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by kulahan 15 days ago
There’s really nothing inherently profane about the concept, it’s just often abused. I’d love to see a few working examples out in the real world, personally.
2 comments

> There’s really nothing inherently profane about the concept, it’s just often abused.

The same thing can be said about any autocratic government, but the practical and documented historical issues are why they are not liked. Just as dictatorship works well when you have a good ruler who cares about the people, the issue isn't if you get a bad ruler, but when.

The same can be said about literally anything in existence, from this incredibly inane point of view. Lots of things are historically dangerous and only work well when people who don't suck is running it.

Most things suck when someone shitty is running it. This is the worst argument of all time. There's really no reason, based on the very bad argument you've presented here, to assume a local, state, or federal government would be any better than any corporation. Please, I beg of you, come up with some argument that takes more than two seconds to disregard.

> Lots of things are historically dangerous and only work well when people who don't suck is running it.

Authoritarian dictatorships always have people who sux on top. They are created by people who sux in the forst place and there is only a little to make them accountable.

And incentives placed on rules and their underlings ensure they will sux even when they did not originally.

Cool, we’re not discussing authoritarian dictatorships - we’re discussing company towns.
> Most things suck when someone shitty is running it. This is the worst argument of all time.

I actually think it is the only argument.

As Churchill mused:

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

Company towns, communism, etc are bad specifically because of their ease of abuse, which is why our best (least worst) systems of governing are focused on transparency, accountability and minimizing abuse. It sucks that all that friction makes it less efficient, but alas we need to plan for the/humanities worst, because it continually crops up.

Pullman, IL was the model of a company town and started off as a reasonable (if paternalistic) approach to providing good housing and services to your employees.

Unsurprisingly, it did not last.