I don't like the US government much, but I like it a lot better than the average multinational. When it comes down to it, we don't have more than our choice of devils.
If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying? No, my only option is to flee - which the state will often try and prevent you doing anyway.
The state is a huge corporation, that will use force to change you for its services, whether they are good or not, or whether you use them or not. Your only option to avoid this involuntary charge s to flee - and the state reserves the right to employ violence to stop you doing even that.
It seems pretty clear to me which is more immoral.
But on Ayn Rand, it is.
Gave up half way through Atlas shrugged I'm afraid. I did enjoy how accurately it depicted socialists and social democrats though - as I was reading it I could help but laugh as I've come across people talking like that so often.
In other words, it's tolerated rather than accepted.
Roman poets would call this "bread and circuses".
I'd wager (but don't have the chops to prove) that if you could plot displeasure with government on a graph, and and draw a line where overthrow historically results, the height of that line would roughly correlate with the increase in leisure time, access to entertainment, and decrease in GDP per worker.
Enforcing those "laws" was totally immoral.
When most of the laws are immoral, then I would say that it is. And an immoral law is - IMO - any time the State is doing anything other than acting, as Bastiat[1] put it, "as the collective extension to our individual right to self defense".
The US is really awful about this. Americans are not allowed to opt out of their citizenship without extreme measures.
Maybe that wall isn't for keeping Mexicans out?
False. If you renounce it it's expensive and difficult to get it back, and but renouncing itself is free and unilateral.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal-considerati...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/10/23/u-s-has-w...
To sum up, there was a $450 renunciation fee as well as a $450 fee for relinquishment, but both were jacked up from $450 to $2,350. This does not include exit taxes and the like, but while $4700 might seem trivial to the well-heeled, it's a far cry from free (and unilateral).
Thanks for catching my error.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/08/28/2014-20...
Which is a common reason to wish to renounce US citizenship. But there is a trap which prevents renunciation because you don't like to be unfairly taxed:
"If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E) of the Immigration and Nationality Act"
Which seems perfectly fair to me.
Or to the aging of the infrastructure?
When I go on holiday, am I obligated to leave my water turned on? My power? My cable service? Or can I turn it off, and come back?
Fun fact, for many immigration classes, a US citizen is required to sign a security document saying that even though you are paying SS and other taxes, that the government, for ten years, may come after them for every dollar of benefits you may claim.
So an eighteen year old who has yet to pay taxes can claim these benefits, but a thirty year old immigrant has to pay taxes without access to services for ten years (well, with access but with the government reserving a right of recovery for any use).
You can vote.
>The state is a huge corporation
No.
How is state not a huge corporation?
The state is an entity designed to mitigate risk for the benefit of all, which ends up benefiting the few due to implementation problems
Why?
Um. A state is a place that happens to constitute the jurisdiction of its government. A corporation, huge or not, is a legal entity chartered (in the U.S.) by the government of a state (q.v. supra).
For example, I can choose to buy steak or ham. But voting on whether the government store provides steak or ham, that isn't the same thing at all.
You have a say in government - that is its stated goal and purpose. Of the people for the people.
"In order to form a more perfect union" VS "the pursuit of shareholder wealth."
Even if the system is not working exactly the way we want - it never will - we are still endowed with the rights to participate. The same cannot be said for corporations.
The fact that you don't have a say in Uber's corporate decisions is irrelevant, because you can simply stop using it. You don't need a say. The fact that you can't opt out of government is why you're given a say, and what makes it infinitely more dangerous.
True.
I have effectively no choice in ISP, and no choice in power company. At what point do I get to vote on seats on my ISP's board, or my power company's?
This is the root cause of many problems in other markets too. High pharmaceutical prices? The government granted monopolies (patents) to those companies. Forced to use Windows? Microsoft has a government-granted monopoly (copyright) on Windows. Strange that limiting or revoking these state-granted monopoly rights is never considered as an option for remedying these problems.
More relevant to this article, the government has historically put drastic limits on the number of taxis that can operate in a city, to the point where the permits required to operate one were once worth over a million dollars apiece. The need to disrupt that system is why Uber developed a culture of law-breaking to begin with.
It is true that being part of a government system is not a choice but without that community you would be dead or at least not an educated human with internet access.
You cannot reap the rewards of government, community, and progress and then turn around and want to abolish the systems that made those things possible just because you cannot speed and murder people.
