How Govt. Ruined The Movies

[Joel Kaye]

The Libertarian program would still be undigestible for lefties like me, but if libertarians were more visible in this fight, it wouldn't be so easy for the other side to demonize government critics as pampered elites who are trying to criminalize policy differences.

Well, the media didn't exactly make Ron Paul as visible as he could have been. I don't love some of the stuff Libertarian's are about... like privatizing the Grand Canyon but they are definitely against American Imperialism.

We had a local libertarian radio host (Charles Goyette) lose his job over his criticisms of the Iraq nonsense while he was on a conservative station. The local liberal station picked him up for a while.

I love Andrew's example of the tobacco industry. Clearly they were killing off customers, knew about it and kept on doing it. The movie "Thank You for Smoking" comes to mind.

Again - gov't isn't all good or all bad. Neither are corporations. But heavy influence of corporations over gov't is usually to benefit the corporation and not the average citizen. That's why this is a complicated discussion... black and white thinkers don't do "complicated" very well but they sure love to argue.

 

[Julian Banos]

This is a really interesting topic, and I think history could have been worse for the film industry in the US. During WWII there was a lot of talk about nationalizing Hollywood, but producers were able to defend their studios.
Looking at data from the 1920s and 1930s in Britain the movie business declined, at first not in quantity. This was an era where Europe adopted quota systems for distribution and all sorts of government intervention in the film industry. I think this really hurt the film industry in Europe.
This also happened in Mexico. Right before and during WWII Mexico was producing a lot of films and several studios emerged. The industry was booming and it was non stop. Right after the war the government began taking control of parts of the industry until the industry practically disappeared.

I think people should be very aware of the extension of their governments. I think that they should be kept to a very basic level. Maybe the only job for a government is to protect our property.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Yeah I agree. The government should only protect property.

Nevermind people. Property is the important thing to keep safe. Do whatever it takes to keep people's stuff safe.

---

You know what we should do. We should have witches and warlocks handle everything. Stick with me on this... We've never really had a truly witch and warlock managed economy. I don't think it's ever really been given a fair chance. If you just trust the witches and warlocks I guarantee that they'll take care of everything. After all... they are witches.

Also we should get off this crazy fiat money system and on to something tangible and limited in quantity like... unicorn horns.

 

[Danish P.V.]

I think people should be very aware of the extension of their governments. I think that they should be kept to a very basic level. Maybe the only job for a government is to protect our property.

That makes sense - as long as my used underwear or my screwdriver is safe everything is totally fine! I don`t much care about pollution etc. Leave those things to, let`s say, General Electric, one of the biggest corporations on earth, founded by a guy that sent henchmen out to competing theater owners, electrocuted animals ranging from dogs up to a fully grown elephant and subsequently invented the electric chair to prove that AC (alternating current) is more dangerous than his system (direct current). Yes. Safety belongs (unrestrictedly) into the hands of business people...

 

[Louis Timm]

Bullshit. Who is calling you terrorists now?

The US Department of Homeland Security, among others. :couch:

I don't hear Fox news every day accusing libertarians of treason.

I wouldn't know. I don't follow Australian media. :sifone:

 

[jpp]

The US Department of Homeland Security, among others.

The Department of Homeland Security raised the odd notion that members of armed militias, including veterans, who advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government might pose a threat of terrorism. How strange.

At least we can say the government is broadening its criteria somewhat: for years, labor activists, environmentalists, socialists, progressive church groups, civil rights activists and civil liberties proponents -- anyone to the left of the Republican party -- was deemed a potential terrorist both by the Feds and local police departments, and the groups were (and are) routinely infiltrated by informants and provocateurs.

You may remember the case (was it Washington state?) when the local police shackled peaceful environmental protesters in the station house and painted their eyeballs with pepper spray. So confident were the police that there would be no consequences, that they left the cameras running. The whole thing was captured on tape, screams and all. The litigation went on for years, and no officers went to jail for it.

