Trade benefits from peace and trust, but also helps build mutual trust and peaceful cooperation by way of incentives.
Because people can produce more stuff and more complex stuff by dividing the work, specializing and cooperating, trade tends to promote shared interests and cooperative dependencies.
Voting is great, but it does not protect citizens from each others.
In an ideal democratic case, the minority is vulnerable to the majority. In practice, things are even worse and some minorities typically capture the system.
It's in large part due to two important effects "rational voter ignorance" and "concentrated benefits, dispersed costs". Because of those effects, transparency and vigilance can only help as second order checks. Furthermore, incentives for politicians and bureaucrats are not aligned with their objectives (simply put they don't get rich if they produce a brilliant solution and they don't lose their wealth and investment if they produce a wasteful one). That's not to say that incentives are perfectly aligned in the private sector, but are relatively better aligned.
Going back to your idea of "collectives", there is nothing about collectives that calls for them being monopolies. There is also nothing about collectives that calls for unreasonable bundling (single payment for a wide range of unrelated services).
Yes, private competition involves redundancy. Yet it consistently outperforms government monopolies. See the Trabant, postal services, schooling, railroads, air traffic control, etc. Schools are a great example of not-a-shoestring-budget. More is spent per student with less result, even in randomized studies (to eliminate selection bias).
Competition and choice are the reason why. Government monopoly and taxation predictably produce worse incentives. Competition is what keeps individuals focused on delivering results, as opposed to political visibility and promises.
Can you show how the military-industrial complex and other government-supported industries have created jobs?
Yes, they have clearly hired people. But do we have more jobs as a net result?
You are correct in your analogy. But you should be very thankful for such competition between governments. It is the only thing aside from violent revolution that limits government power over its citizens or citizens from using government power over each other. That's why totalitarian governments have to prevent their slaves from fleeing. Be careful when people are not allowed to leave a country or take their property out of a country.
Clearly other constraints on government, such as the Constitution, have failed in this regards.
Underlying this whole discussion rests the question of rights and ownership. Do rights precede government, or do they derive from it? I believe murder, rape, slavery and theft are wrong regardless of government.
Without going into this long topic of ethics, it is naive and simplistic to view government as simply collective entities. Governments are not clubs. Taxes are not club dues. Clubs don't have territorial monopolies enforced with guns and they don't have ultimate arbitration power or tax their "members".
Papers such as these are great at pointing benefits, but do little to address costs. The question is not, is going to the moon useful, but rather, is going to the moon worthwhile?
I have become very skeptical of governments taking on such well-intentioned programs as governments are ill-equipped to evaluate such trade-offs as they do not collect the benefits or bear the costs. Instead, governments collect the benefits of appearances (as opposed to actual success) and shift the costs.
If those scientists can convince Buffett or Gates, there is a chance the proposal makes sense. If the can convince politicians, fat chance.
What happens to incentives when government provides indemnification beyond what private insurers are willing to cover?
Any risks beyond what is covered by insurers becomes essentially free to the corporation taking the risks. That cost is "socialized" onto taxpayers.
That means they will take unreasonable risks for which they won't be accountable.
Insurers have incentives to evaluate the risk properly. Otherwise they lose business and money. Government agencies cannot provide the equivalent service and protection as they lack incentives and accountability.
I'm surprised that Netflix is choosing to build this in-house. Outsourcing to specialized firms such as Akamai or other CDNs seems like it would be more economical.
Does anyone have an idea how the costs differ?
If some services have better moderation policies and systems, or require different forms of authentication, then I may prefer to use them over some of their competitors. The trade-off should be with the customers.
Some people value anonymity a lot, and can foresee some of its side-effects (people being less respectful).
But nobody is forced to use services that allow anonymous commenting.
Conversely, nobody should be prevented from using services that allow anonymous commenting.
Taking a step back from the article and its conclusion, I wonder about the method that is used.
Has anyone seen the presentation or read the paper to explain the method?
Why should their modelling process produce convincing conclusions?
Mathematical models seem a reasonable way to come up with plausible hypothesis, but I have trouble giving much credibility to such a hypothesis without a double-blind study or maybe validating some unlikely predictions about the future.
The most important lesson is the same as that from the financial crisis: when you create perverse incentives, people and companies take irresponsible risks.
The result is predictable when you socialize risk by letting governments take on the downside by insuring nuclear disasters, protecting deposits and providing various forms of bailouts.
Such de-coupling of profits, losses, responsibility and accountability lead to increasing and un-mitigated risk-taking.
