John Carmack on the Government • Hacker News Board

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#21

Post by antisthenes » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

Nothing more to see here than the regular libertarian, economically illiterate drivel:

Need less government, government is bad, regulation is bad, taxes are theft.

There, I just saved you 10 minutes. I apologize for the snark, but for an outsider (someone who's not part of the tech bubble, and not a libertarian), these rants from libertarian tech people are comically identical to each other, yet none of them ever amount to anything, because all fail to take human nature into account.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#22

Post by funkysquid » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

"Helping people directly can be a noble thing. Forcing other people to do it with great inefficiency? Not so much."

Just because scaling a process results in inefficiencies doesn't mean there's no need to scale it. If you feel like you personally can help every person directly, please do, disrupt taxes! But until you, we're not tearing down the system that works (however inefficiently).

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#23

Post by matt4077 » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

sremani wrote: post #9

justicezyx wrote: post #2

A tech god start talking about topic he does not understand well enough, and the article is full of descriptions without much data to back. No one is immune from human nature after all.

This is absolutely crazy, he did say, that he gained much of data point from Armadillo Aerospace project. Again, Peter Thiel reiterates the similar thing about "bytes and atoms". What if the state of CA regulated Quality Controls and Error rates on Software produced? What if there is a regulation to prove that a Video game does not impair congnitive skills of 1% of people who play it etc. The tech world is so lefty b…

He calls out regulation but can't provide a single example? How can that be called "empiricism"? And while he lists "regulation", this rant is almost exclusively a complaint about taxes.

The old chestnut about "how can it be fair to extract money with the threat of jail" is also a huge warning sign. The government only has two methods of enforcement, one being fines and the other being prison. If you buy into that idea, you are left without any means to collect any taxes and therefore the concept of "government" no longer makes any sense. That leads you into Ayn-Rand-la-la-land which is a nice idea for a 14-year old to entertain but not a serious option to organise a society.

I'm also sceptical of his claims of government inefficiency, considering Armadillo Aerospace doesn't exactly strike me as a paragon for the magic efficiency of private enterprises.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#24

Post by wvenable » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #10

vvanders wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup massive respect for Carmack on a technical level but I can't agree with him here. At least on the individual level US has one of the lower income tax rates when compared to Europe or Canada. I don't see how going even lower would benefit US society as a whole(spending a little less on the military might help though).

I found the post very rambley but I don't think Carmack was far off the mark. Most of his arguments seem to orbit around the concept that the federal government is hugely wasteful, which isn't a particularly uncommon or controversial opinion. Your comment about the US tax rate is misguided though. While we might technically pay less than some European countries (not much less, in some cases), we also receive a lot le…

> When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.

The real damning part is that there have been concerted efforts to reduce taxation in the US for decades but the net result seems to be that you still pay about the same amount but you get less and less for it.

My wish for your country (and mine for that matter) is that people stop focusing merely the bottom line and more about what you want to achieve. Single-payer health care, for example, requires taxation but would ultimately be a better use of your tax and personal money than the system you have now. But that is really wishful thinking, the political tides have turned everywhere in the world and there mere thought of destroying entire industries for the good of a nation is completely unpalatable.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#25

Post by kbenson » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

> My core thesis is that the federal government delivers very poor value for the resources it consumes, and that society as a whole would be better off with a government that was less ambitious.

Well, since we are stating theses, mine would be that while the government delivers poor value for services it consumes in some areas, the private sector sometimes provides very poor value for the services it consumes because it is incentivized to do the opposite.

Believing one is better than the other without actually looking at the economics involved leads to things like privatized prisons (where the incentive is to keep people in and returning to prison, not to rehabilitate them), and large public lending systems (Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac) which are susceptible to being brittle under economic stress.

Any time you think you believe something strongly enough that it falls under a 90/10 rule, it's probably worth really looking into that 10% and understanding it. You might find your 90/10 rule is more accurately a 70/30 or 60/40 rule, and that's really a different thing.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#26

Post by wvenable » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #20

1_2__3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wastefulness of government is fairly uncontroversial, yes. But you're acting like that's all he claims - he's claiming it's both wasteful and that it cannot be fixed . It's a slightly more eloquent version of "make it small enough to drown it in a bathtub". That government cannot be made to work for the people IS controversial (and kind of un-American, really). That evidence of wastefulness weakens the usefulness of…

His point that government is not subject to the same competitive forces which force private industry to adapt or die isn't wrong. You can see this at work in industries with monopolies or duopolies: how many people are over the moon about the service and support they receive from, say, Comcast? Carmack's point seems to be that an entity with no competition and the ability to requisition cash at a whim is inherently w…

Except government is always under pressure to lower taxes (reduce prices) and be more efficient even without free-market competition. Competition is always just one election away.