So it's hard to be sympathetic with the right-wing, particularly in view of its silence when the left was the sole target. Besides, given the choice of spying on well-armed radical right-wing militias or tree-huggers who brandish organic eggplants and who couldn't unblock a toilet, which would you prefer?

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

You may remember the case (was it Washington state?) when the local police shackled peaceful environmental protesters in the station house and painted their eyeballs with pepper spray. So confident were the police that there would be no consequences, that they left the cameras running. The whole thing was captured on tape, screams and all. The litigation went on for years, and no officers went to jail for it.

I'm living on the otherside of the pond but if I recall correctly this case happened in Miami, FL.

Hans

 

[jpp]

In fact it was California.

http://forests.org/archive/america/courpepp.htm

This is the opening of an article on it:

Title: California's Pepper Spray Trial Begins
Source: The San Francisco Examiner
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 8/14/98
Byline: Seth Rosenfield

Humboldt County sheriff's deputies were "courteous" and "compassionate"
when they daubed pepper spray on the eyes of several already immobile
environmental protesters, their lawyer told a jury.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Also coincidentally our most notorious domestic terrorists have been by and large ultra right wing conspiracy/militia men.

It is a logical fallacy to say all right wing conspiracy militia men are terrorists ala

"Doug likes bread. Dogs like bread. Doug is a Dog." but that's not what the government is claiming.

Again I'm more concerned about the government's warrantless and unfounded invasions of privacy than politically incorrect and obvious observations about what a terrorist looks like.

Just as I think security guards should be more careful with the guy sweating buckets and fidgeting. He might just be nervous about the big meeting in NY... but that doesn't mean he doesn't warrant a little extra attention.

If I were creating a profile for cops to watch out for people more likely to run a ponzi scheme I would show them a picture like this:

even though I'm sure all those guys aren't criminals.

 

[Chris Nuzzaco]

Know any smokers?

As for this smoking example, I have this to say:

Who made you smoke?

You are free to choose for yourself, and that is very much a libertarian view. Again, it seems like big govt. advocates assume there are zero options in life aside from what the govt. can provide. Furthermore, smoking was being called into question long before the FDA came around.

What I like about libertarianism is how it is outside the current system. It's like having a birds eye view of the whole problem were in. If anyone can see all the strings attached to half backed rebuttals, its the libertarians. They actually hold many values of both the traditional "left" and "right". Most of this thread has been focused on business, but they also have fascinating points of view on labor, morality, religion, etc.

There's a little something for everyone!

 

[Tom Lowe]

Of course I have used this example before, but one of the best arguments against overblown regulation is Bernie Madoff. The SEC "investigated" and "certified" Madoff year after year as being a legitimate businessman. This gave investors a false sense of security.

Without the government covering for Madoff, investors surely would have taken the five minutes that was required to discover that his whole operation was an obvious ponzi scheme. In fact, the whistle-blower who outed Madoff said it only took him five minutes of investigation with a calculator to be 100% certain that Madoff was a scammer. He actually brought his finding to the SEC numerous times, and they ignored him!

Without the federal government's seal of approval, Madoff would have never been able to pull off the largest private financial scam and theft in world history. Point being that when government becomes too large, their actions often backfire and have unintended consequences. It should be up to investors to due some basic due diligence.

One of the main arguments for limited government is that if government is small and narrowly defined in its powers, there will be less incentive for corruption, lobbying, and corporate cronyism. It won't matter if a Senator is in the back pocket of the banks, for example, because the government won't be able to overstep its bounds and rig the system in the banker's favor anyway. Increased government power always breeds more corruption, by definition.

 

[jpp]

But this runs us in a circle. Government regulation is incompetent because it's fundamentally corrupt, or designed to fail. Who corrupts it? Business interests. Who will run the show if there's no regulations at all? Business interests.

The answer isn't to eliminate regulation. It's to get business interests out of government regulation.