What systems are those, exactly? Protectionist laws for taxi drivers?
When a organization ignores those laws then they are going against the will of the people.
I cannot speak to the motivation of those that chose Uber as a customer or employer. Perhaps customers chose them because of the cost and convenient app. Perhaps employees chose them because of the low barrier to entry and flexible hours.
Just because something different came along and grabbed everyone's attention does not mean that the gov services are valued at zero. There was a time when those yellow cabs had little to no rules or oversight. And that changed for a good reason - or at least a reason that people thought were good at a time.
The rules for Uber are going to change too - there will be laws and rules designed to correct wrongs (either real or perceived).
If the rules need to be different then people need to stand up and try to make the rules what they think they should be. My argument is that Uber should not decide on its own not to respect the will of the people.
The 'will of the people' on the issue of Uber is abundantly clear. Everyone wants it, except taxi drivers and the companies and structures that benefit from them. This gets blocked sometimes due to the fact that taxi drivers represent a concentrated interest against a diffuse benefit. We all benefit a little from Uber, but taxi drivers benefit a lot from killing Uber. So they raise their voices against it, and nobody speaks up for the rest of us. It is the classic problem of representative democracy. The representatives are beholden to the concentrated interests of the few against the collective interests of the many.
Where is the pro Uber Lobby? Don't have one? Start one! You are clearly in favor of this type of program. If you truly believe that it is the right thing then be part of the solution that makes it happen.
They raised their voices against it.. You have to speak up for "the rest of us". Be the change that we need in the world.
I believe in you.
If you're arguing that all those things are good and consistent with the will of the people, then sure. I suppose that's a consistent position, even if absurd in its consequences. But I don't think for a second that you believe all three of those things are good simultaneously.
Sure you can. Just leave their jurisdiction. I've heard Somalia is nice.
Their "jurisdiction" is invalid, so why should we leave?
I look forward to being amazed by the breadth of your knowledge about the history and conditions of Somalia and how it pertains to libertarianism.
You don't have a say in government like you do with a private company. If I don't like the government, I have to hope that millions of other people agree with me. If I don't like a company, I alone can choose not to associate with it. My relationship with or without Uber is entirely up to me. I'm forced to endure the government whether I like it or not -- I could petition and protest until I'm blue and it won't make a difference to my life unless millions agree. With Uber, etc. I can simply stop buying their product and poof! They're out of my life.
It's a lot easier to divest yourself of a bad relationship with a company, than a nation-state.
(And no, "move" isn't a reasonable response to this, so don't waste your digital breath with any Somalia references).
http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/30739/is-there-a-... is a good starting point
You can do ALL of those things with uber. You can vote as a shareholder, apply for a job, petition, volunteer, protest, etc...
I find it really unsettling how many people on HN seem to need this distinction explained.
Similarly you give something up (social contract) to have a say in government
You clearly come from a difference place on this issue so I don't expect you to understand what I'm saying but I'd be pleased if you did.
Additionally, the problems like gerrymandering still appear in different forms in corporate structures. Often times founders have majority control of the company in the form of different shares. While this is good for the founders, this is bad for anyone else who doesn't like the direction of the company.
On paper. In practice... well, that's a whole different story. See: gerrymandering, voter fraud, ballot access restrictions, voter id laws, etc.
Of the people for the people
Even if that were ever actually the case, I think those days are long gone.
The reason gerrymandering, (I will not include voter fraud), access restrictions, etc etc is still a problem inspite of being identified as a problem is the collective will of the people to demand that these wrongs be correct.
Imagine what the 2016 campaign and election would look like if everyone cared enough to learn and vote. Imagine what your town or state would look like if we could get 80% voting rates... [eyes twinkle as I stare off into the distance thinking of what could be]
The system is not only not designed to allow change easily, it is explicitly designed to make it as difficult as possible. The idea is that change shouldn't happen just because someone somewhere said they wanted something, and not enough people disagreed to stop it. Change should only happen when the vast majority of people have thought about it and agreed with it. This system is designed to prevent genocide or other forms of purposeful mass inequality. It is, however, extremely poor at giving an individual rights and freedoms. The assumption is that the individual should already have rights and freedoms, and all the government need do is not remove them. Barring some injunction with the state, an individual can then do whatever they choose.
