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SECTION 5: SAMPLE NEGATIVE CASE AND EXTENSION
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- VALUE: Democracy
- CRITERION: Public Welfare
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SECTION 5: SAMPLE NEGATIVE CASE AND EXTENSIONA great theft has befallen the American public. Congress and the President approved a $700 billion bailout package for bankrupt financial firms on Wall Street. Every dime of this comes straight out of our pockets: the trusting taxpayers. We vest the federal government with certain powers of governance. In turn, the government has an obligation to use the tools we give them for the general welfare. That is the basis of democratic governance. VALUE: Democracy In an increasingly uncertain world filled with poverty, social strife, ethnic conflict and the specter of nuclear war and terrorism, we should remain steadfast in advancing democratic governance at home and abroad. However, “democracy” is more than a means of governance. It speaks to our very rights to be free human beings. Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, recognizes extrinsic justifications for democracy, but discusses it in terms of having intrinsic value: Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Lamont University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, 1999. “Democracy as a Universal Value,” JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY, 10.3, pp. 11-12. If the above analysis is correct, then democracy's claim to be valuable does not rest on just one particular merit. There is a plurality of virtues here, including, first, the intrinsic importance of political participation and freedom in human life; second, the instrumental importance of political incentives in keeping governments responsible and accountable; and third, the constructive role of democracy in the formation of values and in the understanding of needs, rights, and duties.
In a free society, the government has an obligation to protect the general welfare of its citizenry. In determining what actions are “just”, we should look to the general welfare of the public, not corporations. This is essential to avoid threats of extinction Harry Magdoff, editor, and Fred Magdoff, Professor, Plant and Soil Science, University of Vermont, July-August 2005. “Approaching Socialism,” MONTHLY REVIEW v. 57 n. 3, Accessed 12-10-2008, The experiences of the Soviet Union and China indicate that the attainment of a mobilized and educated populace willing and capable of taking power—understanding the basic problems and limitations and capable of checking the growth of a new bureaucratic class or strata—will not come easily. However, we must learn how to do so if there is to be any hope of significantly improving the conditions of the vast number of the world’s people who are living hopelessly under the most severe conditions while also preserving the earth as a livable planet. This is necessary not only for humans but for all the other species that share the planet with us and whose fortunes are intimately tied to ours.
A. THE BAILOUT IS ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE LEGACY OF THE RISING U.S. DEBT Chris Lugo, Green Party of Tennessee candidate for US Senate, September 23, 2008. “Just Say No to Corporate Bailouts,” OpEdNews.com, Accessed 12-10-2008, It is time to say no to more corporate bailouts. The United States is already almost nine trillion dollars in debt as a result of decades of over spending on the US military combined with twenty-five years of Reagan era tax cuts for the wealthy and private corporations. Now is the time to invest in real priorities for the future by fully funding health care and education. By saying no to corporate bailouts for Wall Street we will ensure real economic opportunity for Main Street. As a candidate for federal office I oppose further corporate bailouts and I support strict regulation of Wall Street and a federal investigation into fraud and abuse of the trading system, which led to the current financial crisis. The results of decades deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy and privileged has led to the decimation of the middle class and brought us to the edge of ruin for future generations.
B. BAILOUTS COME DIRECTLY OUT OF TAXPAYER POCKETS Robert W. McGee, Director, Center for Accounting, Auditing and Tax Studies at Florida International University, November 20, 2008.
Money does not just fall from the sky. Ultimately it comes out of people’s pockets. If the government pours money into some industry that is in distress, it must first take the money from some place else. If the government spends a trillion dollars to bail out one industry it first has to take a trillion dollars out of some other industries so that it will have the trillion dollars to spend on the industry in distress. What happens to those other industries or sectors of the economy if a trillion dollars is extracted from them? They will shrink, of course, but this inconvenient truth is seldom addressed, or even recognized. C. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS UNJUST IN TAKING TAXES FOR CORPORATE BAILOUTS Robert W. McGee, Director, Center for Accounting, Auditing and Tax Studies at Florida International University, November 20, 2008. “An Ethical Analysis of Corporate Bailouts,” SSRN Working Paper, Accessed 12-11-2008, The flaws inherent in utilitarian ethics can be overcome by applying rights theory. Rather than asking whether the result is a positive-sum game, a rights theorist would ask whether anyone’s rights are violated by the act. If the answer is yes, then the act is unethical regardless of whether the result is a positive- or negative-sum game. Let’s ask this question using corporate bailouts as the subject. Are anyone’s rights violated if the government chooses to bail out some industry or some particular company? The answer is yes. Taxpayers are being forced to part with funds so that their tax dollars, Euros, Yen or Pounds can be transferred to some industry or some particular company. D. CORPORATE BAILOUTS ARE UNETHICAL UNDER RIGHTS AND UTILITARIANISM Robert W. McGee, Director, Center for Accounting, Auditing and Tax Studies at Florida International University, November 20, 2008.
