10A

Reply to "built a system", part 2 of 2:

Corporations set the wage, you apply, and if you tell them you need more money to work there they tell you to get lost*. Job postings receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications. Why would they lower their profitability by giving you the wage you set if the next person in the very long line will work just as hard for cheaper?

Like any market, supply and demand does determine price. If you want to be a forest ranger, you'll be competing against a whole lot of people who like the idea of getting paid to hang out in the forest all day. You'll get much better pay as a garbage man, since fewer people like the thought of taking that job. But as individuals, we can choose whatever kind of job we want to work, balancing our skills and aptitudes with our personal tastes and how much we value monetary remuneration compared to other measures of job satisfaction. And if you're clever, you can figure out how to spend all day in the forest and make well over $100k (start a logging company).

Corporations tell their workers what to do and therefore control their workers. Same goes for hours. If I told my boss that I will only work Sundays-Thursdays from now on, I would be fired. That is a form of control.

Depends on the type of work. Personally I don't care when people work, as long as they show up for meetings and get their jobs done well. But sure, if you're a gas station attendant then you'd better show up before the start of your shift.

place of employement - Corporations quite literally have been forcing people to return to offices or face dismissal. There are other kinds of this action, but that's just one example.

If you like remote work, and your manager doesn't understand that you're productive working from home, then the job's a bad match for you and you should find a better match. That's not anyone having control over the other party; it's just conflicting values.

type of employement - Corporations are the one who decide if you're exempt, non-exempt, a contractor, what the job responsibilities are, etc.

I've known people to negotiate their status when getting hired. Everything's on the table in a negotiation. You just need to recognize it as a negotiation, and learn to negotiate well.

hours - If you refuse to work the hours you are told you are fired.

Again, this is very much dependent on the kind of job. Many jobs just require you to get a certain amount of work done.

how money is distributed - At no point does your average worker control this. The higher ups decide this and almost universally decide that the majority should go to them. If businesses were truly democratic, then you'd never see a single company giving a CEO the money for a brand new yacht every year.

You lost me here. First off, we wouldn't want a business to be democratic any more than we'd want our country to be. A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for supper. It's a tragically terrible idea, under almost all circumstances. So no, of course businesses aren't democratic.

If you've ever tried to hire a CEO (and it's obvious you haven't), you'd know it's extremely hard to find someone qualified to do the job well. Again, their compensation is a function of supply and demand. There's almost zero supply. And if you want to be cheap and hire an inexperienced or second-rate CEO, you're taking a big risk with the life-blood of the company.

With both of those points established, I'm lost as to your overall point about how money is distributed. You get a paycheck or direct deposit. Some businesses pay cash. A few will pay in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. You don't seem to be discussing any of these things, but they're how money is distributed.

the media (narrative) - Virtually all media companies are owned by the rich, and they do not allow news articles and the like to be against them. For example, the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and you'll never see an article from them criticizing Bezos or Amazon.

Yes, well that's true if we're only discussing the mass media. Most of the conservative media outlets are tiny operations.

But that's not evidence that companies seek power over people. It's just evidence that the personality type of journalists tends to be leftist, and while that's not true of all journalists, they've banded together with like-minded people.

Even in the worst case examples, big tech silencing conservatives, which is a very real problem with examples far too numerous to count (Why do my mailings from Team DeSantis keep going to spam, no matter how many times I click "not spam"?), that's not corporations trying to control people. It's just employees with personal political preferences who work alongside like-minded people, and who believe they're making the world a better place.

Reply to "Why should I think that?" part 1 of 2:

Why should I think that? ["If you find yourself attracted to a man, acknowledge that attraction as an evil temptation to sin."]

Because it's true. If you find a quarter in your pocket, you should acknowledge that quarter as monetary unit equivalent to one fourth of a dollar. Why? Because that's what it is.

Yes, that was what I meant [pornography]. And I have no reason to think of them as sins.

1 Corinthians 6:18

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

Note "fornication" there is translated from "πορνεία", which is a generic term for sexual sin of any kind, and is better translated as "sexual immorality".

Now you have a reason. And there are more where that one came from!

And I have no reason to believe eternity is on the line, or that it would be based on sexual attraction. If a god exists, I would think the least of it's worries would be humans, let alone who humans choose to mate with.

