b psycho's blog

U.S. Foreign Policy: "don't bother, it's a rerun"

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:58:05 -0700

It's an election year, and Iran tested some missiles. Naturally, this means candidate reactions. Both mentioned sanctions, but the relevant issue is where they differed. Obama restated his general narrative on the issue -- "Of course we should pursue diplomacy. It ain't like threatening them at least twice a week has helped...". As for McCain:

Arizona Sen. McCain said he believes the governments of France, Britain, Germany and others in Europe are prepared to impose meaningful sanctions against Iran and suggested it was time to proceed on that course without China and Russia, which have blocked stronger U.N. sanctions.

He also vowed to go ahead with an anti-missile defense shield based in Europe.

The United States on Tuesday signed a pact to build part of the missile shield in the Czech Republic. The Bush administration also wants to install facilities in Poland, although talks have stalled. (emphasis mine)

Dear Joe Pesci not this crap again...

I've asked before, when Bush was talking it up, and didn't get an answer. So maybe since the issue is relevant again the 2nd time'll be the charm:

Simple question: why?

You see, people tend to do things for a reason. Firing a missile at Israel, yeah, I could understand them doing something like that. Sure, the response by Israel would be to completely wipe out Iran, but that’s irrelevant, point is it’s at least feasible, the slightest chance is available that it could happen. But Europe? For what reason?

*yawn*...wake me when sharks with laser beams start sprouting up along the coast.

BTW: I recall many neo-imps arguing over the past few years that invading Iran wouldn't go as terribly as us sane people think, since as they put it the Iranian government is more anti-american than the Iranian people. You'd think if they sincerely believed that they'd be screaming their heads off about comments like this flying from McCain's mouth.

A Devil's Advocacy moment

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:07:47 -0700

So, the "windfall profits" tax was successfully blocked:

Senate Republicans blocked a proposal Tuesday to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies, despite pleas by Democratic leaders to use the measure to address America's anger over $4 a gallon gasoline.
The Democratic energy package would have imposed a tax on any "unreasonable" profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies and given the federal government more power to address oil market speculation that the bill's supporters argue has added to the crude oil price surge.

"Americans are furious about what's going on," declared Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and want Congress to do something about oil company profits and "an orgy of speculation" on oil markets.

But Republicans argued the Democratic proposal focusing on new oil industry taxes is not the answer to the country's energy problems.

"The American people are clamoring for relief at the pump," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., but if taxes are increased on the oil companies "they will get exactly what they don't want. The bill will raise taxes, increase imports."
The Democrats failed, 51-43, to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster and bring the energy package up for consideration.

First of all, the stated objectives on both sides of this are flawed. Using legislation to address "anger", especially when the rage is over what has become a norm whether we like it or not, is misguided at best, if not outright pandering. Plus, I always find it curious when the party popularly considered more environment-friendly ignores that higher fuel costs are aiding that cause without them having to lift a finger.

At least the Democratic view can be seen as muddled, as opposed to the Republican tack of being openly delusional: No, the price of gas is not going to go back to $1, or even $2, probably not even $3*. Since it's unrealistic to actually expect the relief people are clamoring for (especially considering we're going bonkers over prices many countries have been dealing with for years), this rhetoric can only mean one thing: they want to give Big Oil more breaks. No surprise there, tell 'em "no" and move on.

Now, when it comes to the process behind the goals, it's safe to say I'm waaaaay off the reservation. However, imagine that the context of this move were reinterpreted...

Oil companies have enjoyed a huge amount of help from political connections. Targeted tax breaks, regulatory structures that weaken alt-fuels right out of the gate, all the way to outright subsidizing their operating costs, making the space between cost & profit much larger than it would naturally be (I'd argue a substantial chunk of our foreign policy amounts to this. If you think gas is high NOW, imagine if the cost of all the global wheel-greasing involved were factored in). Instead of a pseudo-populist narrative of punishment -- which seems to leave these facts out for some reason -- suppose this policy were sold to the public as if its creators have Dean Baker's "The Conservative Nanny State" somewhere on their shelves or hard drives? Imagine if the tactic were to point out how much government favors were involved in obtaining those profits, negating the myth that oil companies operate in anything close to a free market, and adopt an air of "you've got to be kidding me" with regards to refusing to pay for those favors.

