[Poelmo]

False. In fact, ultra-rich are much more powerful when there is a government for them to corrupt and buy.

The weaker government is, the less power the ultra-rich have.

No, that's a fallacy: the government serves to counteract the ultra-rich: even if it's 90% bought then 10% of it is still working against the ultra-rich. Most of the time the ultra-rich use the government to undo older government regulation. Without a government there would be no regulations to fight, nothing that can harm the ultra-rich. They wouldn't have to massage the commander in chief, they could just buy an army. Naturally they would also control all forms of charity so they'd have a level of power over people's private lives that religious conservatives can only dream of. The Koch Brothers could then finally decide with 100% certainty if people can have an abortion or not (only at private hospitals the choice would exist but those would be unaffordable to msot people).

[Eran]

What on Earth makes you think crony capitalist corporations fight regulations? They welcome, embrace, author and greatly benefit by them.

Not to mention corporate welfare payments, subsidies, protective tariffs and good-old bail-outs.

Many (though not all) of the ultra-rich wouldn't have been as ultra-rich as they are without the help, direct and indirect, of government intervention.

The only three American counties with median household income over $100,000 are, not coincidently, located in Virginia, around Washington D.C. Of the top 11 counties, 8 our DC suburbs.

The ways in which America's Wall-Street elite benefited from government intervention needs no elaboration either.

Without a government there would be no regulations to fight, nothing that can harm the ultra-rich.

Nothing, except competition. And competition is what the ultra-rich (again, I am generalising, but only a little) fear most. They use their government influence to fight that competition.

[Rei Murasame]

Nothing, except competition. And competition is what the ultra-rich (again, I am generalising, but only a little) fear most. They use their government influence to fight that competition.

But don't they acquire this ability precisely because they control enough resources to become the government?

[Eran]

No, government is much longer-existing institution than any specific ultra-rich person or corporation.

It isn't the case that corporations or the wealthy become government. Rather, they co-exist in a symbiotic relation with existing government. They benefit from the relation, primarily by extracting taxpayer resources and depressing competition. In turn, they benefit politician and other government decision-makers, both financially and otherwise.

Obama isn't "ultra-rich", and Goldman Sachs isn't part of the government, regardless of how much Obama's policies might help Goldman, and the latter's contributions might help Obama. They are distinct entities with different aims and interests, which collaborate for their mutual benefit.

[Rei Murasame]

Okay, describe the exact mechanism of how you think the government works. Because I think that you libertarians have a very unorthodox view of how governments came into existence. From my perspective, to try to separate economic interests from government is almost like denying the fundamental reason for government's existence.

Government is basically a bunch of economic interests grouped under one roof, trying to map out solutions to whatever problems they are facing. In the case of the United States, Goldman Sachs would very much be part of the US Government, because the core of the Federal Government of the United States is its financial system and the US Treasury. The question would then become - to keep using the US as the example - how much weight should Goldman Sachs' wants and needs have in determining the policy of the US government?

[Eran]

The US government came about as an integration of pre-existing state governments, themselves a continuation of the British government which has existed continuously for centuries, since at least the days of the Saxon invasions of Britain.

Over the millennia, the character of government evolved, and the group of people with more or less direct influence over it has changed as well.

Economic interests have always been very important, though they have historically been interleaved with other interests (military and religious, for example).


Today, the US government is a corporation over the control of which many compete. More than anything else, I think of government as a "brand name". Its primary asset is the legitimacy it enjoys in the eyes of its citizens. Without that legitimacy, government would collapse in days, weeks or months at the most.

So the essence of the "US Government" is "that organization whose rules and commands the vast majority of Americans accept as legitimate".

Government is an abstract corporate body. It is convenient to talk about it in the singular, but we have to recognise that any such description is necessarily approximate and imprecise. Decisions aren't made by corporate bodies - they are made by individuals. Even when those individuals make a joint decision (as would the majority of Congress together with the President, or as would regulatory-agency decision-makers together with lobbyists representing the interests of the industry being regulated), they may each support the decision for their own reasons.