10 Most Faudulent Ideas Being Sold to America

The 10 Most Fraudulent Ideas Being Sold to Americans

1. All ideas must be treated (respected) equally by the media e.g. there are two sides to an
argument no matter how patently absurd or bereft of logic one is.
2. Corporate personhood e.g. wherein corporations assume all rights of “free speech”
3. The desirability of unregulated markets
4. Depiction of politics as a sport
5. Government is often inefficient
6. Government programs hurt the private sector
7. Truly representative government still exists (Did it ever?)
8. The free (i.e. unencumbered or independent) press
9. A monolithic ECONOMY e.g. “a rising tide lifts all boats…”
10. American exceptionalism

It seems to me that these ideas taken together form a mythology - that collectively these ideas
comprise the dogma of a new national religion wriiten by the moneyed interests for the prols.

Feel free to add your favorites...

And allows crooked politicians to keep getting "elected" over & over again.

The media and the voting machines are THE KEYS to taking our country back. As long as the military/industrial/congressional complex owns the media and the voting machines (with their secret, proprietary programming) , WE, THE PEOPLE are royally screwed, and NOTHING in this country is going to truly and permanently get any better.

which it most certainly does not.

it would be nice to see. It runs counter to human nature, though. :(

The Right wants us to forget about all the good things government can do-- Social Security, Medicare, fire departments, FEMA, OSHA, child labor laws, public education, public highways etc. Bush tried to help that along by cutting funding to successful agencies, putting dolts like Heck-of-a-Job Brownie in charge of FEMA, letting Karl Rove politicize the DOJ, and other attempts to undermine public confidence in their government.

If Republicans had succeeded in privatizing Social Security with "individual savings accounts," we would have millions more desperate people bankrupt and cursing the government.

Let us not forget Republican Idol Ronald Reagan's charming quote that "The most dangerous words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

There is also Right Wing Kingpin Grover Norquist's dream of making people dislike government so much that they will de-fund it so it will become small enough to drown it in a bathtub. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010514/dreyfuss

Government certainly DOES promote the common good when it acts boldly in the interest of the people. Your statement is true only if government is controlled by corporate lobbyists. You're using the word "government" in an undefined way, like the right-wingers do, and that's dangerous.

that governments (including our own) are generally not of the people.

The only possible way to have a government "of the people" is pure direct democracy. Direct democracy just fails to work when you get more than a dozen people, and is certainly no method to run a nation.

on smaller, communal -- tribal -- levels I believe that a governing body can serve the people's best interests.


Anything on a larger scale, though, and I agree with you completely.

Who says we're a secular state?

I was going to welcome you to DU but you've been around a while. Why so quiet when you obviously have such wisdom and ability to distill issues into such succinct terms? Like to hear more from you!

I never worry about bringing people down over here with a dose of reality.

The people who can't deal with reality should be Republicans anyway. There are delusions aplenty over on that side of the aisle to find comfortable perching places.

And our military is a force for good in the world.

When is the last time we voluntarily removed all our military from another country? Why do we need bases in Germany, Japan, England, Turkey, if the nations we are scared of can do it with only bases within their own borders? How did we beat the Soviet Union? We got them to spend too much on their military while their manufacturing base failed to advance. The we helped them struggle in Afghanistan. Of course that wont happen to us because we're number 1.

If we are not an empire, then why do we insist on acting like one?

And why are we risking out very way of life by engaging in foreign entanglements and squandering the resources we need to be using to keep up with an advancing world.

Franklin, Washington, and Eisenhower were all right and we are ignoring them.

We've given up freedom for a false promise of security

We are more than ever involved in foreign entanglements

The military industrial complex are out of control and bleeding us dry.

Our arrogance has become a limiting belief. "we're number 1" isn't confidence, in most cases it's delusional.

The Right has been trying desperately to promote that idea, even though our professional military and intelligence interrogators told them and had proven softer techniques were far more effective.

the peoples interests.

Seperation of church and state.

I'm sure there are others.

The media is liberal.

This jewel is based on the lie that the playing field is level. It isn't. And everyday it becomes more skewed in favor of the rich & well-connected.

The other problem with the 'work hard' idea is that they abhor labor. On the one hand they tell us to work hard & we will be rewarded; on the other, they implement detestable policies that oppose labor.