Slashdot Mirror
Trade benefits from peace and trust, but also helps build mutual trust and peaceful cooperation by way of incentives.
Because people can produce more stuff and more complex stuff by dividing the work, specializing and cooperating, trade tends to promote shared interests and cooperative dependencies.
Voting's for suckers?
Voting is great, but it does not protect citizens from each others.
In an ideal democratic case, the minority is vulnerable to the majority. In practice, things are even worse and some minorities typically capture the system.
It's in large part due to two important effects "rational voter ignorance" and "concentrated benefits, dispersed costs". Because of those effects, transparency and vigilance can only help as second order checks. Furthermore, incentives for politicians and bureaucrats are not aligned with their objectives (simply put they don't get rich if they produce a brilliant solution and they don't lose their wealth and investment if they produce a wasteful one). That's not to say that incentives are perfectly aligned in the private sector, but are relatively better aligned.
Going back to your idea of "collectives", there is nothing about collectives that calls for them being monopolies. There is also nothing about collectives that calls for unreasonable bundling (single payment for a wide range of unrelated services).
Yes, private competition involves redundancy. Yet it consistently outperforms government monopolies. See the Trabant, postal services, schooling, railroads, air traffic control, etc. Schools are a great example of not-a-shoestring-budget. More is spent per student with less result, even in randomized studies (to eliminate selection bias).
Competition and choice are the reason why. Government monopoly and taxation predictably produce worse incentives. Competition is what keeps individuals focused on delivering results, as opposed to political visibility and promises.
Can you show how the military-industrial complex and other government-supported industries have created jobs?
Yes, they have clearly hired people. But do we have more jobs as a net result?
You are correct in your analogy. But you should be very thankful for such competition between governments. It is the only thing aside from violent revolution that limits government power over its citizens or citizens from using government power over each other. That's why totalitarian governments have to prevent their slaves from fleeing. Be careful when people are not allowed to leave a country or take their property out of a country.
Clearly other constraints on government, such as the Constitution, have failed in this regards.
Underlying this whole discussion rests the question of rights and ownership. Do rights precede government, or do they derive from it? I believe murder, rape, slavery and theft are wrong regardless of government.
Without going into this long topic of ethics, it is naive and simplistic to view government as simply collective entities. Governments are not clubs. Taxes are not club dues. Clubs don't have territorial monopolies enforced with guns and they don't have ultimate arbitration power or tax their "members".
Papers such as these are great at pointing benefits, but do little to address costs. The question is not, is going to the moon useful, but rather, is going to the moon worthwhile?
I have become very skeptical of governments taking on such well-intentioned programs as governments are ill-equipped to evaluate such trade-offs as they do not collect the benefits or bear the costs. Instead, governments collect the benefits of appearances (as opposed to actual success) and shift the costs.
If those scientists can convince Buffett or Gates, there is a chance the proposal makes sense. If the can convince politicians, fat chance.
What happens to incentives when government provides indemnification beyond what private insurers are willing to cover?
Any risks beyond what is covered by insurers becomes essentially free to the corporation taking the risks. That cost is "socialized" onto taxpayers. That means they will take unreasonable risks for which they won't be accountable.
Insurers have incentives to evaluate the risk properly. Otherwise they lose business and money. Government agencies cannot provide the equivalent service and protection as they lack incentives and accountability.
I'm surprised that Netflix is choosing to build this in-house. Outsourcing to specialized firms such as Akamai or other CDNs seems like it would be more economical.
Does anyone have an idea how the costs differ?
If some services have better moderation policies and systems, or require different forms of authentication, then I may prefer to use them over some of their competitors. The trade-off should be with the customers.
Some people value anonymity a lot, and can foresee some of its side-effects (people being less respectful).
But nobody is forced to use services that allow anonymous commenting.
Conversely, nobody should be prevented from using services that allow anonymous commenting.
Taking a step back from the article and its conclusion, I wonder about the method that is used. Has anyone seen the presentation or read the paper to explain the method? Why should their modelling process produce convincing conclusions? Mathematical models seem a reasonable way to come up with plausible hypothesis, but I have trouble giving much credibility to such a hypothesis without a double-blind study or maybe validating some unlikely predictions about the future.
Another instance of government protection for nuclear disasters are liability caps.
The most important lesson is the same as that from the financial crisis: when you create perverse incentives, people and companies take irresponsible risks. The result is predictable when you socialize risk by letting governments take on the downside by insuring nuclear disasters, protecting deposits and providing various forms of bailouts. Such de-coupling of profits, losses, responsibility and accountability lead to increasing and un-mitigated risk-taking.