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Why Governments Fail

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Re: Why Governments Fail

#81

Post by dv_dt »

fabbari wrote: post #52

Something about the statement 'So inequality is not the problem, poverty is the problem' is wrong. I can't quite put my finger on it -- it sounds along the lines of 'So falling from the 20th floor is not the problem, hitting the sidewalk is the problem'. Can someone explain me to myself?

Inequality as some level of uneven distribution is not a problem iff that distribution keeps the lowest percentile above poverty. In the real world this doesn't happen, because not only is the distribution not bounded for minimal fairness, it has been shifting by those who have capital to further push value upwards - so it's a problem that never self corrects.

Imho Cowen makes obscure arguments to inequality not being a problem because he is paid from the Koch empire (for at least a significant portion of his career w/ George Mason University) which has put in significant resources into developing multiple Economic arguments their their wealth and influence are not a problem.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#82

Post by yosito »

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.

Plato's famous works were about this. One of his ideas was to create the perfect state in which good behavior didn't have to be enforced by laws, by instilling people with an internal sense of morality that they willingly want to follow. Early Judeo-Christian societies were built around this idea. If people are doing what they want to do, and that aligns with what society needs them to do, then their freedom doesn't have to be restricted.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#83

Post by User23 »

naravara wrote: post #64
User23 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s more strong evidence that the system really doesn’t work as advertised. If it did then the people that supposedly have the power of the purse and control trillions of dollars in spending might vote themselves enough budget to do their jobs.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#84

Post by anikan_vader »

billytetrud wrote: post #76
paulpauper wrote: post #50

>. 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, power…

> Wealth inequality arises from capital concentration No. Wealth inequality is capital concentration. What you're saying is that rain causes rain. In actuality what causes wealth inequality is corruption. The financial sector has been extracting wealth from the people since the 70s. That's what causes wealth inequality.

> What you're saying is that rain causes rain.

It's a little ironic to use that as an example, because rain actually does cause rain. Falling water droplets induce a down draft which causes other water droplets to fall out of the sky as well. This is why water precipitates rather suddenly rather than as a constant gradual drip.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#85

Post by pietrrrek »

billytetrud wrote: post #68
dane-pgp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

One could argue that subscription based news orgs are incentivesed to provide you news which would ensure that you stay subscribed. For some people these news would have to be factual, but, for IMO most people news which are either not fully factual, or omit some information would be "preferred" as long as they (the news) conform to the opinion of the subscriber.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#86

Post by sbacic »

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.

There's a funny joke about that.

"Where do rich people hide their wealth in the West?"

"In tax havens."

"And where do they hide it in Eastern Europe?"

"In plain sight".

A free press won't do squat if there is no consequence for the behavior they expose. If neither the public nor the courts punish such behavior having a free press cover it will amount to very little.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#87

Post by spencerrodgers »

Out of all the comments here, I'm glad to see so many bring up the one and only reason any governments ever fail on their own - corruption.

I spent three years with my company selling into the Trump administration. I had a solution to the American energy crisis. After my company closed, because I couldn't get a call back to save my life, I learned that there were no people at the offices I was calling. Trump left 35% of the renewable energies offices unappointed.

I'm bringing this up because no one here is mentioning the elephant in the room. Trump completely eviscerated the CDC epidemic watchdog groups, the CDC funding allocated for emergency response, and the FEMA funding for epidemic response. Our government didn't fail. We lacked infrastructure to chase the answer we needed in a timely fashion.

Looking back at all we've lost, this grave time will actually spur a much larger scope of growth over the next 20-30 years. We will have another roaring twenties. Yet, here in the US, people walk around talking about how little the government works or how incompetent lawmakers are. Well, it's not all of them. Just enough of them that they keep the system gummed up.

Term limits are the singular answer the US needs, now more than ever. It could beat back the corruption we see from the likes of McConnell and Pelosi, two people more concerned with their grip on power than actual for-goodness changes. But as long as Trump remains relevant, we will see a vast division among lawmakers, which will destroy infrastructure built by the government to help people. The voting rights laws being rolled back in Georgia are a fantastic example. However, on the grand stage, those same supporters can never win any real gains. This boils down to the fact that his backers do so based on a lie. As long as that lie exists McConnell and Cruz, and their like, can never engage in any advancements for fear of being killed by Trump's base.

If Trump had followed his supporters to the Capital on Jan. 6th, our government would have failed. We were close. It's a good thing he's more interested in tv ratings than reality.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#88

Post by mcculley »

slibhb wrote: post #72
mcculley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someh…

I'm arguing for a distinction between being wrong and failure . I don't see anything from you (or the other poster) besides rhetoric. Apparently we should have "just known" that this virus was going to be a disaster. And evidence of this was "I knew" or "other countries knew". Great, and half of HN "knows" there is imminent hyperinflation. It may be fair to describe the lack of available tests a failure. All the PCR…

"post-hoc silliness"? In March, we had seen what had happened in China and Italy already. We were watching how other countries were investing. We chose not to invest.

When a government fails to do something about an entirely predictable outcome, that is not just an error, it is also a failure.

You have a really surprising way to view things: All governments can be excused for inaction or even the wrong action with this logic.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#89

Post by salawat »

simonh wrote: post #80
loki49152 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying is a form of self-defense against the real corruption - a government that has assigned itself the power to interfere in our day-to-day lives. Most people today take it for granted that "regulations" must exist because they solve some actual problem. Usually, the "problem" they exist to solve is that some government functionary wants to look like they're "doing something", which is itself a form of corruption…

Just for clarity, it seems that when you say regulations, you're really talking about laws.

Specifically of the Administrative form (read: delegated to the executive in their definition by Congress)

These are the types of regulations that can change on a moments notice, and that the American citizen has no knob to turn to influence once the paper to establish the Agency in question is inked.

Executive lawmaking was never supposed to be a thing.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#90

Post by luxuryballs »

slibhb wrote: post #7

Did the government fail? I don't know. We got a vaccine remarkably quickly and the governments (federal and state) distributed it efficiently. I don't blame the government for not taking the virus seriously to start with. SARS and MERS didn't pan out and people, on the left and right (including me), figured COVID would be the same. Some people predicted COVID would be bad but it wasn't crazy to think COVID wouldn't t…

Also didn’t they change the definition of a pandemic in 2009 such that it wouldn’t have even been a pandemic prior? I read that somewhere standby... https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173.pdf
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