| > while the government is _much_ more important than Valve is for any business. Hah. If only that were true. The government's only positive role in commerce is ensuring political stability. Lots of times, they fail hard at that one job. Once you have political stability, then the government becomes a power broker. The tax system is really an elaborate financial instrument for big business, has been ever since the dawn of mercantilism. The value you gain from the government is proportional to how close you are to the giant sums of money being funneled through it. Sure, there are things like welfare programs that ensure an adequate baseline of minimum prosperity, (i.e. the homeless in the US won't starve to death, and might get a bed to sleep on a couple times a week) but you only really benefit from them if you really need them, and relying on them is no fun. And we only have those because those of us close to the poor, who can't just shut them out, threw enough of a fit to force the elites to. The rest of us, lower and middle classes, small and medium businesses, including entities like Valve, don't get squat from the government. We have to earn our own keep, we can't rely on the government to bail us out. The government is entirely too small to help out the rest of society in any meaningful way. They can try to pass laws, but laws breed loopholes and suck for the same reason Valve's lofty initiative failed, it's impossible to consider the incentive structure of the new world you're creating with a law until you actually enact it and see what's going on, and there's only so far hiring experts will get you. Legislation is a long, slow slog towards a saner world on the aggregate, and a vehicle for pork in the particular. The only thing worthwhile the government provides US businesses is in just being there. Great that we have one, but extremely hard to point out specific things it does that aren't already being far better done by other commercial entities. |