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I am going to give an example an every day life of a doctor in my country: Jhon is a doctor with a family, every month the government gives Jhon a contract of how much he can take from the grocery store, it's free but limited, the limit is based on the amount of food divided by how many people there are in the group. The group is a population 600 people or under just to make ruling the country easier. The resources given to the groups of the country is calculated by dividing the amount of life necessary resources in the country by the amount of groups in the country. When Jhon gives his wife what he got from the market according to the amount restriction in the contract. Jhon walks to work and saves another life. Saving a life is quite honorable so the government would grant you honor points in the form of tickets. Allowing to buy something that is not necessary in life but makes it easier, for example a car. Let's see, Jhon has done a great job for the community in health care. The people and the government are pleased with Jhon, as he kept saving honor points he managed to get a car as a reward of all of his hard work. The more you do for society the more honor points are rewarded. All are equal. There will no more poverty and only deserved abundance not wealth. This is what my avatar represents. For me Communist parties are the pre-steps of this ideology)
The amount of food will not be divided evenly among the group because communism under government is not a market because prices must be set according to supply and demand, not by need, so this is the case in Ethiopia where shortages are rampant just for bread. Price controls are what causing the shortages.
Communism is the opposite of wealth, and it is the undeserved poverty.
The first thing I would do is make it illegal for anybody to hold any power over anybody else, saying that the people are to assassinate anybody who would dare declare themselves a ruler over the people, and then I would fire everybody in the government and then quit myself.
Well, given that I can do w/e I want, i would eliminate most functions of the government. This includes the DEA, NSA, ATF, FBI, etc.
I would eliminate most to all market regulations, including subsidization, registrations, permits, licenses, most kinds of taxes, and things of that sort.
I would add many amendments ensuring the civil liberties of the people. This would keep the States from taking away certain rights. While it is common for people to believe in State's rights, I believe that individual rights are far more important than State's Rights.
If you're going to eliminate so many bodies of the government, how would you moderate consumer goods? Do businesses have the right to protect their recopies or practices, despite the fact that consumers might find them immoral and not buy the product if they were known? I agree with the idea, but in practice I'd imagine it's quite impractical, it would almost encourage producers to make bad quality, cheaper goods, and high quality goods for those that can afford it. Could also lead to downright dangerous goods, bad moonshine can kill, as can home-made ecstasy and other substances.
But how can consumers know what's going into their products? Businesses want to get as much money as they can, they're not interested in being fair on consumers. How can you guarantee that the consumers will be the priority? I believe you need some monitoring, to make sure basic health & safety is followed, and that'd be essentially it. But businesses still need consumers, or else they lose money, and fail.
You're essentially planning for a free market, I'm just interested in to what extent you trust human nature without laws and restrictions.
Really, the same goes for all larger entities, doesn't it?
The free press, of course. Now, whether I believe that government should at least mandate that a business can NOT lie about its products, what's most important is that monitoring among consumers (or voters) is much more successful than having restricting government regulation (especially permits and registration requirements).
Business itself is no angel, but neither would any higher power. The fact is, government, in order to actually be able to regulate business (business seen by advocates of big government as out of their power) will have to be even more out of our power. What gives government "power" when we say that big government is out of control? The advocates will say our votes. However, our votes do not represent our own interest when all that is required is the majority vote. Our money, on the other hand, is in our direct power. If a business is not in our favor (for whatever reason), we simply do not give it our money. Those who do will possibly keep that business in power, but if that business does enough harm to lose a lot of customers, it will not be able to exist much longer.
The Free Market gives far more power to the people than an overseer government that doesn't even HAVE to abide by the demands of its voters (which does not reflect the beliefs of all the people it represents). As well, the Free Market is much faster in meeting demands because money can be spent at any time for any reason. Voting, on the other hand, comes in intervals and can not be changed.
My advocacy for a free market is not as optimistic as other more strongly Libertarian folks (like PrayerFails). I do not believe that every business man is an ethical, moral being who only wants what's best for the customer. I believe that some of them can be evil men, and they may already be running some of the largest corporations. However, a powerful government is like that, but far far more static. The Market is dynamic, and theoretically, a Free Market is far more dynamic with government not being able to keep small business from flourishing through its regulations. A government, especially on the Federal level, is far more static. And it seems that it is growing more and more, correlating the the largest corporations also growing more and more.
I do have a sense of principles, in that I personally support the right to life and property, but I support individualism mostly because the government, if anything, is just really big corporation that controls our lives and anything going on within it. It's a monopoly, for most of us can't just move to another country that provides either the same thing or even worse. We're stuck with it, and it knows that. So my advocacy for shrinking it is really just to save us all from the monster it has become.
Instead of having a government with the power to shut down, or restrict, businesses, which as you said, is at least potentially a negative, could you have a press, with the ability to go 'backstage' into the production line of products, or equivalent depending on the industry.
As it is a free press, if the journalists think a practice is unjust, they can write about it. The people can then be notified, and buy or not buy, support or not support, the company based on the information.
That seems to tie in most of both our points relatively well, I think. Obviously, there's potential corruption, but I don't think you can really eliminate the risk of corruption. It supports the liberties and rights of people, whilst giving business' the right to do whatever they want, as long as they're open about it. No government interference, no restrictions, and its market controlled. Would you agree? I did get most of it from what you wrote, after all.
The problem with giving the press access to a business's works is that other competition could easily use that to their advantage. Do not make it AGAINST the law to access and publish information that could be damaging to a company, but do not make it the law that they must.
I trust free press more than businesses, if a business abuses its customers trust, there's not much that you can do, but if a newspaper destroys a company, the company can provide proof that the newspaper was wrong, destroying its reputation just as much.
And I never said it was press' responsibility, but just the possibility of embarrassment should force businesses to keep good practices.
Sure, let the press be free. However, respect for private property is far more important. This means we can't waive away someone's rights just because we FEEL that it would benefit us more.
Now, if that's not what you were asserting, than I'd think that we'd have no disagreement. I believe in a completely free press, in that one can publish any information that they find. This would also mean that rights to "intellectual property" would be abolished.
Just out of interest, if there's high tax in a country for high income earners, and there's also a large percentage of their tax being spent on providing for lower incomes, what's to stop them leaving the country? Just making it a nice country?
And also, I'm guessing you're American? (You're talking about death penalty and high defense spending, among others) You're not inheriting a country, you're just saying how you'd run it, you don't need to say 'abolish death penalty', it never existed.
And what do you mean emissions trading? Rewarding business on low environmentally sound practices?
And do you mean put people in rehab for first time offence of possession of small amounts of drugs, or repeat offenders who repetitively refuse to follow the law? It's also worth noting that rehab & jail really aren't entirely dissimilar.
In a ideal country, there would be no government, it would be anarcho capitalism with poly-centric rule of law with strong individual rights including property.