Mitt Romney | Khannea Suntzu |
1. Corporations are the basic units of society. Corporations are people, and the overriding purpose of an economy is to maximize corporate profits. When profits are maximized, the economy grows fastest. This growth benefits everyone in the form greater output, better products and services, and higher share prices. | 1. Corporations are organized self-interest promoting gangs of people. Corporations exemplify societal attempts at hoarding scarce resources. Such attempts may stimulate progress, but in all cases the actions of all corporations must be scrutinized whether or not they inflict more damage than they produce for their shareholders or society. If a gang of people, corporation or not, consistently results in more damage for society than benefit, it must be interpreted as a criminal entity and all who enable such an entity must be held accountable as members of a criminal organization. |
2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. If workers do not contribute to that goal, they should be fired. If they cannot then find other work that helps maximize profits in another company, their wages must be too high, and they must therefore accept steadily lower wages until they find a job. | 2. Human beings come first. All other considerations come secondarily. Humans must be protected from aggression from other humans, whether or not this aggression is intentional or not, unconscious or not, unavoidable or not. The function of lawful society is to protect all its members from predation. One form of predation is marginalization. Corporations by virtue of their nature tend to marginalize human beings, by means of exploitative practices or by means of socio-economic displacement. The state regards corporations as a means to secure income and tolerates corporations only in that capacity. The state protects all its citizens from the displacing effects of corporations and other potentially predatorily self-interested factions. |
3. All factors of production — capital, physical plant and equipment, workers — are fungible and should be treated the same. Any that fail to deliver high competitive returns should be replaced or discarded. This keeps an economy efficient. Fairness is and should be irrelevant. | 3. Society generates collective means of force in the form of a legal apparatus, courts of justice, and means to correct malfeasance. If a gang plots to marginalize large numbers of people in a society, then this gang will be held accountable as a criminal element. The citizens in society receive robust protections from such dangers, personal (criminals) or natural (a large storm) and the state levvies the means to do so. |
4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. They should not be used as excuses to constrain the pursuit of profits through regulation. | 4. The state uses all means at its disposal to mitigate negative effects of corporations in a rational manner. Those who cause damage to the people of society, to the environment, must pay a high price for such acts in the form of a tax or in the form of a penalty. |
5. Individual worth depends on net worth — how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. Any person with enough intelligence and ambition can make a fortune. Failure to do so is sign of moral and intellectual inferiority. | 5. Humans are the measure of all things. The state works to guarantee freedom. One freedom comes in the form of a state guaranteed protection from predation, a state guaranteed minimum living standard, but also in the form of a state guarantee that all its citizens can pursue financial success. The state is a facilitator that proactively aims to balance these functions, and the state seeks to minimize its footprint in terms of levying tax, against these services. |
6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. They should not receive food stamps, Medicaid, or any other form of social subsidy. Coddling leads to a weaker society and a weaker economy. | 6. The state guarantees a spartan minimum living standard to all its constituents. Even if people do not (want to) work, they receive a spartan minimum set of services, which will include some money, food, spartan housing and base medical services, and quite likely some other things as well. The state exists to accommodate the needs of its constituents. |
7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. It is the right and responsibility of individuals and corporations to exploit every tax loophole they (and their tax attorneys) can find in order to pay the lowest taxes possible. | 7. Taxes are a necessary evil to redistribute the fruits of the talented and the predatory towards those of less blessings and those who are lazy. Those who shirk taxes commit a crime. |
8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. Any means used to win the game is legitimate even if it involves lying and cheating, as long as it gains more supporters than it loses.
8. | Politics is a necessary evil. Politics should be to serve the constituents of the country. A politicians who places the interest of a minority before that of the majority commits a crime of treason. |
9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. The rich must therefore do whatever is necessary to prevent the majority from exercising its will, including spending large sums of money on lobbyists and political campaigns. The most virtuous among the rich will go a step further and run for president. | 9. Democracy is the best system there is and it should aim to better itself towards greater justice, fairness, effectiveness and efficiency. |
10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money. Patriotism is a matter of guarding our economy from unfair traders and undocumented immigrants, rather than joining together for the common good. We owe nothing to one another as citizens of the same society. | 10. Society forms a state, which is a collective means where the virtuous, talented, hard working and resourceful will able to seek fair reward for their efforts, but where no one is left behind. The state does not predate on citizens of other countries. The state does good and minimizes force. |