You realize that both of these acts by Congress is exactly why we need less government, right? On the one hand, they grant exemptions they shouldn't. And on the other, they threaten companies with the removal of benefits as a way to influence their behavior. This is just about verbatim from Atlas Shrugged. The govt is effectively blackmailing companies within a sector of the US economy to support the adoption of a socialist agenda. And if that doesn't scare the bejsus out of you, you aren't much of a student of history.

Why is it that the same people who want healthcare reform applaud these sort of tactics by politicians? It's because it's all part of the same tapestry: big business = bad, govt = good, and control = even better. These exemptions shouldn't have been given in the first place; their repeal should not be used as a stick to control a sector of the US economy. The fact that either of these things happened through our govt is exactly why we should not put healthcare in the govt hands.

Atlas Shrugged? Jesus yawned.

Dictatorships haven't come in by governmental action, btw. They've come in by coup (Stalin, Hussein) or by popular vote (Hitler, Peron).

Obama

dwilkinsnh:

You realize that both of these acts by Congress is exactly why we need less government, right? On the one hand, they grant exemptions they shouldn't...These exemptions shouldn't have been given in the first place...

Exemptions from what? The exemptions are from antitrust laws, which wouldn't exist absent government "interference." This is one problem with a lot of Randyians and libertarians: they assume that you can remove "government inerference" (vaguely defined) while maintaining all of the aspects of our social superstructure that they like. Without government, your precious property rights wouldn't exist. And neither would antitrust laws, so you can forget about private competition.

Once you start aknowledgeing that government interference forms the backbone of our social superstructure, you start to recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is in fact dependant on government interference as much as any other system. The only question is where does government need to step in to solve certain problems inherent with social chaos (if you think the answer is nowhere, you should think about whether existing stateless societies -- e.g., much of Somalia and Afghanistan -- conform with your notions of perfect Randyian capitalist society). At the end of the day, bland statements conflating all government interference with some vague notion of "socialism" only make you look stupid. I might as well say that government interference equals capitalism -- that's no more or less correct than your silly notions.

I apologize for the imprecision of my comments. By exemptions, I was referrring to their exemption from anti-trust laws. Surely we can agree that it's this capriciousness that is the issue with government intervention or control of just about anything. Terry Schiavo comes to mind. Designation of hate crimes are another. The Mass legislature overturning it's own laws to appoint a new Senator just because the Dems are in power (the same body voted the other way when Repubs were in power). Government of course is required for both commerce and ensuring domestic tranquility. But the goal is to create a level playing field, isn't it? Otherwise, it's about whoever holds the most power at any given point. When govt uses laws or levie to attack certain groups or industries and promote others, how far removed are we from Afghanistan or Somalia? Warloads in suits vs warloads in spears. Either way, they control my life and take my stuff.

libertarians should do more research on ayn rand.

she was an avowed athiest who had a long standing affair with one of her former students.

she also believed that selfishness is a virtue and altruism a vice.

all in all not really a good person nor a respected philospher.

Libertarians are a bunch of overgrown teen-age boys screaming at mom to stay out of their rooms. They want Ayn Rand to me their mom instead, because she'd be the cool mom. She'd kick them out of the house at eighteen and rent their rooms out. Beating this metaphor to death, here...

dead on observation my man. I always tell people. 13 million people VOTED for hitler out of total population of 75 million. And that includes women who was given the right to vote ing ermany in 1918

The precise contours of your "level playing field" will always depend on whoever holds the most power at any given point. That's inevitable. All laws favor one group over another, and even the most subtle and innocuous changes in a legal system will shift the balance of power and wealth between groups; no system exists that is entirely neutral. For instance, contract laws that only permit compensatory damages (our current system) favor parties that often break contractual obligations resulting in comparatively small compensatory damages (insurers are one example -- through inexplicable denials of claims) but are able to use legal expenses to deter private lawsuits. If I advocated a change in contract law, would you accuse me of capricious government intervention, because I'm targeting, for instance, insurers? But the system as it was initially put into place (through government laws) was already uneven before my intervention. On the other hand, my “intervention” won’t be neutral; it will shift power from defendant-insurers to prospective patient-plaintiffs.

