in a megacorp. Without the first, you wouldn't have the second.

they act to protect and improve the lives of their citizens. Egypt, for example, fairly recently raised minimum wages for some category of employees.

An example of them not actually improving the lives of their citizens. It's possible that's what they were trying to do, but they also could have just been trying to bribe the populace into keeping them in power.

And then you give two examples that show exactly how the problem is government power being used to give things away to businesses. And you don't see the problem is that government is allowed to do this in the first place?

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