Mark Cuban: The most patriotic thing you can do is "get rich"(blogmaverick.com) |
Mark Cuban: The most patriotic thing you can do is "get rich"(blogmaverick.com) |
Right, so I bust my ass in school, non-paid internships, contracting as much as possible, and 50 hour work weeks on my startup... and the reason I'm making money is b/c I'm more "fortunate" than the slob who is still playing video games in college after 6 years and the idiot who chooses to have kids he can't afford?
OK, got it... making wise choices makes you "fortunate"... and it's "unfortunate" when idiots who make poor decisions just don't make quite enough money to afford cigarettes, bling for his car, and health insurance.
Another serious flaw in this article, besides his inept philosophy: money stolen from us by the government is not "helping to support millions of americans"... it's being completely wasted by GovCo, for the most part, or at minimum used very inefficiently.
I don't know you, but I consider myself fortunate to be making more money than most because I was given, through no merit of my own, the ability and environment in which I could become educated and work towards goals that ended in lucrative work. As the child of educated, middle-class, white-collar people in a modern industrialized country, I have had thousands of opportunities denied most others in the world. If any of those things changed, for example if I happened to be born 300 years ago or if my community never taught me the importance of education and hard work or if I was born in a place where subsistence-level living is the norm, I would be in a completely different boat. If you have the ability to make wise choices that effect change in your life, then yes, you are fortunate.
On a side note, this sort of disdain for the poor is disturbing to me. Do people really think poor people choose to be so? Nobody wants to be poor.
That no one wants to be poor is obvious enough, but it's hardly the same as whether or not they choose to be. The poorest person I know has an IQ of 186 and a PhD in chemistry. He chooses to live on government disability and not work, even though he's quite capable of doing so. But he he shares a quality I've noticed in all of the poor people I know personally: a belief the world owes him a living. Everything in his screwed-up life is someone else's fault, never his, no matter how much damage he inflicts on others.
That isn't all poor people, but it's a lot of them.
You also work more hours than workers in other developed nations and yet still can't stop going on and on about lazy people.
There's really very little sense of proportion in this country.
There's more to success than making wise choices. It's also have the ability to even have that choice because of your surrounding environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY...
65% of taxpayer's money went to defense/social security/medicare-medicaid. Think about it for a moment. 65% of the money spent had nothing to do with infrastructure. Also, do you think that government is spending all the taxpayer's money carefully OR you think that government wastes tremendous waste amount of money? There are 3 ways to spend money:
1. Your own money on yourself. [You are very careful about getting your money's worth and you do spend generously] 2. Your own money on someone else. [You are very careful about getting your money's worth but you spend as little as you can] 3. Someone else's money on someone else. [Let's burn some money to heat up the place!]
Government falls in 3rd category and it's no surprise that there is tremendous waste.
That's why libertarians are advocating 'limited government', 'minimal taxes' so that people (you and me) can keep their hard earned money for themselves and spend as they see fit.
It's a bit ugly that you can loop everyone that can't afford healthcare, mental health issues or drug addiction into a single bucket and dispose of them.
Those who can afford to spend 6 years in college playing video games, rarely are the ones who are doing it on the gov't dime. Its the kids that grow up in crappy underprivileged neighborhoods with poor school systems and no guidance are the ones that need help. But hey its their parents fault right?
You sir, compassion less, and cold spirited and are the one I can do without.
Let me give you an example. NY State auditors recovered around 270 million dollars in Medicare fraud/waste between Oct 07 to Mar 08 (6 months). This is only one state, think about the amount of fraud/waste happening in other states. In fact, they plan to spend 90 million dollars to prevent this fraud/waste! Why give government money so that they can waste it and then let them spend more money so that they can prevent the waste?
Link: http://www.nysun.com/new-york/state-recovers-269m-in-medicai...
I bet you'd love to tell us how socialism would work if we "just gave it a chance." Let me guess... it "hasn't been implemented properly" yet right?
Mark Cuban said that we need to make a boatload of money, but does not say how exactly to do that. At this point, you cant go by the Mark Cuban book. Dont try to duplicate what he did. Aside from the rare occassion of the German based ebay copycats whom later became reviered VCs, The European Founders (http://www.europeanfounders.com/index.html), you have to create your own path. What do you enjoy? Where is there a void in the market? Etc.
