Every big decision the government makes (you know, healthcare, civil liberties, where/when we go to war), a vote is called and we only do if the majority are game.
You're a little behind the times -- about 23 centuries or so.
It's called Mob Rule, and even the ancient Greeks came to understand that this was a bad idea.
It was one of the things the American founders were trying to avoid.
I mean, sure, maybe in the OLD days of Slashdot. But the comments are a lot different now than they were then. We've grown. Evolved! I thought we now all agreed that individuality was a bad thing, and that top-down central planning was the way of the future.
Wyatt, I usually agree with your posts, but your first sentence here -- "governments who are the harshest against human rights always outlaw abortion and suicide right off the bat" -- is essentially just selection bias.
Counter-examples are just as abundant as examples. China, for example, has no problem with abortion. In fact, just the opposite: in some circumstances it has been mandatory. In 1920, the USSR became the first country to provide for free, on demand abortions with their "Decree on Women’s Healthcare."
Nice try at discrediting opponents of home-schooling, by pretending to be a giant douchebag.
Your one mistake: NO ONE is as big a stereotypical, reactionary, thoughtless douchebag as you're pretending to be. In the future, your tactic would be more believable if you dialed it down a notch or two.
The way I look at it, Adolph Hitler is no more evil than Franklin Roosevelt. They both cost the world untold destruction, death, and insecurity because of their ideological stubbornness. They both declared each other to be the devil and believed it. That's worse than undiluted evil, it's diluted evil. It's diluted by the silly conviction that the battle is being fought for a good cause.
Why isn't there a "Caption" tag? (I mean for images, not for tables).
So if you had something like this:
<img caption="yadda yadda yadda" src='"blah blah blah">
Then the caption would be underneath the photo, with the photo and the caption treated as one block (i.e., with the body text wrapped around it the same way it is wrapped around the photo.)
I'm sure there's a good reason -- can someone enlighten me?
The government does not have money of its own. The money it has, it has because it's taken from you, or borrowed (i.e., taken from your children).
So, here we have $53B. Two things can happen.
(1) It can stay in the private sector. The private sector will invest it in based on the market -- i.e., *what real people actually want and will willingly buy.*
(2) The government can take it from the public, and invest it based on political decisions (where the rails will be located, what routes will be run, how much rides will cost, which contractors are chosen to build it, where the factories and repair facilities are located, etc.). It's like when the Pentagon decides the money it is currently investing in an expensive fighter could be put to better use in better ways. But the fighter's supporters have smartly scattered the contracts among important political districts.
Yes, people will be employed building and operating the train. But it is highly likely that it will be many fewer jobs that would have been created if you had simply left the money in the private sector, to be invested in efficiently producing goods and services that people actually *want*. So what you actually have is a net job *loss*.
It's just another variant of the Broken Window fallacy.
I don't really dispute anything that you wrote. I would point out that the examples you provide are pretty much all infrastructure related. Remember, for the most part, *even libertarians* -- who believe that the government should do a few things, and do them well -- agree that infrastructure IS one of these things.
The USPS is a little different animal. It was conceived as a way to ensure communication and the free flow of information/ideas -- considered critical to the new republic -- back when there was no other practical alternative. Now we have the internet, thriving private-sector package delivery, etc. Times do change, and you can make a perfectly cogent argument that we don't need government-sponsored mail delivery any more. As least, not as much as we used to. There are reasonable arguments both ways.
"The fallacy is that the private sector is *always* more efficient than anything else at solving problems."
Well, this is a fallacy, all right, but not in the sense you mean. It's a fallacy in the sense that it's a position that some people think other people hold, but in fact almost no one does. (Outside of a few capital-anarchists and the like.)
The government certainly is "forcing" something -- they force you to pay taxes. They than offer your money to others -- which you neatly euphemize at "incentivizing the outcome" -- in a way that you, practically speaking, have no say over.
"Setting a goal... defining the agenda... educated people whome they believe know what they are doing." You do realize, right, that you've basically just defined a command economy? You know, the type that historically produces results that get utterly CRUSHED by free market economies? (The ones that let millions of individual consumers set their own "goals", define their own "agendas" and generally "know what they're doing" to a much greater degree than government experts.)
Read my replies to bennomatic and the other AC. I never said the government should never "invest" in anything. I pointed out that the government has a terrible track record.
I should also point out the the internet investment was almost purely R&D. It wasn't a consumer-oriented market manipulation like this proposal seems to be.
You describe Cash for Clunkers as "wildly successful." First, you do understand that this was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's characterization of the program, right? And that Ray LaHood is the political appointee with the single greatest interest in painting the program in a positive light?
Economists have a different understanding of Cash for Clunkers. It was "wildly successful" among the upper-middle-class types who actually used the program; and a raw deal for everyone else. Economists Amir Sufi (Cal Berkley) and Atif Mian (Chicago) studied the program extensively. They found that ultimately, the program simply accelerated the purchases of middle and upper class types who *would have soon purchased new vehicles anyway.*
The unintended side effect was taking hundreds of thousands of perfectly usable used vehicles off the market, decreasing supply and so increasing the price for people in the market for a used vehicle -- i.e., the poor. Used car prices went up an average of 10 percent.
And of course, the actual money used to subsidize the new vehicles didn't come from thin air: It was *taken from everyone else* -- i.e., other taxpayers.
Ultimately, it was Basqiat's Broken Window Fallacy writ large. *Destroying things* -- whether they be windows or old cars -- does not create wealth. All we did was destroy the value inherent in the used cars, then create the illusion of "wild success" by transferring some wealth from group A (public) to group B (program participants).
So the "wild success" thing is a tautology. Of COURSE it was successful -- among the people it benefited. That's like saying Jesse James' bank-robbery spree was "wildly successful." For Jesse, you bet. For the bank's customers, not so much.
