In all 6 things listed below, it was government that either did the things or allowed them to happen. The problem is that government is behaving badly. It may be that in some of the cases below, the government is being influenced by corporations, but it is still the government that is overstepping its boundaries, behaving badly and assuming more power than it is suppose to.
Marge
Marges point is the most valid. In the end educating voters is the best way
to combat people abusing government power. If its not the corporations, its
unions, or leftist special interests, or the religious right. Teaming up
with the authoritarian left to "get back" at corporations solves nothing.
You have no one to blame but the ignorance of voters for their poor
decisions, not some scary conspiracy.
Tom
Yes, for example, in an earlier e-mail Eric said something about corporations using the power of eminent domain. Legally, it's a local government that has that power -- so the corporations (or anyone else) has to persuade (or bribe) elected officials to use that power.
Without government, Big Business would have to come out into the open and use force to take what people don't want to give.
Government + Big Business working hand in glove = Fascism
"You have no one to blame but the ignorance of voters for their poor decisions, not some scary conspiracy."
I don't entirely agree\. Why are voters ignorant? Does it have anything to do with the educational system? Sure\. Many \(not all\) people need to be taught critical thinking skills, how to recognize propaganda and all the tools of rhetoric in order make good decisions\. What schools actually teach those skills any more? Conspiracy? I suspect so\. Does anyone know how phonetics were taken out of California schools years ago? About Bill Honig\. That was a conspiracy \-\- not to dumb down kids, but to make sure Honig's buddy made money\. But one person in a position of power could just as easily have made that kind of systemic decision to intentionally dumb down the population\.Very good analysis, Letitia. One little aside: When my daughter was in primary school, somebody at the school implemented the "sight reading" plague. It took only about a couple of months before we parents did some stern negotiations at all levels of the school system. The school went back to phonetics. I did not see similar action in too many other schools, so Honig got away with whatever he intended to get away with.
Marcy
Eric,
Do you also support forcibly taking all homeowners homes away and
redistributing them since homeowners were complicit in lobbying for unfair
zoning laws to inflate their property values?
Just wondering /:-,
I think most zoning laws have been around for such a long time that most property owners can't be accused of lobbying for them; they just ended up in a residential zone without even understanding anything at all about zoning laws. Most of the lobbying on zoning-type issues these days is done by new development developers, or by people seeking a CUP (conditional use permit) or variance from an existing law.
Thank you very much for commenting on your family's experience with the Honig "conspiracy" to remove phonetics from all California schools\. It illustrates one of the problems that citizens face when there an unwise and outright BAD decision is made that affects everyone: the inability to get anything changed without GROUP efforts\.
In Marcy's case, the parents banded together to DEMAND a return to phonetics, and got it\. In the case of my friend's mother, who taught at a poor school with many immigrant families \(Hmong\), no such group action was taken because of the general nature of the parent population\.
So my friend's mother, who'd taught reading for years and could SEE what was happening, was forced to simply PRETEND to use the new method any time an observer came in, and to go back to what worked when the reading gestapo left the room\. Teachers were actually punished if they refused to use the new \(and STUPID\) method\.Letitia,
Then you can make the same arguments for stockholders from whom Eric
supports theft of capital. No difference. And property owners still lobby
for zoning changes day in and day out, I've been at these city council
skirmishes where homeowners are trying to stop In and Out from coming to
pleasant hill because it would hurt their property values. It's still
happening.
Now I have to make one more response! Great for your Mom's friend, Letitia; I applaud her! However, my family and I were poor immigrants at one time, barely speaking English, which did not keep my parents from fighting the idiotic practice of dumping immigrant kids into classes taught in their own language, ignoring the fact that little kids can learn a new language in a couple of weeks. My parents won, I struggled at first, but was in the honor roll by the end of the semester.
My point is that so many parents have been convinced they have no say -- that the "system" knows what is best. And it is so easy to accept passive roles in a Brave New World!
Marcy