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Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

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Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#131
post #53
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of downvoting the parent, make an actual argument instead. You'll find it difficult. If the current shutdown proves anything, it's that many functions of the federal government are un-essential to daily life. Those un-essential parts should be eliminated.

Even the 'essential parts' would be better if the government had competition. If one provider of the essential services shut down, they'd go out of business and another would take their place. People would pay the provider offering the best service for the best price - and the prices would generally be lower because competition drives out inefficiencies.

So we all end up paying many multiples for incomplete, expensive private services to replace the National Weather Service and the like?

Eastern Oregon has gone the route at one point for fire fighting, and recently went and closed libraries, leaving it to local towns to rebuild said service. Private offerings for services that are a public good tend to either be expensive and poor quality (unreliable, limited service) for these things that were formerly community funded, leaving me with little faith that privitization would do anything besides add cost.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it really did take 2 million dollars. The video explains why. We have decided to make a lot of trade offs when doing government infrastructure work that makes it really expensive. But this isn't government in general, it's American government specifically that is really inefficient at building things. In Texas I've been to over ten government run parks (like ones you'd go camping in), and I've never even hear…

If given the option for a $2M toilet where "the locals are engaged", and takes 4 years to build, or a $300k toilet which is built in 6 months, which do you think most people would opt for? The real problem is government is too damn big that it becomes impossible to separate out such concerns from every other aspect of government, and each time government expands, it adds more inefficiencies. A park should be a self-c…

> If given the option for a $2M toilet where "the locals are engaged", and takes 4 years to build, or a $300k toilet which is built in 6 months, which do you think most people would opt for?

You and I both know this is not the cause of a 86% of expenditures.

> The real problem is government is too damn big that it becomes impossible to separate out such concerns from every other aspect of government, and each time government expands, it adds more inefficiencies.

Do you mean too damn big by % of gdp? If so we could double the size of social security and not change the costs of infrastructure.

Do you mean too damn big by employment? If so during census years infrastructure costs don't change much.

If you mean by number of regulations? I think reducing regulations could definitely decrease the cost of infrastructure, but this isn't what most people mean when they talk about the size of government. Texas is a very conservative state with little welfare, not very many services provided by the government, but we have an enormous amount of regulations. An incredible amount of red tape and laws.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If given the option for a $2M toilet where "the locals are engaged", and takes 4 years to build, or a $300k toilet which is built in 6 months, which do you think most people would opt for? The real problem is government is too damn big that it becomes impossible to separate out such concerns from every other aspect of government, and each time government expands, it adds more inefficiencies. A park should be a self-c…

> If given the option for a $2M toilet where "the locals are engaged", and takes 4 years to build, or a $300k toilet which is built in 6 months, which do you think most people would opt for? You and I both know this is not the cause of a 86% of expenditures. > The real problem is government is too damn big that it becomes impossible to separate out such concerns from every other aspect of government, and each time go…

> You and I both know this is not the cause of a 86% of expenditures.

This is missing my point. The point is that if it were a private development, then they would be sacked and replaced. This isn't some isolated case and many areas of government are similarly ineffective. The problem is that you can't just replace the one area - the government isn't modular enough to fix its individual parts - it's a monolith.

When I say the government is too big - it's trying to do too many things, and does most of them badly. Markets are better at selecting for efficiency than a single centralized entity. Each 'ministry' or whatnot should be a distinct entity, and should operate like a for-profit business. If one ministry is performing poorly, it could be replaced with a different company in a free market. The threat that they could lose such a contract would force them to perform. No performance, no job - like the rest of us.

To be clear, I'm not for "no government," but for very limited government and little regulation. Governments should not be interfering in markets for instance. Things like environmental regulations are obviously more complex issues which require people to come together for solutions rather than competing.

Another example of a more free market is the education system in Sweden. Instead of funding people to go to the nearest public school to them, they give vouchers for education which are redeemable at any school, private or public, and children can choose. There are no restrictions on location. Because private schooling is almost always better than public schooling, this system has caused the public schools to improve out of necessity - they're competing for children to get the funding - in turn the private schools need to innovate to retain their edge. The result is an overall improvement of the entire education of the country, and reduced government spending.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#134
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is asking for less than 1/1000 of our annual budget for border security. We spend 10x that on foreign aid annually. This entire thing is political BS over what amounts to a rounding error while congress almost unanimously approved $38 billion in money for Israel

> Trump is asking for less than 1/1000 of our annual budget for border security. No, he's asking for it for a wall, not for border security; wall's are't security, they're security theater. Actual security requires people, not walls. Most illegals fly in on Visa's and just over stay, they don't sneak in through the desert. Walls are easily by ladders, ropes, and shovels, only an idiot like Trump would want to spend b…

What is this meme that walls are ineffective? The only places that are/were effective without walls shot people on sight (Dominican Republic for example).

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#135
post #25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government departments are legally required to budget for the possibility of a shutdown, which means they have to keep the money around that they will use to shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act

Yes, but this coupled with the fact they shut down things that don't otherwise really require a human to actively working proves that it's all just a political ploy.

Web sites are not maintenance free nor cost free. Sudden traffic spikes, hardware failures or new vulnerabilities can easily make web sites down. It need manual human intervention to restore. If that human intervention is not possible due to the law, It's best to just shutdown.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#136
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the 'essential parts' would be better if the government had competition. If one provider of the essential services shut down, they'd go out of business and another would take their place. People would pay the provider offering the best service for the best price - and the prices would generally be lower because competition drives out inefficiencies.

