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ancianita

(36,030 posts)
Mon Apr 13, 2020, 08:41 AM Apr 2020

Government Run As A Business? Slap That Down Hard!

From one of my former students:

This was always an idea rooted in ignorance. It sounds nice, but it's legitimately a terrible idea.

Here's why: what are all the businesses doing right now?
In 2008 what were all the businesses doing, especially the banks?
In 2001 what was the airline industry doing?

Businesses can fail.
Sometimes businesses need to fail.
Sometimes businesses need to file bankruptcy and restructure.
Sometimes they need to sell of parts of themselves.
Sometimes businesses need to be bailed out to avoid cascading failures.

But government is the thing we have that is quite literally too fucking big to fail.
Government is the thing that bails out all of the other things.
It's the last best hope for all of us playing in the US sandbox.

Government can't file bankruptcy.
It can't say "I don't got it".
Government can't "run out of money" because a hurricane wiped out 3 of its top producing states.
It can't stop putting out forest fires because it couldn't get a loan at the right interest rate.
And generally speaking, government can't layoff large portions of its workforce suddenly and be "leaner and meaner" coming out of it, and ALSO remain effective doing all the things it has to do.

Government doesn't require advertising.
It either has NO customers or it has ALL of the customers.
It has NO competitors. It's a monopoly.
It has no quarterly earnings statement.

If government does well its executives don't get giant bonuses (nor should they).
It can legitimately ask people to walk into life or death situations.
It doesn't get to poison an entire city and simply settle for an undisclosed amount or close up shop.

I know there's a vast ocean of people in this country who think these things are true but they're wrong.

Whatever government needs to do it legit NEEDS to do until that thing is done.
There are no choices.
There are no options.
Our government can't give up and leave the corona market to Spain because they have a better product or name recognition.
If millions of people die the government HAS to clean up the bodies and it has to remove them and dispose of them in a safe way.
If several buildings are destroyed in the middle of New York City, the government doesn't get to decide IF there's ROI on cleaning up the rubble.
It doesn't get to shop around investors to see if someone's interested in buying the site for new development.

Government MUST do the shit it does.
Post Office not solvent? Doesn't matter, those stimulus checks have to go out. They just have to get there. That census has to be taken. Those votes have to be counted. And yes, the fleet has to keep rolling.

So our governments (local, county, state, federal) are in no fucking ways like any business anywhere on Earth, nor will they ever be, nor should they ever be, nor can they ever be and still be GOVERNMENTS.

And now that we're seeing what happens when the entire world of business STOPS
and the government MUST keep going,
more of our friends on the Right had better recognize that.

ANYONE telling you "Government should be run like a business"
--no matter how tall they are,
no matter how handsome,
how well spoken,
no matter how genuinely they're nodding,
or how sincere their smile
--does NOT understand what they are talking about, and is either speaking directly from that ignorance or maliciously attempting to prey on yours.

This shit is over. It's settled. It's done. It's on snopes. We quite literally NEVER need to talk about it again.

You say that Democrats have been saying this for decades?

Yes. So what.

It would be a FURTHER crime if, after all of this, WE didn't hit back folks on the Right with the utmost severity if they say shit like this again.

It's one thing to be wrong in theory and another to have been devastatingly proven wrong 6 months ago at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

It's similar to my principles about climate change.

Anyone can be a climate change denier BUT, if it turns out to be real and IF we survive it and IF they ever open their mouth about science or skepticism again, the rest of us get to either smack the shit out of them or outright arrest and execute them on principle.

Sorta like Germany's policy on holocaust revisionism, but with a Philippine intensity.



I like the way this millennial thinks. I'd be lying if I said otherwise.









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