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Why Governments Fail

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Re: Why Governments Fail

#101

Post by imtringued »

jonathannat wrote: post #11
giantg2 wrote: post #4

There's a lot in here. I was going to make some quotes and comment about some of this, but it's a pretty diverse set of topics. The main thing is that I didn't see a solid definition on how a failing government is defined or a concrete connection between that and the topics covered. It seems to be Q&A about a bunch of loosely affiliated topics.

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…

> Ballooning debt

What does the debt buy them? If it buys them increased growth why even care? Assuming you can grow forever, you can get into infinite debt.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#102

Post by imtringued »

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…

Yeah, that explanation calls on its face because it cannot explain low interest rates. If land owners have excess savings that drag the interest rates down why aren't they spending them to buy more land until interest rates rise? If they don't have excess savings why aren't they borrowing more money to buy land until interest rates rise?

The weird part is that if we assume that land owners are the only ones with the inequality, this is a self reinforcing cycle that keeps growing stronger to take over the entire country but yet somehow balances itself to keep interest rates and inflation low. They somehow control the entire economy and yet they don't have any effect on it at the same time.

If land owners are taking over the economy how come corporations were increasing their savings since 2000? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B057RC1Q027SBEA

Re: Why Governments Fail

#104

Post by nradov »

salawat wrote: post #89
simonh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I share your concern with the legislative branch handing over its lawmaking authority to the executive branch, the rules really don't change on a moment's notice. There is a defined rule making process which all federal agencies must follow, which includes a significant public comment period. The real problem is that regular people don't have time to monitor notices of proposed rule making or submit comments in the right way. So the process ends up being dominated by lobbyists, special interest groups, and unaccountable bureaucrats who are pushing their own agendas.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#105

Post by lazide »

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…

And what is to stop or check that ruthless agency when it is corrupted?

It is a fundamental attribute of power that it corrupts, and any agency with the power to decide what is corrupt and enforce against other agencies /government bodies their idea of corruption - is pretty much all powerful no?

Re: Why Governments Fail

#106

Post by lazide »

giantg2 wrote: post #73
watwut wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you have the numbers? I would specifically be interested in the 09 swine flu, which is one of the strains which affected younger people more than normal.

I did some digging (not the parent poster) - here seems to be a decently thorough meta analysis of IFR and CFR from the swine flu outbreak. It appears to be clearly and dramatically less lethal to all age ranges than COVID [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/#!po=0....], with the highest risk group (>64 yrs old), having a roughly 1% chance of death per symptomatic case, and children (lowest risk) roughly three orders of magnitude less risk (1 per 100,000 symptomatic cases vs 1 in 100 for elderly).

Here is a more direct link to the graph [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/figure/...].

Covid is too new, and we’re too unclear on how widely it is spread to have solid CFR or IFR data at this point. NYC did a decent study post outbreak early last year however using antibody tests that is probably not complete junk. You can read one of the many studies here [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...]. The pertinent quote is probably - “ City. Our estimated infection-fatality risk for the two oldest age groups (65–74 and ≥75 years) was much higher than the younger age groups, with a cumulative estimated infection-fatality risk of 0·116% (0·0729–0·148) for those aged 25–44 years and 0·939% (0·729–1·19) for those aged 45–64 years versus 4·87% (3·37–6·89) for those aged 65–74 years and 14·2% (10·2–18·1) for those aged 75 years and older. In particular, weekly infection-fatality risk was estimated to be as high as 6·72% (5·52–8·01) for those aged 65–74 years and 19·1% (14·7–21·9) for those aged 75 years and older.”

Re: Why Governments Fail

#107

Post by giantg2 »

lazide wrote: post #106
giantg2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the numbers? I would specifically be interested in the 09 swine flu, which is one of the strains which affected younger people more than normal.

I did some digging (not the parent poster) - here seems to be a decently thorough meta analysis of IFR and CFR from the swine flu outbreak. It appears to be clearly and dramatically less lethal to all age ranges than COVID [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/#!po=0.... ], with the highest risk group (>64 yrs old), having a roughly 1% chance of death per symptomatic case, and children (lowest risk)…

So comparing young and middle aged (based on watwut's comment) it seems the IFR was 1% for swine flu and 1% (overall according to Fauci) for covid. Granted seasonal flu is about .1% (overall). So it seems like it could be similar for watwut's stated age groups, with some strains of flu being higher and most (likely) being lower. The real issues/ discrepancy emerge with the elderly.

I do see the wild differences in the estimates. This one is interesting. https://www.nbc26.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-estimates-covid-1...

Re: Why Governments Fail

#108

Post by neoburkian »

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 abandoning that approach, we have seen the greatest poverty reduction in human history. Check the GINI coefficients of those countries, it isn't great. Ask Chinese/Indian citizens if they are wealthier now than 60 years ago and its not even a question.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#109

Post by neoburkian »

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…

The work Tyler cites demonstrates that inequality in the US is almost entirely a function of real estate. Let that sink in. This implies that the vast majority of inequality comes from owning land.

Big Tech companies are not a real estate business. To believe that they are indicates extreme confusion about what a company like Netflix does. To shoehorn them into culpability for rent seeking in the housing market is to substantially miss the point.

Re: Why Governments Fail

#110

Post by HWR_14 »

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…

> Usually, the "problem" they exist to solve is that some government functionary wants to look like they're "doing something",

I tend to disagree. Most regulations address some problem, and in fact, the rules around changing regulations are strict enough that most of Trump's appointees' attempts to do away with regulations were ultimately reversed by the courts.

Sometimes, the problem no longer applies. But, I don't just want to disagree. So I'll tell you what. Throw 3 or 4 regulations out there you think are insane, and we'll see if I can explain a real problem for at least 1. I'd bet I could with a single regulation chosen at random, but your choices will be anything but random.

> serve ideologically-motivated belief that some faction has managed to force on everyone else

This one is true. Like, I believe murder is wrong and want it to be outlawed. But there are tons of other beliefs - e.g. rich people should a higher percentage of their income - that are ideological as well as pragmatic.

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