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Why Governments Fail

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Re: Why Governments Fail

#111

Post by cung »

loki49152 wrote: post #77
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…

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…

Like child-labor laws? Public education? Your comment has a point, but it is quite black and white.

Governments are a service that people buy, which we have collectively voted on, agreeing that there are things that a purely corporation driven society would not do.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#112

Post by HWR_14 »

neoburkian wrote: post #108
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?

Your analogy implies that inequality creates poverty or that there is some casual relationship. This is what many people intuitively believe. It is not true. As a rule, when people try to remove inequality everybody gets poorer, not richer. Countries are more successful at reducing poverty when they focus on lifting all boats. India and China were communist countries in the mid 20th century. As a result of them aband…

Since India was never what many would call a communist country (the communist party was outlawed less than 5 years after independence), I would question the veracity of everything else you say.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#113

Post by neilwilson »

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 is the water balloon argument - that for one side to go up, the other side has to go down. It's fixed amount thinking.

Poverty is the water source argument - let's just have more water flow so that those that want to keep it in buckets can do so without affecting anybody's ability to drink. That's floating amount thinking.

Money is a floating concept not a fixed one. The fixed amount is the amount of hours a person has in a day.

Poverty is solved by distributing needs by hours and relegating money to the distribution of wants.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#114

Post by gtyras2mrs »

hungryhobo wrote: post #27
jonathannat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion is a bit all over the place. The main points are that EU failed vaccination, and US failed covid testing (Statista disagrees https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645/covid19-testing-... ) , as well as having a decline of innovation and movement (disagrees here, people moved everywhere during covid, and US came up with tons of effective vaccines) It's pretty hilarious both ignored discussing the curr…

> Came up with a 50% effective vaccine sinovac, and forces its citizens to take it is this worse than not having your own capacity to manufacture vaccine and having to beg other countries for vaccines? 50% efficacy is for transmission prevention, however when you consider effectiveness against deaths and hospitalization, it's >90% > Wolf warrior politics has infuriated almost every democratic countries on Earth, and…

> funny that indian government asked twitter to remove anything critical of its handling over COVID, with 350k daily cases, but they are democratic so they get a pass. no this isn't whataboutism, this is pointing out the double standard.

a. as the other comment pointed out - they aren't getting a pass on this. b. Multiple news agencies reporting on failures of the government's response to the second wave of COVID (and as usual the government is reacting by clamping down on the louder voices - as they did with the farmer protests) c. the religious nationalism that embodies the current right-wing government of India has been a subject of op-eds for the past couple of years (not criticised loudly enough IMO)

Re: Why Governments Fail

#115

Post by gtyras2mrs »

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…

From a US perspective, how would you deal with interstate commerce? Would the federal government be able to interfere as a result?

Would companies State A (where drugs are legal) be able to trade freely with citizens in State B (where drugs are illegal) without an inspection at the border? Would citizens from State B (where guns are legal) be able to travel freely to State A (where they are heavily restricted) without an inspection at the border?

What laws could State B (where abortion is illegal) create to punish its residents for travelling to State A (where abortions are legal) to get an abortion? How would this disparately impact people based on wealth (i.e someone who could freely afford to fly to State A, vs someone who lives on a min-wage job)

Re: Why Governments Fail

#116

Post by gtyras2mrs »

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,…

> 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

Is this really representative? What %-age of each age-cohort engage in speculation on WSB or play around with crypto? I'm just assuming as well here - but i think that WSB speculation is being done by a extreme minority with a lot of people just looking at them for entertainment. Is there any data you would be able to share?

Re: Why Governments Fail

#117

Post by gtyras2mrs »

billytetrud wrote: post #97
anikan_vader wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, that's interesting to know. I still wouldn't say rain causes rain. Rain may be self-reinforcing, but there is generally some other far more significant catalyst. Regardless, I hope you got my point.

I would say wealth inequality is comparable to rain in that regard, as it seems to be reinforcing itself. Wealth inequality leads to more wealth inequality as the rich are able to highly leverage their wealth to get richer?

> In actuality what causes wealth inequality is corruption.

wealth inequality -> corruption -> more wealth inequality and so on.

I can't really say what is the root cause - but corruption IMO is a function of wealth inequality in action. Rich and powerful exerting influence to get more wealth and power.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#118

Post by kspacewalk2 »

the_benno wrote: post #96
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally, I'm a little less convinced of the 1st bullet point. In particular, I see many obstacles to a "free society in which everyone gets to pursue a dignified life": healthcare costs, ongoing climate disaster, erosion of labor rights, rising nativism and authoritarianism on the far-right, etc. chief among them. To be as monomaniacally focused on "cancel culture" as Mounk (and many others on the center/right of…

Listen to the podcast and read some more articles on Persuasion. Mounk is not "monomaniacally focused on cancel culture". He's monomaniacally focused on defending liberalism from populism - there's a lot on his podcast about nativism, authoritarianism and the populist right (the whole damn podcast started as a way to explore how the populism of Trump, Orban etc can be defeated in the realm of ideas).

And generally, I find him to be the most prepared interviewer with the most thoughtful questions that I ever encountered in podcasting.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#119

Post by naravara »

User23 wrote: post #83
naravara wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They might, but a significant chunk of that body (and of the electorate) is philosophically opposed to the idea of them doing their jobs.

Also fundraising, public communications, and case-work are all bigger determinants of them getting reelected than legislative acumen or policy-making skill so big surprise what kinds of people the job selects for.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#120

Post by naravara »

imtringued wrote: post #100
billytetrud wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think he made a distinction between lobbying which anyone can do and a lobbyist which is a career whose sole goal is to do nothing but lobbying.

Yes and no. There are lots of public interest lobbying organizations out there as well. For example, I donate to one that's just focused on making cities more bike friendly. I used to work for one focused on improving how the Census counts people. There's a galaxy of nitpicky, nerdy stuff that's supported by very nerdy volunteers and part-time lobbying efforts (and usually a bit of pro-bono work from one of the big lobbying firms).

But even though they outnumber the "big industry" lobbys they just don't have the money, connections, or influence.

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