[natedogg]

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I think this is teh awesome. He wants to ban volume discounts in his constitution. That may be one of the stupidest things I've ever read on this forum, right next to banning low fat milk.

natedogg

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It was just an idea, maybe it is stupid and won't work.

1) How would you keep big business from oppressing innovation and new ideas?


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Remove all regulations and taxes on business, preventing government from playing favorites with one at the expense of another.

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2) How would you reposition America as the innovative leader that we saw throughout most of the 20th century?


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see above. also, volume discounts actually drive innovation.

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3) If volume discounts were illegal, how would this hurt or destroy the economy?

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For one, it's unfeasible, so you'd have a bunch of insane regulations attempting to describe what 'volume discounts' mean (not to mention you'd have a bunch of arcane loopholes instantly provided by congress to the biggest donators).

Also, how would you handle service industry pricing? Do I go to jail if I cut my rate for my Indian programmers when you hire 10 of them?

Also, implementing this ban would be a function that relied on oppression. You'd have to get state agents accounting and tracking and involved in every business transaction. You'd be sending in agents to bust up warehouses of tin cans just like Prohibition era Eliot Ness.

Since businesses would have to price each unit the same to every vendor or customer, they would either:

1. circumvent the law by coming up with *other* reasons for charging less to certain customers who happen to be buying more, or perhaps make different products that are the same in all but name in order to sell them differently. This would of course spur the govt to clamp down with even more heavy-handed oversight of every business operation in the country.

or:

2. businesses would follow the law and all consumers would suffer higher prices for basic items, and jobs would be lost.

This doesn't even touch on the cavalier dismissal of actual respect for people's free choices that is required to even contemplate such a law. It is completely counter to all notions of freedom. This is ostensibly a free a country you know. if I want to sell you two bottles of milk for a 10% discount that isn't anyone else's business but yours and mine.

This idea is a singularly bad idea. it encompasses nearly all the mistakes that can be made when proposing public policy.

natedogg