Let me rephrase that last bit, its not greedy old men that run the economy when the government steps aside, it's the greediest most powerful men. Usually they're at the peak/end of their careers but not necessarily.

i don't associate myself with any party or ideology (although as I've said before, I am a registered Democrat - but only because I figure my primary vote carries more weight in NY); I make my own decisions on an issue-to-issue, candidate-to-candidate basis. But if I had to identify myself with a particular ideology, it is pretty obvious that I am a libertarian.

p.s. bump

Big ups gb, if more people approached politics like you we'd probably be living in a much different country and world.

Historically speaking the US has an isolationist streak so I get where a lot of libertarians come from and I get their rationalization. I'm personally not a libertarian because I think one way or another everything is going to trend towards total globalization and if that's the case such sentiments need to not only be embraced but assimilated as to reduce the leeway of future corruption in the political system.

Anyway what I find ironic if not counter intuitive is that many individuals (usually not libertarians) deem themselves anti-government because of a distaste for corruption. But instead of trying to rectify the short comings of government or demanding transparency many suggest replacing tge government with the private sector, if its not suggested it's implied. Ultimately the private sector may not have as ambiguous motives as say a politician but I'm not sure if that's necessarily better. The motive of the private sector is profit and profit alone, the driving factor of some of the gravest injustices of the last 200 years (child labor, sweatshops, slavery, monopolies, etc). Furthermore the private sector is cannot be mandated or obligated to transparency nor will they uphold human rights when is against their financial interest.

So anyway Greek I share the sentiments of most libertarians and conservatives on this subject but I can't bring myself to believe that profit driven conglomerations would be any better, in fact I fear such syndicates would be far worse and perhaps rival the syndication of fascist Italian and German syndicates

I wrote this on my phone so forgive me if it's unclear.

just a heads up veta... there was a thread titled "monte" that made it 100+ like a year ago. so dont get any goose bumps over anything here. ;)

BO:

Interesting use of the word "some" in your list of gravest injustices in the last 200 years. Why not list all of them above a baseline level, and indicate to what degree profit played a role in the perpetration of these injustices, and make a correlation between the degree of profit and the gravity of the injustice?

Thought never occured to me lol. But I do think it's silly to derive who from the Internet

Derive ego* god damn auto correct

Haha skrum, so you don't contest the fact that money causes injustice and/or evil (if you believe in morality) to occur?

Certainly some injustice wasn't a function of profit (fiscally anyway). But some was which is why I said some. Arguably the pursuit of wealth, power, and religion can account for most if not all injustices in the world that man had a hand in. So in that way self interest or profit could be construed as the root of injustice or evil.

Edit: replace religion with any form of dogmatic ideology

Scripture says that the love of money is the root of all evil. It doesn't say that money is the root of all evil. So it is the relationship of people to money, not the money, that determines the evil.

Incidentally, the reason that money is the root of all evil is that money is a man-backed promise and is in direct competition with promises backed by God.

There may have been some evil that money is not the root of, as evil pre-existed money. And there may be still non-money rooted evil if the scripture's use of "all" is not meant to not allow any exceptions whatever.