One of the main arguments for limited government is that if government is small and narrowly defined in its powers, there will be less incentive for corruption, lobbying, and corporate cronyism. It won't matter if a Senator is in the back pocket of the banks, for example, because the government won't be able to overstep its bounds and rig the system in the banker's favor anyway. Increased government power always breeds more corruption, by definition.

This non-regulatory system only ensures that the worst tendencies of large organizations are allowed free rein. There's no mystery about how corporations behave when they're unregulated. Just look at the behavior of American corporations in the third world.

In your example, there's no need to corrupt a Senator, because the bank can do what it wants without the trouble of corrupting public officials. How is that an improvement for the taxpayer who has to deal with the consequences? Or for the customer or shareholder, neither of whom is in position to interrogate management or assess the bank's books and business practices?

None of this works unless we first have the libertarian paradise -- without which none of the theories are provable, and in the absence of which none of the theories work. That's fine for religion, but not economics.

 

[Tom Lowe]

The answer isn't to eliminate regulation. It's to get business interests out of government regulation.

You'll never be able to do that as long as the government has the power to rig the game in favor of those who can bribe officials. History proves that. It's better to limit the scope of government to preventing fraud. Once investors discovered the Madoff scam, that is the point when government should step in, to toss Madoff in jail.

Look at AIG. Simple fraud protection is all that was needed. AIG was writing credit default swaps (insurance) with 1,000:1 leverage. There is no possible way they could pay off those bets. They were committing outright fraud the whole time. Government could have stepped in to prevent that type of obvious fraud. They should have shut down AIG years ago and tossed their execs into jail. Instead, they are bailing them out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, needlessly.

Same thing with Fannie and Freddie. Government backing of those institutions provided cover for massive fraud and abusive. Not to mention that congress was pushing all lenders to make risky gambles on home loans for unworthy borrowers. Of course, it's all backed up by the implicit guarantee of the federal government. This helped to fuel and enable the greedy schemes of Wall Streets types.

FDIC is another example. Without the 100K guarantee of the feds, perhaps people would have investigated what their banks were doing with their money? Alarm bells might have sounded at the fact that these institutions were gambling recklessly in subprimes. But since the FDIC was backing the banks blindly, Americans figured, "Who cares what my bank does.. it's all backed and guaranteed by Uncle Sam."

The best solution is to let the government concentrate on prosecuting fraud and keeping the system unrigged.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I can't really agree with your logic, that somehow less government regulation spawns more industry oversight and self-regulation. There is no evidence of that. The notion that the failure of regulators to catch fraud and abuse is therefore an argument for less regulation is ridiculous. It's like saying that if the police fail to catch murderers, the solution is to make murder legal and get rid of the police. It's a sort of unrealistic view of humanity.

When the financial stakes are high, some people naturally look for ways of cheating. The solution isn't to therefore remove regulations and safeguards.

The fact that the SEC wasn't doing its job in this circumstance is not evidence that we don't need the SEC, it's evidence that we need to SEC to do its job.

Sure, a private citizen can catch a fraud and report it, but they have no enforcement capability, no ability to punish or fine the person, and they may not have the industry credibility to challenge the company doing the fraud. If we didn't have the federal government acting as a final authority on what's allowed and not allowed, the situation where big companies can beat-up on little companies, where no one is going to listen to some little guy complaining about some powerful company committing fraud, would only be worse than it already is.

This idealized notion that without government regulation, ordinary citizens would regulate and catch financial criminals themselves and the industry would self-police itself... well, it goes against human nature and against historical evidence.

Financial systems going back to the Middle Ages have always relied on a partnership with governments to create prosperity -- you need court systems, you need regulations for the safety of products, you need safe transport, you need police, border control, etc. Lack of regulation tends to kill markets ultimately because greed and shortsightedness is basic to human nature. Businesses do not think about the greater good, they just think about beating their competition, and many these days don't even plan beyond their quarterly reports.