From the above analysis it is clear that corporate bailouts do not meet either the utilitarian ethics test or the rights test. Such bailouts are inherently beneficial to some special interest at the expense of the general public. They can never result in the greatest good for the greatest number because bailouts are negative-sum games. A few benefit at the expense of the many. But more importantly, bailouts must necessarily violate property rights, since those who pay are forced to pay. In an economic democracy, consumers have already voted on which companies shall survive and which shall fail. Politicians who interfere in this voting process by representing the special interests at the expense of their constituency are violating their fiduciary duty to the people who elected them. They should be removed from office. OBSERVATION TWO: CORPORATE BAILOUTS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY A. THE BAILOUT IS AN AFFRONT TO DEMOCRACY. SCARE TACTICS ARE BEING USED AS BLACKMAIL AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE Michael Collins, Columnist for Scoop Independent News, September 29th, 2008. “Bailout Bill Defies Will of the People,” DISSIDENT VOICE, Accessed 12-10-2008, How would citizens react to that, were it presented as part of the bailout debate? They would probably be furious and demand that there be careful consideration and deliberation of this bill. They might even determine that it was blackmail with the people who caused the problem threatening a world financial meltdown if they don’t get their way. Then they would connect the dots between the bailout and the head dispenser of funds, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. This firm received huge financial benefits from Secretary Paulson before this bill was even conceived. The will of the people is just “collateral damage” if members of Congress determine that details like democracy and honesty are less important than the instructions of their leadership and the Wall Street firms that created this problem in the first place.
Robert Morpheal, Staff Writer, December 10, 2008. “Constitutional Challenge to Corporate Bailouts,” Democratic Underground, Accessed 12-11-2008, Which action is truly and rightfully in keeping with the original intent of the framers of the constitution? We argue that government has no constitutional right to give large sums of money to large corporations. We argue that government has a right to provide individuals with the means to support those corporations, by means of purchasing the product, thus fulfilling the original intent of a constitution and the government under that constitution existing to serve those individuals, as a class of legal entities, the citizens, not the class of legal entities that is comprised of the corporations. C. MARKET BAILOUTS SIGNAL A RETREAT FROM REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY Blake Masters, Staff Writer, September 29, 2008. “On the Bailout, Banks, and Barry O,” THE STANFORD LIBERTY, Accessed 12-10-2008, It’s worth noting that even if banks are given cash infusions, they might not necessarily want to lend. And people will certainly be growing increasingly reluctant to borrow. The music could stop and there won’t be enough chairs for everybody. Of course, the charlatans will blame the ‘free market’ (as if such a thing ever existed!) and claim government is the savior to ‘market failure’ when in reality it is the very source of the crisis. Just today, records the Washington Post, Obama “continued to blast McCain for his support of deregulation and at the same time claimed credit for several parts of the agreement Congress reached late Saturday.” When representative democracy renders truth unmentionable and deception the rule, we have a problem that is in many ways more fundamental and pressing than what’s going on on Wall Street. D. OTHER COUNTRIES MODEL OUR UNCONSTITUTIONAL BAILOUTS FOR ECONOMIC GAIN Robert Morpheal, Staff Writer, December 10, 2008. “Constitutional Challenge to Corporate Bailouts,” Democratic Underground, Accessed 12-11-2008, It is long past the time that the United States of America, and other nations following its current lead, rethought their position on how they are legally entitled and empowered to stimulate an economy and what their rights and responsibilities to the people are in direct legal distinction to their rights to give money to corporations. The latter action would seem to be constitutionally illegal in the United States of America, though presumably untested in the courts, due to lack of adequate class action and the persistent inability of constitutional and class action lawyers to mount a suitable and effective case. Similar problems exist in other nations, but as I have said, it is largely due to following America far too closely, in its unconstitutional rampage at the expense of the “we the people” taxpayers of what ought to have been a constitutionally governed nation. E. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE IS ESSENTIAL TO ALL LIFE ON EARTH Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December 1995. “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives,” A REPORT TO THE CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON PREVENTING DEADLY CONFLICT, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Accessed 12-10-2008, This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. Download 343.42 Kb. Share with your friends:
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