If this sounds familiar, it's because such a view takes a stab at my request that, as long as there is government, funding it be determined based on asking who truly benefits from it. I wouldn't say this is what I had in mind, but expressing this as such would be an opening, both for my view and for mainstream liberals. Even with the failure of this particular legislation, the tactic I describe could be adapted: simply respond to the failure with "sorry, no freebies!", and very publically push to wipe out as many of their privileges as is politically possible, smacking down any GOP griping by painting them as the corporate equivalent of Bolsheviks.

(* - I'd suggest the cause of the current oil market madness would break down 40/40/20: 40% the dollar plunge due to our spiraling debt & the panicky Fed "liquidity" flood; 40% reaction to our beligerent foreign policy by the nations that have enough oil under their turf to hold sway; 20% negative speculation that is fast becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Each influences and reinforces the other. Dealing with these seriously is going to require a long, extremely difficult process with several figures involved essentially committing political suicide to drag us towards a sanity they will never see themselves. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.)

It's a start...

Thu, 29 May 2008 12:01:19 -0700

Shorter Barack Obama: "First thing, kill off these stupid laws":

Maybe it’s his background teaching constitutional law.
If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.

Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

What? A politician openly suggesting that chunks of the Federal Register will go bye-bye on his watch? Hold on, I have to go shoo these flying pigs away from my window...

To the partyarchs out there: I know I'm an obvious outlier. You might think back to some of my remarks on my own site & reason that there's no point in listening to my radical anarchist rants. However, I know regardless of how bad I think the current setup is, the next president declaring themself dictator-for-life would make my goals that much more difficult. You have someone who has now stated they want to go the other direction. If you NEVER take me up on anything else, do so on this:

Hold him to his word.

If by chance he gets in & fails to keep his promise, and the new lows of the last eight years aren't being actively erased, I hope you will raise absolute hell over it. Because you already know I will.

Talk is cheap. And that's a good thing.

Fri, 16 May 2008 13:05:39 -0700

During the latest dustup over whether talking to foreign leaders that disagree with US policy is reasonable or somehow "appeasement", while witnessing some commenters on the Right trying to move the goalposts they planted a thought came to mind. An obvious one, but one I'd say is key: Talk, in and of itself, doesn't cost anything.

The modern Republican philosophy seems to begin and end at "actions speak louder than words". Constantly, they make vague references to "strength", which translates as far as I can tell to arrogance and lack of foresight. Sure, it is true that actions speak louder than words, but when it comes to foreign policy -- specifically, concerning nations skeptical of us or worse -- actions mean people, um, die. As much as the loudest corners of the Right wish we could just drop bombs on anyone that disagrees, that benefits no one. Well...except weapons manufacters.

Besides, such an openly antagonistic policy is completely unfeasible in many cases; take Hamas, for example. If one agrees with the conventional political wisdom that we must be involved with the Israel-Palestinians conflict (full disclosure: I do NOT agree), then barring an unlikely scenario where they pose direct threat to the US we can't bomb Hamas no matter how much we think they're scum. Such an operation would inevitably kill innocent palestinians, infuriating the palestinian people even more than they are now, and making the aforementioned threat to the US more likely in the long run. Besides, they won the PA's elections, so doing this would make us open the can of worms marked "yeah, you can attack an elected party", and something tells me they'd take better advantage of that than we would: thanks to 1st-world military superiority, the only choice of the underdog in such a fight is to cheat.

The assumption behind equating talk to "appeasement" is that the only purpose of talking is to give away the shop. Yet people talk all the time and disagree, loudly in fact. Also, the context the talks are taking place within changes everything: it's called "leverage". If the parameters either party sets are so outlandish that they can't be agreed to, then the other can simply break it off and we're back to square one. Armed conflict doesn't have that option.

These tables don't turn

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:17:26 -0700

John Cole, noting the sudden "don't cross me, Mahmoud!!" statement from Hillary, asks a really damn good question:

Are the roles reversed anywhere else in the civilized world- is there some place where candidates, on their respective national television channels, play out their war fantasies in which they nuke the United States?

What's amusing about this is that even Iran doesn't make this kind of threat. Most they say referring to the US is "if you invade us, we'll make you regret it", and that comes out of a position of fear and weakness anyway, akin to threatening to throw a sock at someone if they don't stop beating your wife.

