David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show' • Hacker News Board

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#271

Post by logfromblammo » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:36 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #171

jerf wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2012 US GDP was 15.68 trillion. The 2012 Federal government expenditures were 3.54 trillion. Right off the top, the Federal government accounts for 22.6% of the economic activity in the country. Depending on how you measure, you can quibble with this exact choice of numbers, but no matter how you fiddle you're not getting out of the Federal government being a huge part of the economy directly. State and local gov…

I agree with your views regarding less government being a good thing. Just in case some take pride in the number you provided I want to take a moment to put it into some context. > The 2012 Federal government expenditures were 3.54 trillion. Right off the top, the Federal government accounts for 22.6% We thankfully have a canonical example that exposes just how bad government can be: Obamacare. Government is the only…

I have been working for government contractors / subcontractors / sub-subcontractors / military-industrial complicators for a few years now.

For the last year, I have been working with a team of 20+ to accomplish only half of a task that would have been absolutely trivial in comparison with my last job in the fully private sector. It could have been accomplished by one person working for 6 months, or perhaps 2 working for 4 months.

The government pays for 20 times the personnel, quadruple the required time, and gets a quarter the quality in return. And this team is rated very highly by the government's idiotic metrics.

Since the contractor companies also skim off the difference between what the government pays them for the labor and what they actually pay their employees, I can easily believe from my anecdotal experience that government is capable of wasting 99% of everything that it spends.

While waste does not disappear entirely from the economy, it is not directed into useful production, which is the basis of a healthy economy. What it does is build a human ecosystem around absolute fraud and purchasing political favors and influence.

That doesn't account at all for the things that government does to destroy the wealth-building activities of others, such as requiring barbers to spend thousands of dollars to get licensed to cut hair for $10 a pop, or demanding that 8-year-old kids selling lemonade buy business licenses.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#272

Post by VMG » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:36 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #110

VMG wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrived example time? What is the political system on the spaceship that allows three of the four to hold a vote and kill off the least popular guy on the spaceship?

It's contrived but it highlights a real problem: free markets are very poorly suited to the task of avoiding tragedies of the commons. Unless you think tragedies of the commons don't happen in real life, the contrived example is relevant.

Let's use your contrived example to highlight a new problem:

The three astronauts Yuri and John elect Markus to be the new commissioner of oxygen, while Markus votes for Ronald and Ronald abstains. Everybody delegates total control to Markus, who unfortunately turns out to be a psychopath and kills the whole crew.

What were we talking about again?

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#273

Post by Nursie » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:38 PM UTC

anoncowherd wrote: post #199

21echoes wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the NAP is in effect. it's just me and you in the forest, and there's one apple tree. you "own" the apple tree. I am starving, and I "steal" an apple from your tree. who initiated the aggression?

There's no need to quibble about "lifeboat scenarios". You can come up with countless scenarios where there needs to be an "exception" to the NAP, but that's pointless, and a waste of time. It changes nothing about NAP itself, or its basis. You'll break a rule when you have to , and that's it. It's very simple. If you're in the desert, dying of thirst and someone comes along and starts trying to force you to pay a ri…

>> You'll break a rule when you have to, and that's it. It's very simple. If you're in the desert, dying of thirst and someone comes along and starts trying to force you to pay a ridiculous price for some water, then of course you'll do whatever you can to get some. But no sane, independent, objective "court" would punish you for that.

Then the NAP is not the whole of the law, or necessarily even a useful starting point.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#274

Post by crassus » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:44 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #267

crassus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mirrors the argument in Albert Jay Nock's book "Our Enemy: The State" (1935). He argues that expanding government crowds out non-governmental social activity, giving the example of hurricane response. In his time he already saw the shift in the public mind from treating a disaster as a problem for the entire community to something that the government should handle. If Nock is correct, there is a darker thesis th…

>> He argues that expanding government crowds out non-governmental social activity, And yet if you look to the past you see that when government does nothing people die in the streets because charity in no way covers what government can now. Particularly for those on the fringes of society, those considered immoral or sinners in some way. Private social activity absolutely does not do all we need it to.

