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John Carmack on the Government

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Re: John Carmack on the Government

#31

Post by taserian »

humanrebar wrote: post #13
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 don't see how going even lower would benefit US society as a whole The argument is that the tax rates (and control over resulting revenues) should be more of a local decision. It's an orthogonal concern to what government, at all levels, should take responsibility for. And therefore how revenue is collected is also an orthogonal concern.

When I need an example of local authority, I always refer to the Catholic idea of subsidiarity, an organizing principle that states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority.

However, we've seen how well that has handled the improper behavior of priests.

What tends to happen in the US is that issues tend to get ignored at the local level, and they basically go up the chain of authority until it falls in the hands of the federal government, not because they want to handle the issue, and not because they're the most capable, but because they can't pass the buck any further. And when the issue isn't handled, it's easier to blame the federal government than to identify the inability/unwillingness of local authorities to do it themselves.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#32

Post by [deleted] »

wvenable wrote: post #26
cloakandswagger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#33

Post by aphextron »

zeveb wrote: post #29
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.

>in response to a perception that markets (unfree markets …) failed to do one thing or another.

Was it a mistaken perception that rivers were catching on fire in the 60's, leading to the EPA? I guess we should have left that to the free market too.

Government and business can work together, but we must acknowledge that the goal of business is to drive profit, not human welfare. The goal of the government is to drive human welfare, not profit. The two should be seen as litigants in a court of law; combative yet civil, with an agreed upon set of values. The opposition of these two forces creates a dynamic far preferable to one extreme or the other.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#34

Post by zeveb »

aphextron wrote: post #33
zeveb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>in response to a perception that markets (unfree markets …) failed to do one thing or another. Was it a mistaken perception that rivers were catching on fire in the 60's, leading to the EPA? I guess we should have left that to the free market too. Government and business can work together, but we must acknowledge that the goal of business is to drive profit, not human welfare. The goal of the government is to drive…

> the goal of business is to drive profit, not human welfare

I agree, and that is indeed a problem.

> The goal of the government is to drive human welfare, not profit.

I disagree strongly: the goal of government is power. No-one runs for office to make the world a better place: he runs for power or, if we're very, very lucky because he wants to be the one to make the world a better place.

To your dialectic of government & business, I'd like to add a third party: the people. We're not pure either, of course (as a group, we like to oppress, ignore & line our own pockets!), but we're the ones that create government; we're the ones it ought to serve; we're the ones who ought to hold it accountable.

Some of us fall into the trap that whatever a corporation wants is okay, others into thinking that the State is always right, others still into thinking that the People are always right. The truth is that all of them are sometimes wrong. There's no real solution.

But let's try to minimise the amount of violence in our society, and try to maximise the utility we get for that violence. Am I okay sending men with guns to wrest your property away in order to fund the national defense? Sure. Am I okay sending them to prevent people starving in the streets? Okay. Am I okay send them over in order to finance a cowboy poetry festival? Hell no.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#35

Post by SloughFeg »

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…

> tech focused white male > How could he possibly see the world in any other way? Most everyone on HN or Silicon Valley sees it in another way, white males included.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#36

Post by humanrebar »

taserian wrote: post #31
humanrebar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how going even lower would benefit US society as a whole The argument is that the tax rates (and control over resulting revenues) should be more of a local decision. It's an orthogonal concern to what government, at all levels, should take responsibility for. And therefore how revenue is collected is also an orthogonal concern.

When I need an example of local authority, I always refer to the Catholic idea of subsidiarity, an organizing principle that states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority. However, we've seen how well that has handled the improper behavior of priests. What te…

> What tends to happen in the US is that issues tend to get ignored at the local level, and they basically go up the chain of authority until it falls in the hands of the federal government, not because they want to handle the issue, and not because they're the most capable, but because they can't pass the buck any further.

Counterpoint: the various states suing the national government for overstepping its authority in the case of the ACA.

Also, lawsuits over immigration enforcement show that the national government can pass the buck just fine when it wants to.

Regardless of either point, the case is that local governments should be empowered and held accountable. To the extent that they "pass the buck", it's because citizens don't care that more and more issues are national issues. That's the trend that has to reverse, especially given that almost everyone is unhappy with one of the last two U.S. presidents.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#37

Post by Canada »

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…

> Canadians don't have to buy medical insurance

That's just not so.

Canadians are required by law to pay medical premiums in the amount and manner determined by their province. It's currently C$75 per month for a single person in BC, with subsidies available to those with low income. It's paid just like any other utility bill.

Overall people seem happy with the system, though most of them have nothing else to compare it with.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#38

Post by badsock »

Canada wrote: post #37
badsock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Canadians don't have to buy medical insurance That's just not so. Canadians are required by law to pay medical premiums in the amount and manner determined by their province. It's currently C$75 per month for a single person in BC, with subsidies available to those with low income. It's paid just like any other utility bill. Overall people seem happy with the system, though most of them have nothing else to compare…

That's not insurance, and it's only in three of the thirteen provinces/territories. For all intents and purposes it's a tax, and I'm pretty sure it's included in the figure I listed above.

I don't know what you're getting at with "most of them have nothing else to compare it with". Are you suggesting that Canadians are ignorant of other countries health care systems? Certainly not of America's - many Canadians go to the States to vacation or have relatives there and have first or second-hand experience with it. Also the whole world got to watch the insane debate over ACA.

Objectively, the health care outcomes aren't any better in the States than in Canada, despite the fact that it's essentially twice as expensive once you add in their insurance premiums.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#39

Post by neutralid »

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…

Carmack probably experienced a lot of government waste in aerospace. It's an industry that's long been dominated by subsidized government programs. On the other hand, Carmack should have experienced the dramatic development of the electronics industry, basically the break up of large electronics corporations into a vertically integrated semiconductor industry. Government had a huge role to play in that. The same thing needs to happen to the aerospace industry and other technology areas, e.g., health care, transportation, comm, etc..

One of the major reasons that the semiconductor and software industry took off is because of agencies like DARPA, where program managers are rotated (never permanent). If we continue to have careerists in charge then, unlike DARPA, we're bound to have inefficiencies develop. We would benefit from a reorganized government, where only small term-limited crack teams are kept in civil service and rotated to address gaps and challenges. This is how the Obamacare website was changed from a dysfunctional site being developed by a politically connected contractor selected/overseen by civil service to a more robust site developed by a volunteer crack team from SV. So, I disagree with Carmack in that it's possible to reformulate government to make it more effective and have government fund risks that private sector is unlikely to take due to short-term profit perspectives.

Despite the perceived waste in defense and other tech centers, I would guess the waste in the state department dwarfs everything. Not sure what to do about this area.

Re: John Carmack on the Government

#40

Post by ant6n »

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…

I'm a lefty because I believe in single payer health care, paid parental leave, cheap day care, cheap post-secondary education, and representative, pluralist parliamentary democracies. Those views have nothing to do with regulation.
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