(cross-posted to Psychopolitik)

The Audacity of Reality

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:29:05 -0800

Shorter Robert Samuelson: "Change? What change?"

By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:

• Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).

• Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.

• Expand the child-care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and "double spending on quality after-school programs."

• Enact an "energy plan" that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."

Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goody-bag politics: something for everyone. They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing Obama of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim.

Not to mention -- in the case of the "investment" (read: wild throwing of tax dollars) towards green energy -- inherently counter-intuitive. The entire reason such plans even get proposed is because of a huge blind spot in perspective when it comes to economics: statist-progressives assume that the dominance of non-green energy is entirely market-driven, and thus think any shift from the status quo requires activist government. How anyone can believe that that called out the war in Iraq as a war over oil puzzles me.

This is what irks me about the use of "CHANGE!" as a campaign rallying cry. Now, I'm approaching this from an obvious outsider view -- I'm an anarchist in the long run, Obama and his supporters are not, this has not changed and in all likelihood will not. However, in the immediate term there are obvious things that, as long as the current system exists, can be reworked to (depending on whether it's my perspective or theirs being emphasized) introduce some semblance of rationality to it or grease the wheels on the track away from it. The difference between such and the nibbling at the edges commonly proposed is that in some way the structure itself is reinterpreted.

Take energy, for example: the status quo is that oil is massively subsidized, both directly and in terms of systemic privileges cleaner sources typically don't have, and the standard response to this is to subsidize the alt-fuel with the most political access -- ethanol. A true change would be to in one fell swoop yank the breaks from the oil companies & shut them out of foreign policy discussions. Over time, the true cost would reveal itself, and people would demand the producers adjust. Since encouragement of centralized production would be a thing of the past, various smaller scale solutions would be used, saving money -- and for my purposes, killing off one more rationale for the State.

Another example would be tax reform: Obama is proposing a few targeted breaks meant to encourage certain results, adding to the complexity of a system that's already waaaay too big. What would be true change here? Try scrapping it for something simpler, yet still progressive, there's options out there: a flat tax* with a high floor (exempt a relatively large amount & index to inflation), a modern adaptation of the Georgist land-value tax (consider who tends to own huge amounts of land...), the Automated Transaction Tax (progressive because the amount of such transactions rises disproportionately with income). Hell, even if they don't want to go that far, a huge dent would be to do a kill'n'switch of the payroll tax with a carbon tax; while that wouldn't accomplish what I would personally prefer, in terms of ending as many taxes at once as possible, it would at least streamline things and remove a direct burden on low-income workers.

Obama's rhetoric screams "CHANGE!" at every opportunity, yet still merely shifts a little bit in the same hole. Despite this easily observable fact, which he himself has alluded to (i.e.: the interview where he sideways portrayed himself as a liberal Reagan) he's treated like a one-man revolution. This is why, as a matter of principle, the most I hope for in this election & any other is for life to imitate art in a humorous way.

(* - the reason that the mainstream Left screams bloody murder at the mention of this is because the way the right-wing proposes it stuff like capital-gains & dividends would just go free -- meaning a stockbroker wouldn't be taxed but the guys who wash their Porsche would. It'd make more sense to just say "income is income is income, period", and with a high enough floor it'd effectively be a class tax -- which is what the first income tax put in place after the 16th Amendment passed was. This is not to say I agree with income tax itself, or the 16th Amendment -- I do not -- only that the precedent is set, and if progressives wish to go that direction for now it's available. My personal preference is that, as long as the State exists, taxation be applied based on use of resources, whether in terms of separation of the commons or of answering the question "so, who uses the force of government more?". Either one would be progressive without even considering income.)

(cross-posted to Psychopolitik)

At least he's honest. Wrong, but honest.

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:10:05 -0800

Shorter Mike Huckabee: "The 9th & 10th Amendments make Jesus cry, so away with them":

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee rejects letting states decide whether to allow abortions, claiming the right to life is a moral issue not subject to multiple interpretations.

"It's the logic of the Civil War," Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. "If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong."

