People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

This is an unorthodox way of looking at this, and could only be persuasive with actual data.

The economic argument for government providing public services is actually that for public goods, the incentives on the individual lead to sub-optimal outcomes (that’s partly just the definition of a public good).

Just because voters vote for government that may be less good at providing that public good (let’s say police protection) is not an argument that this completely eliminates any benefit from that service being provided as a public good.

From the simple example, the Democrats may provide less optimal policing than Republicans (wasting money on nanny state directives) does not mean the service can effectively provided by the private market.

You’re positing that sort inverse incentives apply when voters are choosing the governmental provision of public services. This seems unlikely to be true in the aggregate because voters do not get to choose politicians who are going to pursue policies to benefit themselves, as an individual, when they vote. As you point out, they may vote for totally psychological benefits.

So the tension is not really over the size of government; it is over making the correct determination of how much of a good or service is comprised of being a “public good.”

Classic public good problems, like imposing the correct costs on pollution, can’t be solved by wishing them away.

What you’re complaint more seems to be with is that democracy allows elements of self, or class, interests into individuals voting choices. The solution to this would be some kind of perfect benevolent dictator, who would make the optimum determination as to which goods should be provided by the government, and dedicate the correct resources to them.

The problem with this, of course, is again the incentives on the holders of power distort their decision making to their own benefit, as had be shown over and over in the real world.

Thank you for being you. It has been very lonely for me to propagate that very idea, esp. given how tied humans are to the idea that they are smart. On the spectrum humans use, I'm certainly on the high-end of it, but, gosh, we are such retards. We only think that we think.

To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion, settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb".

I like to view our intellect as a tool for survival of our species. By that measure, we are doing fairly well. We used to get wiped out by minor stuff like not enough food, not enough protection from the elements and other animals, diseases, we have eradicated the majority of these things hindering our survival.

I hypothesise that most of the people here (on average) on HN are highly educated. It's kind of fashionable and almost necessary social behavior to be humble in your own intellect. By all objective measures the people on HN are really fucking smart but you can't say that of course because that's "arrogant". Yes, I too think I'm stupid and suffer from impostor syndrome having two graduates degree in applied math.

Anyway, humans, compared to other animals we compete with for survival, food, and territory, are doing really well. I don't see any cows on the moon yet.

No, this just shows some folks aren't specialized in the same way you are. Everyone has their areas of non-specialty, and everyone has limited mental energy to devote to things. Everyone sometimes has a "stupid" moment. But I'm going to guess every one of these folks you talk to have things they know that, if you tried them, you'd seem pretty stupid as well.

This is easy to derive if you have a little algebra, but it is shoved at kids before they can derive it, so they don't understand it (which is anti-math). The dull ones go along with it, but the brighter ones often think they are stupid. I (and independently others) have worked out visual proofs of both fraction multiplication and division for younger kids.

But I mostly think that "fractions as ratios" can be left until the child is older and has more chops for derivations.

The Greeks thought about these as different ways to measure intervals, and they worked out the idea of "common measure" as a good solution to dealing with these problems.