Pizza Lobby? wtf? What do they need to lobby for? Is big bad government regulating pepperoni standards?

I mean c'mon. If businesses aren't free to make pizzas in sweatshops by 10 year olds, you're asking for the death of the pizza business!

"It would be cheaper to hire sweatshop labourers to follow you around and tie your shoes as necessary." - slashdot comment

I would say that in your case, @blankfist, that the burden of proof is on you to prove that raw milk can be used and offered safely.

This may be a shaky analogy, but it's similar IMO. to the 2nd Amendment, I'm very pro-gun, but there has to be SOME regulations, you just don't put certain weapons out there in the open market for any tom dick and harry who has the cash to buy. The potential for those weapons infringing on the life, liberty and happiness of others far outweighs the freedom to buy said weapons. Sure there may be plenty of people out there who would use such weapons wisely...but we don't just take their word for it, do we?

If it weren't for gov't regulations, we probably wouldn't even have ingredient lists or nutrition information on our food. Much of our quality of life today is because of these gov't regulations, not because of the free market. Personally, I don't want to turn back the clock and live in the old west days where if someone shoots me, It's MY fault for not dodging quick enough or for not shooting him first. Free market says slavery works too. Free Market says child labor is awesome. Free Market says sweatshops rule! We as a people have said time and time again that some things are more important than profit at all cost and that just because you can do a thing, doesn't necessarily mean you should. Were you asleep in History class?

If you believe otherwise, the burden is on you to prove it. It's a judgement call, you can't just blindly de-regulate everything in the name of liberty. News flash, the patriot act has very little to do with patriotism. The fair tax is anything but fair, and freedom isn't free. Just because Liberty is in the word libertarian, doesn't make it so.

This is another case of someone envisioning their version of a utopian world and working backwards. Well in a perfect world, there are no abortions, so obviously we have to ban abortions. Well in a perfect world, there are no poor people, so obviously we gotta make life more and more difficult for poor people so they are motivated to not be poor. In a perfect world, we don't need gov't looking over our shoulder because we get along fine on our own, then obviously we need to reduce gov't.

It' just doesn't work that way.

@NinjaInHeat maybe you're right, but then again i genuinely do think that people wouldn't want that stuff at the expense of personal privacy and/or the law. People like to see the rich and famous recieve some misfortune and they may be intereted in cheryl cole's intimacies, people like "good" stories, yeah. Maybe i'm being too optimistic, but i feel they wouldn't want it at the expense of just about anything.

I feel that it's flawed to say "well the demand is there, so people obviously want it", yeah sure they want it, but they never said they wanted the tabloids to break the law for it. The tabloids took that step for themselves because they want to sell more than their rival, so it's not really the people that are at fault it's the papers themselves for wanting to beat the competition at any cost surely?

It's a bit like saying "well, you like cheap clothes, so we provided you with cheap clothes. oh sure we have kids working in sweatshops but the demand for clothes is there so blame yourselves!" I don't want my clothes made at the expense of others, but how do i distinguish? And am i then to blame for heinous practices because i like cheap clothes? I think that's a pretty good analogy.

>> ^burdturgler:

I disagree that the only people with influence over this situation are those who have wealth and "power", and with your characterization of viewers as "powerless". In my mind it's the complete opposite. The viewers have all the power. The power to write. To call. To contact advertisers. To e-mail .. twitter, blog, petition, etc etc their unhappiness and unwillingness to partake of the "product". And most importantly, the power to change the channel, cancel subscriptions and so on.

And my point is that this kind of reasoning winds up being an easy excuse for virtually any decision anyone in power ever makes. It's sort of a "the masses didn't rise up in rebellion to stop me, so it must be okay" sort of philosophy.

Nobody wants the environment protected, because they haven't given up using electricity or gasoline.

Nobody wants to stop sweatshops from operating, because they keep buying cheap clothes at Walmart.

It's not the people watching Fox, buying gas, and tube socks who're spreading propaganda, playing fast and loose with safety on oil wells, and running sweatshops.

I agree, in theory collective action could stop all those things. But that's very different from saying the people running the companies cannot or should not be held responsible for the choices they're making about how they do business, because it's really their customers making all the moral choices.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

The robber barons of America's past abused power in a way far more like what Stewart is whining about here. They ran roughshod over people, and there were no laws to stop them. A good thing happened, and the people forced government to pass laws that allowed government to regulate such abuses. It was a good thing.