"For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can't simply have 50 different versions of what's right," he said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

The former Arkansas governor, who has drawn within striking distance of Mitt Romney in Iowa's leadoff presidential caucuses, said he was taken aback by the National Right to Life Committee's recent endorsement of Fred Thompson, the ex-Tennessee senator. (emphasis mine)

This is what never made sense about the weasel words about overturning Roe v. Wade. The same people that said they wanted to do that, always ended up in the same breath characterizing abortion as an absolute unacceptable evil, begging the question of why (since we're talking about statists here, who think "I think it's wrong" or "a plurality of people don't like it" is reason enough for something to be illegal) they weren't just openly saying "ban it". Of course, the answer to that was a half-hearted attempt at not completely alienating everyone else. Mike Huckabee's remark is a media-friendly translation of the religious right letting out a collective "f**k it".

BTW: the comparison to slavery is not only biologically & historically nuts (blacks were thought of to be less than human in the sense of animals, not of "pre-persons"), but as it in effect downplays slavery by attempting to play UP abortion, strikes me as at least subtly bigoted. Whether or not something that spends a decent chunk of time being microscopic & cannot yet live outside of its host is equivalent to you or me is in no way whatsoever as obvious as whether or not ones skin color makes them less human. The latter has no scientific basis for any dispute.

(cross-posted from / additional commentary at Psychopolitik)

The Either/Or of death

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:56:46 -0700

So, among the issues next up for the Supreme Court is lethal injections, specifically whether they constitute cruel & unusual punishment. My personal view is that the two concepts can actually be split.

Ok, you can pick your jaw up off the floor now, I'll explain...

Consider the process taken to administer a lethal injection: the person being strapped in, the chemicals involved, the fact that even though this person is being deliberately killed they still do an alcohol swab on the area where the needle is to go in. If you ask me, an inordinate amount of process is being used for such a base purpose, if this scenario is anything, it's unusual.

That said, the alternative to that, within the assumption that the death penalty itself is acceptable, would be inherently to get more barbaric about it -- firing squad, electrocution, drowning, that kind of thing. It'd be a more honest communication of intent, but at the same time it'd remove the veneer of detachment from the act. This way, it'd be "normal" (people aren't usually killed by being administered hospital-quality drugs while strapped to a gurney, complete with witnesses...), but all but the sickest mind would agree it's needlessly malevolent, thus cruel.

Frankly, I find it disgusting that we bicker over how to kill, rather than asking why we do it. You can't argue self-defense when someone is already locked up.

(cross-posted to Psychopolitik)

Big Money follows the tide

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:46:41 -0700

Sign #412455 that the Republican Party is collapsing under the weight of Bushism: Wall Street is supporting Democrats...

Wall Street -- often thought of as a bastion of Republican ideals -- is leaning toward Democrats these days.
As campaign contributions pour in to the 2008 presidential race, employees at some of the nation's largest banks and investment firms are deciding more often than not to write out big checks to Democratic candidates.
Workers at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and elsewhere are putting their cash behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards over the Republican front-runners, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by ABC News.
At Goldman Sachs, the largest of the firms, employees donated $542,000 to the top three Democrats and the top three Republicans from Jan. 1 through June 30.
More than 63 percent of those dollars went to Democrats, with Obama getting the bulk of that cash $184,750, according to the ABC analysis.
Don't be mistaken -- there are still plenty of Republican supporters on Wall Street. But, for the first time in more than a decade, Democratic donors outnumber those supporting Republicans. (emphasis mine)

Of course, they wouldn't be donating to Democrats -- or any politicians in general -- if they didn't think they could get favorable treatment. What do I think of Big Financial? Take a wild guess...

Questions I'd like to ask the Democratic leadership in congress

Thu, 03 May 2007 11:06:29 -0700

As I type this, you're discussing a "compromise" on funding for the continuing occupation of Iraq, offering to leave out a timetable for withdrawal. Considering that it is congress that authorizes war in the first place, it is entirely plausible that congress could revoke that authorization. With that in mind, how is the bill that Bush vetoed not already a "compromise"? If you recognize that as a compromise, then in what way would it not be fair to interpret removing a withdrawal timetable as "bending over"?

One more thing: could someone among your ranks PLEASE make the case that Bush vetoing the bill, thus choosing a lack of funds w/ no real goal in sight over funding w/ an actual goal, shows he himself doesn't "support the troops", to use the GOP's favorite phrase?

A matter of degree. And relative sanity.

