and what makes one think there should ever be economic growth?
I ask that as a very serious question. For most of human history, economic growth was essentially 0%. Your parents lived pretty much the same life you did who would live pretty much the same life as your great great great grand children.
This changed briefly during the industrial revolution, which I'll say broadly happened from about the 1700s to now. But now we're post industrialized.
We have our running water, our shopping centers, our communications, our electrical grid... I dare say humanity really isn't that complex. I grew up in the 'developing world' and by in large people want to do the same things as people in North America. Have fun, eat good food, interact with friends and relatives... in short nothing different in the big picture.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure well invent crazy things, but can you really get more real economic growth? Our needs are satisfied in the industrialized world. For lack of a better term, walmart is there. Is there anything walmart can't satisfy? Walmart might get replaced, but it will at the end of the day just be another company replacing what walmart already does. For example, amazon might do it, but its not really creating economic growth on a broad basis. How many pairs of jeans are you going to buy each year? How much are people willing to work to get more? Not much more.
Now sure, we'll invent new things and gain efficiencies. NetFlix will replace blockbusters. And we'll continue to invent all kinds of technology... but we're not really doing anything that will generate economic growth. For example, the 'green' industry is not a real new industry generating new wants and needs. It's just a replacement industry.
Now sure, I could be wrong and maybe there will be the 'next big thing' that drives demand. However, I think the industrial revolution was a unique point in human history. It is the exception, not the rule.
It was especially good when fulfilling the new wants and needs required mass labor. For example, at its peak, the telephone industry required telephone switch operators. This has all changed due to advances in computing.
Whatever new fields we do enter will not generate mass employment due to computing.
And so yes, we have generated huge institutions around the industrial revolution that are by in large struggling. Wall Street is one of them, dependent on economic growth that is getting harder and harder to find. But it's not just Wall Street. The public sector as well is dependent on economic growth. The industrial revolution and wall street allowed your teachers, doctors, police officers to be paid more than what society can actually afford. They were paid based on promises of economic growth and the highly paid labor of the industrial revolution.
I think at this point we have to separate 'capitalism' from the 'free market'. Make up whatever words you want.
The free market can adapt to new circumstances as it essentially just says that people choose the goods and services they wish to purchase for a price they can freely agree to.
But 'capitalism' is suffering from the same problems of communism. Capitalism has transformed into a command and control system. It's just bankers in charge instead of social planners. But the results the same. They are unable to adapt to new realities, beholden to special interests or predict the future enough to plan for it.
Our entire society is based around economic growth which simply is not guaranteed to exists. And so yes, we have bubbles. We have cheap money trying to inflate bubbles. We have HFT to try and keep wall street afloat. It's the only thing we can largely do to preserve the current system.
And so I agree we have had really 0% real growth. I just happen to think that's the historical norm. I don't think there's any real growth left in the big market as a whole.
As we look around the world, the only growth left is in countries industrializing. Human population is also stabilizing which also hinders economic growth..
Rather than try to get 'real growth'. I'd suggest we treat growth as a bonus when it happens. But our society should not be dependent on economic growth.
Historians have long document societies rise and fall. There doesn't appear to be any real stable form of government that always leads to prosperity.
What really matters is how a society is able to change and adapt. This is really where socialism falls as it is much harder to change than a freer society.
But America before big socialism has lasted almost 300 years. It was really only in the 1960s that you started to see real socialism in America.
Find me the society that began poor, implemented socialism and became well off.
Most socialism works like this:
Country is rich to begin with.. typically via the free market or if they're lucky oil or natural resources. Europe and America was wealthy and far ahead of the rest of the world long before socialism.
Then they implements socialism.
The jury is still out on how long the mixed market socialism can last. At best it's been around for about 50 years in the western world. Not even long enough to see one generation from cradle to grave.
Let him leave his government job and he is free to talk about whatever he wants.
Do you think a police officer or teacher or RCMP agent can just talk to the public without some screening via a public relations person?
When you work for an organization, you go through the processes. If you want to think of it this way.
The Canadian public elected the government. The government is his boss. That's how representative democracy works.
Representative democracy has lots of problems, but that's how it works.
Imagine the thousands of government workers willy nilly ranting about all their opinions and ideologies. That's now how it works. We elect the government to represent us. The public service does is in fact serve the government.
The idea of an independent public service is attractive to some. Those who think people in the public sector are free from issues of power and greed and should be trusted as truth councils. You'll typically find progressives in this camp. I don't mean progressives as in general leftist that it has come to mean. The progressive ideology that believes in expert panels determining society.
A government that threatens people will jail times and fines for not filling in how many hours of unpaid house work they do....
or one that doesn't let government scientists speak to the media.
Yeah... I'll go with the one that doesn't threaten me with jails and fines for a silly census.
Scientists are not independent people. They are not objective saints like a truth council. They're just as political as anyone else. I can't run my mouth about any issues in my company. They aren't allowed to turn their mouth.
And if you think scientists are a truth council, well that is your problem not understanding humanity.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Science has only been allowed to flourish because it has been free from power and politics.
For profits needs to worry about the greed of shareholders. Government entities need to worry about the greed of public sector unions, special interest groups...
Same difference.
Making things non-profit might reduce the profit motive. I don't think it does,but we can grant that to you. But it certainly doesn't get rid of it.
We should treat every public sector and non-profit employee the same as we would a used car salesman... with suspicion of their motives.
