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You were talking about
government regulations harming small businesses:
Also, this is a business environment where the only people who benefit are the ones who can afford to comply with all the regulations imposed by the Fed govt. In other words, small business is getting wiped out, not because of the quality of their products or services but because of the cost to stay in business.
So, I was sort of looking to hear about the government regulations that you mentioned that were wiping out small business. Your examples:
I'll give you 2 examples off the top of my head:
1) WalMart - just think about every small business that was sacrificed so that Walmart could exist. Walmart got tax-breaks from local govts, land grants, overseas trade arrangements and Lord knows what other competitive advantages the govt implemented to stifle the small businessman.
2) The Banks - This Too Big To Fail concept is allowing the larger banks (JP Morgan/Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank) to swallow up the smaller banks as they continue to "go under" at a record pace! There are no consequences for these larger banks but the smaller ones are shut down by the FDIC
See the FDIC list of failed banks. In many instances, the larger banks acted a lot more reckless than community banks
dont appear to be examples of government regulation, run amok. Governmental decision making, perhaps, but not governmental regulations.
In example #1, there doesn't appear to be any
government regulations at play that ruined small business. Incentives are given to both small and large businesses, all the time. Many local governments give such incentives to small businesses in an attempt to revitalize areas of cities and to push economic development, generally.
Now, if you're arguing drop the subsidies, thats one thing, but it is my experience that both large and small get subsidized. If so, doesn't that just reduce your point to getting government out of fostering local employment and economic development -- and letting larger corporations eat up, consume, stiffle, and otherwise fuck-over smaller businesses, without the hand of government involved?
That seems to be a difference without a distinction -- except without government, there's nothing to even resemblance an evening of the playing field -- which through capitalism, allows the bigger, dirtier, and possible more evil to simply kill-off and trample over the little guy?
Is that a feature you particularly enjoy about capitalism? - because thats it in its purest form. Perhaps, thats the reason pure capitalism doesn't exist, anywhere
You see examples everyday, this is one I saw a couple days ago; where 'big business' uses the govt in an attempt to stifle competitors.
You sort of switched the subject on me (or, as usual, I misunderstood the subject). I thought we were talking
government regulations instead of
where 'big business' uses the govt in an attempt to stifle competitors. The latter, Lemar, is precisely that justifies governmental regulation. No?
Needless to say QueEx, I've always said "let the market decide what cars people want to drive". As opposed to the govt extending a competitive advantage to GM & forcing people to purchase a Chevy Volt, or the like
In many cases, Lemarr, I might agree with you. In others, however, I think the
let the market decide is assinine. The market, unchecked, allows Greed (where is he by the way?) to run amok to the detriment of everyone else from competiting small businesses, the workers who produce big bidnesses greed, to the consumers who are ripped off, injured, maimed and killed by that, greed.