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:54:50 -0700

Many things about the mainstream media annoy me -- the habit of portraying every bit of bad news as if it's a call for Big Brother to "DO SOMETHING!!", the sensationalism, the following of celebrity "news" by media outlets that have more pressing matters to cover, the unfortunate tendency to take the words of all political authority figures at face value, etcetera, etcetera. The most basic issue I've got though is the Single-Minded Follower mentality, how when one story breaks they all run towards it and seemingly can't take anything else seriously. The way I see it, by engaging in this the media is eroding a major benefit to having a free press.

Having said that, here's an example of taking that beef and running into a wall with it. At 120 MPH. While juggling hand grenades. All emphasis mine:

"The Virginia Tech massacre is legitimately a big news story, on the crime-and-natural-disaster beat. And I understand why those affected by this event cannot think of anything bigger and more important in their lives than the tragedy they have just suffered.

But something more is needed to explain why this story has completely dominated the national media (and even the global media) for two straight days, to the exclusion of everything else--while the president and Congress are in a showdown over funding for the War on Terrorism.

Keep in mind that this week we are already approaching the point at which the Pentagon is going to have to start diverting funds from other parts of its budget in order to keep paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, since the Democratic Congress has refused to pass a war funding bill that does not require the president to withdraw our troops from Iraq. In effect, Congress has already de-funded the War on Terrorism. That is the most important national news story of this week. Good luck trying to hear about it on the national news. [...]

This flavor of the coverage was reflected in New York Times article that explained the ease with which reporters slipped into a familiar routine in covering the Virginia Tech story by saying "how familiar campus shootings have become." But of course, they aren't. It has been at least six years since the press has covered a big school-shooting story like this. If the press thinks these stories are "familiar," it is not because of their frequency, but because the press feels metaphysically comfortable covering them. They feel like they are at home, in their proper element, relieved from the mental strain of having to deal with the uncomfortable topic of Islamic terrorism.

So that's where we are today: a school shooting dominates the news, while the media ignores the much greater threat of Islamic terrorism. It's a 1990s flashback."

The author here took a legitimate media problem -- single-mindedness -- and, amplified by his neo-imperialist agenda, explodes into a torrent of spin (he suggests in a sideways manner that the reason 9/11 happened was because school shootings were seen as more important than terrorism, and attempts to wrap Iraq up in the "War on Terror" blanket) & outright lies (congress has "de-funded" jack squat). He doesn't stop there...

"The irony of the Virginia Tech case is that it is distracting our attention from the War on Terrorism, when it ought to make the need to fight and win that war all the more urgent.

The details that have emerged so far about the Virginia Tech killer ought to give us a slight shudder of recognition. According to early reports he apparently left behind a "manifesto" that consisted of "expletive-filled rants against the rich and privileged" with a "somewhat incoherent list of grievances." Doesn't this sound just a bit like the actions of a terrorist? The only thing missing--the only thing that differentiates this killer from archetypical terrorists like the Unabomber or Osama bin Laden--is a grand-scale ideology to tie his rambling grievances together and give him a systematic moral justification for his crimes.
The Virginia Tech killer is, in effect, a terrorist without a cause."

Surprise! Cho Seung-Hui has been retroactively & posthumously added to the Axis of Evil! See, it doesn't matter that he seemingly did this crap for no reason, even though terrorism by its very frickin definition means violence against innocents for a political purpose. Cho was a Bad Man, and so are the insurgents in Iraq, so his actions only remind us that Jihad Is Everywhere. Oh yeah, don't forget Iran!

"Ahmadinejad has all the makings of a spree killer just like the one at Virginia Tech--but a killer who will soon be armed with nuclear-tipped missiles instead of a mere pair of pistols."

Spree killer? But I thought you said he was a terrorist?

I gotta say, if the alternative to hive-mind coverage of the latest story is Bushist warmonger propaganda, I'll gladly stick with the current flavor.

(Cross posted to Psychopolitik)

Kossacks vs Libertarians: a selection from the trenches

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:01:03 -0700

Spotted something in the comments in Logan's Kos entry that I felt needed serious debunking. I'm sharing it here because I think it could be useful outside of my own site's usual audience. (Edit: apologies for the format at first, the rich-text function isn't working right. When enabling it, instead of keeping the format shown it deletes it, resulting in one huge blob.)