This reflects your decision not to become a father yourself. But you can imagine for a moment what it feels like to have a child. You very much do care who that child associates with, even as a friend, but certainly as a mate. There's a good reason why when you want to marry a girl, you ought to first ask her father for permission. God created us in His own image for a particular reason. If you've ever created anything at all, you know that you care about whatever it was you made.

I don't believe in god, so why would I consider the feelings of something I do not believe exists?

Because He still believes in you.

I'll address each of the things you listed, but I want to go on something a little more objective than us tossing things back and forth about how the country is left/right. The closest to useful/objective info I came across was this:

https://objectivelists.com/2022/06/26/countries-with-the-most-conservative-laws/

Thank you. I think the "far-" prefix is contentious on both sides of the aisle. Are you familiar with allsides.com? They rate news sources as one of: { far-left, left, center, right, far-right }. I sometimes disagree with their exact assessments, but I recognize that it's difficult to rate the bias of news sources. Especially because when I consider where I'd personally categorize them, I realize that there're not close to enough options. It's radically oversimplified.

When I say "left" (or "center-left"), I approximately mean pro-trade-union, Robin Hood taxation, pro-birth-control, and sexual intercourse out of wedlock. You get the idea. Anything to the left of that I consider far-left. These days, the Left is off-the-chart far-far-far-left in my opinion.

Also it's impossible to compare the US to other countries for a wide variety of reasons, one of them particular to this case being that classical liberal principles played a major role in our founding, which are now considered conservative principles by most measures. That's how we wind up with (for example) liberal gun law being widely supported by the Right.

Because if you were to compare the U.S. to many European countries, they go far more to the left on such issues.

True, but that means nothing. They're dragging us leftward, due to so many leftists who hate America and think we should abandon our traditional values and instead imitate other countries.

Reply to "Why should I think that?" part 2 of 2:

The U.S. does not have open borders, it is illegal to cross without permission.

This is wildly out of touch with reality. The Biden Administration is coordinating tens of thousands of illegals flooding in per week, and giving them "free" (taxpayer-funded) plane tickets to any US city they choose. The Southern border is essentially wide open. All you have to do is check any conservative news source from any time in the last two years to know this.

Prohibiting the government from forcing prayer on children is not a far left thing, most other developed nations are the same.

Anything anti-Christian and pro-Satan is far-left. The fact that other nations do it too is no excuse. Traditional American culture is Christian.

ESGs are left, but they aren't far left, they're just a type of investment.

Are you joking? They are extremely far-left. I mean they'd have to be openly communist to be any further left.

Few people in the U.S. are neo-marxists.

Few might self-identify as such, but the philosophy is readily apparent everywhere you look. Anyone who thinks people can legitimately derive their identity from their group membership is neo-Marxist.

As for the LGBTQ+, our rates aren't very different from other developed/free nations.

Stop trying to compare the US to any other country, because it's illegitimate. The US is the greatest country possible, and there's no comparison to be made. Yes, we have sodomites trying to take us down, but the fact that other countries do too doesn't make it acceptable.

(And in case you were not aware, "Transvestite" is considered to be a slur by many people due to it's malicious use.

Far be it for me to potentially break any terms of service. I only meant to refer to people who reject their God-given sex, and play dress-up, whether or not assisted by hormone pills and genital mutilation. Thank you for letting me know.

Abortion is generally supported by the left, and some parts of the right, so it is hardly a far left thing.

It's about as far left as possible. It's anti-Christian, anti-family, and pro-murder — of innocent babies no less. It's like the essence of far-lefthood bundled up into a single word.

As for "Post-Temperance Feminism", I'm honestly not sure what you mean by that.

The Temperance movement was a coalition between Christians, conservatives, and feminists back in the day. Women didn't want their husbands coming home drunk anymore. Around the same time Prohibition succeeded, they also succeeded in gaining the women's "right" to vote, which is one of the primary origins of all of this far-left madness and social devastation we've witnessed since their success in that endeavor. Following that, they moved on in subsequent "waves" which became increasingly hostile to traditional family values. When I wrote "Post-Temperance Feminism", I was referring to that entire history after their coalition with Christians and conservatives fell apart.

