If government shouldn't regulate businesses it shouldn't regulate people's lives.

[rainy]

Libertarians think Government shouldn't regulate anything so that should mean that my life should not be regulated. I should be able to pitch a tent on the beach and sleep there. I should be able to own horses and pigs and chickens in my back yard, even though it is too small, how dare the government tell me what to do eh?
It goes both ways.
I should be able sleep on public benches. I should be able to wash my clothes in the rivers. I should be able to prostitute my body, sell anything from my house, run a business from my house.....the list could go on and on.
If businesses aren't regulated and they are people then people's lives should not be regulated.
I'm being facetious of course but it gives a new perspective to the conversation.

[get the red out]

1. Women should have reproductive rights....

....these guys are definitely against that. It seems like their GAWD is one of mercy to all big business and fire and brimstone to women and gay folks. Everybody else (except them) can just sign up for serfdom and be happy about it because of all the FREEDOM they will have.

[Oregone]

2. I'm all for less individual regulation

Prostitution, drugs, etc...

Its the businesses that need to be clamped down on. They affect more than a single person pursuing their happiness

[bobbolink]

3. But women aren't people, so uteri should be completely regulated.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. I'd be happy if they all were pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. No, they believe keeping

the government out of the 'free market' is a good thing, but should tell its citizens how to live their lives.

[Trillo]

5. Facetious? Hardly.

Some are more equal than others.

[Dank Nugs]

6. Governments that govern least, govern best. -- Thomas Jefferson

A man should be self-reliant and not dependent on the Government. However, I'd argue that it's the Government's responsibility to give people the tools they need to be self-reliant. Honestly, if a business isn't receiving federal funds, the federal government has no right to regulate it. It should be done at the state level, imo. Ever since Social Security was passed, and the Cardozo court ruled that it was constitutional, we've moved from a presumption of individual liberty trumping government encroachment and totally did a 180. Now, government interest trumps personal liberty. That is wrong.

[jdlh8894]

7. Nail-Meet Hammer! n/t

[laughingliberal]

8. The 'individual liberty' we had before SS meant the #1 cause of death

in the elderly was starvation. I see no reason we have to give up a social safety net in order to have individual liberty. I don't see people in countries with strong social safety nets and worker protections as having less liberty. In fact, I'd say a guarantee of a living wage and 6 weeks vacation for workers feels like a lot of liberty to me. On edit I'll add it is 'bidness' interests who have bought our government who are trumping personal liberty.

[Better Today]

9. Yep, we need government to govern for the overall benefit and

advancement of the society/citizens. That means regulating some business and some individual rights.

Certainly, however, persons rights should trump business rights pretty much all the time, and they don't.

[jdlh8894]

10. Few bones to pick

#1-6 weeks holiday - who pays for that?
#2- My Grandparents lived off of their land during the the Depression.Never asked anybody for ANYTHING!
#3-Got more to say - But I'll stop typing.

[laughingliberal]

12. In order to "live off the land" you must first have some land to live off.

Good for your grandparents that they, apparently, were in position to do so. Your grandparent's example does not, in any way, change the fact that the #1 cause of death in the elderly before SS was starvation. I find that unacceptable.

As for the six weeks vacation it is paid for by the companies who make their profits off the workers' labor. As it should be. The companies in those countries seem to survive it just fine. Here, it's just one big greed fest for 'bidness' with workers surviving on crumbs and working themselves into early graves (saves a lot of SS, dontcha know?).

[jdlh8894]

13. If you check those stats

The starvation was coming the inner cities,not rural rural America.

[laughingliberal]

15. So, it wasn't really a problem?

That would suggest it was those who lived and worked for others in the cities until they could not work anymore who were left to starve. I think we have a lot lower percentage of the population in rural areas now than we did then. Is your point that it's acceptable if the elderly who are starving are only in the inner cities? It was still the #1 cause of death among the elderly which I find unacceptable regardless of where they live. It seems you find it acceptable but I do not and will not.

edited typo

[jdlh8894]

23. Not what I am saying,

Kids left the family farm in the early 1900's for a "better" life.When the depression came along,there was no way to transport goods to the cities.And hardly anyone to work the farms. I guess what I am trying to say, is that,we need families to stay together and fend for or own.

