Markw
Markw, I think you confused a lot of the points so I won't try to answer each one in a tedious list.
To give one example of what I'm talking about, you earlier made an argument that public campaign financing is a bad idea because it has no guarantees that the politicians will actually do what they say they will do. I responded that that's not a criticism of public campaign financing: it's a problem separate from that, and applies equally to the current system. I added that your taking some unrealistic requirement, to fix something which is not caused by campaign financing or fixed by the current system, and demanding that campaign financing correct it, is an unfair requirement.
You then answered that it'd be nice if politicians did what they promised - a non-sequitor in the discussion about campaign financing - and again demanded to be told how campaign financing will improve the issue, concluding with the rhetorical question, what good is public campaign financing if it doesn't fix that issue.
First, I think this 'politicians doing what they say they'll do' is a pet issue of yours; I do not see it as all that important, and I do not see it as very if at all relevant to the discussion on public campaign financing. Public campaign financing is about returning the power in elections to the public, out of the hands of the organized, wealthy corporations whose agendas are narrow and selfish (sociopathic, according to some current thinking, see the movie or book "The Corporation"). The issue of politicians doing what they say they'll do may be an indirect benefit of the changes, but the bottom line is that when the pharmaceutical industry stands to gain over $150B of pure theft when the politicians put a clause in the bill, they can afford quite a bit of donations to make sure 'their' guys are elected, paying for the sort of marketing that convinces the public so effectively. Those selfish donations for a policy against the public interest are in direct conflict with, and far outweigh, the sums donated by citizens out of the goodness of their sense of civic duty to elect politicians who will not put that clause in.
There are countless such issues.
Anyway, I will answer a few points of the list:
Ah! there's the rub. How do you put limits on capatilism? Again, I have some ideas which are not without problems, but I want you to come up with some that will work. hint.. .think Japan in the 50's.
There are limits which cover the gamut of the law. It used to be that corporations had very limited charters - they were organized for finite periods, for limited purposes required to be certified as in the publi good, and their charters were revoked if they did anything else. They were extraordinarily limited compared to today.
In modern times, the limits can include everything from participation in the political system as I've mentioned repeatedly, and to give several examples in effect now, limits on advertising, requirements for product and worker safety, requirements to pay taxes, requirements for disclosure of anything from product ingredients to financial data, restrictions on how many of any given units in an industry they can own (for the sake of 'diversity' in the public interest), limits on monopoly, limits on land use, limits on polluting, limits on compensation for employees, and many more.
I'm not sure why you asked that, since you are no doubt familiar with the answer already.
Originally Posted by Craig234
"In theory, anyway, that's in the process of getting quite screwed up as the corporations steal hundreds of billions from the public coffers, and gain huge control over the US elections with their for-gain donations that outweight so much of the private citizens' donations."
And,those coproprations put quite a bit into those public coffers, too.
The garbage is collected by Tony Soprano's company - that makes him ok, too then since he's doing a public service?
You are oversimplifying. Because a company makes a drug that helps people, therefore it's simply 'good' and can do no wrong.
The fact that (some) corporations put funds into the public coffers is completely irrelevant to the other harmful activities they engange in.
We can have the benefits without the problems much more than we do now.
The drug companies would have done well with the new program even without the corrupt clause. Energy companies can make a profit even without trashing our environmental protection laws, just not as much. Financial companies will still make nice profits without all kinds of scams made legal, just not as much. All those 'just not as much' are far more than paid back to the public interest.