Capitalism can, when implemented properly (inb4 no true scotsman), act as a true democracy. It can allow each individual person the choice to do what that person chooses, independent of other peoples disagreement - even if the vast majority thinks the decision idiotic. Under our governments form of "democracy", what should an individual do if the majority of people don't want privacy, if those people are against privacy? There is nothing they can do! Whereas, even if everyone else in the world was a hardline supporter of a company like Uber, any individual could make the choice not to use them.
This is a super naive view of how markets work (and I'm very surprised to see this out of someone who calls the state a "corporation").
I don't really mind Uber as a service; they get me where I need to go. I hate Uber as a market participant. They change the economics of taxis, of existing black car services, of public transit, etc., i.e., of every single thing I'm using because I'm not using Uber.
I haven't used Uber in years, but I want it out of the markets that I try to buy transit service in, because it affects those markets.
You are free to choose not to use Uber, others are free to choose for themselves.
This has historically worked pretty well for human society; for instance, if someone gets the clever idea to participate in a market by impersonating an existing, trusted market participant, or offering counterfeit goods, or using slave labor to plant cotton, or whatever other bad idea that is short-term profitable, the government can step in and say that this isn't long-term good for society.
Whether Portland is correct to stop Uber is a legitimate matter of debate, but that Portland legitimately has the ability to choose to stop Uber is, I'd hope, uncontroversial.
If you don't think this is legitimate, two questions:
1. Is it legitimate for the government to restrict foreign participation in markets, or to place rules like tariffs on their participation?
2. Was it inappropriate for the greater military force in the US in the 1860s to decide that Southern plantation owners could not participate in the cotton market if they continued to use slave labor?
Your only option to avoid this involuntary charge s to flee
Bollocks. People organize for and achieve their political goals by modifying government on a regular basis. Governmental institutions suffer from numerous flaws, but your argument is that government is fundamentally totalitarian which is nonsense.
Consider that the entire marketing industry is literally about taking away agency from one side of the business relationship.
Yes both are problems but libertarianism claims to solve only one of those. For the other one, if you are unable, follow/place-your-trust-on someone else. There is no need to solve one problem by creating bigger problem.
Consider what would happen in, say, medicine without the informed part.
And saying you can switch... Typically not due to availability, lack of information and monopolies.
The other question is who enforces these contracts and who prevents these people from abusing their means.
Even ignoring the fact that Uber might become a monopoly, this ignores extrenalities caused by corporations.
You don't have to purchase chemicals from a chemical factory to be impacted by them dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply because it is cheaper.
Uber only becomes a monopoly if they can keep all competition out, not just taxi companies. Taxi companies succeeded in doing that for decades by colluding with politicians to limit competition. Uber would have to adopt a similar strategy to get anything close to a monopoly.
Driving as a service always operates on public infrastructure and medallion systems are there to protect those commons from excessive use. If uber does not like the rules of road use, they are free to purchase their own right of ways. It's America, nobody will stop them if they show up with enough cash. Also, no more speeding tickets for uber drivers!
But who holds the State accountable when they do the same thing?
Flee? So states are a prison? Last time I checked it was pretty easy to leave a state which equals 'stop using Uber'. Fleeing implies you aren't allowed to go, that's wrong. The only problem is no other state (or country or whatever) is forced to accept you as a new customer.
And who would want a customer that doesn't want to pay for the products ..
You can't evade a service like Uber either which does have an impact on the commons just like a Government does. You can avoid giving Uber your money but that isn't quite the same thing.
I'm not going to change your mind on statism, and don't really want to, but a key component of statism is the massive power advantage they have over you. A multinational does not have a state level power advantage, but they're still much more powerful than you. If they choose to act in an immoral way, there's not much you can do about it.
You can, but if that decision is not sufficiently common in your area, and you don't have sufficient resources to relocate before the problem becomes acute, you may find your practical choices constrained in such a way that you are left with no realistic choice for necessary functions but to use Uber.
> What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying?
You can (and history has lots of examples of people doing just that), but if that decision is not sufficiently popular in your area... well, the same as for Uber, above. The particular manner in which the lack of options, may, depending on the particular state and the particular service involved, be more dramatic than the case with most corporate goods or services. OTOH, depending on the particular state and service, you may have a lot more direct input into the decision making behind providing the service and how the state reacts to opting out, in the first place.
Susan Fowler's post has me pretty fed up with Uber, but for some reason greyballing doesn't bother me at all.