Yes, so let's do that again. We just need to roll back the robber barons' acquisition of government. They took it over in the immediate aftermath of the progressive era in the early 20th century -- by 1929 they basically ran Washington, just like now.

Back then, people demanded a New Deal, and got one. We had an era of real growth, where the resulting prosperity was relatively equally shared. The rising tide really did raise all boats. Not because businesses were more kindhearted, but because we had strong unions, and regulators who saw their job as actually regulating business.

Then Ronald Reagan came along, and it became Mourning in America. Unions got systematically broken up and destroyed. Business was welcomed into Washington with open arms, and allowed to write regulation. An anti-Fed objectivist became chairman of the Fed. Taxes for the rich were slashed, so were benefits to the poor. Everyone (who matters) wins!

Now we're getting a Great Depression of our own, and it looks like instead of us getting a New Deal, the robber barons are. More union busting, more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation, and all so we can "compete" with authoritarian dictatorships that run sweatshops, by setting up our own here at home.

Let us repeat:
Enlast Personal Male Lubricant is made from the pelts of baby seals. The entire company is dedicated to green technology funded by Nazi war profits, and all proceeds are used to fund terrorist activities domestically and abroad. Do you like to sodomize little schoolboys? Then Enlast Personal Male Lubricant is right for you. If you order today they'll throw in at no extra charge a vial of the tears they've collected from thousand of children working in one of their sweatshops. So order now!

Enlast Personal Male Lubricant is made from the pelts of baby seals. The entire company is dedicated to green technology funded by Nazi war profits, and all proceeds are used to fund terrorist activities domestically and abroad. Do you like to sodomize little schoolboys? Then Enlast Personal Male Lubricant is right for you. If you order today they'll throw in at no extra charge a vial of the tears they've collected from thousand of children working in one of their sweatshops. So order now!

Wal*Mart kills small businesses, ships jobs to sweatshops overseas, offers wages so terrible that many of their employees are below the poverty line, are abusive to domestic workers and invasive of their privacy, spy on their workers, bust unions, ect.

There is nothing even vaguely just about this corporation.

I know you love ReasonTV, largely because they tell you what you want to hear. I believe that if you were willing to take a step back and set your partisanship aside, it would become clear to you that this is thinly veiled corporate propaganda, from a media outlet that perverts the concepts of liberty and a free market that you hold dear in order to boost corporate power and profits. Much like the politicians you despise, Reason is on the corporate payroll.

Skepticism. Just do it.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I don't think that's what he's saying. You should watch the video again. Never did he say the way to combat social injustice is to shop. He said lowered prices for the poor helps them, and going after the places that offer lowered prices is adding to the problem.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
The best way to combat social injustice is to shop? At Wal*Mart?! Really!?! Who knew?

Wal*Mart kills small businesses, ships jobs to sweatshops overseas, offers wages so terrible that many of their employees are below the poverty line, are abusive to domestic workers and invasive of their privacy, spy on their workers, bust unions, ect.

There is nothing even vaguely just about this corporation.

I know you love ReasonTV, largely because they tell you what you want to hear. I believe that if you were willing to take a step back and set your partisanship aside, it would become clear to you that this is thinly veiled corporate propaganda, from a media outlet that perverts the concepts of liberty and a free market that you hold dear in order to boost corporate power and profits. Much like the politicians you despise, Reason is on the corporate payroll.

Skepticism. Just do it.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I don't think that's what he's saying. You should watch the video again. Never did he say the way to combat social injustice is to shop. He said lowered prices for the poor helps them, and going after the places that offer lowered prices is adding to the problem.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
The best way to combat social injustice is to shop? At Wal*Mart?! Really!?! Who knew?



(This comment is from a profile to profile discussion, but I thought it relevant enough to this discussion to add it to the thread)

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's just a useful metaphor for the combination of self-interest and the mechanism of supply and demand.

In a completely free market- self-interest is the only guiding rule. You can count on individuals to always do whatever provides them with the maximum benefit- too bad for the environment, your neighbors, single mothers and libraries.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I don't like the term "invisible hand". It implies a singular unseen designer guiding the market. The market is made up of a large mass of individuals, so the free market is more like a "great number of visible hands".

To me, people who believe markets cannot be left to natural selection (evolution), and think central planning (design) is required in the marketplace, are demonstrating a similar fear-based need for a guiding, loving hand I see in Creationists.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Then I guess I don't understand how you could think it's statist or akin to creationism? This isn't doctrine- this is the free-wheelin', unfettered supply and demand that you free-marketeers love. It also has no heart. Ask the kids working in Nike sweatshops. The invisible hand doesn't care if they get an education.