At the end of the day, figuring out exactly which laws favor who and trying to make the platonic ideal of a neutral law is impossible. Instead, we tend to take a results oriented approach, i.e., "does our current insurance system work?" The answer appears to be "no" given that we spend an inordinate amount on healthcare but our lifespans and quality of life lag behind other developing countries. Thus, many or most of us have decided that we need to make a change. But people like you argue that any changes amount to "socialism," because we're targeting one industry or another, or some such notion. Given that all laws inevitably favor one industry or another, how am I or likeminded individuals to make heads or tails of your definition of "socialism" and your aversion to "government intervention" into systems that were created and supported by the government in the first place?

As for your examples, I have some sympathy for your position on several of the enumerated issues, but I don't share your views on the nature of government interference. Regarding "hate crime" laws, do you oppose creating tiered penalties depending the circumstances of a crime? This is very basis of our legal system -- theft, rape, murder all result in different sentences, and within each crime a person's sentence may vary depending upon numerous factors, including the nature of the crime, the nature of the victim, etc. You might argue that laws assessing additional penalties for assaulting an African American on the basis of race are unfair because all victims of assault should be treated equally. But do you think assaulting a grown man is the same as assaulting a child? Do you think assaulting someone because of their religion is the same as assaulting someone who talks about raping your wife? We always take motives and the nature of the victim into account, because we as a society have determined that some motives are more reprehensible than others. Regarding the situation in Massachusetts, why can't an elected government change it's own laws? Enacting a system of laws isn't capricious interference, but changing it later is? Regarding Terri Schiavo, multiple relatives asserted a claim over her life. The government enacted a system to adjudicate those claims that favored the husband, and then the government attempted to change that system to favor another party.

I'm not saying that any of the above laws make any sense, but I can't tell you which one is "government interference," which is "socialism," and which is "capitalism" They are all government interference, and I hesitate to even try to define what "socialism" means in the present political environment. As far as I know, it simply means "things that Republicans don't like" or perhaps "things done by Democrats." This definition would explain the Republican cries of "socialism" for TARP under Obama but not Bush, and similiar cries of socialism regarding antitrust laws that were favored by Reagan but are now Marxist under Obama. This would also explain why Medicare is capitalist, and the public option is socialist. And why giving subsidies to farmers is capitalist, and giving foodstamps to the urban poor is socialist. And why antitrust laws are both capitalist and socialist depending on how you apply them, etc.

tradbert

i am hard to impress but your post is one of the most well articulated and logical post i have seen in a long time.

The Nazis only received 30% of the vote in the 1932 presidential election. Hitler was appointed to the position of Chancellor by Hindenburg, the guy who beat him in the election.

oxboggle--You left off one part of the analogy that would truly pin some of the "libertarians" I know. They want Mom to stay out of their rooms, but they nevertheless want her to take care of their laundry from start to finish. And to feed them what they want when they want. "I WANT MY FREEDOM, but I'm gonna need your support . . . ."

Tradbert, you made my day. I've always wondered if libertarians could give an example of a country that remotely actualizes their vision, since Somalia and Afghanistan are the only ones that come to my mind. I've also wondered about the poor, miserable lives of those Danish, French, Spanish, German, English people who waste away in the squalor of their "socialist" cultures. They seem so terribly unhappy, don't they?

yearbooker:

oxboggle--You left off one part of the analogy that would truly pin some of the "libertarians" I know. They want Mom to stay out of their rooms, but they nevertheless want her to take care of their laundry from start to finish. And to feed them what they want when they want. "I WANT MY FREEDOM, but I'm gonna need your support . . . ."

Sounds to me like you know a lot of party-line Dems and "progressives" who are somehow mistaken for libertarians. Small-"l" libertarianism (IMO, anyway) includes in it the tenet that being independent and being entitled to subsidy/support are mutually exclusive conditions; the idea that one can be free while also entitled to the results of another's labor is prevalent mainly in "progressives" and in societies which accept the practice of slavery, neither of which have much use for libertarian ideas in many ways.

religiouslib:

libertarians should do more research on ayn rand.

she was an avowed athiest who had a long standing affair with one of her former students.

she also believed that selfishness is a virtue and altruism a vice.

all in all not really a good person nor a respected philospher.

I wouldn't agree with the idea that altruism is a vice or that selfishness is a virtue, but I would say that in general, self-interest is more prevalent than altruism, and systems which align self interest with progress have historically produced more progress than those which rely on altruism or willingness to submit to the collective.

If having an affair makes one a bad person, then the list of bad people would apparently include John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr. (just to name a few), and the notion that adherence to organized religion is somehow a prerequisite is in direct opposition to the tenets of liberalism (as a philosophy, not in the sense of what "liberal" supposedly means within the context of U.S. domestic politics).