Statism, AC, and Corporatism- The End Result is the Same

[Mempho]

I think everyone here has probably taken one of the two-axis political quizzes that graph social beliefs on one axis and economic beliefs on the other axis. These quizzes have been commonly associated with the introduction to libertarian though. Certain quizzes seem to better reflect one's core beliefs than others, but that is not the substance of this post. (I will come back to the political map, the libergraph, later, though).

All of these various beliefs have big problems when we move to the fringes of the graphs and, yet, it is quite surprising how many people test on those three corners of the graph. There is one other corner, totalitarianism, in which very few people test.

If one moves to far towards:

1) Statism- I'll attack statism first. People who point to statism usually point to the state as a solution to the ills that affect the general populace. The massive problem with this is that statism is simply an instrument waiting to be abused by a non-benevolent power.

2) Corporatism- The U.S. is now heavily moving to the corporatist side of the graph. The only difference between corporatism and statism lies in mere formality of ownership. It matters NOT whether the government owns the companies or whether the companies own the government, the end result is still the same. It is an instrument just waiting to be abused by a nonbenevolent leadership.

AC- I test as a moderate libertarian, but there is a big problem with AC and that is that AC is so underregulated that the consolidation of power is inevitable. AC will always lead to corporatism (even if the corporation doesn't exist).

All of the above three lead to totalitarianism...and therein lies the problem. All socialist and fascist (corporatist) regimes are eventually abused because the hearts of men thirst for power over others. AC just becomes corporatism left unchecked. Therefore, the best approach is a very balanced approach.

All of the extremes lead to consolidations of power and consolidations of power, all of them, eventually lead to abuse.

Many people here used to worry about collusion in a poker game for a very good reason and that was because the threat was very real. If you don't think that people will collude in other things, then you are very naive. I used to laugh at all of the arguments against the presence of cheating and collusion in poker because the arguments completely dismissed the strong motivations that people had for cheating or that it was too complicated. According to accounts I've read and heard, it was neither.

Politics is the same way. If it hasn't already happened, it will eventually happen. With enough power, everything can be controlled: legislation, campaigns, media, etc. It's going to happen, sooner or later, because our Constitution left this door wide open.

Denial of this fact is the denial of basic human nature. Economies of scale was an awfully seductive term at one time, even to me.

Now, take a libergraph (political map), print it out and wrap it around a globe. Your political map is no different from a flat map of the earth. The extremes are in close proximity. That is the way to understand politics.