Don't take that as an insult. I'm sure if you paid the used car salesman 100k/year and guaranteed him a job for life, he would gladly think just of your welfare and getting the most appropriate car.
Why do we mistrust used car sales people more than teachers... They're just trying to make a living. We should distrust them with the same level of suspicion.
There's a lot of healthcare that is not surgery. Diagnosis, drugs, imaging...
But more importantly, that is your choice. If you only want to trust licensed medical doctors, more power to you.
Just like with your car, if you want to, you can pay for good auto service at the dealership or go for lower cost options at a smaller car dealer.
There is always a trade off between quality and cost. That's life.
Some places like Washington state do a better job allowing nurse practitioners to practice more in primary care. The world won't come to an end if you allow more freedom in the health system.
Once again, there's much more to healthcare than life or death surgery. One could also question the quality of doctors versus cheaper options that could spend more time with people.
when will you get it in your head that teachers and professors and bureaucrats care about money all the same.
Making something non-profit or government run doesn't remove the motive to get more money.
Or do you think most police officers and prison guard unions are against drug legalization for truly honorable reasons... or that it affects their bottom line and jobs?
Medicine and law have been around for a while and benefit from government protection.
It's also why medicine is so expensive. If engineering was run like medicine you'd need a Master's degree in wireless communication to install home router and people would play you $500 to install the router. Government regulations would prevent you from setting up the home router the same way the FDA prevents people from selling medical devices or drugs...
Of course, it is all done for quality reasons:) You know... you the lowly regular person might not encrypt things correctly and might not optimize for wireless connections and frequency. You know we can't trust you with wireless signals and we can't trust you prescribing your own drugs.
Engineers, IT, and business people haven't resorted to this yet. Mainly because they are forced to compete in the market place to keep prices low and innovate.
They might start adopting such things... and it might be a good idea for the greater good overall. or it might not be a good idea. i haven't quite made up my mind on hte issue.
Of course the education industry is a scam, but it's a powerful industry. It largely suffers from the problem of people feeling special. Back in the day when few were educated, few people got Bachelors and even fewer got their Masters. So these people felt special and got good jobs. Like being the only person who could read in a village.
Then some bureaucrat saw some statistic that said, people with B and M's earn 50% more in their lifetime than those without it. And so,.... hey... if we all got our B and M, then we'd all be well off!! So we all did... and those of us who came to our senses realized... we can't all be special... so we can't all get those jobs. And worst of all... now that we're all educated, the job can no longer carry a premium... and wages drop.
And so now we up the ante as people try and feel special again. Now we need more degrees to stand out.
Of course, it's not the degree that earns you more money. It's that you out competed someone else for a job.
So when we all have M and PHDs, it will still be the exact same problem.
In every other industry there is an acknowledged trade off between quality and cost.
This at least the low-hanging fruit to become cheap and affordable.
But not in the healthcare industry. There, you just mention the world quality and it must be done. Driving up the cost and preventing people from getting cheaper affordable treatment.
No, we're talking about someone hacking you up to do brain surgery at low cost. But the low-hanging fruit.
I've been on the same thyroid medication for years. Yet I always have to go to my doctor to get it refilled. Every once in a while,I have to go get a blood test to confirm my levels. There's a computer program the doctor reads that tell me what my levels should be.
Is the visit any more affordable? Could a nurse do that job? Yep, but they gotta make their money... for quality reasons of course.
If engineers behaved like the medical profession, we'd have regulated wifi devices to the point where you'd need an engineer with residence experience in wireless communication to install your home router. They'd make sure it was secure, safe...
And of course it would cost $1000 to install home router and less people would get it... but it would be 'safe'.
I spent less than a year in the healthcare imaging industry. Just dealing with HIPAA was such a pain. The worst part was reading up on the regulations... then seeing what was actually being done and developed. The quality of the software was not better than any other 'enterprise' like application.
Keep the FDA out of the medical apps. Let the low-cost healthcare products come to life. If it means a few bad apps, that's okay.
"You seem to think that as a liberal I have faith in the beneficence of the state. What I want is the state to protect me from others, without taking away my rights"
Well congratulations, you're a libertarian and you find yourself by definition without a party. Since libertarians don't like the power of government, they tend not to end up in power.
Both parties are equally guilty of taking away rights. I'm glad you want to smoke weed and have sex with homosexuals. More power to you.
For some like me, it's about different rights, like the right to raise my kids. While the Democrats fight tooth and nail against school choice. They still tax me heavily to fund their 'public schools'. Let's not even get into the myriad of regulations from various government agencies around child rearing that have parents scared. Places like Chicago even have schools that have banned home made lunches.
So I'm glad you've found your hatred of republicans. Apparently having sex and smoking weed are the main rights you think are being violated in society.
For the rest of us, it's a different set of rights and on those issues the Democrats are the greatest violators.
But in the end, both parties are pretty bad. Now you just need to find the same hatred of Democrats and you can consider yourself complete in terms of wanting the state to protect you from others.
Another part people miss is that engineers and scientists have cut off their own private stable funding.
Let me pre-empt anyone and say, I'm not suggesting we go back to the old days... I'm just giving a historical perspective and how things have changed.
What do I mean, we cut off any good cash flow or stable funding available? Back in the bad old days when ATT was a monopoly, it had a strong research arm. It's where we ultimately got C++ and other such things. How could it do that? By having constant cash flow from its monopoly.