But, hopefully, you are not trying to "Get Rich Quick". Create your entrepreneurial venture off of passion and a genuine interest in what you are creating. Dont need it to blow up and produce millions over night, because you have to pay your electric bill. Thats not the way.
I'm pretty sure that if this country was "built on" a concept, it was intellectual freedom. Entrepreneurship is perhaps a nice consequence of that legacy, but let's not confuse which end wags the dog.
Allow me to rephrase. Entrepreneurship is what our economy is built upon. Not intellectual freedom. Granted, intellectual freedom created peanut butter, the lightbulb and more. But no one was attempting to create these items for sales purposes initially. Peanut butter was invented by George Washington Carver, not Jiff.
And I wouldnt say that intellectual freedom is what built this county. As so many whom actually put in the man hours, hard work and physical suffering to build this country, did not have any intellectual freedom, and died in the process.
High-income earners, on the other hand, often have negative net worth (school and housing debt). The rich want high taxes on the high-income earners because they don't want the upstarts competing with them for control of assets...they want to make it harder for the next wave of entrepreneurs to build disruptive or competitive businesses.
It is ironic, but taxes on new capital formation directly benefit those who already have capital.
With that said, I agree with Mark Cuban's philosophy here, and do not get personally upset with paying taxes.
I don't think the solution is to complain about taxes on high income earners. Rather, there just needs to be more pressure on instituting equivalent taxes for other forms of wealth generation (i.e. get rid of tax-free bonds).
So, if you set everything else equal (purchase of goods and services, payment of taxes, etc.) the self-made rich are doing a lot more for others than the rich-by-inheritance.
Don't most wealthy people hire lawyers and lobbyists to help them not pay taxes? Don't they also move jobs overseas to reduce how much they pay to their own economy?
Cuban seems to be living in a dreamworld.
So just to clarify-- if you become successful, it was a combination of hard work and good fortune but if don't become successful, it was just poor fortune?
Consciousness is a gift through fortune. Through consciousness, you eventually come to a realization that you should work hard and endeavor to become successful. The less fortunate never reach such a level of consciousness.
It's like some bizarre fear that by admitting that some people are simply feckless and/or unmotivated you risk marginalizing everyone hasn't "made it" whereas in reality incentives are a huge part of the productivity equation (as anyone with a knowledge of basic economics can attest).
And, essentially the choice is whether to think or not to think.
The results of that choice are not a random twist of reality that's foisted on an individual... the results are the real and logical outcomes that can be expected using the application of probability.
It seems like the most beneficial thing would be to "Hire people. Train people. Pay people. Spend money on rent, equipment, services." but not skim a bunch off the top for yourself.
"The most patriotic thing you can do is get rich." -- Mark Cuban
Sounds about right.
Asimov's "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." has a similar trap for those who don't read critically.
Just because someone posts something on their blog, does not mean it is what they truly believe. It is only what they want to appear on their blog.
Isn't there a limited monetary supply at any given time? So the richer I get, the less rich other people become. Even after I pay rents and salaries and everything else, if I'm richer than I was before, then there is less wealth available for everyone else.
Sure, most wealthy pay more on an absolute scale. Not always so on a relative scale.
Cuban's core rational is that rich people make things move, shape change. I agree somewhat. So it follows that if they make less efficient things more efficient, then removing all tax loopholes and aggressively going after illegal tax behavior would force these wonderful, really smart rich people to make the tax system and government spending of it more efficient. As long as they have a way around paying, they have no incentive to make the tax usage more efficient.
I'm pretty sure Warren Buffet proved otherwise:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ec...
For one, he's not saying you can't go through hoops to avoid paying taxes, he's saying don't do it. Of course, if we wanted to we could legislate to prevent this exploitation of tax law, although I'm not sure how far that would get without a considerable social realignment.
I have never seen a law that says such a thing. Shareholders get to vote respective to the rights of their share class...That's about it. Other than embezzlement and other forms of fraud, a company can do as they like.
he presents a great example of a couple of friends with beat up cars....
If 4 guys all have old beaters worth 1000 each. in total they have $4000 split evenly. Each has 25% of the wealth. If one guy goes, and decides to fix up his car, and his car is suddenly worth $3000, then suddenly he has 50% of the wealth, and the other three guys only have 16%. But the face value of the other three cars did not change.