Kos User "GussieFN", in response to Logan, further down his Kos entry on Trent's challenge:

"I too wield coercive power due to the gov't. I can sue someone. I can force them to retract slander (or libel, I always forget which is which) or face penalty. I can shoot them for entering my house, with a legally-purchased gun. I can call the cops when they pee on my lawn. I can get them arrested for punching me. I even have illegal coercive power due to my gov't. I can use the internet to stalk someone or trade in illegal pornography. I can use the highway system to get away from a bank robbery.

Corporations do wield coercive power because of the government, and wouldn't without government aid. Yes. Nobody disagrees with that. But so what? So do I." [...]

GussieFN is making some very critical errors here: misunderstanding the nature of coercive power, overrating minor police powers (which minarchist libertarians -- like, um, Logan -- actually do not oppose except in amount of application), & classifying making an action easier unintentionally in the same category as overt subsidy. Let's break this down, shall we?

-Access to the court system: GussieFN thinks because one can, in theory, sue someone for slander that they wield the power of the State. That assumes that no decision as to the merit of the claim has to be made, it's as easy as sue-->win. If it was like that then there'd be so many lawsuits that half the population would have a law degree. Sure, they can THREATEN to sue & possibly get a settlement instead, but that depends on the person being sued thinking that the government is not going to take their side. Fate is still held in the balance when you exercize this "power", so it's as likely to work as it is to get you nothing.

That's not power, it's luck.

See, when we say that corporations wield coercive power through government, it's not this kind of power we're talking about. Technically, everyone has that access, and it shouldn't really be referred to as a "power" anyway. No, corporate-state power would be more like being able to take someone to court while secretly paying off the defendant's attorney to "take a dive", or being able to pick a judge that's staunchly biased in your favor, or threatening members of the jury with death if they vote against you. Notice a common theme with those? These tactics all involve not using an impartial system to come to a decision, but deliberately rigging it to be unfair.

Using the power of government to direct unearned funds towards themselves, to subsidize operating costs, to limit competition, & to squash internal dissent. That is corporate power. The thing is, it is all because of government power that this is even an option. A truly private business cannot go around with firearms extracting money from people to make their operations artificially cheaper, the State has to do that; a truly private business cannot blockade & shut down competitors, the State does that via lopsided regulations; a truly private business cannot respond to discontent over compensation with force without a government that implicitly GRANTS them that power & is willing to back it up with its own force if deemed necessary. No surprise here: the corporation as a concept started its existence as an explicit agent of the State, back in the glory days of imperialism. The only difference now is rather than the government using the corporation it's the other way around.

-"I can shoot them with a legal gun!"... I can't believe this statement was even made, seriously. The government not punishing you for shooting an intruder is in no way whatsoever a wielding of their power -- besides, some people do get punished. Ask Cory Maye what he thinks of that...

-Subsidy vs unintentional ease: true, the internet at its absolute roots started as a government project -- specifically a military project. But no one today would recognize the Arpanet if you showed them. Saying simply "thank the government for the internet" would be like saying the car was invented in prehistoric times because some neanderthal made a wheel. This is beside the point though: the internet was not created to facilitate stalking or pornography, that it is used for those purposes is chance. The highway system was actually created by the government -- for military purposes (notice a pattern?), and as a huge subsidy to General Motors (though in effect the two were one in the same, since the head of GM at the time was Secretary of Defense, after having previously been director of the "War Production Board" during WW2) & is still maintained by government. Yet, again, the purpose was not to facilitate bank robberies -- that is, unless you mean the money that car companies got from goosing demand for cars, & the subsidizing of sprawl.

So, the analogy of corporate-state coercive power to anything the average person can seek from govenrment or take advantage of is completely void. A more appropriate one would've been the ability of a loud plurality to get laws passed that attack a minority group. For example, the Religious Right's war on homosexuality. Even that though is only strength in numbers, and for all the screaming it doesn't have as much effect as it could -- thank yahweh. A corporation, by law, is seen as a meta-person, a group that has morphed like Voltron, with the CEO forming the head, into an immortal individual, with all of the rights an individual holds by nature but none of the responsibility. Rectify this, and you've solved the problem.

(Cross-posted to Psychopolitik.com)