Today, people would be irate at that kind of monopoly. Everyone wants things separate and good for the consumer... so the engineers and scientists don't get any constant cashflow from the service they ultimately provide.
We cut off our own funding.
People like to hate on Microsoft for its license fees. Yeah, not many companies have the kind of advanced Research that MS does? How can it afford that luxury? By having all those licenses that bring money into the field.
In no other industry will you find people who openly advocate cutting off their money supply. Except in tech and R&D.
The result of which, we in the field are completely dependent on the whims of government University R&D funding or startup capital. Both of which can run dry. There's still some legacy of the industry R&D (Microsoft, Intel...) But this is a model that is dying fast.
I only suggest we look at how the past operated and how other fields operate for the long term viability of our field in research.
I remember going for Laser eye therapy, and the doctor told me they have to pay the Laser eye manufacturer for every person they operate on. That's a good revenue stream to continue research.
Again, I'm by no means naive to think businesses will behave nice in a monopoly. I know how bad fees can be. But I'm just pointing out the long term benefits of stable cash flow to industry R&D. The more stable the business is, the more in can invest in long term R&D.
We'd be naive to simply leave it all in the hands of universities. Better that we fund the industry via the users that use the service. Internet connections should fund R&D at ATT and Bell. Electricity generation should fund R&D in advanced electricity generation.
This kind of industrial research also encourages people to make the investment in the field. Because the future right now looks bleak. Who is going to want to get their PHD in some field if their only hope is to be like a sports athelete and hit it big in a startup?
There is nothing here about the broken window fallacy.
Anything to do with broken window fallacy either 1. Is an actual criminal act. Literally going around breaking people's windows and the like 2. A government program like the war on drugs
In a voluntary market (monopolies skew this... as below), the broken window fallacy does not exist.
As to monopolies (telecom...). Things can get tricky. But last I checked society is composed of people. A company is just a collection of people. Government is just a collection of people. Both can extort society to their own benefit when in a monopoly position.
There is no such thing as the 'public interest'. That's a myth thrown around to say 'give the government a monopoly'
For example, I think society becomes poorer since the government has a monopoly on education, denying people school choice. Education being something that doesn't need to be a monopoly at all. All you need is a room and a teacher.
Quite frankly, the 10% profit a company makes is worth the freedom not to have it government controlled.
But like I said, you view government controlled as being intrinsically good. I don't. I think most government institutions are self serving, just like private companies.
What do you think would happen if the government ran the internet? Do you think it would be better or worse than the current problems at ISPs? Do you think there would be more content filtering or less? Do you think it would remain anonymous?
Private companies running monopolies isn't good. The government running monopolies isn't good either.
The ideal is to minimize monopolies. In the cases where you have them, then they always need to be watched for abuse and for opportunities to get rid of the monopoly and maximize voluntary payment.
If people are paying money... which generates money for the company... they are providing a service people deem useful enough to pay for... and society benefits.
I'm pretty much the leftist teacher unions are the primary ones blocking independent study.
But good on you for finding a way to blame the right. Next thing you know you'll blame drug companies for the war on drugs instead of lawyers, police officers, and prison guard union.
"Sure Linux has been doing that already for years, but it was designed that way -- Windows wasn't."
You say that as if what Linux did was a good thing.
There's a reason MS dominated the desktop. They made the desktop work. While some Unix person would just deal with slow graphic performance on a consumer PC, MS did all kinds of tricks and integration to make it work. Just try windows 95 on an old computer. Then try Linux around that time. You will not find it comparable. Windows 95 produces a superior experience by far.
*nix might have been designed a certain way... but its why they lost the war on the desktop. They built it in an ideal manner and closed their eyes when things didn't work nice. They ignored their customers.
It's the same reason why Office became popular. MS did things like save the file in binary to improve save performance. A more *nix minded person would have insisted on a 'proper' file format.
Microsoft has plenty of smart people who were more than aware of the *nix way of building an OS... most of this stuff was figured out a long time ago.
And so MS begins the long transition to the ideal OS, dealing with backward compatibility... the whole works. Can they do it... who knows. Will it be successful... who knows.
But I don't think there's any to be proud of in saying Linux was designed that way.
Microcredit sound nice in theory, but I've yet to find one I like.
The 'best' services tend to be those that let you access everything for a fixed price.
One of the things I've found infinitely useful at work is safaribooks. Basically an online repository of books. We use it for mainly tech books. I'm assuming the company pays a yearly or monthly fees and we get access to any book we want. No microtransactions or anything.
It's akin to cable tv. You pay a fixed price and you get some block of channels. Netflix operates the same. It gives you unlimited viewing. It doesn't charge you per episode or per minute watched.
It might even be theoretically cheaper for people to do MTX, but we don't like it. We like certainty and ease of payment. I think I'd probably be better off with a pay as you go cell phone plan, but i like my unlimited. For the features that are pay as you go, i tend to just not use them.
Even for newspapers, I think they'd better get in bed with ISPs or something. Maybe you're with ATT and can get unlimited news access for 5.00 a month that gives you access to all the major news papers. If they can solve the login issues if you logon from different computers, that would be great.
I'm not a big fan of MTX. I've just yet to see one that works well. I'm a much bigger supporter of subscriptions that encompass a wide array of things. Leave it up to the provider to break up the payments to each content provider.
No provider wants competition. Every provider wants a monopoly.