Like every startup (and most companies), it aims to be; a moat is pricing power is an absence of substitute is monopoly.
Seriously, how do they get lock-in of riders or drivers? Installing a second app is a really really low bar. You can't do predatory pricing forever.
Arguably the only reason why is because it would mean they'd have to classify the drivers as employees rather than contractors.
Keep in mind, this is only possible as long as there's an actual alternative to Uber. Once they, or any other multinational for that matter, manage to establish a monopoly you will be flat out of other options. Even worse: Once they are well aware of their monopoly they will abuse it in every imaginable way. Don't be evil.. at least until you are big enough.
>It seems pretty clear to me which is more immoral.
No, it's not. If you dislike "government" so much you are always free to move to a place where there's less or even none of it. Case in point: Somalia has barely any government to speak of, pretty much no regulations and very high rates of firearms ownership, it's basically "libertarian utopia". Strangely enough, barely any libertarians would want to live there?
Oh, a Somalia expert. I was wondering when one of these people would pop up in this discussion. I'm sure I can learn a lot from you actually - I don't know much about the place at all.
Can I ask you why you think Somalia doesn't have any government to speak of? Somalia has had a central government since 2007 - but I'm sure you already knew that.
I'm also curious about your opinion of the Barre Administration and the (presumably) high standard of living the government provided during that time.
>Somalia has had a central government since 2007 - but I'm sure you already knew that.
They have some government going that is barely able to project itself across the country.
>I'm also curious about your opinion of the Barre Administration and the (presumably) high standard of living the government provided during that time.
That's a non-sequitur, just because some governments failed/had been ineffective at what they're supposed to do, does not mean that all of them are failing/are ineffective at what they are trying to do.
I might as well ask someone advocating for social democracy to move to North Korea, because "it's among those countries that have what supposedly makes a good 'socialist utopia'". I would rightly be panned for this. Doubly so if I had not the faintest idea of North Koreas history or situation.
Oh, you mean like the taxi companies? Regulated to the point of no competition?
Or at least, it should be.
I'm not suggesting that it is, as there are semantically many problems with it, but an argument could be made that this is more of an extension of one's fifth amendment rights to remain silent than it is evading the law. Starting a company to drive people around is (depending on one's interpretation) either presumptively legal or presumptively illegal. Let's assume that many people view it as the former. Is it silly to assume that Uber might have anticipated the Portland government's assumption that it was the latter?
What if it were considered legal in every municipality worldwide except for Portland? That doesn't make Portland wrong or right, but at the same time, it doesn't make Uber wrong for the assumption that someone might find it to be presumptively unlawful.
I think that there are plenty of valid reasons to hate Uber, but anticipating a law enforcement response to something Uber deemed presumptively lawful seems like a pretty rational set of actions.
Not to mention freedom of association.
A bad government is far, far, far more dangerous than a bad corporation.
Yes they can, they just need to hide that they're doing it or keep the government on their side.
Not killing, but taking of liberty and property through their own extrajudicial system of justice.
And AFAIK no one running Macy's went to jail, so the penalty isn't the same as I'd get if I, say, imprisoned my neighbors and stole their credit cards to get payment for packages I think they stole from the porch.
Contrast that with, say, civil forfeiture. Cops can stop you for little reason, and if they find cash in your car, they can take it. It's all perfectly legal. This is not theoretical, it happens all the time and enormous amounts of money are installed.
Like, uh, US Steel. [1]
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=89051115
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics-jan-june12-slavery_0...
That said, plenty of corporations abused and killed innocent people en masse. Some even had their own standing armies to occupy territory.
Call me when a corporation racks up 100,000 people in a day, when not doing it as a contracting agreement for a government.
But hey, cheap Eveready batteries by avoiding burdensome regulations !
First: if you're involved in an online discussion, and your interest is in arriving at a greater truth rather than promoting some previously established premise, you might care to consider the principle of charity, that is: reading your interlocutor's comments in the most charitable way possible. http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
In part:
The principle of charity is a methodological principle—ideas can be critiqued after an adequate understanding is achieved. The original presumption of setting aside our own beliefs and assuming the new ideas are true is only a provisional presumption.
Secondly, you're committing whataboutism, or more formerly, tu quoque. The behaviour of governments, of themselves, has little bearing on the behaviour of corporations.
