Weena wrote:
A private company can do whatever it wants.
But they're going to do things we like, and they're going to have to do them better or cheaper than their competitors, or they disappear.
This works in the same sense Communism works. On paper. Not in real life. We see that every day.
Weena wrote:
Quote:
We always have to have more, cheaper, better.
How is this a bad thing?
These all lead to a more prosperous life.
This is a case of "see sig".
Greed is not, fundamentally, good. The price of freedom is discipline, self-restraint. Accepting that we must impose on ourselves what we choose to not allow others to impose.
It is a form of moral laziness to deny the question of morality and say that virtue and vice are one and the same.
The USPS is fine. It doesn't need to be privatized. We will not all starve to death if oil or mail prices go up or renewable energy is subsidized, ensuring our future.
Go read Tacitus. The man wrote two hundred years
after the fall of the Roman Republic - after the death of Roman freedom. He engaged a difficult question of interest to people of the time: should the freedoms of the Republic be brought back? He wasn't partial to the imperial tyranny - he lost much of his family in political violence - but his answer was...no.
Tacitus lived in a "post-democratic" society, and he understood something very important, which was that the reason freedom couldn't come back to Rome was that the people couldn't handle it. He understood that it was because of the excesses of the Roman people, their inability to be content with what they had or to appreciate the importance of the common good, that ended Roman freedom. The discipline they could not impose on themselves was inevitably imposed on them by others.
People like to fixate on his famous "deserts and peace" cliche (which is a misquote), but another part of that same speech is at least as important:
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...the Romans...robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep...Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches...Do you suppose that the Romans will be as brave in war as they are licentious in peace? ...what with disloyal subjects and oppressive rulers, the towns are ill-affected and rife with discord.
The point is, Tacitus understood that to be free...one most also understand the need to restrain greed. To serve the greater good over one's self interest.