That's what screws up the old 80-20 rule... you think it's unfair until you realize that the 20% created most of the wealth they control.
PG touches on this: "The Pie Fallacy" in http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
My 2 cents on it: Wealth is created. Currency is a limited resource that represents that wealth. The value of a single unit of currency is increased every time more real wealth is created. Wealth is created when goods or services that people actually want are produced.
Completely unnecessary partisan drivel. The man asked a question and you made a useless generalization that shows, more than anything else, that you don't understand your opposition's socioeconomic philosophy.
However, you are correct, currency is simply a tangible representation of value. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Consider a screwdriver. Physically, this screwdriver is simply its raw materials. However, by organizing the materials in the right way, this screwdriver becomes more than the some of its parts and increases its value accordingly. Thus, by selling this screwdriver for its perceived value, one can create wealth in the difference of costs vs. revenue. Of course, a simplistic example, but one that answers the question fairly well.
Edit: Maybe I should cite pg and get on the bandwagon...
Don't confuse wealth with money.
However, I think randomness (i.e. "fortune") generally plays a much larger role in all of our lives than we care to admit. The American obsession with hard work and merit fuels this misconception. Our brains are also somewhat intrinsically hardwired to intuit simple causes and effects, even when none truly exist.
If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend reading "The Drunkard's Walk" by Leonard Mlodinow. http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Vintag...
I have a general issue with the waste argument. And perhaps this is a bit naive, but as long as the gov't spends money that stays domestic, then the economy is being helped. Even with waste.
I'm sorry I have less faith that "most" Americans would spend money more responsibly than my gov't.
I'm well aware of how much I pay in taxes, its significant and getting worse since I started my own business this year.
But I believe that my taxes fill a need society and in fact even have a pragmatic slant (one which Cuban raised) in the Keynsian model more taxes = more spending by gov't and the only real way to stimulate economy.
Win/Win I help people and make more money with a better economy.
I think you fail to comprehend how complicated modern day economy is. Have you heard of 'I, Pencil' story? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU The gist is that no single person knows how to make a pencil. Because of co-ordinated efforts of thousands of people, working for their own goals, makes it possible to manufacture pencil and deliver it at your local store where you can buy it for dollar a piece.
Do you really think that few hundred bureaucrats in DC can decide how billions of dollars should be spent so that economy is stimulated?
check out any company's s-1 filing. here's google's for reference: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/pdf/ne/2004/google.pdf
just search through that for the phrase 'shareholder'. here's just a small taste: We will make decisions on business fundamentals... and always with the long term welfare of our company and shareholders in mind
and 'lest you forget, the board of yahoo was actually sued for initially rebuffing the microsoft takeover bid.
As to Yahoo or anyone else getting sued by shareholders, sure you can sue. The courts may take into account actions of corporate execs and decide they haven't been listening to the shareholders. But it really depends on what the shareholder rights are in any given corp. Was Yahoo required to put a buyout offer to a shareholder vote, but did not? If so, the shareholders have legal standing. But its not the reason you state: "exist for the sole purpose of advancing their shareholder's interest (profit). period. end of story."
In fact, I'll wager you cannot find such a clear law that supports your position.
The EPA, before the anti-EPA right wing nuts of the bush administration took it over, was doing good work, like trying to keep mercury out of our water. Of course, under the "pro business" bush administration, they've undermined such protections and declared that mercury and other toxins in our water aren't so bad after all and raised their acceptable limits in water (which is just a small sample of the outrageous "pro business" bullshit the bush administration was guilty of).
I happen to enjoy the National Parks in the US, as I think many Americans do; and I, for one, am glad that they're in public hands instead of the hands of the corporations. Yet Bush appointed people to head the National Park service who had explicitly expressed their opposition to even the existence of National Parks. And they've proceeded to sell off public lands and undermine the protections of the National Parks by granting more permissive logging rights to corporations and by watering down environmental regulations.
Now on to the FDA, which does a pretty good job of protecting the quality of the food and drugs it regulates (though in my opinion they are not nearly strict enough, because in many cases they in bed with the corporations and are underfunded, so consequently their regulation and enforcement is not nearly strong enough).