Ragged Dick has been described by one Marxist critic as a "puerile fantasy of the assimilation of the so-called dangerous classes to the bourgeois social order. In Alger's world vision the individual, of whatever class background, is superior to the objective social relations that he finds himself in." The critic found this the reason for its appeal as a modernist myth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragged_Dick

To believe this, you also need to believe that

there's no such thing as bad luck,

financial markets will always go UP rather than rise and fall,

your investments will appreciate 7 to 10% each year,

you'll never be immediately undercut and priced out of your business/field by a corporation,

the tax system is actually progressive (it's NOT),

wages actually keep up with the cost of inflation,

baby boomers who have nothing saved and are in the same boat as you are will quit work so you can get promoted into their job.

With every successful Horatio Alger story, there are about 1 to 2 thousand more examples that, for whatever reason, situations just didn't pan out for.

That one went out with the trash long ago.

That one really bugs me. More often, one side is right and the other is wrong.

that goes around invading other countries pre-emptively.

5 is undeniably true. i've worked in govt. too long to believe otherwise.

it is astounding to me HOW inefficient we often are when compared to private industry. when i compare the efficiencies of my govt. agency to a grocery store, it's staggering

i could give a million examples. govt. often has perverse incentivies to be inefficient. private business has incentives to be efficient

2) no market in the world is CLOSE to unregulated. we have not had unregulated capitalism in the US recently, if ever. try to start a business and tell me about "unregulated" capitalism. it's a myth

lots of countries are far LESS regulated than the US (singapore being a perfect example)

10) i stand for american exceptionalism. we are different, and on the whole, we are better. i've done extensive traveling. i love france, costa rica, el salvador, mexico, canada, etc. but i love america more, and i LIKE the fact that we are different in regards to free speech, firearms rights, emphasis on individual autonomy, and a govt. that balances federal power with local power.

standpoint; but first define "efficiency". Maybe gov't programs are deemed inefficient because we hold them to the standards of for-profit concerns which I hold to be the wrong measuring stick. I have worked in a county (tax supported) hospital and we were very efficient with the $$ even when compared to the private hospitals.

There is also a symbiotic relationship between the gov't concerns and the privately run. Where would Fed EX and UPS be without the
U.S. post office? Mailing a simple letter would likely cost over a dollar. In a sense these government programs that right wingers
decry actually subsidize the private concerns or create a more favorable environment for them. I can tell you from experience
that the private hospitals in the Dallas area love parkland memorial because if it went away all "those" people would be at their
door instead.

So this is not the simple calculus that you imply.

that i refer to, but the overall nature of how govt. DOES stuff.

i've worked for govt. MOST of my life, and it is staggeringly inefficient in the way it does many things. it has (at least in my line of work) little to no incentive towards inefficiency and lots of incentive to be INefficient, which is backwards.

and i would like to add that if you spent ten minutes in a country with an unregulated economy, you would realize we are FAR FAR from unregulated. of course there is no such country, but there are plenty that are less regulated.

to judge by the laws on the books. I was merely pointing out that one of the myths being sold is
the more de-regulation the better.

As far as the efficiency of the gov't vs. private sector -
well, they serve two different masters (or so the legend goes) and I would argue
that a true comparison would be between efficient gov't practices vs inefficient gov't practices. To say that the gov't is
efficent OR inefficient is almost meaningless - i.e. "efficient at what exactly...?"

Of late there have been cases where gov't inefficiency (defined by the lack of wherewithal in vigorously executing its role as watchdog) appears to be by design driven by the very entities who desire to subvert it - like the SEC.

IMO, de-regulation is shorthand for making it easier to line the pockets of the people that matter at the expense of the people deemed
of lesser importance.

PERIOD.

again, have you ever tried to run a business. we are VERY regulated. in some areas - too much. in other areas, not enough.

of course govt. and the private sectors serve different masters, but the reality is that, regardless of who they serve, the private sector, on average, does TASKS more efficiently.

i KNOW how inefficient we are. heck, even my supervisors do, but they simply have little to no incentive to be more efficient, so why would they? there are in many cases, significant (ie big $$$ at stake) perverse incentives that make inefficiency PREFERRED, because it means MORE money and more power, which is the COMPLETE opposite of how the private sector works

to recoup their costs from insurers. Basically, when any procedure is done there is a code attached to said
procedure. The problem is that the insurers make it difficult for the provider to make an "exact match" in the
billing so as to get reimbursed. The company exists only BECAUSE of the chaos by-design that exists with
getting reimbursed from the insurance companies; a very opaque process at best. Plainly there would
be no reason for this company to exist if single payer were ever adopted.

I think you and I are talking about two different definitions of "efficiency" - Of course there are incentives
for private concerns to be efficient in terms of controlling labor costs for example... but what about a board of directors
contracting with a third party b/c one of the BOD nephews has some undisclosed interest in it. That kind of shit happens
all the time - and there are often "incentives" in private concerns that are not at all transparent to the "market".