I don't like the term "invisible hand". It implies a singular unseen designer guiding the market. The market is made up of a large mass of individuals, so the free market is more like a "great number of visible hands".

To me, people who believe markets cannot be left to natural selection (evolution), and think central planning (design) is required in the marketplace, are demonstrating a similar fear-based need for a guiding, loving hand I see in Creationists.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Then I guess I don't understand how you could think it's statist or akin to creationism? This isn't doctrine- this is the free-wheelin', unfettered supply and demand that you free-marketeers love. It also has no heart. Ask the kids working in Nike sweatshops. The invisible hand doesn't care if they get an education.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Then I guess I don't understand how you could think it's statist or akin to creationism? This isn't doctrine- this is the free-wheelin', unfettered supply and demand that you free-marketeers love. It also has no heart. Ask the kids working in Nike sweatshops. The invisible hand doesn't care if they get an education.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I knew which invisible hand you meant.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Dude. I'm talking about THE invisible hand.
In reply to this comment by blankfist:
And that is where you and I disagree. Competition ensures we care for each other. You mentioned Time-Warner as if it's the 'Going Galt' example of free markets, but I'd dare argue that if you're incorporated you're no longer part of the free market but instead part of the collusive crony market.

Only statists think of societies in terms of having a guiding hand, much like Creationists think history of life had one. There's no invisible hand. Only people.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

@Tymbrwulf, I don't know what prompted your lame and sudden attack against me, but you do understand you're citing a cracked.com comedy page to bolster your argument, right?


@dystopianfuturetoday, glad to see you had to edit your comment above and add a bullet list. Very classy, sir. Allow me to touch on that NEW list.

-Why your anti corporate movement is funded by corporations.

You keep citing the Kochs as being supporters of CATO as if their contributions are in any way a strike against the liberty movement. Here's a fun fact: how many corporations can we count that donate to your Democratic Party? A whole helluva lot more than donate to any liberty movement. And don't get me started on the Democratic support of the military industrial complex.

-Your double standards on 'coercion by threat of violence' as it pertains to private property.

You're trying to compare defensive and offensive violence. Fail.

-An example of a successful modern society that doesn't tax.

Irrelevant. Also, I noted compulsory tax vs. voluntary tax above. I hope you're actually reading the comments before posting responses.

-Your use of deceptive slogans and frames in lieu of an actual argument.

Not sure what you mean unless you're trying to paint words like "central designer" and "statism" as being deceptive slogans? I've given nothing but cogent and well framed arguments. I understand I may be in the minority on this site and a lot of people vocally disagree with me, but that doesn't mean I'm not giving you strong arguments. To the contrary, I must be because I've brought on the wrath of several Sifters in here already. That's me tickling that cognitive dissonance.

-Your frequent use of 'begging the question'.

Where have I proposed a premise as truth that requires proof? This, to me, is grasping at straws. I know we love to accuse people of fallacious arguments, but this seems out of left field

-The striking similarities between your own opinion and corporate opinion.

Like your striking similarities to white land owners and their democratic belief in slavery?

-How markets reward violence, labor exploitation and pollution.

This is unfounded. You can post links to isolated incidents all day long, or how corporations (government created entities) are doing bad things under the limited liability protections of the state. And labor exploitation is real, but you're forgetting a part of the market that corrects for these things: the consumers. You like to use Nike as an example, but there's a couple problems with that argument: 1. You can't assume to know the economy of the country with these "sweatshops" (otherwise that would be begging the question, sir). 2. This may be more money than they can make in that part of the world. 3. Nike is a corporation, therefore a government protected entity that enjoys crony capitalism and corporate welfare that keeps competition in the marketplace noncompetitive, so there are less companies able to compete with Nike.

Boom.

This was in last night's episode of The Simpsons.

Banksy did the storyboard, and then the normal Simpsons animators brought it to life........ from their sweatshop caves in which they dwell.
>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

I'm still a bit confused, it says banksy wrote the storyboard, was this in an actual episode, or is it made by independent animator? (if the latter is true, they really nailed everything animation-wise) If it was in an actual episode, thats just awesome. Either way its an easy upvote, and easily the best simpsons intro I've ever seen, not because of the political message, but for the sheer comedic value. The chained unicorn was just amazing.