All the "pro-business", anti-environment, and anti-public-property abuses of the Bush administration would be increased a hundred fold if the libertarian vision ever came to pass. The libertarians would get rid of the EPA, the FDA, and sell of the National Parks. The corps would be free to pollute our air and water, kill off all endangered species, and the corps would be free to "self-regulate" the food and drugs they produce (meaning a free-for-all for a quick buck at the expense of public health).
And the above doesn't even begin to address the havoc libertarians would wreck on our education system (turning it in to even more of education for the wealthy than it already is), and destroy the few vestiges of a social safety net that America has managed to save despite many decades of assault from the "small government" crowd.
Basically, what libertarianism really amounts to is the attitude that there should be even more concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy, and the poor can go fuck themselves.
In my youth I was drawn to libertarianism (and I still agree with a few of their positions, such as their opposition to the War on Drugs), but as I've learned more about politics and history I see that the vast majority of those who will benefit from libertarianism are the wealthy, which is one reason (another is his racism) why Ron Paul could sneak in as a Republican candidate, where he wouldn't have stood a chance as a Democrat.
* Seven thousand people die every year because the FDA hasn't approved the Ambu CardioPump, a CPR device that is available in just about every other industrialized country.
* Nine hundred people die every year because the FDA hasn't approved the OmniCarbon heart valve, which also is in use just about everywhere else.
* From November 1988 to May 1992, about 3,500 kidney cancer patients died waiting for the FDA to approve the drug Interleukin-2, which was already available in France, Denmark, and seven other European countries.
* In 1988 alone, between 7,500 and 15,000 people died from gastric ulcers caused by aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, waiting for the FDA to approve misoprostol, which was already available in 43 countries.
* And 22,000 people died between 1985 and late 1987 waiting for streptokinase, the first drug that could be intravenously administered to reopen the blocked coronary arteries of heart-attack victims.
I have a friend who does medical research and to quote him:
//// As a professional in the medical device field, I can bear witness to many better reasons.
1. Delay of life saving technologies. I've had a product which has already saved lives in clinical trials waiting for FDA approval for 10 years!!! How many have died unnecessarily in that time? Nobody risks their job in FDA by saying "no", only "yes" The review boards are a joke. They consist mainly of your potential competitors!
2. Needless paperwork. At least half of my company's expenses are directly related to useless compliance with FDA paperwork. The joke here is that it doesn't have ANY connection to REAL patient safety, just the proper invocation of holy words on endless reports and forms. Maybe the FDA is really a secret cabal? Just kidding...
3. Chilling effect on new products and technologies. Want to make venture capital run away and hide? Say "subject to FDA approval" ///
Tell me again how is FDA useful?
Also, why do you think libertarians will wreck havoc on education? Could you explain me with example of how they will wreck havoc? AFAIK, libertarian recommends a school voucher system which will ensure that all kids get education and the free market forces ensure that they get best education possible.
The libertarianism doesn't advocate concentration of power, it actually promotes liberty for everyone involved.
The bottom line is that it's infinitely more important what you do with your wealth than whether it was handed to you or you earned it.
Give me a Henry Ford or a porn producer any day over Mother Teresa.
It speaks volumes that you hold a person that "never held a paid job in her life" in higher esteem than an individual that actually created wealth.
The guy who founded girls gone wild produced far more of what people want than your useless social engineers.
Pablo Escobar produced far more of what people want than our hypothetical porn producer. Feynmann produced far, far less. What exactly is your point?
The problem is that economics does not exist in an ideal world with no socio-moral ramifications.
I wish we spent less on the defense, but the amount spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid sits fine with me. I consider that social infrastructure. When large portions of society go without, all of society suffers.
We see ourselves as fitting into society in different ways. You feel that the government is taking your money in the form of taxes. I feel that I'm paying for the privilege of living in a society that affords me the opportunity to earn money.
Trust me, I have no problem with taxes, I understand their need and pay them on time every year. My problem is the already high taxes and the fact that they are increasing. This means that government gets bigger and bigger and wastes all our (yours and mine) hard earned money. Unless you are suggesting that government doesn't waste money, I don't want them to increase taxes.
Or how about when making sure education reaches everyone's hands.
See, the funny thing about people defending libertarian positions is that if they hadn't lived in a country with a public education infrastructure, roads, fire brigade and energy, it would be very unlikely that they'd had the capacity to acquire the knowledge and stability they'd need to become what they are today.
The inescapable fact is that they did nothing to "deserve" their health care of education through their infancy, yet it's one of the core reasons they got here, and they have the gall to complain about it.
