Why Governments Fail • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Governments Fail

#61

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #17

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…

I don't understand the whole "freedom" argument against basic public health and safety guidance. Almost everyone wears their seatbelt in a car and doesn't complain about how their freedoms are being taken away in the name of safety. So why is this not the same with masks and distancing? Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them into Braveheart, fighting for freedom against oppression? Sensib…

> Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them into Braveheart, fighting for freedom against oppression?

1) In my country, some of the same scientific advisors to the government on the COVID response, are also criticizing the government for requiring masks to be worn outdoors in deserted streets, even though the science says that the risk of transmission there is negligible. They say that this kind of "hygiene theatre" can ultimately diminish the state's authority to mount efforts that truly matter to stopping the spread. A problem is that the outdoor mask law also appears to discourage outdoor exercise (even if people could exercise in a mask, the psychological barrier is real), and exercise is something public-health experts naturally want to encourage, even during the pandemic.

2) In some countries, the authorities have eased up on restrictions, or kept them on the books but ceased enforcing them, after the broad population flaunted them. Ruling parties are sensitive to what the population is willing to accept, lest unpopular restrictions cost them the next election.

Now put those two facts together, and people refusing en masse to wear a mask outdoors (while continuing to responsibly wear masks in crowded open areas and in indoor spaces like shops and other people’s homes) might be effective in ending a measure that even actual public-health experts say is pointless and oppressive.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#62

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:09 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…

> weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their interests. It's marketing and mass manipulation

Which means there is a problem even if the money never even touches a politician's / campaign's bank account. It's too easy for a politician to say something like "If elected, I will remove burdensome regulations on airlines" as a dog whistle for "I want the airline industry to buy ads that attack my opponent".

The only obvious ways to prevent that are to somehow prove that the politician coordinated their position with the industry (which seems impossible) or banning companies from ever expressing a political opinion (which apparently some politicians would like to achieve, but only those political opinions that they disagree with).

Fortunately there does exist one slightly less obvious way of preventing this, which doesn't require nullifying all the freedom of speech principles of the First Amendment. What is needed is a law (and probably an enabling Amendment) which limits political advertisements to N dollars per person per year (with N being 1% of the median US income).

Importantly, other forms of political speech and expression wouldn't be restricted. This way the law is targeted at the specific loophole that lobbying exploits, which is that people can be bombarded with a message against their wishes, generating an "illusory truth effect". People can still go out and find information, or march in the street to spread awareness of a political cause, but having more money wouldn't give you a greater ability to get your message in front of people who aren't interested in it.

The idea above is basically the core of CFR28 which is explained more in the relevant Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the...

Re: Why Governments Fail

#63

Post by slibhb » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #60

slibhb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this implies a historicist perspective. In other words, you tacitly demand that the government tell the future and act accordingly. Well obviously the government can't do that. I think "failure" should be a question of incompetent administration. That is, once a policy is decided, how well or poorly was it carried out? It may be that the government failed at carrying out mass testing.

> In other words, you tacitly demand that the government tell the future and act accordingly. This is a common excuse about every bad plan after the fact; that the critics are expecting decisionmakers to have been psychic. It scrupulously ignores that the critics were offering the same critique at the time. It scrupulously ignores anything specific to the problem being discussed. It's the "no one could have known" or…

Doing nothing is a perfectly fine policy. In medicine they say "first, do no harm".

Re: Why Governments Fail

#64

Post by naravara » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #46

naravara wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> 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.

Even if they wanted to, they couldn't. Their staff offices don't have the payroll budgets to pay a decent analyst a living wage so their offices are staffed by the rich children of donors who can afford to be paid a pittance while living in one of the highest cost-of-living metros in the country. Smart legislative analysts are expensive, but none of them can afford to pay off student loans and raise a family at the payscales available to them. So they end up going into advocacy, big law, or lobbying once they cut their teeth on the Hill.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#65

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

gen220 wrote: post #48

lbriner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't help but wonder how the American political system would look if an amendment passed which gave the individual states the ability to decide for themselves:

1. What constitutes a well regulated militia

2. Whether certain drugs should be legal to consume

3. At what stage of development human life begins

Moreover, I can't help wondering how popular such an amendment would be with voters, and with the two main parties.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#66

Post by billytetrud » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #42

>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,…

People have gotten poorer in the last 40 years in the US. Quality of everything has gone down, the most expensive things in life (housing, health care, transportation) have all gotten more expensive in comparison to incomes and more difficult.

People want to take lucrative risks, but they don't have the money to do it right, and the opportunities just aren't out there. It's not that people need to move more or take more risks, it's that there is demonstrably less opportunity out there today because our governments are corrupt and have destroyed the economy.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#67

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #65

gen220 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't help but wonder how the American political system would look if an amendment passed which gave the individual states the ability to decide for themselves: 1. What constitutes a well regulated militia 2. Whether certain drugs should be legal to consume 3. At what stage of development human life begins Moreover, I can't help wondering how popular such an amendment would be with voters, and with the two main par…

You'd have drug and gun smuggling between states, and abortion tourism between states.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#68

Post by billytetrud » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #47

jrwoodruff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 th…

This is only a problem for hype-based ad funded news. Our news is so bad today because it's ad funded, instead of subscription based. With a subscription, you read a source you trust and that source has an incentive to keep you trusting it by giving you interesting information.

By contrast, ad based news gets most of it's revenue from vitality, shares, and clicks. They create hyperbolic headlines aimed to create an emotional response (usually highly negative) in order to induce people to click in a rage.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#69

Post by billytetrud » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:32 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…

I think there is a lot more quid pro quo than you think. Lobbiests are NOT usually just regular people. They're usually paid agents.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#70

Post by mcculley » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #63

pessimizer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words, you tacitly demand that the government tell the future and act accordingly. This is a common excuse about every bad plan after the fact; that the critics are expecting decisionmakers to have been psychic. It scrupulously ignores that the critics were offering the same critique at the time. It scrupulously ignores anything specific to the problem being discussed. It's the "no one could have known" or…

Doing nothing is a perfectly fine policy. In medicine they say "first, do no harm".

This is the most contrived apology for incompetence that I have read. I am quite amazed.

It would be different if we had never before experienced a pandemic. It would be different if we did not have the examples of countries and cultures with effective implementation of testing at scale while we did nothing.

This defense of inaction is like leaving potholes alone because doing the obvious thing might cause harm somehow.