I find Nock's book more convincing than Nursie's comment, but good try.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#275

Post by mercurial » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:47 PM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #26

jotm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's time to start thinking global, move to other countries where we're needed. That would be one solution (though not for many)...

That was tried with Northern Ireland and Israel. Didn't go well. The settling of the America's and Australia went really well ... for the non-indigenous people. I don't think moving people around the world to solve problems is a good idea.

Heh. If you went to Sunday Musk-worshiping, you'd know Mars is the new frontier.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#276

Post by Nursie » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

patrickmay wrote: post #10

gum_ina_package wrote: post #4

When I see arguments like this one, I always remember the little known fact that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before he wrote about economics. A fundamental principle for capitalism is that people will behave morally and be compassionate. Without a moral society, no matter what system you're talking about, that society will always collapse. I think David Simon, and many other modern critics of capitalism, have…

As well as Smith, I am reminded of Bastiat: “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state…

>> We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality.

Without state enforced equality, there is no equality.

Many of the other things he says may well be true, and I'm not socialist, but that one has been shown over and over and over.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#277

Post by bmelton » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:54 PM UTC

saraid216 wrote: post #241

bmelton wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it me? Link me. I don't remember it. Just so it's said, neither of us has to be right for our opinions to be equally valid. And regardless of whether or not we agree, originalism certainly has validity in arguments of law, we're just disagreeing with whether or not it should be the standard we hold highest. I'm not saying that necessarily we should.

The thread is back here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6662163

Thanks. I remember it now. I don't know what to think of the idea that "political corruption" apparently comprises a non-negligible portion of my HN postings, and your pointing it out makes me aware that it is.

Probably time for a self-imposed moratorium.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#278

Post by Nursie » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:55 PM UTC

crassus wrote: post #274

Nursie wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He argues that expanding government crowds out non-governmental social activity, And yet if you look to the past you see that when government does nothing people die in the streets because charity in no way covers what government can now. Particularly for those on the fringes of society, those considered immoral or sinners in some way. Private social activity absolutely does not do all we need it to.

I find Nock's book more convincing than Nursie's comment, but good try.

Thanks for your confidence.

FWIW I don't disagree with the premise, state intervention may well crowd out social activity.

But you'd have to be deliberately blind to hundreds of years of human history to make the claim that the social activity did anything like the job our current welfare models (for all their masses of imperfections) do.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#279

Post by ahomescu1 » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:58 PM UTC

ant512 wrote: post #73

avar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The libertarian and anti-government sentiments aren't saying that we shouldn't be all in this together, but that we shouldn't be forced to be all in this together. That difference is what the entire argument is about. Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this", they're saying "let's not force everyone to do this". That's a very profound difference, it's why having the government make an…

> Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this", they're saying "let's not force everyone to do this". There are four guys in a crippled spaceship. They have 7 hours of oxygen left if they continue to breathe normally. If they all make a concerted effort to breathe slowly they could extend the oxygen to 8 hours. The rescue ship arrives in 8 hours. They are all in it together. There's nothi…

> No amount of cajoling, threatening or reasoning will get this guy to give up his "one-man island" philosophy.

That's an unreasonable assumption. If he doesn't breathe slowly, he dies. As CamperBob2 also points out, it would be completely irrational for the libertarian astronaut to refuse to cooperate, so he'd go along.

The problem most libertarians point out is that we're sometimes forced (by society) to contribute, without receiving anything in return. One-sided trades are the problem, not mutually-beneficial cooperation. When you pay 40% of your income so others get welfare, you're arguably not receiving anything in return.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#280

Post by johnchristopher » Sun, Dec 08, 2013, 9:59 PM UTC

eudox wrote: post #17

johnchristopher wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem in the US isn't capitalism, it's that the government interferes extensively in the economy. Well... maybe the problem is that the economy interferes extensively in the government. > Building a society is the responsibility of each individual who values it. Using government force in pursuit of that goal leads only to the co-option and disenfranchisement Simon complains about. Individuals have to band tog…

>Well... maybe the problem is that the economy interferes extensively in the government. Well... maybe the government shouldn't have so much power that when influenced it can cause so much harm.

If the government hadn't such power, no one would try to influence it.