Evidenced by the high standards of living in countries which do have social infrastructure (and yes, it exists, no need to put quotes around it) it works, and works reasonably well.
Doing infrastructure planning and development for millions of people kicks in economies of scale which are unachievable otherwise. History has effectively shown that social benefits that guarantee a minimal level of rights for education and health have dramatic effects in social mobility and overall quality of life.
This why I don't see libertarianism (or even conservatism) working in general. There are vast swathes of americans who given more money would spend it irresponsibly - and what do you do then when someone spends their limited income on new truck nuts instead of health insurance?
Are you okie? I hear a 'no'. Then why do you think you want government to control how others spend their money? Do you really think someone else knows better than you what to do you with your own hard earned money? And why do you think libertarianism doesn't work? America is a living proof that libertarianism/capitalism works.
Another example: I am an Indian and when I was a kid, I remember how poor our country was. Since India decided to open up the trade in 1991 and adopted some of the libertarian policies, it has flourished. I don't know how old are you but did you hear about India as a vibrant economy 25 years back? So please don't suggest that libertarianism doesn't' work because I have seen it with my own eyes how well it works.
You're not answering my question. I trust myself, heck you seem smart enough, I even trust you. I don't trust large sections of my country and you don't have a solution for dealing with the people who decide to spend their money irrationally.
You can not call America a libertarian country and wave it like an example. Its far from it and thankfully so. The most economic success this country has seen in the last 25 years was the eight were it was run by democratic leader (you know the tax more spend more people).
Likewise India's success in the last 25 years is great, but its a bit hard to show that as an example when it houses 1/3 of the worlds poor and 42% live beneath the international poverty line.
From http://fdaissues.blogspot.com/2008/03/upton-sinclair-book-ju...
In "The Jungle", Upton Sinclair, "wrote about how dead rats were shoveled into sausage grinding machines. He explained, in nauseating detail, how diseased cows were slaughtered for beef; how guts and garbage were swept off the floor and sold as "potted ham."
Upton Sinclair even described how the occasional worker would fall into a meat-processing tank and be ground, along with animal parts, into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard."
The Chicago meat-packing industry was in deep trouble after Sinclair's landmark book, The Jungle, was published in 1906. It caused outrage in America and abroad and meat sales fell by half. The book forced the government to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the Food and Drug Administration."
That's one of the things the FDA does right. I, for one, am glad I'm not eating rat sausage and meatpacker lard.
Another thing it does right is requiring food and drugs have all their ingredients listed on them. I am appalled when I buy other products, such as various cleaners and other chemicals, which are not under the jurisdiction of the FDA and could have all sorts of carcinogenic and dangerous chemicals in them without my even being aware of them, because they are not required to list their ingredients on their labels. I am glad that at least the food and medicines I consume do require strict labeling.
While many people may have died waiting for various drugs and medical devices to get FDA approval, there are also no doubt countless thousands saved because this approval was required. All you have to do is look at the days before the FDA existed to see the mountains of snake oil garbage that was peddled to American consumers (things like these radioactive quack cures: http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/quackcures.htm )
I am quite grateful to be living in the days of the FDA, and wouldn't want to go back to the pre-FDA era.
This is not to say the FDA is perfect, by any means. It's been affected by budget cuts and has a huge conflict of interest in its sometimes incestuous relationships with the corporations it is supposed to regulate.
These deficiencies are cause for reform (perhaps even radical reform) but not for elimination of the FDA altogether.
As for the complaints of your friend in the medical industry, I agree that the approval process takes too long. More funding of the FDA, and perhaps even requiring the FDA to conduct its own studies (eliminating the corporation from the loop, which have a conflict of interest in testing the safety of their own products anyway) would help.
I have a friend of my own, who worked as an internal safety inspector in a pharmaceutical plant owned by a major pharmaceutical company. He said that the plant should have gotten closed a decade ago because of its poor safety record (for which it had been sited by the FDA many times in the past), but it stayed open because the company's CEO had a lot of pull in the FDA.
This sort of thing calls for tougher regulation, not weaker regulation (much less the elimination of the FDA altogether).
