Why Governments Fail • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Governments Fail

#41

Post by jrwoodruff » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #14

The problem is that nobody cares about corruption, or the so-called "lobbying". Big companies get their way at the expense of regular citizens meanwhile police and other agencies are busy enforcing big pharma monopoly on drugs. Most governments run until they are exposed and people are mad enough to march on the streets, or they simply run out of "their" monopoly money. To improve that we need a ruthless agency that…

>a ruthless agency that will remove corruption from politics once and for all.

Used to be called a free press, until we allowed massive mergers creating single companies with control of a massive media market share, and journalism trade unions to be eliminated, leaving journalists no choice but to cover what they're told.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#42

Post by paulpauper » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

>Cowen: There's been a decline in entrepreneurship, a decline in the rate of innovation, a decline in people moving across the country. People are bringing up their children in highly paranoid ways. Just general risk aversion is going up quite strongly.

yeah it's hard to be risk-taking when you aren't a tenured professor, I suppose. Moving is expensive and time consuming. Tyler says this same line in every interview, about how people need to move more and how people are too averse to risk and complacent. But there is plenty of risk-taking though. Look at all the speculation in crypto, or young people making huge, speculative options bets on r/wallstreetbets, or the web 2.0 tech scene. Coinbase went public a few weeks ago. To say there is stagnation or aversion to risk taking , goes against the empirical evidence otherwise. Also, entrepreneurship has a high failure rate and is very expensive on an inflationary-adjusted basis (insurance,eadvertising, rent, marketing, etc all very expensive). Unless the VC bears the risk by writing the check, I cannot blame people for choosing to not start businesses.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#43

Post by mcculley » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #33

yosito wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we really want to build our society to survive viruses with the fewest causalities or are there perhaps higher ideals (freedom, self determiniation) that we should aspire to? I don't see why these have to be mutually exclusive goals. Arguably, there are better ways to get an entire society to cooperate toward a goal without resorting to authoritarianism. This sort of societal engineering is demonstrated in relig…

It seems clear to me that "religions, cults, and political tribes" that enforce uniform behavior are by definition restricting freedom. Which is not to say that freedom is never worth restricting. My general point was that I prefer American notions of freedom to East Asian notions of freedom.

This is a false dichotomy. We don't have only U.S. apathy and East Asian collectivism as our choices. We could invest in public health infrastructure. We won't, but that is another topic.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#44

Post by jl2718 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

These are all reasons why governments fail to do anything useful. But we have numerous modern examples of dysfunctional kleptocracies persisting for generations. Governments fail, as in, stop functioning entirely, for only one reason: they go broke. If the money keeps flowing, they don’t care about any of this stuff. Sure, go ahead and vote. If that had worked in those countries, they wouldn’t have become dysfunctional kleptocracies in the first place. Just watch; they’ll all go broke before even considering reform, and then only in exchange for more money.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#45

Post by watwut » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #38

If otherwise young, healthy ppl were dropping dead in droves because of this, then I think there would have been more more mobilization, cooperation, and compliance, but the later data showed Covid only being slightly more deadly than the flu for young and middle-aged people instead of 40x as deadly as originally feared.So the urgency and concern began to dissipate by mid-2020 when the studies came about affirming a…

> Covid only being slightly more deadly than the flu for young and middle-aged people

That is not true. Flu is significantly less deadly for the same age bracket. You have to compare young healthy people dying from flu with young heathy people dying from covid.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#46

Post by User23 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #20

varispeed wrote: post #14

The problem is that nobody cares about corruption, or the so-called "lobbying". Big companies get their way at the expense of regular citizens meanwhile police and other agencies are busy enforcing big pharma monopoly on drugs. Most governments run until they are exposed and people are mad enough to march on the streets, or they simply run out of "their" monopoly money. To improve that we need a ruthless agency that…

This misses the actual mechanism by which political corruption works. Lobbying is merely any person going in to press their interests with their representatives. Where large, monied interests rig the game is because they run election campaigns and implant narratives in the media. In other words, the mechanism by which lobbyists get their way is by weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their interests. It's mark…

Put more simply, lobbyists are just the bag men. They facilitate payoffs that are laundered through junkets, book deal advances, insider trading opportunities, and who knows what else. The lobbying firms certainly have little or no idea why the proposed bill they are selling was crafted.

It’s a sobering realization that none of our elected legislators are competent to actually write laws. Occasionally you’ll see an example where they’ll have a staff attorney draft something for the purpose of political grandstanding, but that’s a sideshow compared to the amount of legislation written by the people with the real power.

The dynamic of how the sausage is made in DC is why, incidentally, Trump had to go. For all his many many faults, one thing he did right was bring buying legal privilege in the form of laws or federal regulations to a grinding halt.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#47

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

jrwoodruff wrote: post #41

varispeed wrote: post #14

The problem is that nobody cares about corruption, or the so-called "lobbying". Big companies get their way at the expense of regular citizens meanwhile police and other agencies are busy enforcing big pharma monopoly on drugs. Most governments run until they are exposed and people are mad enough to march on the streets, or they simply run out of "their" monopoly money. To improve that we need a ruthless agency that…

>a ruthless agency that will remove corruption from politics once and for all. Used to be called a free press, until we allowed massive mergers creating single companies with control of a massive media market share, and journalism trade unions to be eliminated, leaving journalists no choice but to cover what they're told.

I think you're missing the other half of the problem, which is that people actively seek out "journalism" that confirms their world view, regardless of whether it is true.

Despite the mergers, there are still news outlets that produce accurate and in depth reporting, and of course it's possible to consume news from multiple opposing sources, but most people either don't care about the news or only care if it gives them a reason to hate the other side.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#48

Post by gen220 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #6

oddmiral wrote: post #3

Every organisation has 3 major stages: newborn, mature, and old. When competition is present, old organizations are eaten by newborn organizations. Government is monopoly, so no competition, thus old organization must die first.

Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? Interesting idea! Unfortauntely, I think the states are too high at government level. Nothing too bad will happen when one trash company takes over from another trash company but what would happen if some random group took over the defence policy for a country because the current government didn't seem to be doing very well at it?

This is what federalism is!

(Competing state and local governments, federated together and governed by a centralized federal government, which grows over time as citizens of the states agree on what laws they want to enforce).

Most laws passed by the federal government were first experimented with at the local or state level, until a majority of the peoples’ representatives believed they should be applied universally with a centralized implementation. Of course there are many loopholes and exceptions in the US’s system, but this was one of the foundational ideas of the current constitution.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#49

Post by petermcneeley » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #18

petermcneeley wrote: post #2

I appreciate the honesty when it comes to the naming of this group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion

Here's the rationale[0] for the naming of the group: >“Persuasion” stands for: >1) A commitment to a free society in which everyone gets to pursue a dignified life. >2) A belief in the social practice of persuasion, which necessitates free speech. >3) A determination to persuade, not to mock or troll, those who disagree with us. In my view, they are succeeding admirably in meeting these 3 goals. [0] https://twitter.c…

A quick glance at the contributing authors makes it obvious as to what one is being persuaded of.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#50

Post by paulpauper » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

>. I'm just saying the observed increase in wealth inequality in these nations goes away when you abstract from land. So capital is not the problem. Let's deregulate building.

Yeah cuz the fortune 500 list is dominated by land-owners such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. Wealth inequality arises from capital concentration, of which land is just one of several forms of concentration. But the ability of large, powerful companies to protect intellectual property and harness network effects to derive large, reliable recurring revenues, which are passed on to shareholders, are other contributing factors. Tyler is a smart guy but is he like a fire hydrant at time that spews out things that are wrong or incomplete.