I get sick and tired of this knee-jerk "we don't need the government" mentality, as if the government were made up of Martians who descended down on us to rule us. It's our government and it's made up of fellow citizens -- it's US, just as much as the people working in the marketplace and who run these corporations are us as well. And for the system to work, we have to find a proper balance of government control and oversight over the marketplace.

As long as human beings are running things, there is potential for corruption in all areas of life -- I don't see how you can say that the government leads to corruption yet unregulated capitalism leads in the opposite direction. The only system that works is to assume that corruption will take place in all aspects of human institutions and find ways of monitoring and correcting that, to create safeguards, oversight, etc.

I don't see how the ordinary person somehow has more control over the corruption of corporations through the exercise of their pocketbooks compared to control over their government through the exercise of the ballot box. And when the ordinary person tries to take on a powerful private institution, the solution tends to be use a powerful public institution -- so people themselves tend to create both large governments and large corporations. It's not like businesses are made up of human beings but governments are made up of alien beings, so I don't get this attitude that somehow regards government as some sort of viral infection on human activity when we created that government and it's made up of our fellow citizens, some of whom we put into office by voting for them.

 

[jpp]

You'll never be able to do that as long as the government has the power to rig the game in favor of those who can bribe officials. History proves that.

Exactly, because we live in an imperfect and fallen world. But there are matters of degree. You're effectively saying that not only are American business interests so depraved and incorrigible that they're prepared to destroy the country for profit, but that there's no difference between the two political parties, and nothing is salvageable in American political culture, it's rotten to the core.

I'm nearly as pessimistic as you are about reform, but can't take it to that extreme. Things are better for ordinary people than they were, say, 100 years ago in this country. There's no reason things can't be far better for the country at the end of Obama's first term, than they were at the beginning. Unlikely, but still possible.

In any case, one has to hope. But there's no hope at all that business interests, left to themselves, will stop exercising the advantages of wealth and power, with disastrous consequences not only to society, but to their own interests as well.

 

[Julian Banos]

Yeah I agree. The government should only protect property.

Nevermind people. Property is the important thing to keep safe. Do whatever it takes to keep people's stuff safe.

---

You know what we should do. We should have witches and warlocks handle everything. Stick with me on this... We've never really had a truly witch and warlock managed economy. I don't think it's ever really been given a fair chance. If you just trust the witches and warlocks I guarantee that they'll take care of everything. After all... they are witches.

Also we should get off this crazy fiat money system and on to something tangible and limited in quantity like... unicorn horns.

Property includes your own life. The extension of what you call property leads to a really interesting discussion about liberties and law. José Ortega y Gasset writes in depth about it. No witches, no warlocks. I advise you Gavin, that you should keep your tone with some respect.

 

[jpp]

I don't get this attitude that somehow regards government as some sort of viral infection on human activity when we created that government and it's made up of our fellow citizens, some of whom we put into office by voting for them.

This is all the more unaccountable when you consider that government, however imperfect and corruptible, has to answer at least occasionally to the voters.

But to whom does business answer? Not even to shareholders, if you look at the way publically held companies are run in this country.

Unfortunately, we need the libertarian paradise to be in place before any of these mythical self-regulating mechanisms can be tested. And if the mechanisms fail, it's obviously because paradise wasn't fully achieved.

This is religion. It has to be taken on faith, and can never be proven wrong in the minds of believers, because there's always a reason why it doesn't work.

 

[Julian Banos]

I can't really agree with your logic, that somehow less government regulation spawns more industry oversight and self-regulation. There is no evidence of that. The notion that the failure of regulators to catch fraud and abuse is therefore an argument for less regulation is ridiculous. It's like saying that if the police fail to catch murderers, the solution is to make murder legal and get rid of the police. It's a sort of unrealistic view of humanity.

When the financial stakes are high, some people naturally look for ways of cheating. The solution isn't to therefore remove regulations and safeguards.

The fact that the SEC wasn't doing its job in this circumstance is not evidence that we don't need the SEC, it's evidence that we need to SEC to do its job.