[laughingliberal]

27. And those without families?

People are situated how they are situated and many have been made poor in this economic crisis and need help to survive. Your Little House on the Prairie solution sounds great. It just isn't available to a lot of us.

[ieoeja]

29. "No way to transport goods to the cities"?!?

1) Starvation was the #1 cause of death among the elderly LONG before the last economic depression. So that has nothing whatsoever to do with this conversation.

2) In the lead up to the last depression, farmers started destroying their own produce rather than sell it for the low prices. Starvation of the non-elderly that occured in high numbers during the depression was made worse by farmer greed, not by a lack of transport.

3) Today, less than 5% of Americans live on a farm. So 95% of Americans should just *die* because they have no farm in the family while the farmers "take care of their own"?

[jdlh8894]

30. Links Please? n/t

[jdlh8894]

32. Links Please? n/t

[ieoeja]

38. Links!

1) Can't find any links for leading causes of death before the last economic depression.

2) You've actually never seen any films of farmers dumping milk during the last depression? I must have seen that a zillion times (give or take) on television or in a classroom.

"In Iowa and other Midwest states some farmers organized milk strikes to protest the low prices they were paid. They blocked the roads to stop delivery of milk and cream to market. If the driver did not turn back, the strikers would dump the milk."

3) "Today, only about 5 million people" of the https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html">310 million Americans (you may have to click on People), less than 2% of the total population, live on farms.

[rainy]

39. In a money system that can NOT function at 100% employment how can you

expect all to fend for themselves? We have a system that uses the PEOPLE's natural resources to profit and gives NOTHING back to the people. Just some crap job that won't even pay for food and housing. No one asks to be born. One should not be forced to live in a world that says you have to work your whole life in some crap job if you can get one and then pay taxes and all of it goes to the already rich. Plus, the raping of the world's natural resources for the profit of a few is un-sustainable. Then when the earth crashes and burns then what?

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. And starving citizens is OK if they are urbanites?

WTF?

(edited for dumb spelling error)

[laughingliberal]

19. Well, after all, they were probably...

(whispers) 'black'

[ieoeja]

25. You're probably right. But rural people think White city folk are evil too.

They believe themselves to be morally superior, harder working, etc to people who live in the city.

Given that attitude you can see why this jerkwad doesn't give a fuck if city people starve to death.

[Dank Nugs]

26. That's because they have no basis for comparison

I've lived in both rural and urban areas. I grew up in rural areas, lived in the urban areas through teenage/college years. Now I'm rural again. I understand both mindsets and it's not difficult to bridge the cultural gap, if one kept an open mind.

[ieoeja]

31. I grew up on a family farm. Have lived in Chicago the second half of my life.

I did spend two years in the 'burbs. That was f'ing hell. A lot of suburbanites really don't like country people. But then I discovered city living where Hillbilly is just one more ethnic group for the pot.

And as one that almost speaks english, more welcome than most!

[sinkingfeeling]

11. You may have joined the wrong site. Your views seem to fit more with the Libertarians.

[Dank Nugs]

20. I agree with the Democratic Party on a lot of social issues

I'm more closely aligned to the Democratic Party in terms of social issues. I just think that a man ought to be self-reliant.

[rainy]

40. Again, if there are not enough jobs for all the people how do you expect them

to fend for themselves?

[Hansel]

42. Good luck with that. No one is self-reliant.

It is the cumulative efforts of everyone that anyone is successful. Wealthy people are really the most dependent on society and least self-reliant of them all.

Because without cumulative efforts to pay for/create/maintain roads, infrastructure, space programs, technology, police, armed forces, fire departments, courts, patent protection efforts, airports, public education, stock markets, etc. etc., they lose their ability to accumulate their riches. And they certainly are reaping far more from the dependencies on others than the poor person who takes a few hundred dollar welfare check monthly.

It takes ingenuity, creativity, labor and brain power from the many for the one so called "self-reliant man" to pompously stand up and brag about being self-reliant. Too often the more wealthy the "self-reliant man", the more he takes from the pool and the less he pays back proportionately to those whose backs he stands on.