It's no different from people. Everyone wants an advantage. No one wants to limit themselves or face barriers or face competition. Would you like to be the only male in the society that females would have the option of mating with. Of course:P
But in real life, we have the 'free market' in love and you can't just go out there and murder your competition or make laws stating barring different people from mating or marrying.
Of course this was done in the past. Inter-racial marriages were banned. Sometimes the king gained better breeding rights...
That's the government.
Notice how Apple is trying to use the government to stop competition. That's what people mean when they say the government should be limited. Arbitrary government power results in people able to exploit that power.
the 'free market' is an ideal system where everyone competes on their merits. People are free to choose the products and service they want. Providers are free to offer such products and services.
It's a system people agree upon... but its ridiculous to think any individual corporation or person wouldn't want a monopoly or advantage if they could.
The other big problem is government's are run by bureaucrats. When people get fed up with the bureaucrats, the only other option is to 'run' the government like a business... which means the finance people and auditors come in.
Their job of course is to quantify things in long detailed documents and then open up a bidding process.
Anyone involved in a complex project in either software or systems administration knows this is going to lead to collapse.
Now in tech companies and even many large companies, they still have IT people and developers to push back and basically say 'trust us, we'll get it done'. As silly as it sounds, that's basically what we say. That's what we're saying when we push back against endless requirements specs and endless conformance matrices... And magically, things get done.
This layer is totally missing in government. Governments demands bureaucracy and accountability. 'Trust us' doesn't cut it.
It affects every area the government touches. The most recent is healthcare. Instead of you 'trusting' your doctor as there would be trust in any other business transaction, like getting your car repaired, the government demands accountability.
Now, granted your mechanic can screw you over... and people can rip off the government, but the amount of paper work in healthcare is insane.
Doctors too have learned to game it. Just like IT consultants.
Click the right boxes, maximize your tests, say you checked for 50 things when they just came in for a cold... equal more money.
As the government is a single entity, the 'trust us' attitude just won't work. 'Trust us' only works in the private sector where failure is an option. You can have different companies provide the same service. They each trust their own staff. If their staff don't deliver, the company fails. The others are still there to do the job.
All these things are good. Unit tests, code reviews...
However, they all come with conditions to make them useful.
Unit tests for example require clean abstracted code to be useful... and they cannot be used to test integration and communication without significant effort. My own view is the primary success of unit testing is that it forces developers to write well abstracted structured code... not in the actual benefits of testing units.
Code reviews require skilled people with good knowledge of the code to be useful.
Does your company have the excess labor to have skilled people duplicating responsibility looking at code? I hope so... but not so in many companies.
I'm not too good for reviews. But I think they're a waste of time when the people doing the review don't know anything about the code, when timelines aren't taken into consideration...
If you want to reward 'education' then you do it the way doctors and lawyers have. By restricting labor.
Want to promote education in the tech field. Maybe you would need a bachelor of engineering in wireless communication followed by a residency program to install a wireless router. Make sure you call one up the next time you buy a home router and it will cost you $200 to install.
That's the kind of world where education is valued. It's not the kind of world we live in.
There's no easy answer to that question... but creating unproductive legal and financial jobs is not the answer I'll tell that much. An education is only good if it is put to productive use for society.
While increased productivity does lead to more stuff. The people needed to create 'stuff' is decreased.
Now, if you are studying pure economics without any context, you would say something like you said. It allows labor to be reallocated to other areas to create more stuff and we're all richer.
All true, except for a few points.
A lot of what people 'want' today comes from the public sector. We want for example more healthcare. Theoretically, all that wasted labor in the legal field, engineers, manufacturing... would move to healthcare and we would get all the tech work done, a simplified legal system, and we would all get more healthcare.
Wonderful no? Except this will not happen as those who work in healthcare expect to earn a premium over the rest of society. They're not going to jobshare with the rest. It's also political in the sense that people expect government to make affordable healthcare.
So what does the average person have to offer a doctor that expects to earn 200k+/year? Well not much as all the good private sector jobs become a commodity. This collapses the payment system. The vast majority of private sector workers are trying to trade 1 peanut of wealth for a a cow of public sector services. In short... that's not going to last long.
The other thing to keep in context is how much are you willing to work to improve your standard of living. Most people really do the same things... and have the same needs as they always have. They want food, transportation, entertainment, drinks. All these needs are really satisfied. The kind of things we want more that can provide mass employment are typically 'low-wage' jobs. I'd love to eat out more, go on vacation...
All the 'good' jobs as people will say are small in number, yet highly productive.
But again, what does the average person have to offer society to get more money... in order to live better and go out to eat more and go on vacation... the answer is not much.
Another thing to keep in mind is the kind of economic growth we've come to expect is really only a result of the industrial revolution (in the long sense). It began around the 1700s and continued to this day. Prior to that, economic growth was basically 0. Just keep that in mind. There's obviously vary vague data on this and history didn't exactly keep good economic records, but its generally accepted. But I'm not going to contest this point if you argue it. Just keep it in mind.
The reason the west's real economic growth is done is because we're already industrialized. We have what we need. Don't mistake what occurred briefly in the industrial revolution to be the rule of history. It is not.
Slashdot Mirror
and what makes one think there should ever be economic growth?
I ask that as a very serious question. For most of human history, economic growth was essentially 0%. Your parents lived pretty much the same life you did who would live pretty much the same life as your great great great grand children.
This changed briefly during the industrial revolution, which I'll say broadly happened from about the 1700s to now. But now we're post industrialized.