The SPLC is a hate group watch, so I don't see why you would have a problem with them.

Please tell me you're joking. They're widely derided for grouping normal conservative groups with Christian values alongside neo-Nazis and actual "hate groups". Nobody takes the SPLC seriously. And that's ancient news at this point.

And as for hollywood, they are definitely left, but they ain't far left.

Almost every single movie they produced in the last fifteen years, or so, has featured anti-Christian sentiment, a complete lack of understanding of Christian theology, anti-American sentiment, anti-family sentiment, especially anti-traditional-family sentiment, pro-sodomy sentiment, premarital sex, illicit drugs, strong women and weak men, transvestites, global warming alarmism, anti-corporate sentiment, and the list goes on and on. It's quite hard to find any movie that's not woke through and through, unless it was made in the '90s or earlier. There are a couple exceptions, but they're rare.

It seems to me that you have done the same. You gave me an entire list of "far left" things in the U.S. that you are critical of.

Fair, but that's within the overall context of my message that America is essentially great, and always will be. Of course I have my minor gripes, and plenty of them. But at the end of the day, I pray for our country because there's no better place on earth.

The 5000 character limit is sorta making me miss reddit.

Yes, this thing is buggy. But it's brand new. If these problems are still unresolved in a year, that'll be bad, but it's open source and I'm under the impression an increasing number of people are contributing to it.

Sorry, I didn't realize you had asked. This is what I was referring to:

Thank you. They write in their intro:

Human freedom enables and empowers people to do as they please, free from constraints or punishments, so long as it does not impinge upon the freedom of another.

That's a libertine definition of freedom. It advocates for legal cocaine and prostitution. I acknowledge they're not the only ones to hold that definition, but I do not.

Human freedom enables and empowers people to obey God, do His will, worship Him as they see fit, and (as a result) to be blessed with emancipation from sin.

(Skipping a bunch here. Sorry, I'm reading what you wrote, and I don't have much to say in reply that I haven't already said. I guess that's for the best, all things considered.)

I believed in Jesus, god, christianity, the whole thing. I was raised christian and believed it all. I went to church, believed I was saved, felt the holy spirit, etc. I just now realize none of it was true.

What do you suppose you actually felt, when you thought you felt the Holy Spirit? When you say that you believed it all, did you really believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, or did you only say you did? When you decided that none of it was true, do you think you might be enduring a test of faith?

It doesn't, but the ruling it mentioned does. Sorry, I should have given you a better link than that.

Thank you, that was informative. Much as I disagree that the Pledge is idolatry, I respect that you're not the only one to believe it. Of course JWs also believe the Second Coming happened in 1914, so I've got a few grains of salt. I completely side with SCOTUS on that ruling, that compelled speech breaks the first amendment. I just wish they had the same decision on school prayer, that nobody can be forced to partake, but the rest of us are going to proceed with it anyhow.

I'll definitely be marrying her, but we have mutually agreed not to have kids. We can't ethically justify bringing a kid into a dying world, and also her physical disabilities would quite literally kill her if she were pregnant. And suicide is generally considered to be a sin.

I'd argue with you on the ethics point, and the claim of a "dying world" (what), but your follow-up point about her disability overrides anything I'd say. I'm happy for you! When's the wedding?

Maybe, but I'm not sure why that matters. The essence of our dispute here is over whether salvation works reliably for kicking a drug addiction.

I usually don't lol. It's very rare for me to get into a conversation as much of a tangled mess as this one.

I'm flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyable, though I agree it's a tangled mess. Yet if you'd find it prudent to quickly wind it down, I won't be offended.

Instigate? No. Enable? Absolutely.

Well then we're close to splitting hairs. My contention is governments should be too small to enable companies to grow huge. I get that we don't completely see eye-to-eye on this, but I'm not sure it's worth our bickering over the details.

The mega-corporations are the natural result of capitalism. You can't have one without the other.

I mentioned the importance of definitions recently. Among people who disagree over capitalism, I find we are often operating on different definitions. What if we just talk about free markets? There's nothing about freedom that inherently gives rise to mega-corporations. They didn't even exist until relatively modern times.

