I think Libertarianism is so popular in America right now because in the US, we don't have much to
show for our tax dollars. Our infrastructure sucks, we still have a ton of poor, and the middle class still has it kind of rough in general. Christ, we're just
barely starting to help poor people pay medical bills legitimately instead of sneaking off to a different ER every time their kid gets sick.
In other nations (like many European nations), taxes are somewhat high but they actually have something to show for it, whether it's good transportation infrastructure, college funding, good health care for its citizens, et cetera. In the US, we have... bureaucracy? Seemingly orders of magnitude more military spending than anyone else on the planet? Waste?
The irony is that, in my opinion, the small-government low-taxes quasi-Libertarian crowd tends to support policies which
exacerbate the problem. For example, in the recent debt fiasco, Republicans were damn near ready to swallow bleach rather than raise any sort of taxes on
anyone, even the very rich, and they think the solution to us not getting much out of our social programs is to cut them even further, to the point where things become even more of a hellhole for those without means.
Those people would do well to realize that one reason this situation exists in the US is not because we tax too much, but because we don't tax
the right people in the right way. We have ostensibly a very high corporate tax rate, but enough loopholes and deductions that they aren't paying diddly. Similar situation for the very wealthy. It's quite insidious: You tax the middle class an amount high enough that they have to struggle a little bit, use it to provide infrastructure for all classes (and other help for the lower classes) that's shitty enough that people don't really value it highly or find it necessary/useful, and then leave the wealthy to their own devices. End result: Through natural social forces and intentional manipulation of public opinion, the middle class hates spending and hates taxes (because they bear the brunt of the former and don't see much coming from the latter), the lower class is kicked while it's down, and the upper class is
really happy that the middle class hates taxes, because they get to keep their position at the top of the totem pole. The idea that taxing the wealthy/corporations a fair amount (and no, flat taxes aren't "fair") will actually be harmful to the average man is only possible because those with the money aren't taxed enough (and the revenue the government does get is misspent enough) that people don't realize what proper governmental spending and programs could actually do for them.
What doesn't help is the over-emphasis in American society on individualism over collectivism. Both are necessary for a functioning society, but an American taken at random seems much more likely to believe "a man has the right to keep any resources he manages to acquire for himself" than believe "a man has the responsibility to share what resources he is able to acquire with the society in which he lives" or "a society has the right to collectively allocate where necessary the resources its members are able to acquire". To a degree, all of these statements are true, and must be true for any society to function. Except in far-flung utopian scenarios, you can't have people hoarding absolutely everything they can, nor can you have zero personal incentive to be productive. American culture tends to teach that if you succeed or fail, it's a success/failure of your own ability or spirit, not of the society and environment which ultimately is responsible for and supports you. Obviously, people need to have incentive/be rewarded for what they accomplish, and see consequences of their failure, but it's also necessary for people to understand that when they succeed, it's not
in spite of the world and society around you (this is a sociopathic point of view, in my opinion), but
with the support of and
in conjunction with that society. People need to acknowledge that they're individuals, but also that they're part of something larger than themselves. Both cooperation and competition are essential facets of society and human behavior, and it frightens me when either is praised with significant lack of regard for the other.
I happen to enjoy the fact that I have, like, roads, and that my food is regulated to not have poison in it, and so forth. It's working out pretty well for me!
Same for me... basically, I blame stuff like the melamine scandal in China to be caused by lack of regulation. I still can't figure what kind of person would put poison in milk just to increase profits...
If your mindset is strictly competitive, as is the case with a for-profit institution (especially something like a corporation, where individuals have less influence than cold corporate cultural and bureaucratic mechanisms), then the fact is that it
simply doesn't matter to them. Why put poison in milk? Why
care if there's poison in your milk, if lack of oversight helps you maximize the bottom line? We've seen this before in history. Five-year-olds working in coal mines, people selling radium water to cure illnesses (this one got less popular after the spokesperson's
jaw rotted off, and all kinds of fraud and misbehavior. This is especially easy to do in the modern, global age, because even if you're personally allowing these kinds of decisions (instead of it just being the result of policies and red tape), those decisions are likely affecting people you don't know, don't particularly care about, and will never seen in your life. It's far easier to care about whether or not you're poisoning the wells in the nearby town than care about whether, say, some aspect of your business's practices are indirectly poisoning the wells in a remote village in Africa.
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Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread (Read 878810 times)