WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

> Sometimes, even as a consumer, this is desired

I don't understand this argument. The goal is not to be intrinsically "slow", but to be suitably "careful". If you can be as careful as needed, but execute that careful process in such a way that no time is wasted, that's a win. The two are separate questions.

To put it differently: high-security systems programmers don't move their fingers more slowly on the keyboards because "going slow is better". They put checks in place, and they take as much time as is needed to do things right, but padding that time just for the sake of "slowness" helps nobody.

> Government is also inefficient by design. Imagine the gov’t pivoting to different laws every week - it would be completely unsustainable and would drive people crazy.

Speed of change has nothing to do with efficiency of implementation. I'm talking about writing laws that are efficient for companies to deal with, not streamlining the law-passing process so that legislators themselves are unburdened. It's a totally separate thing.

> inefficiency can be a feature...for big companies because it creates a slow and expensive hurdle for smaller competitors

This is true, and could be part of the reason this problem hasn't been addressed. But corporate lobbyists are just one of the many forces influencing legislation, and formalizing ideas around "efficient regulation" would only shed even more light on bad-faith attempts at making laws less efficient for the purpose of moat-building.

I'm surprised that you think that too much legislating is the problem. No legislation can even happen without bipartisan support unless one party has control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, AND the Presidency. Oh, and unless there's a supermajority in the Senate, the minority party can filibuster most legislation anyway.

Sounds like a great way to ensure that compromise has to happen, except that the party in power ends up getting credit for anything that gets done (or doesn't get done), plus to the other side they're dangerous fanatics who can't be trusted.

If you're in the minority, why not just ensure that the ruling party (if it can even be called that) fails to accomplish anything? Your side will love blocking their agenda, and if enough people aren't paying attention maybe they'll blame the other side for "not getting anything done".

As long as your party can hold out hope for not losing too badly in the next election, the status quo works just fine.

Across the US political spectrum free trade has been embraced by economists and politicians alike, all with the idea that capitalism will force liberalism in places like China. And yet, here we are 50 years later and the CCP is as strong as ever. Instead of a growing middle class resulting in better working conditions, it resulted in an insulated and complacent privileged class who either can't or won't demand better working conditions for the less privileged, for fear that they or their families will become state enemies. China's currency manipulation and curbing of worker's rights ensures industrial equivalents in the US are incapable of competing.

So many economists have rationalized the benefits of free trade as being that the country who can make things most efficiently and with the best quality will succeed, but they ignore what goes into "efficiency". But worker safety protections (especially from litigation risk), higher wages, and better time off are all significant sources of inefficiency, from a production standpoint.

The market devotee acknowledges that the market solution to worker protections is unionization and job-shopping, but it's nearly guaranteed to put enough pressure on corporations to offshore as soon as possible. Unions help wages for those jobs which stay, but guarantee there aren't that many left. Free trade with places like China and Mexico is stacking the deck against American labor.

Conservatives have long used unions as a scapegoat for this problem, but it doesn't explain why it's more often the case that a corporation offshores operations instead of moving operations to a state without government mandated unions. There is some truth to their argument, but I don't think they understand that basic safety protections, natural market forces, and potential litigation all contribute to a significantly more costly American worker than one abroad, even if they aren't in a union.

I think that one of the central reasons this has been happening is that the American ruling class has been insulated in their ivory towers and Ivy League schools for too long. They're genuinely more concerned with "saving the world" than creating a cohesive, prosperous society. It explains why so many lives and money is used to intervene in countries on the other side of the planet, why immigration from 3rd world countries is heavily promoted despite fierce resistance from the lower class, and why they have all but abandoned the idea of low-skilled labor becoming more valuable.

yea it's a real coincidence that it coincides with the death of representative money

> As this would depress salaries everywhere, that's very unlikely.

This part of your comment was super confusing. So much so it seems better in reverse:

>As that's very unlikely, this would depress salaries everywhere.