And yes, I have in the past (and do presently) run my own business that is itself highly regulated - but I think that you make a false distinction between the private and public sectors where in reality, the relationship is more symbiotic. Perversely, government inefficiency
and by inefficiency, I mean failure to take action on behalf of the public, creates opportunities for the private sector.

For example, if the public schools weren't so sub-par there would be no need for charter schools. Why are the public schools so messed up -
a number of reasons, one of them most certainly being the thought in some circles that "The best education for the best is the best education for all..."

I will grant you that there can exist disincentives to productivity in some areas of the public sector. That said, some government agencies
and programs are underfunded and the employees overworked and would definitely be "more efficient" if given the opportunity and funding.

If your business is failing from over regulation - you probably aren't bribing the "right" people - but maybe your competitors are.

desire for the U.S. to become any more like them.

not the point

we were referring to economic systems.

its economic system is far LESS regulated than ours, and even it is not "unregulated capitalism"

Clearly, our markets have become less regulated than is wise. There being less regulated markets doesn't mean ours are acceptable or beneficial in circulating resources (you know the actual purpose of any economy in anything resembling a democracy) to the majority of people.

Also, apples to oranges comparisons are imprecise. Contrasting how a private business compares to a government arm that does the same thing(s) is reasonable but in most cases we will see that government does what the market refuses to do because there is little money in it. In many cases I'd argue that between need for profit, the costs of acquiring business, compensation, shadiness, and general doing no more than it takes to get by that government and private companies are probably at least at parity as far as benefit to cost for any particular service.

the efficiency thing. we do things less efficiently (usually) because there is NO INCENTIVE to be efficient, and in many cases, an incentive to BE INEFFICIENT

that is a fundamental difference you have no addressed.

i personally do things all the time in a very inefficient way, because i HAVE to, we are mandated to do it that way. the technology exists to do it MUCH more efficiently (faster, cheaper, and more accurately) but nobody will implement such efficient techniques because they have NO incentive, and in many cases are incentivized towards ensuring we are inefficient.

compared to private industry, it's understandable that they are more efficient. more efficient means more money (usually), whereas that is not the case in govt., quite frequently. in fact, it's the opposite - the less efficient we are, the more budget and money we get

and it's a nice counterexample (exception proving the rule, etc.) . i think the evidence is clear that IN GENERAL, govt. is less efficient than private business, as well as the fact that govt. much more frequently has perverse incentives to be inefficient, but of course some disagree :)

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moreover, the private sector's version of "efficiency" needs some clarification.

generally speaking, private sector "efficiency" is a bit of an illusion based on the fact that most people just don't see the inefficient parts. there's also a HEAVY dose of "religion" in the concept of private sector efficiency, by which i mean it's more of an article of faith than reality.

the private sector has an incentive to be INefficient on the paying and spending side. insurance is a great example, they have a profit motive to make it difficult for customers to file claims, for the company to process claims, for them to pay claims in a timely fashion, etc. if the company loses your claims or makes a mistake, that means more profit for them. similarly, they have an incentive to delay paying suppliers. what a company might call "efficient cash management" is actually inefficient from the point of view of the supplier and the economy as a whole, as it creates more artificial work for accounts payable and collections personnel at the suppliers. similarly for long hold times for customer service, etc.


the private sector has the luxury of choosing its own "efficiency". it's not that they're wonderfully efficient at anything, it's that they are free to simply refuse to serve a market or potential market if they can't figure out a way to make enough profit, i.e., to serve them efficiently. serving only the 48 contiguous states, or refusing to try to reach certain segments of the population, e.g, means that the company might be more efficient for the customers they are serving, but completely inefficient for the would-be customers they aren't. you can call that efficiency, but it's really exclusiveness. the government might have a better shot at that sort of efficiency if it didn't usually have a requirement to treat everyone equally.

finally, once a private company becomes profitable at something, inefficiencies start to abound. people have career and personal incentives, pet projects, or competing visions that don't necessarily line up with corporate efficiencies. these might efficiently sink a small or marginal company, but once a company is big and profitable enough, all sorts of inefficiencies can be masked and happily exist for a long time anyone who has worked for a giant corporation knows how inefficient they can be.

one more thought: government efficiency has to be judged against government goals. part of it is to create consituencies and jobs, so government employees taking their time instead of hustling means more jobs and that IS part of the goal. that doesn't mean it's less efficient.

Going with the private sector is a way to avoid "waste, fraud, and abuse". (actually they are far more skilled at it)

Peace through strength (of arms).

The Death Penalty deters... (anything).

The right to "bear arms" is actual freedom.