There are also numerous lottery winner stories around. That doesn't mean that everybody should buy lottery tickets as a means to success.

No kidding. When you hold a race, there's one winner. You might give out medals for second and third place, but most competitors are losers. And that's great. Everyone goes home and tries again tomorrow. In the end, some people are never able to win at all, due to lack of drive, technique, or what-have-you, and that's fine. Life isn't fair, and we wouldn't want it to be. All that matters is that everyone's able to compete, fair and square.

Nowadays people are too poor to reasonably afford a home, food, and the basic necessities. The retirement age keeps getting higher. The majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely has been dead, and for a while.

Okay, now I really wonder where you live. Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the America I know and love.

Inheriting wealth is not a means for being successful for the overwhelming majority of americans.

Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.

The success of a business is directly tied to the starting investment.

No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. It's eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before there's anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.

If you don't feel like you are free then what is the point?

The point is always God. And God, incidentally, is the source of our freedom. People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God. That's hardly the fault of corporations (although you could make a good case that any corporation propagating secular culture is indirectly at fault.)

"Just about any business" does not equate to a livable wage, because just about all businesses have employees who are being paid below a livable wage. And like I said, horizontal mobility is not true mobility.

What's a livable wage? That's a mighty subjective phrase. It wasn't long ago that many of us lived in single-room log cabins that we built ourselves, hauled our own water without plumbing, used outhouses, lacked electricity, had a horse and cart instead of a truck, and grew most of our own food. And we were happy. Because we had God, and in the end that's all we've ever needed. If you're defining a "livable wage" in terms of anything more than that standard, it's unreasonable.

definitions aren't really why I am here, so I will move on.

Definitions are so important! Oftentimes we talk past each other, thinking we're arguing when we actually agree on 95% of the issue, but we're using different working definitions of our words, and misinterpreting each other accordingly.

When you say "complete denial", do you mean the kind of denial of that secretly knows some unfortunate truth, or literally denying?

I have no background in psychology, but I don't think denial necessarily involves secret knowledge. I just went to research the topic, and quickly remembered that I dislike the entire field of psychology, so I didn't get far. Sorry. But no, I don't pretend to know what you really know and what you don't. That's between you and God, not me. I just think you've intentionally decided to refute God, and thereby unknowingly invited Satan to guide your thoughts.

I don't believe in either of the sides you are talking about. So it's kind of like asking "are you rooting for team A or team B", but the sports teams* that you're talking about are all fictional. It just doesn't make sense for me to say I am on a sports team that I think is made up.

That's a good analogy, and I understand your perspective. But the problem is that good and evil are entirely real, and it's absurd to pretend they're not. You're ignoring the spiritual warfare that underlies everything happening in our world, in our lives, and indeed in this very conversation. You're denying the foundational tenets of Western Civilization, based on millennia of correspondence with and guidance from the Lord our God. You arrogantly pretending you're somehow smarter than our ancestors who built this civilization with God's blessing, and what's far worse is you're arrogantly pretending you're somehow smarter than God Almighty Himself. That's why I say you're in denial. God does not like to be denied. But the Devil does, and seizes upon that denial to manipulate you.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

—Verbal Kint

I'm embracing neither. I can't embrace something I don't believe in.

But you can, and you do. When you deny God, you embrace Satan. There is no third option.

I know you don't think I was ever a christian, but when I was, I thought I had abundant evidence. But the closer I looked at my reasons for believing the more I realized they weren't good reasons.

I find that completely believable. You predicated your faith on faulty reasoning, and as a result, your faith was unstable. Solid faith cannot be predicated on reasons at all — that's what makes it faith. But when your faith is solid, you're then provided with the ability to see the abundant evidence for what it truly is. The key is that the evidence comes second, contingent on faith.

I think trying to single out a single document that defines a 246 year old country is a mistake, because no such document could possibly define such a long and chaotic history/country.

I'd say that's reasonable if I wasn't familiar with the US. But every child memorizes key lines from that single document, and learns all about how it made us the greatest country on earth. And every American refers back to it in common parlance, while discussing and debating a wide variety of issues. And that single document continues to influence all of our legislation and jurisprudence. So in the case of the US, that single document really does define our culture.

