US government does not have a good record. I feel like anyone that thinks it’s particularly bad now needs to read some history books. Obviously I wish it were better but this is the same group that brought you a dozen wars in the 20th century, Japanese internment, forced segregation, price controls, nuclear weapons used on civilians, and so on.
My guess is that it has more to do with reading news sources particularly aligned with one political viewpoint than the actual facts of what the government is doing.
This kind of opinion seems logical only if you don't look at history. I'm struggling to think of a government which is effective today but didn't have some horrible actions in the near past. At best I think you'll get functionally "minor" states like Switzerland or Denmark that weren't really in the powerful position the US was/is in.
And so it's much better to compare the US government's record with the record of other states, and in that comparison I think the US comes out reasonably well. Not the best, but certainly not the worst.
How does this show that corporations have too much power? We are literally discussing that this act could easily be stopped by legislation. Doesn’t that imply they have less power than the electorate?
A corporation having to ability to bribe people who need money to pay their rent and healthcare in order to save their own image is indeed "too much power".
> We are literally discussing that this act could easily be stopped by legislation. Doesn’t that imply they have less power than the electorate?
Not when they have full time people dedicated to lobbying the legislation. That's the issue on why things move so slow or halt when it comes to really voting on such policy.
I don't understand your argument. Contracts can generally be entered into by private individuals as well as by legal entities like the state.
If you're making an argument that the right to contract should be unlimited between individuals (and perhaps unlimited between legal entities), but should be limited when made between individuals and artificial legal entities, that would be an interesting framing to explore. But afaik it's not really a popular one.
(although I don't know that such a framework would actually invalidate what I said, especially for autocratic totalitarian states - each citizen of North Korea could just as easily be said to have a contract with Kim Jong Un himself)
Everyone who has a job that requires them to speak for their employer signs away their “free speech” right to an extent. Your proposal would not lead to a tenable system.
We have a system of laws that decide which private contracts are enforceable and which are not. So we can try to change the law but as it stands we have decided that this one is enforceable.
FWIW I agree about not enforcing non disparagement clauses but legally that not the world we live in.
"we" is a strong word here. More like some people 50-80 years ago decided to at worst rule against the worker's best interest, and at best chose to ignore it and pretend things would work out with a "gentlemans' agreement".
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