But your government is exactly a duopoly -- there is no real competition -- not because it's a fundamental property of government but because you have a very strict two party system. Do you live in a Comcast or Time Warner city? Do you live in a Republican state or Democrat state?

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#27

Post by aphextron » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

Carmack is a highly focused, driven, successful individual that believes in meritocracy. Combine that with being a tech focused white male, and of course he is a libertarian. How could he possibly see the world in any other way?

What gets me the most about libertarian rants though, is how the person writing is always so completely convinced that they have come up with some novel solution to the world's problems. As if the only thing standing between us and a techno-utopia is the EPA and the FCC. They do not acknowledge that the structures in place are a direct result of the failure of free markets to handle basic human needs on a wide scale.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#28

Post by saosebastiao » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

badsock wrote: post #19

cloakandswagger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the post very rambley but I don't think Carmack was far off the mark. Most of his arguments seem to orbit around the concept that the federal government is hugely wasteful, which isn't a particularly uncommon or controversial opinion. Your comment about the US tax rate is misguided though. While we might technically pay less than some European countries (not much less, in some cases), we also receive a lot le…

The US government per capita spending on health care is 4,763.9USD [1]. Canada's is 4801.25USD [2]. But Canadians don't have to buy medical insurance, nor do they pay deductables, or out of pocket for nearly everything. Carmack is totally right. Most Americans are totally right. The government in the US is totally huge, bloated, and wasteful. What's really foolish is that they attribute that quality to the fact that…

This is exactly my complaint with both "sides" of our politics. The spenders have nothing to show for their spending, and the anti-spenders can't imagine a world where you get valuable things from the spending...despite the existence of multiple real world examples.

It's actually quite amazing what happens when government is efficient and successful. One of my favorite examples is the UTA Trax. Built initially off the support of the liberal core in SLC, they did something rare: they built it on time and cost efficiently, and then operated it cost efficiently. And magically, even though every expansion proposal put it deeper into the most conservative areas in the entire country, and passage depending almost entirely on pure red votes, every expansion proposal has passed easily. Because when you actually deliver on your promises, people are willing to part with their money.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#29

Post by zeveb » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #27

Carmack is a highly focused, driven, successful individual that believes in meritocracy. Combine that with being a tech focused white male, and of course he is a libertarian. How could he possibly see the world in any other way? What gets me the most about libertarian rants though, is how the person writing is always so completely convinced that they have come up with some novel solution to the world's problems. As i…

> They do not acknowledge that the structures in place are a direct result of the failure of free markets to handle basic human needs on a wide scale.

That's not really correct: those structures are the direct result of politicians creating them, in response to a perception that markets (unfree markets …) failed to do one thing or another.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#30

Post by kybernetikos » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #20

1_2__3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wastefulness of government is fairly uncontroversial, yes. But you're acting like that's all he claims - he's claiming it's both wasteful and that it cannot be fixed . It's a slightly more eloquent version of "make it small enough to drown it in a bathtub". That government cannot be made to work for the people IS controversial (and kind of un-American, really). That evidence of wastefulness weakens the usefulness of…

His point that government is not subject to the same competitive forces which force private industry to adapt or die isn't wrong. You can see this at work in industries with monopolies or duopolies: how many people are over the moon about the service and support they receive from, say, Comcast? Carmack's point seems to be that an entity with no competition and the ability to requisition cash at a whim is inherently w…

All large systems (and I very much include corporations in this) are inherently wasteful and if some level of waste is your measure then they're all broken too.

Large systems that have been able to stand the test of time and deliver good have had safety mechanisms to deal with the danger that they stop providing value.

Governments have a different (and in some ways, more competitive) check mechanism to companies probably because the catastrophic failure of government is even more traumatic than the catastrophic failure of companies.

Undermining trust in the systems (engaged citizens, the press, elections) that keep government honest is exactly the wrong way to go about solving this problem.