The so called self-reliant man many times bleeds more of the cumulative efforts of all and too many times does not pay back his fair share. But he nearly always whines that he pays too much.

[The Straight Story]

28. I am for govt regulations of business myself, but I think a line should be drawn somewhere

Which is why some call me a libertarian here I suppose.

When is regulation too much regulation?

[Dank Nugs]

37. The Drug War, for example.

Prohibition accomplishes nothing. People have a fundamental right to do what they want with their bodies. People continue to do these kind of things because individual liberty trumps the interests of the State. Government has no business in personal affairs. They can regulate the substance, but I believe they have no right to outright ban it. Tax it, make it available at stores and be done with it. People will do what they want. It's their life. (Obviously, exemptions here would be explosives, tanks, etc. Anything that could inflict massive casualties, really.)

[catzies]

36. ...and judging by username & sig line, "A libertarian is really a Republican who smokes pot."

You show me a libertarian and I'll show you a closet Republican with a bong.

[tech9413]

14. Unfortunately, Jefferson lived in a different world

It might have been fine to limit government intervention when there were a few million people in the country. You could always move somewhere that the mindset was closer to your POV. Government regulations can only happen from the will of the majority or those that have the loudest voice.

I wouldn't play a sport that had no rules or they were fungible. I'd be guaranteed to lose because I have respect for others.

Just go back to the preamble of the Constitution. "We the People" defines who controls our government in a perfect world. You and I both know that major financial influences corrupt the system. If we could get more than half the people to get informed and get out and vote those billions of dollars wouldn't mean spit.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. Without governement regulation you'd never know what you're putting

in your mouth when you take a pill or drink some medicine. The very first national regulations were of patent medicines that were poisoning the people who bought them.

You good with that?

[Dank Nugs]

22. Sometimes, government intervention is necessary

However, it must be kept to a minimum. I didn't say that Government should not govern at ALL. They should do so with the least amount of interference with one's personal liberty as possible. However, I would argue that the interests of the whole would trump individual liberty in certain cases such as snake oil salesmen, food, and so on.

[CreekDog]

21. The New Deal is a good thing here at DU.

I don't come here to waste time arguing that it is.

[Dank Nugs]

24. I never argued that it was not.

I never once said that it was not a good thing. The only reason I referenced it is because that was about the same time frame that things switched from a presumption of personal liberty to a presumption of government interest. If you're able to live off your land and be self-reliant, a man oughta be able to do that. During the Depression, there was massive starvation, especially in the elderly population within the urban areas. There should be a social safety net, but let's be honest here. The Government has failed to uphold its part of the social contract -- they have failed and currently ARE failing to give people the tools they need to become self-reliant. There should always be a safety net to catch those who are unable to do so, but that doesn't absolve the Government of its responsibility. Ideally, you would want to keep those who have to use those services to a minimum. You do that by creating jobs, education, vocational based training -- you know? Tools that people need so they can be self-reliant and productive citizens of society.

[laughingliberal]

34. The New Deal regulated business and financial institutions.

I don't see 'personal liberty' was threatened in any significant way. The trend since Reagan has been away from regulation of business and markets and tightening the screws more on individuals. It's backwards. It is not a coincidence that 30 years after we began dismantling the New Deal protections we find ourselves at the brink again.

[libodem]

18. Agreed

[TheKentuckian]

33. It shouldn't regulate our lives because it has no such authority other than strictly expressed

we have a LIMITED form of government. That's not the myopic SMALL GOVERNMENT that cons blather about but rather the concept that our government is to only do what we give it the power to do. That government has only the reach that we the people allow and no further.

Government should regulate business because that's what we direct it to do for the greater good. We put laws into place so we don't tread on each other's toes and those with the biggest and most feet often need more of an eye on them than just one lone pair.

The way this is supposed to work is anything we don't agree to in law the people are free to do and if it's not expressly granted then the government has no power.

[laughingliberal]

35. +1000 nt

[justabob]

41. thank you for that

I wish more people understood the very important distinctions you made about 'the way this is supposed to work.' The lack of civics/government education in this country becomes more obvious with every passing day. :(

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. Except that true libertarians believe all of that

prostitution should be legalized (and it should but not for the reasons libertarians give)... and you should pretty much be able to do whatever you want to do...