As to your point about education vouchers, those are mainly used by right-wing religious fanatics, who are dissatisfied with the "liberal", desegregated education their kids would get in public school and want to get their kids in to religious schools and schools which are free to discriminate in ways public schools can't. I see no evidence that the voucher system would work for a wider segment of the population. Again, the people who would most benefit from this would be the rich, and religious, racist nuts.
See this report on vouchers from the Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/vouchers/vouchers_main.asp
which, among other things, notes that:
"Under a system of vouchers, it may be difficult to prevent schools run by extremist groups like the Nation of Islam or the Ku Klux Klan from receiving public funds to subsidize their racist and anti-Semitic agendas."
Finally, your point about libertarianism not suggesting concentration of power. On the face of it, this is true, since libertarians never actually come out and say they suggest concentration of power. However, it's not difficult to read between the lines and see that's exactly what will happen when the checks that the government keeps on corporations (the EPA and FDA being just two of many good examples) are removed.
In fact, we have already seen what this is like. It's happened in America during the days of the Robber Barrons, where child labor, an 80-hour work week, workers being literally chained to their desks in sweatshops, the abominable conditions described in Sinclair's "The Jungle", no worker safety regulations in the workplace, and no environmental regulations were quite common. I do not want to go back to those days.
Apart from increased concentration of power in corporations, which libertarianism is powerless against, there's also the concentration of power in individuals, which the US system as a whole does a piss-poor job at controlling. That definitely needs work, but libertarians have nothing to say on the matter. If Bill Gates managed to get his hands on all of the world's wealth (or even, say, all the world's water) and the rest of the people on Earth had none, libertarians would presumably not have any problem with that. But thankfully, many other people do have a problem with that kind of inequitable distribution of wealth and power and will work to prevent it.
Another example of the government doing good work is when it manages to break up monopolies. However, it doesn't do nearly as good a job at this as it should (else Microsoft would have been broken up decades ago, and the media consolidation that's happened in the last decade or so would never have been allowed to take place). But, again, I don't see why libertarians would have any problem with monopolies (unless they're government monopolies, in which case they'll raise a stink).
I believe that for most libertarians, the rhetoric of caring for liberty is a mask for not caring much about anyone who can't make it the rat race of the social darwinists. This is why it's really no suprise that many libertarians are wealthy, highly educated types that imagine themselves made in the mold of Randian heroes. Conversely, you're not going to find many libertarians in the projects (with the possible exception of the drug dealers). And the only libertarians you're likely to find out in the sticks are the militia members and gun nuts who believe in conspiracy theories featuring the UN taking over the US, and the like. Fortunately, the majority of Americans haven't bought in to this bleak vision (yet).
Let me give you an example. FDA doesn't regulate coffee temperature. A lady gets first degree burn from McD's coffee. She sues McD and wins. McD (and all other companies who sell coffee) ensures that they set up right temperature for their coffee. FDA didn't have to do anything and still all the consumers are better off than before.
You haven't given me any public studies where it is proven that FDA disapproval saved people's lives. The page you have linked lists bunch of products but nothing else.
You have yourself outlined the biggest problem with FDA. Because FDA is made up of people like you and me and when you give them power, rest assured that the power will be misused. I would rather trust free market's invisible hand do the work for me instead of few hundred government bureaucrats of FDA. Who is responsible if people die because these government bureaucrats are too slow to approve a drug/medicine?
You copied/pasted text from ADL site about extremist groups running the schools. The point of voucher system is that as a parent of a child, you are allowed to choose a school where you send your kid and that school gets the voucher money. I am sure you are not going to send your kid to school operated by extremist group.
Explain me again why one needs to break a monopoly? You have to understand that it's not easy to become a monopoly. A corporation has to work extremely hard and satisfy their customers for a long time to become a monopoly. If a monopoly starts misusing their status and screw with their customers, soon there will be more companies trying to service the customers and it will automatically take away monopoly. For all practical purposes, Google has monopoly in Internet search. I am sure you would suggest that we should break this monopoly. What good this will do for the consumers? And yes, we oppose government monopoly because they become monopoly not by servicing customers, they become monopoly because the law grants them monopoly. Prime example: USPS vs Fedex/UPS.
You also question inequitable distribution of wealth. Let me ask you, how are you going to ensure equal distribution of wealth if government is in charge? How is government going to make sure that wealth is distributed equally? The fact is government doesn't even have wealth of its own.