It's worth noting, though, that you mention that we're a 246 year old country, and it's 247 (welcome to 2023!), but more importantly I'd say most of what happened during those intervening years are far less important than what happened at the outset. Even if our state and federal governments were to topple, and a foreign army was to invade, American flags would still fly because our national character was established at the outset of our founding, and it cannot be destroyed.

Out of curiosity, if it wouldn't be invasive, which state are you in (or from, or most familiar with)?

However the founding fathers intended the country to always be changing and adapting, to always become better and better.

That's progressive revisionism. They most certainly did not. If they were still around today, they'd be rallying the militia.

Articles of Confederation, and it was a chaotic disaster.

You say that like it's a bad thing. In retrospect it's clear that our situation then was far preferable to where we are today. The federal government's only problem then was they couldn't get the several states to give them any money, which is a perfectly acceptable problem. What's more, the convention of the states had no authority to discard the Articles, so they remain our rightful federal law. I don't deny the fact that the Constitution is well accepted by almost 100% of American citizens, but the least we can do is restore it to its original intent. If we ever do, though, then you'll find me advocating to restore the Articles.

If the government is tiny, then corporations are unfettered, and that is just as bad. But even so, even with a small government, lobbying is still power that they would directly benefit from.

If government is tiny then businesses are tiny. You can lobby your governor just as you can lobby your next-door neighbor, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can lobby me, just as you're sorta doing now.

Paying for campaign contributions, promising contributions, etc are all also legal and considered lobbying. And it is effectively bribery. It's also legal to offer politicians lucrative job opportunities. These things are corruption and destroy our freedoms.

This is a symptom of big government. When politicians have next to no power, there's no sense in spending money to help them.

I had to go back to keep track of what we agreed(?) was the problem,

I concede I wish I was better at staying on track in this sort of enormous conversation.

I simply don't see how removing the government's ability to regulate commerce would lead to less corporate control of america.

Let's distinguish between state and federal control. I believe it's a sovereign state's role to regulate commerce within their borders as they see fit. So business sizes should vary according to state culture.

Corporations would still control our wages

I've already addressed this. It's false. When you sell your labor, you set the price you want to charge, and seek out one or more customers willing to pay that price. Corporations are nothing more than people who pay other people for their labor, as a voluntary agreement between both parties. Neither party controls the other.

place of employement, type of employement, hours, how money is distributed, the media (narrative), etc. If anything it would make it harder for the government to prevent these corporations from harming our freedom.

This is all radically disconnected from reality. Corporations don't control any of these things. You really should start a business of your own, if for no other reason than just to learn how little power it gives you.

The Netherlands ranks 11th in freedom whereas the U.S. ranks 15th on the world freedom index.

What is this "world freedom index"? You never answered that. Link?

So I would have the best of both worlds, more freedom, more safety.

You missed my point. Freedom and safety are mutually exclusive. The only good kind of safety is the switch you flip on your firearm before engaging a threat. Safety is fine when we provide it for ourselves and our families, but if a government provides it for us then we lack freedom.

It's because we are an individualist society. We simply do not care for the well-being of others as well as other nations do.

Yes, we're individualist, but that's not what individualism is.

I used to be a christian

No, you weren't. That much is abundantly clear. You have conflated salvation with religious affiliation. You have misunderstood idolatry. You have failed to grasp the dichotomy of good and evil. You have been blind to the spiritual warfare that rules our world. You deny having evidence for God's glory. You have not yet been born again. You have not yet given your life to Christ. You have not yet been saved. Once saved, always saved.

and I will refer you back to the time when the SCOTUS ruled in favor of jehovah's witnesses that the pledge of allegiance was idolatry:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-latest-controversy-about-under-god-in-the-pledge-of-allegiance

That link says nothing about idolatry.

Sexuality labels such as that one refer to one's sexual attraction, not the status of their current relationship. I am attracted to both men and women, and so by definition I am bisexual.

If you are attracted to your girlfriend, then marry her and keep her pregnant. If you find yourself attracted to a man, acknowledge that attraction as an evil temptation to sin. Repent for it, and don the armor of God that it may shield you from temptation. Know that we are all tempted to sin, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's your response to the temptation that matters.

