Maybe the conservatives are right. Why should the government always interfere? Why not let everything self-regulate? After all, that is only the most fair and effective means for a productive society, right?

Therefore, we should erase all criminal laws from the books, and get rid of the police. People will self-regulate. After all, if they do something bad, everyone else will disapprove, and that will be bad for them, right? Crime will disappear and everyone will treat each other equitably.

Oh, I’m sorry—that’s not what conservatives mean, is it? After all, you can’t trust the people to behave without regulation and police oversight. But corporations? They’re bound to be honest and fair—that’s their defining characteristic, isn’t it? Left to themselves, they pay everyone a fair wage and never act contrary to public interest, right?

Man, it was hard to type that and not break up laughing so hard that I misspelled everything.

Let’s face it: corporations, if viewed as “people,” are essentially psychopaths. Their single common priority is to make as much money as can be achieved. By nature, they have no moral restraints; in their context, what can be bargained for to accentuate their profit is by definition “fair,” no matter how it may seem from an objective moral perspective. If they could get away with paying workers nothing, defrauding customers, trashing the environment, bypassing safety standards, and in doing so avoid criminal prosecution and sidestep any litigation, they would do so—in a heartbeat.

Which is why people like this stand out so radically:

There are a lot of things that can be said about this guy, but he stresses the one key point, which applies to so many issues of what government does in terms of businesses: If businesses acted in a fundamentally moral manner, government intervention would not be necessary.

If businesses paid their workers a wage that would ensure that they at least could work 40-50 hours a week and not sink into poverty, a minimum wage would not be necessary.

If businesses would see to the basic safety standards for the workplace, OSHA and the regulations that govern it would not be necessary.

If businesses paid workers equally, laws like the Lily Ledbetter Act would not be necessary.

If businesses did not discriminate on the basis of race, then Affirmative Action and quotas would not only be unnecessary, but they could exist and yet never kick in!

I could go on and on, but the theme is always the same: government never intervenes in business in order to interfere. Government only intervenes when businesses violate basic moral values and mistreat people and their environments in the name of excessive greed. Not survival, mind you—but greed.

Conservatives’ number one agenda: to stop government intervention.

That is equivalent to them trying to stop police from “interfering” with people’s actions, like robbing stores, committing acts of violence, etc. and instead, allowing the “free public square” to “self-regulate.”

Funny how we never hear them advocating that. It’s as if they don’t believe it would actually work.