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People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

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Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#111

Post by bigpicture »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

I don't think economists agree with the concept of Big Government. Here's an entertaining back and forth between Thaler and Gene Fama about the efficient market theory [1]:

> Q: So policy makers should use bubbles as a way to step in?

> Thaler: Yes, but very gently. It’s not like I think policy makers know what’s going to happen, but if they see what looks disturbing, they can lean against the wind a little bit. That’s as far as I would go. We both agree that markets, good or bad, are the best thing we’ve got going. Nobody has devised a way of allocating resources that’s better.

> Fama: We disagree about whether policy makers are likely to get it right, though. On balance, I think they are likely to cause more harm than good.

[1] http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2016/video/are-mark...

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#112

Post by pretendscholar »

xd2024 wrote: post #91
ythn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarians are the new advocates for small government. Libertarians = Arch Linux (lean, mean, minimal) Everybody else = Windows or Mac (i.e. huge operating system that tries to protect users from everything under the sun)

snap Yep, this is going in my cringe compilation.

Keep /pol/ memes on /pol/.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#113

Post by expertentipp »

dugluak wrote: post #62

sometimes some people purposely create hard systems for others for their own benefit.

The competition for resources, influence, safety, and sexual partners is an attrition warfare. Try working in more than two countries in the same year and preparing the tax declaration becomes an impossible task. Those with power or money don’t even see their tax own declarations. Local politician or some significant figure gets beaten - all media scream for justice, prosecutors investigate, courts process the case. Average Joe gets beaten - welcome the medical expenses, nobody cares, don’t even bother with the police procedures. Freaking frontend development - HTML was designed as permissive so that anyone can put together their silly website. Since Google, Facebook, and Microsoft took over it’s among the most frustrating domains to work on, and so on...

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#114

Post by dbingham »

gascan wrote: post #56
barrkel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many of our problems are collective action problems: where it makes sense for individuals to defect on their own, and they can only raise the standard for the group if they act together. At different scales this means unionization and professional organizations, government regulation, and international regulation, to prevent whole countries from defecting - this is in large part what the EU is about, and a signif…

As I see it, the corruption challenge of collective action is because it is so often not carefully, purposefully structured. Government is constructed with the express purpose of checking power. I read a bit I liked a while back about early feminism, in which members rejected wholesale the idea of power structures & authority, and established no authority. The author relates, however, that the power vacuum was natura…

As someone who's participated in many organizations and movements that were purposefully against power structures and authority, I can tell you that it can go either way.

I've seen it work, where people found ways to fluidly hold each other accountable and natural leaders gently stepped into the power vacuums with out any kind of formalized authority. And I've seen it fail catastrophically in a myriad of ways. It really comes down to the people who are involved, and how intentionally they approach the organizational problem.

I've also seen larger scale organizations that intentionally attacked this problem and created formalized structures that were built to minimize concentrated power and instead keep it distributed. It was essentially a formalization of the first case where the no-authority / structure model worked.

So it's doable. You can have collective action with out concentrated power and hierarchy. It just takes intention and strong (but compassionate) social accountability.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#119

Post by Facemelters »

ythn wrote: post #74
yosito wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems the current Republican establishment is the exact opposite of that ideal.

Libertarians are the new advocates for small government. Libertarians = Arch Linux (lean, mean, minimal) Everybody else = Windows or Mac (i.e. huge operating system that tries to protect users from everything under the sun)

This is what happens when engineers receive very little formal liberal arts education.

Cringe.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#120

Post by aalleavitch »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #82
WilliamEdward wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't have to be an endless hierarchy of people looking over one another. For example, we could watch the people that watch us.

Even if we're all watching each other, we still all have our own incentives and not so obvious irrationalities.

Then the problem becomes identifying and accounting for these incentives and irrationalities.
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