Here's why I believe in libertarian philosophy. Government is about power and if you give this power to someone you better be sure that this power is not misused. The very power hungry people who are running for the government are precisely the people who should not be given power.
See this video on Greed by Milton Friedman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
My choice quote:
'Where in the world are you going to find these angels who are going to organize society for us?' :)
Walmart enters the market and voila, you can get 90 day prescription for 10$! You can get similar deals at Costco and Sams Club. Show me one government program which has actually reduced the price of medicine. Walmart opens up clinic at their stores at a low cost so that uninsured people can visit the clinic and actually get basic treatment by paying cash. CVS and other pharmacy stores have followed Walmart's footsteps and started their own clinics program.
As I commented elsewhere, having a school voucher system will ensure that everyone gets education while also letting free market do its magic.
I am from India and we don't have any free health care there. We do have free public school but they are terrible. My father worked hard to send me to private school and I did part time work in college to fund my education.
And I am not suggesting that government should not provide public infrastructure. As I have shown in my other comment, not even 1% of your tax money goes towards infrastructure. Why are you not talking about (outraged about) the immense waste by done by defense/social security/medicare medicaid?
Just because someone produces a product that serves a client base and produces a profit doesn't excuse moral issues. Similarly, just because Mother Theresa was not making a profit does not mean that she did not produce a net good. The two are apples and oranges but must be used in conjunction, not exclusion.
there is a simple solution: don't do business with people who use force, since there is no indication they won't eventually use force on you. do not do business with people who do business with people who use force, they aren't very bright for the above mentioned reason.
I was unaware that inanimate objects can be morally bad.
I don't remember saying anything remotely like that. I was talking about selling guns to both sides in an armed conflict for profit. Every comment you seem to change the topic a little bit more.
my solution still stands. coercion is wrong, profiting from coercion is wrong, akin to selling torture implements.
I've got news for you. I don't trust YOU to decide how to spend their money or my money.
Yes, people do dumb things with their money. However, they do dumber things with other people's money. And, since the potential damange is greater in the latter case than in the former, that's double-plus ungood.
What do you do with large populations of kids can't go to school because their parents don't want to pay for it.
Or people die because of lack of food and drug regulation
Or when kids break their legs without health insurance.
Or when our parents and grandparents don't have a retirement fund because they saved foolishly.
I fail to see how having a gov't spending our money makes the potential damage worse.
The list goes on.
This happens every day.
Or people die because of lack of food and drug regulation?
This also happens every day.
Or when our parents and grandparents don't have a retirement fund because they saved foolishly?
So does this.
Oh really?
When you spend your money on your stuff, you try really hard to get the best value.
When you spend your money on someone else's stuff, you go cheap.
When you spend someone else's money on your stuff, you don't worry so much about cost effectiveness.
Govt spending is someone else's money for someone else's stuff. Do you really think that that's as good as either of the previous two categories, let alone the first one?
Think about this for a moment. You think that health care is a right and everyone should have it. To expand this, you can also say that 'food' is a right and everyone should get it. Should government get in to business of taxing people and making sure that food is provided for everyone?
I hope you would agree that poverty can not be eliminated overnight. I am thrilled that India is making progress and I can assure that over the next 50 years, India will also join the rank of developed nations if they continue to adopt libertarian policies.
Anyway, coming back to your argument that you don't think others are smart enough to know how to spend their money. Just because percentage of the population is not smart enough, do you think I should suffer (by paying higher taxes) because of that?
Also, let's for a moment say that government should decide my health care. What's next? They will tell me what to eat as well. Where do you draw the line?
But you're still ignoring the core issue.
Also, I am not ignoring core issue. Your solution is that someone in Washington DC should decide how to spend money and solve problems for people living in a country as big as America and I am suggesting that we treat people like adult and let them take care of themselves and minimize the role of government in our lives.
More to the point, even if you think that food is a right and tax people to provide it to the less fortunate, should we have "Nationalized Food Service" or a subsidized "public option"? How about a tax on employers that don't provide acceptable "private food service"?
And speaking of this "food right", does it apply to folks who aren't capable of full participation in civil society? I ask because one of the White House advisors on health care believes that health care as a right does not apply to such folks, giving as an example folks with dementia. Would folks with Downs syndrome qualify?
He also thinks that old folks don't qualify.
And really? you see no correlation between the internet bubbles and India's recent economic growth?