I watch both heterosexual and homosexual content, and I enjoy both. Not everybody does that. I've been with both sexes, not everybody does that.

By "content" do you mean pornography? I appreciate that you're not being explicit here, so thank you. I don't judge you for your sins, but I do urge you to recognize them as sin, and repent for them. Your eternity is on the line.

I'm happy just the way I am.

But is God? We are to live for God, not for ourselves.

And in my experience, prayer never works.

Well it probably won't work very well if you don't first establish a relationship with Christ. Otherwise it's like receiving a call from a number that's not in your contacts — He's apt to ignore it.

Over the years I've talked with christians, countless of them have prayed for me to change, to stop being an atheist/leftist/bisexual/etc. None of it has changed a thing.

That would also require you to actually want to change, you know. Your "I'm happy just the way I am" attitude suggests you don't.

The U.S. is a right wing, authoritarian state, not a left one. It's not an objectively measurable thing, because politics is such a messy thing to study, but on the world stage we are in no way a leftist country.

Agreed that it's subjective and messy. But the list of ways in which the US is currently far-left is a long list. I'll give you a few off the top of my head, in no way close to comprehensive:

• Open borders
• No prayer in schools
• Legal marijuana
• DEI
• ESG
• Homosexuality
• Transvestites
• Paid abortion vacations
• Birth control
• Size of the federal government
• The mass media
• SPLC's influence
• Woke Hollywood

I don't think I am cherry picking or being irrational. The sea of good things the U.S. has done is just as vast as the despicable things we've done. And I would rather be truthfully depressed than happy and oblivious.

Well that says it all. Instead of giving thanks to God for being an American, you deny all that is holy, and contemplate the despicable. You are absolutely cherry-picking, and more than that you have managed to amass a basket of negativity from which to cherry-pick.

Reply to "regardless of government size", part 1 of 2:

Corporations are always incentivized to do so regardless of government size. If you're a corporation and you have the power to get politicians to get a law passed, then the law gets passed even if the fed is tiny.

A couple of problems that make this incorrect:

1. A nit-pick that I find distracting: The phrase "the Fed" always (at least in US context) refers to the Federal Reserve, a private bank in cahoots with the federal government. I know that's not what you meant.
2. I don't think you realize just how tiny the federal government used to be. There were no taxes to fund anything, aside from nominal excise taxes on imports. There were no agencies, at all — none. That's our natural federal government size. They barely had any power at all, because American government is meant to be bottom-up, with families and townships having the most power, and the federal government the least.

So no, corporations are not incentivized to lobby a tiny government which exists strictly to protect the people's liberty, any more than they're incentivized to lobby you and me personally.

The root problem is lobbying (bribery) being legal. Without it we would be in a far better place.

Except lobbying isn't bribery. It's just speech, similar to advertising. I can tell my senator how great the Fediverse is and how he should make an account here, and that would count as lobbying.

The root problem is that the federal government has amassed far too much power. And to break that down, there are mainly two parts to that root problem:

1. The Interstate Commerce Clause
2. The Necessary and Proper Clause

Both have been grossly misinterpreted in violation of the Tenth Amendment to give the federal government unrestricted control over the states. The solution is for SCOTUS to apply the doctrine of originalism to restore these two clauses to their intended meaning. If they have the cahoonas to do that, ~2.87 million federal civilian employees will suddenly be out of a job, and many of our lost freedoms will be restored overnight. Oh yeah, and the incentive to lobby will move to the state level, where governors and state legislatures actually have to worry about losing taxpayers over bad policies.

I think the issue of government size is more nuanced than that. There are things that republicans want that would make the government bigger, and there are things that democrats/leftists want that would make it smaller.

Sure, well both DNC and RNC are coalitions, and we don't all agree on the details. But my view that the sole responsibility of the federal government is to protect the people's liberty is a fairly generic Republican view. Border protection and national defense are the only expensive requirements of that.

There is definitely some regulation that needs to be abandoned, certain zoning laws immediately come to mind,

Agreed!

but the largest reason why we have so little freedom here in comparison is because of government surveillance programs,

Agreed!

corporate control

No!

And ranking freedom solely on economic freedom is not a good methodology.

Agreed!