Sure, a private citizen can catch a fraud and report it, but they have no enforcement capability, no ability to punish or fine the person, and they may not have the industry credibility to challenge the company doing the fraud. If we didn't have the federal government acting as a final authority on what's allowed and not allowed, the situation where big companies can beat-up on little companies, where no one is going to listen to some little guy complaining about some powerful company committing fraud, would only be worse than it already is.

This idealized notion that without government regulation, ordinary citizens would regulate and catch financial criminals themselves and the industry would self-police itself... well, it goes against human nature and against historical evidence.

Financial systems going back to the Middle Ages have always relied on a partnership with governments to create prosperity -- you need court systems, you need regulations for the safety of products, you need safe transport, you need police, border control, etc. Lack of regulation tends to kill markets ultimately because greed and shortsightedness is basic to human nature. Businesses do not think about the greater good, they just think about beating their competition, and many these days don't even plan beyond their quarterly reports.

I get sick and tired of this knee-jerk "we don't need the government" mentality, as if the government were made up of Martians who descended down on us to rule us. It's our government and it's made up of fellow citizens -- it's US, just as much as the people working in the marketplace and who run these corporations are us as well. And for the system to work, we have to find a proper balance of government control and oversight over the marketplace.

As long as human beings are running things, there is potential for corruption in all areas of life -- I don't see how you can say that the government leads to corruption yet unregulated capitalism leads in the opposite direction. The only system that works is to assume that corruption will take place in all aspects of human institutions and find ways of monitoring and correcting that, to create safeguards, oversight, etc.

I don't see how the ordinary person somehow has more control over the corruption of corporations through the exercise of their pocketbooks compared to control over their government through the exercise of the ballot box. And when the ordinary person tries to take on a powerful private institution, the solution tends to be use a powerful public institution -- so people themselves tend to create both large governments and large corporations. It's not like businesses are made up of human beings but governments are made up of alien beings, so I don't get this attitude that somehow regards government as some sort of viral infection on human activity when we created that government and it's made up of our fellow citizens, some of whom we put into office by voting for them.

This is where the discussion about government size is most important. If the main activities of government are defense and judicial, then citizens would concentrate their eyes into these activities only. This way it would advance and evolve into systems that really worked.
The main problem that I see is that governments try to reach out into areas that are really should not, therefore expanding their size and power over citizens. A side effect of this is that citizens are not able to keep an eye, nor have the attention over everything the government is doing. Also this tends to disrupt government financial operations, maybe leading a bankrupt economy.
This is why I advocate to minimun states with a strong judicial and defense system as a priority.
I usually try to keep my contracts outside of courts, through private arbitration and bonds. I would never claim this is a substitute for a court system, but it tends to keep things simple. Also markets punish irresponsible companies, but it should be accompanied with a judicial system that works, but that does not overreach. This balance is were the real discussion really stands for me.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I think we just have to recognize that it isn't "us versus them" --it's all "us". We're all in the same boat and we should all want it to work. Yes, there are corrupt people out there, and criminals, and just as destructively, there are idiots out there in charge of things. In all walks of life, in all institutions, and all political parties. And there are some fundamental disagreements about the nature of things.

But we've had enough ideological posturing going on for awhile and it would be nice if enough people started looking for practical solutions to these problems.

In terms of the Madoff scandal, was the problem corruption, incompetence, lack of resources, or simple lack of interest on the part of regulators? All of the above? Was the SEC more or less 'strangled' by being underfunded and then led by people who fundamentally did not really believe in the importance of regulation? Or were they bought off? Or were they just bad at their jobs?

 

[Chris Nuzzaco]

Govt. becomes the ultimate tool when it becomes too large and powerful. I don't care who wields the tool, Labor or Business for example, it tends to breed problems and the "solution" is always one side granting the govt. more powers (or themselves) to hurt their opposition... I both work for others (in Film as a DP/Colorist), but I also run my own company and hire out others (and have to deal more with govt. because of this), so I think I have a unique point of view on this situation.