Government vs Corporate Power

And absurd amounts of economic power in corporate business isn’t?

No, because business must persuade you to voluntarily purchase their products and services, whereas government can send people with guns and chains to force you to comply with its will. Should I increase the power of the latter group to decrease the power of the former?

When businesses converge and own all of the things you buy, whether monopoly or conglomerated, they have FAR more power over you than a government can name when not actively trying to screw with the people. Indirect power is still power, and there’s lots of it in the corporate sector, so if you ask me, yes, increase government power AND accountability, and decrease corporate power while increasing transparency in their businesses.

Oh I'm so sorry, I forgot about that Major Corporation that owns a monopoly in every industry. Oh yeah that's right – bummer for the socialist arguments – it doesn't exist, and it's never existed. But Government has a monopoly on the use of force – everyone else gets punished for using force, government doesn't.

Oh, I don't recall delegating any authority to the government, do you? Or is this just the French Social Contract BS?

I don’t remember signing on to letting the constitution apply to me, but it works because Americans agree it does, the exact same way as delegated powers to the government, the exact same way this very website is used for political commentary and news rather than gaming and casual conversation, because we AGREE it does at a wide enough level to make it so. That’s how nations operate, that’s what a social contract is, it’s everywhere and unspoken, so yes, the social contract is legit, because you’ve been operating on it for ages.

Can you cite this coming-together of Americans agreeing do delegate vast and unchecked powers to government?

We call those constitutional conventions and the precedents set by governmental bodies like the Supreme Court, congress, and the executive branch. Their power is also not unchecked, if it was, there’d be no anti-corruption law, and literally anything would be allowed. America’s government is a rather average sized one on the global stage, though its influence by corporations surpasses that of most others.

No, America's government is actually the biggest government in the history of the world – it's an international empire and welfare-warfare state that plunders its people of their wealth, wages endless wars resulting in the deaths of innocent people, and censures the right to free speech of those who criticise it, and is now entangling itself with Big Tech and Big Pharma to create a fascist system of government-infused corporatism hell-bent on destroying what little liberties we have remaining.

That’s the United States as a nation itself, with the largest military on earth that enforces national decisions. The government on the international scale is massive, but back here in America, it’s at an average size. We have large amounts of reach, but we are not some massive authoritarian state with dictatorial amounts of power. If you wish to speak of a massive INTERNATIONAL government, then yes, you’re right, our department of state is ginormous, but pulling out now is just a really horrible plan. My greater worry about the US is its international capacity and the consi…  Read more

stent exploitation of its host nations, alongside corporate power taking hold of government. You think it’s government in corporations, but corporations are fine with either t power or small government, because whatever makes money is all that matters. The wars are largely the work of the military industrial complex, a creation of corporate America rather than the government. As I’ve stated before, government is a tool, and right now those at its head are the corporations maneuvering it. Honestly, what I find funny is that your thoughts are actually rather close to mine, but your solution is backwards from the real issue. Instead of worrying about exploiting others, you’re worried about government taxation here. Instead of trying to enforce anti-trust laws to stop Big Pharma, you want government to be smaller, which would just allow them to exploit others even more. Instead of being mad at corporate theft, you’re angry at government theft. Instead of fighting fascism with leftism, you’re fighting government, which truly does just make the issue worse in the long run. Where you should’ve been moving left, you just went more anti-government and failed to address the issues of the system you live in.

Nations that cannot defend themselves against foreign attacks have no right to exist, while we may lament those invasions to which they might be subjected. If you do not have a powerful enough military to defend your homeland from invasion, it has for millennia been known by all civilisations, you won't live long as a nation. This isn't rocket science. If I could stretch out my hand and cure the world of war I would, I can tell you – but I can't. I'm not a starry-eyed dreamer, I'm a down-to-earth realist – these little weak nations have their priorities…  Read more severely misplaced and consequently will be invaded and conquered by powerful States like Russia and China. We can either, learning a lesson from their sorry fate, bring our own troops & resources home to spare our own people from such atrocities by investing in a military defence of the American Homeland, or we can jump aboard the H.M.S. Ukraine, a ship with gaping holes in it, being bombarded with torpedoes, crowned in flame, about to sink to the bottom of a deep ocean trench, and perish with its passengers in World War III. The humane option is obviously to spare mankind the evils of a third world war by doing everything in our power to mind our own business thereby preserving the peace, or we can escalate those tensions inevitable due to the degradation of human nature, perpetuating and exponentially multiplying in the process those very evils we intend to cure.

They do however have a right to fight back with everything they’re worth, and if they have no right to exist, then there are no restrictions upon how they fight to protect themselves, correct? That immediately justifies Palestine fighting against Israel since no country has a right to exist, and therefore, all countries are justified in fighting against those they view as a direct threat to themselves. That thought process lacks sound reasoning, and, ironically enough, the only Darwinism you seem to support is the social Darwinist form, one of the most historically repulsive forms of…  Read more justifying imperialism and oppression of weaker nations. For nations with moral values, we are inclined to fight AGAINST what is assumed to be nature, just as Christianity is supposed to fight against sin and human nature itself. The reason little nations even gain a right to exist is due to coalitions that protect them from outside invasion.