Reply to "regardless of government size", part 2 of 2:

I don't want to make this a debate over definition, but that isn't anywhere close to the definition of secularism:

I was all ready to reply that the wiki article has been biased by secularists, but then I read it (well, I skimmed the beginning of it), and it seems largely agreeable, and supports my personal definition. The social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame, are both completely in line with people "seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion." The article also notes that:

The term "secularism" has a broad range of meanings, and in the most schematic, may encapsulate any stance that promotes the secular in any given context.

That's awkward wording, but does indeed agree with my personal definition.

Atheism and agnosticism is not something to be ashamed about. People should only believe things in which their is sufficient evidence for, and there is insufficient evidence for religion. And atheism is not an embrace of Satan, we atheists don't believe in Satan either.

I know you believe Satan doesn't exist. You're in complete denial of the massive influence he has over you.

You're either with God or you're against Him. That's a really important concept that you seem to keep ignoring. When you reject God, you embrace Satan — even if you're unaware that you're doing so — and even if you think that's impossible — that's what you're doing. And that most certainly is something to be ashamed about.

As for evidence, once you accept Christ, you will finally understand that abundant evidence is everywhere you look.

I'll refer you to my other post that had quotes from the founding fathers explicitly stating that the U.S. was not founded as a christian nation.

…which I rebutted. I wonder if you're missing some of my replies. (Edit: maybe I rebutted it after you wrote this.)

The delcaration of independence is not a legal document or part of american law.

It's the primary document to establish our culture and our national identity. I can't overemphasize that point. When was the last time you read it?

I've spent the better part of two decades debating with christians online in various forums, so I have read quite a lot of it at this point.

Do you suppose your motivation to do that was provided by God or Satan? ("Neither" would be an invalid answer.)

I really just don't have as much free time as I'd like. I have a full time job, a disabled girl friend, ~3 active friend/family groups, etc. At best I get an hour or two a day to myself and I'd rather do something else other than moderating.

That makes sense. But then how do you find this time for long-form arguments with strangers on the internet?

What you're describing is laissez-faire capitalism, and every time it has been tried it has been an objective failure. It doesn't result in tiny businesses, it results in huge ones that create corporate towns.

Fiddlesticks. Look at Hong Kong until China annexed it. Small and medium-sized companies flourished. There are a ton of similar examples. I challenge you to point out a single huge multinational corporation (historical or present day) that grew without government assistance.

Companies do just the same when given the opportunity. They just hire mercenaries and assassins, and that's where the term "bannana republic" comes from.

Yeah no. Read the wiki on banana republics. From the intro:

[…] thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, […]

Their governments instigate and enable their problem.

I'm not talking about small family owned businesses, I am talking about mega-corporations.

It seems we're in general agreement that small family owned businesses are far preferable to mega-corporations. (After all, we're both here in the Fediverse.)

Our only differences on this topic seem to be that I view small businesses as the essential heart of American market economics, and I view mega-corps as mutants resulting from government bloat.

You keep failing until you starve to death, the medical debt collectors come, etc. The american dream has long been dead because we do not live in a society with social mobility.

Again, you focused on negativity to the exclusion of truth. The American dream is alive and well, and there are numerous success stories all around us. The idea that it's "dead" (let alone long dead) has no basis in reality.

A good example is Donald Trump, who took a small loan of a million dollars … (I'm joking, but my above point is true.)

I do not have anywhere near the amount of money to start one.

Depending on the type of business, you really don't need any money, or perhaps just a few dollars. Going back to my fruit cart example, it doesn't cost any money to pick fruit and sell it. And there are a ton of sub-$100 sweaty-startup ideas out there. You may not have the time or the drive to start one, but you certainly have the money.

Not all companies are bad ones to work at, but my point is that not everybody can just up and move to a new job when there are so many companies that are like this.

I have no doubt that some employees who hate their jobs feel trapped. But I contend that's just their feeling, and they're not really trapped at all. Especially in the post-covid epoch, when there's such a labor shortage that you could walk into just about any business and get an interview.

Then it sounds like you're lucky.

"Lucky" is not the right word. I didn't grow up here. I've lived in a bunch of places, from urban to suburban, and now rural. I moved here because I like the area and the people here. And there are plenty of local small businesses I support as much as I can.