(sorry, it is just them letting you have your toys) (you can have a big house, a microwave, a flat screen TV, and a big shiny Hummer as well, but these won't make you free either) - - (However, the right to free assembly to collectively organize and demand better pay, well, that sort of actual freedom is subject to some considerable debate)

1. That's the point of a Democracy; lay out all ideas and weed them out properly.
2. Agreed, that is fraudulent.
3. Agreed, it's not desirable - as a precedent had been set and repercussions made clear.
4. Been that way for decades, if not longer. At least the loser doesn't become VP...
5. Only by those who claim it's efficient, having been in government and making it inefficient to begin with.
6. Private programs ultimately hurt the private sector if the customer base can no longer support it.
7. It did.
8. Only as long as it's profitable...
9. Is that called trickle-on economics?
10. That started with the devaluation of schools and discipline.

I think you (and I) are reacting to that one in a way other than the OP intended.

I believe that all ideas are initially worthy of equal respect - that being, we encounter a new idea and run it through our "Is this bullshit? (y/n)" filters. If it falls into "n" we move on.

What the OP is - I assume - reacting to is the idea that all ideas are always worthy of equal respect - that if there's two principal views on an issue they require equal time even if one failed the filter test earlier, because the mere fact that the view is held is enough. That I reject entirely, but I don't think that conflicts with your "that is the point of a Democracy" view at all.

"1. That's the point of a Democracy; lay out all ideas and weed them out properly."

Evolution vs. intelligent design is not even a legitimate point of debate (evidence vs. no evidence). It has been "made"
a point of debate by our media to placate a demographic that is considered to be more favorable
to de-regulation in all its forms (with the possible exception of regulating a woman's control
over her body).

and therefore don't exist.

The stock market is nothing but a ponzi scheme. :puke:

(local)gov't is there to help you. That said, all too often the lines between corporate entities
and the (federal) government are way too blurred - but that is because entities with ALOT more
power and $$ than you or I have the ears of our (in name only) representatives.

I should add that another big myth is that government and business are
opposed in their ends. Maybe government and small business aren't that
friendly - but government and big multinationals? Why, they're two arms
on the same body!

And you're spot on about big government and big multinationals.

"Out-sourcing American jobs overseas will produce more jobs for all." (And, we can all see how well that has worked, NOT!)

"Welfare hurts initiative and produces dependence." (Tell that to J.K. Rowling!)

"THEY hate US for our freedom." (No, THEY hate us because WE don't know when to leave THEIR countries!)

"Israeli settlements on the West Bank are not related to Palestinian Arab acts of terror." (Just try building YOUR fence over MY property line!)

"Environmentalists hate American progress." (And, industrialists are only motivated by patriotism?)

"All cultural traditions are valid." (Like foot-binding, honor killings, female circumcisions, animal sacrifices, dog fighting?)

"I never got a job from a poor man." (I never got a job from a rich one either. He purchased my time, talent, expertise, and labor.")

they don't

No, some may have contributed to their own problems, but capitalism is a much bigger contributor to conditions which make it impossible for most to improve their lot.

It goes hand in hand with the slogan FREEDOM ISN'T FREE that is used extensively to "support the troops" and to justify unbridled militarism. Americans need to face the fact that our troops are NOT fighting for our freedom. A case might be made that the troops in Afghanistan are fighting to keep us safe from terrorists, but a better case can be made that the wars in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq were fought for corporate profits and neocon ambitions of empire.

Hand in hand with all of that is the MYTH that Republicans are stronger on national security. The eagerness to launch a war no matter how costly and counterproductive to our national interests is not strength; it is STUPIDITY. And those blowhards are NOT supporting our troops by getting them maimed & killed in a war based on LIES for the benefit of the true elites of wealth and power who don't give a rat's ass about the rank and file in uniform.

Mix those together with the trappings of militant fundementalist Christianity and you have the nationalist religion of the Teabaggers (i.e. the 20% or so that supported Bush no matter what).

Snuggie. IMO that is right up there with the evils of corporate person hood and unregulated capitalism. I am not joking. I am serious.

I'll keep trying.

Recommend.

9/11 wasn't an inside job.

Truth-The Wars in the Middle East ARE Genocide.

...the economy will fail.

and...

We need the Fed to print our money, rather than printing it ourselves.

it is true.

...and doesn't work.

or, put an other way...it is unpatriotic to oppose capitalism.

:rofl:

:puke:



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government, you need to read "The Peter Principle" again.

so is private enterprise.

Myth 5: Government is ALWAYS inefficient.

You often hear that from right-wingers. It may even have been true right after World War II, but it no longer is.

The media do indeed thrive on false dilemmas.