We have our running water, our shopping centers, our communications, our electrical grid... I dare say humanity really isn't that complex. I grew up in the 'developing world' and by in large people want to do the same things as people in North America. Have fun, eat good food, interact with friends and relatives... in short nothing different in the big picture.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure well invent crazy things, but can you really get more real economic growth? Our needs are satisfied in the industrialized world. For lack of a better term, walmart is there. Is there anything walmart can't satisfy? Walmart might get replaced, but it will at the end of the day just be another company replacing what walmart already does. For example, amazon might do it, but its not really creating economic growth on a broad basis. How many pairs of jeans are you going to buy each year? How much are people willing to work to get more? Not much more.
Now sure, we'll invent new things and gain efficiencies. NetFlix will replace blockbusters. And we'll continue to invent all kinds of technology... but we're not really doing anything that will generate economic growth. For example, the 'green' industry is not a real new industry generating new wants and needs. It's just a replacement industry.
Now sure, I could be wrong and maybe there will be the 'next big thing' that drives demand. However, I think the industrial revolution was a unique point in human history. It is the exception, not the rule.
It was especially good when fulfilling the new wants and needs required mass labor. For example, at its peak, the telephone industry required telephone switch operators. This has all changed due to advances in computing.
Whatever new fields we do enter will not generate mass employment due to computing.
And so yes, we have generated huge institutions around the industrial revolution that are by in large struggling. Wall Street is one of them, dependent on economic growth that is getting harder and harder to find. But it's not just Wall Street. The public sector as well is dependent on economic growth. The industrial revolution and wall street allowed your teachers, doctors, police officers to be paid more than what society can actually afford. They were paid based on promises of economic growth and the highly paid labor of the industrial revolution.
I think at this point we have to separate 'capitalism' from the 'free market'. Make up whatever words you want.
The free market can adapt to new circumstances as it essentially just says that people choose the goods and services they wish to purchase for a price they can freely agree to.
But 'capitalism' is suffering from the same problems of communism. Capitalism has transformed into a command and control system. It's just bankers in charge instead of social planners. But the results the same. They are unable to adapt to new realities, beholden to special interests or predict the future enough to plan for it.
Our entire society is based around economic growth which simply is not guaranteed to exists. And so yes, we have bubbles. We have cheap money trying to inflate bubbles. We have HFT to try and keep wall street afloat. It's the only thing we can largely do to preserve the current system.
And so I agree we have had really 0% real growth. I just happen to think that's the historical norm. I don't think there's any real growth left in the big market as a whole.
As we look around the world, the only growth left is in countries industrializing. Human population is also stabilizing which also hinders economic growth..
Rather than try to get 'real growth'. I'd suggest we treat growth as a bonus when it happens. But our society should not be dependent on economic growth.
There is nothing 'pure' about anything.
Historians have long document societies rise and fall. There doesn't appear to be any real stable form of government that always leads to prosperity.
What really matters is how a society is able to change and adapt. This is really where socialism falls as it is much harder to change than a freer society.
But America before big socialism has lasted almost 300 years. It was really only in the 1960s that you started to see real socialism in America.
Find me the society that began poor, implemented socialism and became well off.
Most socialism works like this:
Country is rich to begin with.. typically via the free market or if they're lucky oil or natural resources. Europe and America was wealthy and far ahead of the rest of the world long before socialism.
Then they implements socialism.
The jury is still out on how long the mixed market socialism can last. At best it's been around for about 50 years in the western world. Not even long enough to see one generation from cradle to grave.
I'm John Wayne of the first True Grit pilgrims! Hate Clint Eastwood pilgrims.
Let him leave his government job and he is free to talk about whatever he wants.
Do you think a police officer or teacher or RCMP agent can just talk to the public without some screening via a public relations person?
When you work for an organization, you go through the processes. If you want to think of it this way.
The Canadian public elected the government. The government is his boss. That's how representative democracy works.
Representative democracy has lots of problems, but that's how it works.
Imagine the thousands of government workers willy nilly ranting about all their opinions and ideologies. That's now how it works. We elect the government to represent us. The public service does is in fact serve the government.
The idea of an independent public service is attractive to some. Those who think people in the public sector are free from issues of power and greed and should be trusted as truth councils. You'll typically find progressives in this camp. I don't mean progressives as in general leftist that it has come to mean. The progressive ideology that believes in expert panels determining society.
That's not my view.
Let's see what I'd prefer.
A government that threatens people will jail times and fines for not filling in how many hours of unpaid house work they do....
or one that doesn't let government scientists speak to the media.
Yeah... I'll go with the one that doesn't threaten me with jails and fines for a silly census.
Scientists are not independent people. They are not objective saints like a truth council. They're just as political as anyone else. I can't run my mouth about any issues in my company. They aren't allowed to turn their mouth.
And if you think scientists are a truth council, well that is your problem not understanding humanity.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Science has only been allowed to flourish because it has been free from power and politics.
It doesn't really change much.
For profits needs to worry about the greed of shareholders.
Government entities need to worry about the greed of public sector unions, special interest groups...
Same difference.
Making things non-profit might reduce the profit motive. I don't think it does,but we can grant that to you. But it certainly doesn't get rid of it.
We should treat every public sector and non-profit employee the same as we would a used car salesman... with suspicion of their motives.
Don't take that as an insult. I'm sure if you paid the used car salesman 100k/year and guaranteed him a job for life, he would gladly think just of your welfare and getting the most appropriate car.