So we all end up paying many multiples for incomplete, expensive private services to replace the National Weather Service and the like? Eastern Oregon has gone the route at one point for fire fighting, and recently went and closed libraries, leaving it to local towns to rebuild said service. Private offerings for services that are a public good tend to either be expensive and poor quality (unreliable, limited service…

If there are multiple services which provide national weather, the ones which offer the best service at the best price will succeed - if they can stay in business. The point is that they must be profitable, or at the very least break even. If people knew the precise cost of the weather service, they could make their own choice about whether or not it is worth funding.

Government is like a conglomerate and each area of interest is like a subsidiary. The problem is, every single one of their subsidiaries is constantly in the red, year on year. They're completely bankrupt! The only way they survive is by lending more money and collecting more taxes, instead of operating like for-profit businesses which create wealth, rather than take it away.

You can still have community funded enterprises, but they need to be affordable, in the sense that there is not an infinite pot of money they can keep pulling from if they overspend. A fire-service, for example, could charge residents of an area a small monthly fee for operating in that area - and those not willing to pay the fee would simply be deprioritized in the event of any fire on their property. Business owners could pay a premium to have a higher priority. Ideally the fire service will operate in profit, and such profits can be used to improve the service or even partially reimburse the creditors if they've 'overpaid' for the service.

This kind of system obviously can't operate together with the public service if taxes are forcibly collected for the latter. People aren't going to pay for something they've already paid for. To put these systems in place, the existing public services need to be privatized (joint-stock where the users of the service can be part owners), and their tax needs to be reduced by at least the amount they were previously paying which contributed to the former loss-making enterprise.

The overall point is that this system can be self-correcting on a per-service basis. You don't need to wait 4 years to pick between two companies to perform all the services if they're doing badly. If a service is doing badly, and there is a demand for something better, somebody will fill that gap. The mere presence of a big monolithic government is a hinderance to innovation in any service that it provides. The only way the services get improved are from the inside - there is no outside pressure to innovate - much less so if it means that the people inside might be risking their own jobs by making the service more efficient.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#137

Serious question for US members of HN: how do you tolerate these shutdowns? I mean, apart from the loss of services, including websites, it seems like many federal workers aren't being paid. Will they be paid back after the shutdown impasse is resolved or is the money they didn't/couldn't earn lost to them. This seems unfair and, in the meantime, how are they supposed to go about their lives? Overall it seems potenti…

I hate that the government is shut down. It's stupid that people's livelihoods are a bargaining chip, especially when every administration talks about increasing jobs.

But it hasn't personally affected me yet. I am not a government employee and at the moment I am not in need of any of the government services that are shut down.

As for if they will get paid afterward, well legally the government cannot promise that. Legally it's possible that the new budget may even disband something like the TSA and all of the workers who have been working for free would be even more screwed. But historically every shutdown ended with giving back pay to the workers who had to work for free. They just can't guarantee it.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#138

Serious question for US members of HN: how do you tolerate these shutdowns? I mean, apart from the loss of services, including websites, it seems like many federal workers aren't being paid. Will they be paid back after the shutdown impasse is resolved or is the money they didn't/couldn't earn lost to them. This seems unfair and, in the meantime, how are they supposed to go about their lives? Overall it seems potenti…

I hate that the government is shut down. It's stupid that people's livelihoods are a bargaining chip, especially when every administration talks about increasing jobs. But it hasn't personally affected me yet. I am not a government employee and at the moment I am not in need of any of the government services that are shut down. As for if they will get paid afterward, well legally the government cannot promise that. L…

> As for if they will get paid afterward, well legally the government cannot promise that. Legally it's possible that the new budget may even disband something like the TSA and all of the workers who have been working for free would be even more screwed. But historically every shutdown ended with giving back pay to the workers who had to work for free. They just can't guarantee it.

Yes and no. Excepted service employees, which includes most of the TSA, are guaranteed to receive back pay for time worked during the shutdown, as agencies are required to pay for services performed. However, Congress and the President must pass and a sign a bill explicitly paying workers who were furloughed (i.e., non-essential and non-excepted employees).

As the shutdown continues, excepted and essential workers may be entitled to double pay due to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> House (Democrats), Senate (Republicans), and President have to agree on a singular solution The House and Senate can override the president with a super majority. They don't technically need the president's approval. However getting a super majority in the senate to override a veto will be difficult as most Republicans see loyalty to Trump as important for re-election.

> The House and Senate can override the president with a super majority. They don't technically need the president's approval. Senate is the place where bills die. You've got not only the Republican-controlled majority, but Democrats can filibuster anything they disagree with in the Senate. So to pass the Senate normally, you need to have Republicans agree, Democrats "Not Protest". A Supermajority Senate override of…

The Senate unanimously agreed to a spending bill near the end of 2018. The 2019 House passed a version of that bill, and that went to the 2019 Senate, where McConnell won't let it come up for a vote.

So, we do have a spending plan available that does have widespread approval among both parties in the Senate, enough to override a veto if the Senators who support it would also support overriding a veto.

Re: Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His base wants the temper tantrum and the shutdown. The fact of the matter is, Trump hasn't lost any ground in his approval rating over this yet. With that being said, Democrats don't want the wall. They were pretty much elected to stop the wall and have a huge majority in the House. I don't see how this gets resolved at all. To have the shutdown end, the House (Democrats), Senate (Republicans), and President have to…

I think it’s more accurate to say the Democrats (and many of their supporters) don’t want a Trump success. Most or all of the current players that were in office in 2006 voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and the same applies to the 2013 Senate immigration overhaul. It has little to do with the subject of the budget allocation and everything to do with obstructing (for better or worse depending on your own views…

> Most or all of the current players that were in office in 2006 voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006

...and in retrospect that turned out to be ineffective and probably not worth the money. I'm happy if the people still around who voted for it learned from that and instead support more effective border security methods instead of simply repeating old mistakes on a larger scale.

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