More significantly, power and aggression are not limited to any one form, they exist independently, and are innate in any number of institutions (or no institutions at all).
You may be familiar with the concept, and perhaps hold it against governments, that they claim a monopoly on the use of force. If you'll trace the origins of that comment, it comes from Max Weber, who ascribes to government a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. That is: it is only governments who can claim that legitimacy, and the concept doesn't mean an indiscriminate use of force.
If you don't grant the monopoly on legitimacy to governments, then you are allowing legitimacy to other institutions, possibly any institutions. Force and abuse of power are innate. They don't exist only in government, they exist independent of government.
What government is, is a structure, a mechanism, for channelling and controlling political power, and attempting to use it, accountably to some vault of power itself (the people in a democratic or republican government, other sources in others), for the improvement of society as a whole.
As with all machines, they sometimes malfuntion. As with many machines, they have a tendency to not function properly. The incidental failures are not of themselves an indictment of the concept as a whole.
And, if you remove government, or worse, align it, without accountability to the people as a whole, in the interests of business or pecuniary interests alone, you end up with the worst of abuses. You may or may not be familar with some of these:
The settlement of the Americas, through what might be considered a public-private partnership on the part of several nations (Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, Russia, largely), resulted in the genocide of a native population once numbering perhaps 40 - 50 millions. What this lacks in the intensity of nuclear annihilation, it greatly exceeds in magnitude.
The public-private partnership of Belgium in the Congo saw untold atrocities, including the unhanding of hundreds of thousands or millions of Congo natives. See Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness.
Or of England, the East India Company, its private government and army within India, and the Opium Wars against China -- chemical, biolical, and conventional war against two entire cultures.
Labour unionisation, a concept and principle defended by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and other classical economists, say violent opposition by factory and mine owners particularly in the UK and United States. U.S. Steel, the West Virginia Mountain Wars, the Wobblies, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and more.
Industrial accidents have killed or destroyed many tens or hundreds of thousands: the Halifax, Galveston, Port Chicago, and West, Texas, explosions -- some entirely private, some public-private partnerships. Mining accidents claimed an average of greater than 2,000 lives/year for much of the first half of the 20th century, statistics tabulated by the US Department of Labour, and available online. That's on the order of 100,000 souls over the century, virtually all of their deaths preventable. The Union Carbide Bhopol disaster. Dam failures, including Johnstown, in the United States (this was the instigation of the Red Cross as a disaster releif organisation, and of significant concepts expanding liability law). For public-private parternships, the Vajont dam disaster, claiming 2500 lives. And showing that poor management, planning, engineering, and response aren't solely the remit of nominally capitalist societies, the Banqiao Dam disaster of 1975, in China, in which some 170,000 souls perished, on par with your nuclear bombing example, though it was but 25 thousands who died immediately from drowning, the others were lost due to starvation and disease in the following weeks -- as I said, exceedingly poor planning and response.
For raw corporate aggression, I'd suggest the Johnson County War:
On April 5, 1892, 52 armed men rode a private, secret train north from Cheyenne. Just outside Casper, Wyo., they switched to horseback and continued north toward Buffalo, Wyo., the Johnson County seat. Their mission was to shoot or hang 70 men named on a list carried by Frank Canton, one of the leaders of this invading force.
I've written on this previously: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/xwjjk1bh7yki6ja4lrg7ka
There is the insidious poisoning of millions through lead, asbestos, tobacco, mercury, and dioxins, both generally and across specific sites, all whilst paid corporate shills actively and deliberately sowed confusion on the matter, knowing full well that their position was false. Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway have covered much of this history excellently in Merchants of Doubt.
And there's the little matter of carbon dioxide emissions and their effects on global tempeatures and ocean chemistry, known since the 1880s, and recognised as a major threat since the 1950s, but still actively denied by numerous interests more concerned over their trillions of dollars of accumulated wealth and power than over the fate of the planet they live on and the souls they share it with.
What Rothbard's "non-aggression principle" (a very late add to the Libertarian theology) does is to preemptively disarm those who would seek to employ wealth and power without limitation. It is an exceedingly bad principle for the citizenry.
But as you were saying.
Some corporate entity is not.
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Notes:
1. As the saying goes, politicians rule at the pleasure of the votors, tyrants rule at the pleasure of the assassins.
Their CEO, their abusive and toxic mysoginist work culture, etc.