Why do we mistrust used car sales people more than teachers... They're just trying to make a living. We should distrust them with the same level of suspicion.
There's a lot of healthcare that is not surgery.
Diagnosis, drugs, imaging...
But more importantly, that is your choice. If you only want to trust licensed medical doctors, more power to you.
Just like with your car, if you want to, you can pay for good auto service at the dealership or go for lower cost options at a smaller car dealer.
There is always a trade off between quality and cost. That's life.
Some places like Washington state do a better job allowing nurse practitioners to practice more in primary care. The world won't come to an end if you allow more freedom in the health system.
Once again, there's much more to healthcare than life or death surgery. One could also question the quality of doctors versus cheaper options that could spend more time with people.
when will you get it in your head that teachers and professors and bureaucrats care about money all the same.
Making something non-profit or government run doesn't remove the motive to get more money.
Or do you think most police officers and prison guard unions are against drug legalization for truly honorable reasons... or that it affects their bottom line and jobs?
Let me help you understand it.
Medicine and law have been around for a while and benefit from government protection.
It's also why medicine is so expensive.
If engineering was run like medicine you'd need a Master's degree in wireless communication to install home router and people would play you $500 to install the router. Government regulations would prevent you from setting up the home router the same way the FDA prevents people from selling medical devices or drugs...
Of course, it is all done for quality reasons :)
You know... you the lowly regular person might not encrypt things correctly and might not optimize for wireless connections and frequency. You know we can't trust you with wireless signals and we can't trust you prescribing your own drugs.
Engineers, IT, and business people haven't resorted to this yet. Mainly because they are forced to compete in the market place to keep prices low and innovate.
They might start adopting such things... and it might be a good idea for the greater good overall. or it might not be a good idea. i haven't quite made up my mind on hte issue.
Of course the education industry is a scam, but it's a powerful industry. It largely suffers from the problem of people feeling special. Back in the day when few were educated, few people got Bachelors and even fewer got their Masters. So these people felt special and got good jobs. Like being the only person who could read in a village.
Then some bureaucrat saw some statistic that said, people with B and M's earn 50% more in their lifetime than those without it. And so,.... hey... if we all got our B and M, then we'd all be well off!! So we all did... and those of us who came to our senses realized... we can't all be special... so we can't all get those jobs. And worst of all... now that we're all educated, the job can no longer carry a premium... and wages drop.
And so now we up the ante as people try and feel special again. Now we need more degrees to stand out.
Of course, it's not the degree that earns you more money. It's that you out competed someone else for a job.
So when we all have M and PHDs, it will still be the exact same problem.
In every other industry there is an acknowledged trade off between quality and cost.
This at least the low-hanging fruit to become cheap and affordable.
But not in the healthcare industry. There, you just mention the world quality and it must be done. Driving up the cost and preventing people from getting cheaper affordable treatment.
No, we're talking about someone hacking you up to do brain surgery at low cost. But the low-hanging fruit.
I've been on the same thyroid medication for years. Yet I always have to go to my doctor to get it refilled. Every once in a while,I have to go get a blood test to confirm my levels. There's a computer program the doctor reads that tell me what my levels should be.
Is the visit any more affordable? Could a nurse do that job? Yep, but they gotta make their money... for quality reasons of course.
If engineers behaved like the medical profession, we'd have regulated wifi devices to the point where you'd need an engineer with residence experience in wireless communication to install your home router. They'd make sure it was secure, safe...
And of course it would cost $1000 to install home router and less people would get it... but it would be 'safe'.
I spent less than a year in the healthcare imaging industry. Just dealing with HIPAA was such a pain. The worst part was reading up on the regulations... then seeing what was actually being done and developed. The quality of the software was not better than any other 'enterprise' like application.
Keep the FDA out of the medical apps. Let the low-cost healthcare products come to life. If it means a few bad apps, that's okay.
"You seem to think that as a liberal I have faith in the beneficence of the state. What I want is the state to protect me from others, without taking away my rights"
Well congratulations, you're a libertarian and you find yourself by definition without a party. Since libertarians don't like the power of government, they tend not to end up in power.
Both parties are equally guilty of taking away rights. I'm glad you want to smoke weed and have sex with homosexuals. More power to you.
For some like me, it's about different rights, like the right to raise my kids. While the Democrats fight tooth and nail against school choice. They still tax me heavily to fund their 'public schools'. Let's not even get into the myriad of regulations from various government agencies around child rearing that have parents scared. Places like Chicago even have schools that have banned home made lunches.
So I'm glad you've found your hatred of republicans. Apparently having sex and smoking weed are the main rights you think are being violated in society.
For the rest of us, it's a different set of rights and on those issues the Democrats are the greatest violators.
But in the end, both parties are pretty bad. Now you just need to find the same hatred of Democrats and you can consider yourself complete in terms of wanting the state to protect you from others.
Another part people miss is that engineers and scientists have cut off their own private stable funding.
Let me pre-empt anyone and say, I'm not suggesting we go back to the old days... I'm just giving a historical perspective and how things have changed.
What do I mean, we cut off any good cash flow or stable funding available? Back in the bad old days when ATT was a monopoly, it had a strong research arm. It's where we ultimately got C++ and other such things. How could it do that? By having constant cash flow from its monopoly.
Today, people would be irate at that kind of monopoly. Everyone wants things separate and good for the consumer... so the engineers and scientists don't get any constant cashflow from the service they ultimately provide.
