101–110 of 154 posts
what the world needs are more robin hoods. anonymous is a partial example of this, an elite group that fears no organization (big or small) and the means to exact change. checked out the site, personally i think the money angle defeats the purpose of politics, politicians should be bred to enable positive changes in society based on their core beliefs and principles, dangling a carrot in front of them is not going to…
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No. Government is force. Airlines, like most businesses, are subject to market forces. If Delta said "we have to search the data on your computer before you can fly", you can choose not to fly. Someone would have a strong incentive to provide a mode of travel that did not involve laptop searches. I didn't say "no government". I said "small government". There's a difference. You need the force of government to protect…
businesses are subject to market forces Markets are inefficient. Many products and services are inelastic. People will consume them while hating the companies that provide them. It was government, not market forces, that forced companies to stop making kids pajamas out of inflammable material. When people heard that Ford was letting people die in its Pinto rather than recall them because it was cheaper, did people st…
Actually, they did.
And, interestingly enough, the Pinto tradeoff decision in question came from a govt decision. Safety costs money. Ford asked the US govt "how much is a life worth" and the relevant design decision used a higher value.
Price matters. Some folks are alive because they traded in an older less safe car for a Pinto. Some of them couldn't have done that if Pintos cost more.
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No. Government is force. Airlines, like most businesses, are subject to market forces. If Delta said "we have to search the data on your computer before you can fly", you can choose not to fly. Someone would have a strong incentive to provide a mode of travel that did not involve laptop searches. I didn't say "no government". I said "small government". There's a difference. You need the force of government to protect…
businesses are subject to market forces Markets are inefficient. Many products and services are inelastic. People will consume them while hating the companies that provide them. It was government, not market forces, that forced companies to stop making kids pajamas out of inflammable material. When people heard that Ford was letting people die in its Pinto rather than recall them because it was cheaper, did people st…
Ah, so you're admitting that the US govt provides "free healthcare". (The US is one of the richest countries.)
> It was government, not market forces, that forced companies to stop making kids pajamas out of inflammable material.
Actually, it wasn't. It was publicity. Yes, there's a law now, but the market demand changed first.
I don't think that public funding of elections or free advertising (see the bottom of the page) are the solutions to government corruption. That would just force bribers to be more covert. It's analogous to the fact that SOPA wouldn't stop piracy. It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to…
It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to make the purchase. Either you have an elected government which makes the law, or the decision about how to behave is made by individual interests and resources, which are much easier to buy or otherwise influence than elected representatives.
You're ignoring the diversity of individual choice plus the information problem.
I've yet to hear of a politican, technocrat, or bureaucrat who can do a better job deciding for me. To be fair, they don't have the information.
Feel free to delegate decisions wrt your resources as you see fit, but leave me out of it.
Donations don't literally buy votes, but what they do literally buy is face time. That is, people in Congress will hold fundraisers, and lobbyists pay to attend those fundraisers. The understanding is that the lobbyists who attend those fundraisers will have time to talk to the politician about the issues their clients care about.
This episode of Planet Money clearly demonstrates this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues...
Edit: I remove the SOPA specific stuff, and didn't realize that in doing so, I removed the punchline. The implication of the above is that politicians' agenda becomes set by those who have the money to pay lobbyists. When you spend a lot of time talking to a bunch of people with an agenda, you will start to think about that agenda a lot. It's a natural consequence of the circumstances and the incentives.
I've harped on this point several times in the last few days. My reason is simple: we must understand the real problem before we can fix it. And the real problem is not "Vote for x and I'll give you money." That is illegal. What I described above is legal, and while it is not illegal corruption, it is a corruption of how we want the system to work.
And I stole that last sentiment from Lawrence Lessig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc Someone else here linked to that a few days ago, and it's worth watching.
I don't think that public funding of elections or free advertising (see the bottom of the page) are the solutions to government corruption. That would just force bribers to be more covert. It's analogous to the fact that SOPA wouldn't stop piracy. It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to…
US doesn't have too many bribery prosecutions not because there's so little corruption, but because it's all legal.
Viral marketing > any other marketing known to man.
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I don't think you understand. The point is to either eliminate the power, or make it extremely diffuse. That way, there is nothing to purchase.
But that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The wealthiest countries in the world have large governments and don't have these problems. Just outlaw lobbying(bribing) of officials. Outlaw political campaign advertising. Better yet, as I mention above, allow the people to better represent themselves using technology. There are a thousand ways to apply the brakes -- killing the engine is maybe not the best.
The largest governments: Soviet Union, Third Reich, North Korea, etc.
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No. Government is force. Airlines, like most businesses, are subject to market forces. If Delta said "we have to search the data on your computer before you can fly", you can choose not to fly. Someone would have a strong incentive to provide a mode of travel that did not involve laptop searches. I didn't say "no government". I said "small government". There's a difference. You need the force of government to protect…
but in what other way than by reducing its power does making it smaller make it less corruptible? if a teeny weeny government has power over conglomerates, then it is worth a lot of money, and can be just as corrupt as what we have now. so what you are suggesting doesn't solve the problem. the only way "small" fixes the problem with buying influence is if power is reduced.
An absolute monarch, or more likely, his ministers, can get away with almost anything, because they easily find some basis to kill off anyone objects. Corruption under Roman emperors make our worst corporations look like public philanthropies.
The Founders put paid to all this excitement by 1) insisting all power be exercised by elected or appointed officials and 2) splitting up government power so much it just wasn't fun any more.
Today, "smaller" == "less corrupt" because "smaller" reduces returns on political investment. Congress currently manages, through spending or regulation, something like two-thirds of our economy. If they managed something like one-third, the friendship of a Congressman would be dramatically less valuable. And smaller == more transparent, because it's easier to to observe and distinguish the activities within a smaller, less complicated enterprise.
EDIT: Can't find a rebuttal on Wikipedia? Go read some books.
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Bollocks. Democracy is, literally, "rule by the people"; you can twist the definition of "people", but once you do, they stop being "people" in other contexts too, and you really don't want to go there, if you really care about your fellow man (if you don't, you can pick your preferred system that favours your preferred type of assholes: with the right blood, with the right money, with the right degrees, with the rig…
But literally all historically successful democracies have limited what set of populace are the "people". I am not US citizen however I know that when the US was created "the people" were pretty much in minority. It was also expected that "the people" will respect and defend their civic freedoms. The Switzerland for example historically only allowed armed men to vote and even today if one rejects their military servi…