We cut off our own funding.
People like to hate on Microsoft for its license fees. Yeah, not many companies have the kind of advanced Research that MS does? How can it afford that luxury? By having all those licenses that bring money into the field.
In no other industry will you find people who openly advocate cutting off their money supply. Except in tech and R&D.
The result of which, we in the field are completely dependent on the whims of government University R&D funding or startup capital. Both of which can run dry. There's still some legacy of the industry R&D (Microsoft, Intel...) But this is a model that is dying fast.
I only suggest we look at how the past operated and how other fields operate for the long term viability of our field in research.
I remember going for Laser eye therapy, and the doctor told me they have to pay the Laser eye manufacturer for every person they operate on. That's a good revenue stream to continue research.
Again, I'm by no means naive to think businesses will behave nice in a monopoly. I know how bad fees can be. But I'm just pointing out the long term benefits of stable cash flow to industry R&D. The more stable the business is, the more in can invest in long term R&D.
We'd be naive to simply leave it all in the hands of universities. Better that we fund the industry via the users that use the service. Internet connections should fund R&D at ATT and Bell. Electricity generation should fund R&D in advanced electricity generation.
This kind of industrial research also encourages people to make the investment in the field. Because the future right now looks bleak. Who is going to want to get their PHD in some field if their only hope is to be like a sports athelete and hit it big in a startup?
You're 30 UIDs too high to continue that thread :P
There is nothing here about the broken window fallacy.
Anything to do with broken window fallacy either
1. Is an actual criminal act. Literally going around breaking people's windows and the like
2. A government program like the war on drugs
In a voluntary market (monopolies skew this... as below), the broken window fallacy does not exist.
As to monopolies (telecom...). Things can get tricky. But last I checked society is composed of people. A company is just a collection of people. Government is just a collection of people. Both can extort society to their own benefit when in a monopoly position.
There is no such thing as the 'public interest'. That's a myth thrown around to say 'give the government a monopoly'
For example, I think society becomes poorer since the government has a monopoly on education, denying people school choice. Education being something that doesn't need to be a monopoly at all. All you need is a room and a teacher.
Quite frankly, the 10% profit a company makes is worth the freedom not to have it government controlled.
But like I said, you view government controlled as being intrinsically good. I don't. I think most government institutions are self serving, just like private companies.
What do you think would happen if the government ran the internet? Do you think it would be better or worse than the current problems at ISPs? Do you think there would be more content filtering or less? Do you think it would remain anonymous?
Private companies running monopolies isn't good.
The government running monopolies isn't good either.
The ideal is to minimize monopolies. In the cases where you have them, then they always need to be watched for abuse and for opportunities to get rid of the monopoly and maximize voluntary payment.
If people are paying money... which generates money for the company... they are providing a service people deem useful enough to pay for... and society benefits.
I'm pretty much the leftist teacher unions are the primary ones blocking independent study.
But good on you for finding a way to blame the right. Next thing you know you'll blame drug companies for the war on drugs instead of lawyers, police officers, and prison guard union.
"Sure Linux has been doing that already for years, but it was designed that way -- Windows wasn't."
You say that as if what Linux did was a good thing.
There's a reason MS dominated the desktop. They made the desktop work. While some Unix person would just deal with slow graphic performance on a consumer PC, MS did all kinds of tricks and integration to make it work. Just try windows 95 on an old computer. Then try Linux around that time. You will not find it comparable. Windows 95 produces a superior experience by far.
*nix might have been designed a certain way... but its why they lost the war on the desktop. They built it in an ideal manner and closed their eyes when things didn't work nice. They ignored their customers.
It's the same reason why Office became popular. MS did things like save the file in binary to improve save performance. A more *nix minded person would have insisted on a 'proper' file format.
Microsoft has plenty of smart people who were more than aware of the *nix way of building an OS... most of this stuff was figured out a long time ago.
And so MS begins the long transition to the ideal OS, dealing with backward compatibility... the whole works. Can they do it... who knows. Will it be successful... who knows.
But I don't think there's any to be proud of in saying Linux was designed that way.
Microcredit sound nice in theory, but I've yet to find one I like.
The 'best' services tend to be those that let you access everything for a fixed price.
One of the things I've found infinitely useful at work is safaribooks. Basically an online repository of books. We use it for mainly tech books. I'm assuming the company pays a yearly or monthly fees and we get access to any book we want. No microtransactions or anything.
It's akin to cable tv. You pay a fixed price and you get some block of channels. Netflix operates the same. It gives you unlimited viewing. It doesn't charge you per episode or per minute watched.
It might even be theoretically cheaper for people to do MTX, but we don't like it. We like certainty and ease of payment. I think I'd probably be better off with a pay as you go cell phone plan, but i like my unlimited. For the features that are pay as you go, i tend to just not use them.
Even for newspapers, I think they'd better get in bed with ISPs or something. Maybe you're with ATT and can get unlimited news access for 5.00 a month that gives you access to all the major news papers. If they can solve the login issues if you logon from different computers, that would be great.
I'm not a big fan of MTX. I've just yet to see one that works well. I'm a much bigger supporter of subscriptions that encompass a wide array of things. Leave it up to the provider to break up the payments to each content provider.
It's a problem that is really quintessentially Canadian.
I'm Canadian and we see it too. Our attitude at all levels is how do we maximize efficiency? How do we distribute? How can we best ration.
These are all very technical questions and require very smart analysis... but they are ultimately destructive.
As opposed to the more American attitude of how can we do more? How can we increase the supply? How can we create demand?
No provider wants competition. Every provider wants a monopoly.
It's no different from people. Everyone wants an advantage. No one wants to limit themselves or face barriers or face competition. Would you like to be the only male in the society that females would have the option of mating with. Of course :P
But in real life, we have the 'free market' in love and you can't just go out there and murder your competition or make laws stating barring different people from mating or marrying.
Of course this was done in the past. Inter-racial marriages were banned. Sometimes the king gained better breeding rights...
That's the government.
Notice how Apple is trying to use the government to stop competition. That's what people mean when they say the government should be limited. Arbitrary government power results in people able to exploit that power.
the 'free market' is an ideal system where everyone competes on their merits. People are free to choose the products and service they want. Providers are free to offer such products and services.
It's a system people agree upon... but its ridiculous to think any individual corporation or person wouldn't want a monopoly or advantage if they could.
The other big problem is government's are run by bureaucrats. When people get fed up with the bureaucrats, the only other option is to 'run' the government like a business... which means the finance people and auditors come in.
Their job of course is to quantify things in long detailed documents and then open up a bidding process.
Anyone involved in a complex project in either software or systems administration knows this is going to lead to collapse.
Now in tech companies and even many large companies, they still have IT people and developers to push back and basically say 'trust us, we'll get it done'. As silly as it sounds, that's basically what we say. That's what we're saying when we push back against endless requirements specs and endless conformance matrices... And magically, things get done.
This layer is totally missing in government. Governments demands bureaucracy and accountability. 'Trust us' doesn't cut it.
It affects every area the government touches. The most recent is healthcare. Instead of you 'trusting' your doctor as there would be trust in any other business transaction, like getting your car repaired, the government demands accountability.
Now, granted your mechanic can screw you over... and people can rip off the government, but the amount of paper work in healthcare is insane.
Doctors too have learned to game it. Just like IT consultants.
Click the right boxes, maximize your tests, say you checked for 50 things when they just came in for a cold... equal more money.
As the government is a single entity, the 'trust us' attitude just won't work. 'Trust us' only works in the private sector where failure is an option. You can have different companies provide the same service. They each trust their own staff. If their staff don't deliver, the company fails. The others are still there to do the job.
All these things are good. Unit tests, code reviews...
However, they all come with conditions to make them useful.
Unit tests for example require clean abstracted code to be useful... and they cannot be used to test integration and communication without significant effort. My own view is the primary success of unit testing is that it forces developers to write well abstracted structured code... not in the actual benefits of testing units.
Code reviews require skilled people with good knowledge of the code to be useful.
Does your company have the excess labor to have skilled people duplicating responsibility looking at code? I hope so... but not so in many companies.
I'm not too good for reviews. But I think they're a waste of time when the people doing the review don't know anything about the code, when timelines aren't taken into consideration...
No it is not naive. It is reality.
If you want to reward 'education' then you do it the way doctors and lawyers have. By restricting labor.
Want to promote education in the tech field. Maybe you would need a bachelor of engineering in wireless communication followed by a residency program to install a wireless router. Make sure you call one up the next time you buy a home router and it will cost you $200 to install.
That's the kind of world where education is valued. It's not the kind of world we live in.
There's no easy answer to that question... but creating unproductive legal and financial jobs is not the answer I'll tell that much. An education is only good if it is put to productive use for society.
You seem to have missed the point.
While increased productivity does lead to more stuff.
The people needed to create 'stuff' is decreased.
Now, if you are studying pure economics without any context, you would say something like you said. It allows labor to be reallocated to other areas to create more stuff and we're all richer.
All true, except for a few points.
A lot of what people 'want' today comes from the public sector. We want for example more healthcare. Theoretically, all that wasted labor in the legal field, engineers, manufacturing... would move to healthcare and we would get all the tech work done, a simplified legal system, and we would all get more healthcare.
Wonderful no? Except this will not happen as those who work in healthcare expect to earn a premium over the rest of society. They're not going to jobshare with the rest. It's also political in the sense that people expect government to make affordable healthcare.
So what does the average person have to offer a doctor that expects to earn 200k+/year? Well not much as all the good private sector jobs become a commodity. This collapses the payment system. The vast majority of private sector workers are trying to trade 1 peanut of wealth for a a cow of public sector services. In short... that's not going to last long.
The other thing to keep in context is how much are you willing to work to improve your standard of living. Most people really do the same things... and have the same needs as they always have. They want food, transportation, entertainment, drinks. All these needs are really satisfied. The kind of things we want more that can provide mass employment are typically 'low-wage' jobs. I'd love to eat out more, go on vacation...
All the 'good' jobs as people will say are small in number, yet highly productive.
But again, what does the average person have to offer society to get more money... in order to live better and go out to eat more and go on vacation... the answer is not much.
Another thing to keep in mind is the kind of economic growth we've come to expect is really only a result of the industrial revolution (in the long sense). It began around the 1700s and continued to this day. Prior to that, economic growth was basically 0. Just keep that in mind. There's obviously vary vague data on this and history didn't exactly keep good economic records, but its generally accepted. But I'm not going to contest this point if you argue it. Just keep it in mind.
The reason the west's real economic growth is done is because we're already industrialized. We have what we need. Don't mistake what occurred briefly in the industrial revolution to be the rule of history. It is not.