Oh for Pete's sake. Electric cars face the same problem every other consumer product does: presenting the consumer with enough perceived value so that the consumer willingly trades a certain amount of cash for it.
I mean, you do realize that research on electric cars is taking place ALL OVER THE WORLD, right?
Google
(Hint: THIRTEEN MILLION, SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND results.)
Someone in Big Oil's Innovative Research Disruption Unit seriously, seriously needs to be fired.
Anonymous Coward: Private sector investments aren't always good investments bennomatic: Government investments are sometimes good investments.
What can I say, except DUH. I never said private sector investments are ALWAYS good; and I never said government investments are ALWAYS bad. I didn't say those things, because to do so would be idiotic. So idiotic, in fact, that I didn't think I had to belabor the point.
Over the long term, private sector investing CREAMS government investing, for precisely the reasons I articulated. If you feel otherwise, in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, feel free to sink all your money into government bonds.
Anonymous Coward: Private sector investments aren't always good investments bennomatic: Government investments are sometimes good investments.
What can I say, except DUH. I never said private sector investments are ALWAYS good; and I never said government investments are ALWAYS bad. I didn't say those things, because to do so would be idiotic. So idiotic, in fact, that I didn't think I had to belabor the point.
Over the long term, private sector investing CREAMS government investing, for precisely the reasons I articulated. If you feel otherwise, feel free to sink all your money into government bonds.
50 years of political "investing" have left us with a record deficit added on, every year, to our already staggering debt.
Isn't an "investment" supposed to, you know, pay off?
More seriously, this is the problem with government "investing," as economists have understood for centuries. Politicians are "investing" *other people's money.* They don't have the same incentive to pick and choose their investments as you do. And the government lacks the price-signaling information that the free market does. This is why money is far better left in the hands of the people. Private-sector investments are far more likely to actually create wealth, leading to economic growth, creating jobs, etc. etc.
Don't get me wrong, interior Alaska is a complete bitch in winter. But southcentral isn't really that bad.
I will say, though, that when it gets down to around zero here, the extra humidity in the ocean air can make it feel a lot colder. Add in a good breeze and it can feel respectably brutal.
1. pine beetles (highly specialized insects that prey on one species of tree) attack pine trees (to be more accurate, they attack the species of conifer that they specialize in).
2. Many pine trees die
3. Another species of tree moves in to take their place. The ecosystem adjusts.
Slashdot Mirror
The second-hand source seems to be this New York Times article:
MACHINE POLITICS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.htm
But, like you, I cannot find a copy of the alleged letter *anywhere*. Strange.
- aj
Every big decision the government makes (you know, healthcare, civil liberties, where/when we go to war), a vote is called and we only do if the majority are game.
You're a little behind the times -- about 23 centuries or so.
It's called Mob Rule, and even the ancient Greeks came to understand that this was a bad idea.
It was one of the things the American founders were trying to avoid.
- aj
I mean, sure, maybe in the OLD days of Slashdot. But the comments are a lot different now than they were then. We've grown. Evolved! I thought we now all agreed that individuality was a bad thing, and that top-down central planning was the way of the future.
- aj
Wyatt, I usually agree with your posts, but your first sentence here -- "governments who are the harshest against human rights always outlaw abortion and suicide right off the bat" -- is essentially just selection bias.
Counter-examples are just as abundant as examples. China, for example, has no problem with abortion. In fact, just the opposite: in some circumstances it has been mandatory. In 1920, the USSR became the first country to provide for free, on demand abortions with their "Decree on Women’s Healthcare."
v/r,
- aj
Nice try at discrediting opponents of home-schooling, by pretending to be a giant douchebag.
Your one mistake: NO ONE is as big a stereotypical, reactionary, thoughtless douchebag as you're pretending to be. In the future, your tactic would be more believable if you dialed it down a notch or two.
Just a tip.
- aj
In other news, an alliance of the nation's best and brightest thinkers have come together in an attempt to save the buggy-whip industry.
- Alaska Jack
The way I look at it, Adolph Hitler is no more evil than Franklin Roosevelt. They both cost the world untold destruction, death, and insecurity because of their ideological stubbornness. They both declared each other to be the devil and believed it. That's worse than undiluted evil, it's diluted evil. It's diluted by the silly conviction that the battle is being fought for a good cause.
- aj
I'm with you on Dragonslayer, but the ones in Reign of Fire were good too.
Youtube: Reign of Fire part 13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bw9AERXAjM
(Start at 4:50)
- aj
You are technically correct -- the best kind of correct! Thanks. - aj
Why isn't there a "Caption" tag? (I mean for images, not for tables).
So if you had something like this:
<img caption="yadda yadda yadda" src='"blah blah blah">
Then the caption would be underneath the photo, with the photo and the caption treated as one block (i.e., with the body text wrapped around it the same way it is wrapped around the photo.)
I'm sure there's a good reason -- can someone enlighten me?
- aj
"Plus the jobs in (sic) can create..."
No.
The government does not have money of its own. The money it has, it has because it's taken from you, or borrowed (i.e., taken from your children).
So, here we have $53B. Two things can happen.
(1) It can stay in the private sector. The private sector will invest it in based on the market -- i.e., *what real people actually want and will willingly buy.*
(2) The government can take it from the public, and invest it based on political decisions (where the rails will be located, what routes will be run, how much rides will cost, which contractors are chosen to build it, where the factories and repair facilities are located, etc.). It's like when the Pentagon decides the money it is currently investing in an expensive fighter could be put to better use in better ways. But the fighter's supporters have smartly scattered the contracts among important political districts.
Yes, people will be employed building and operating the train. But it is highly likely that it will be many fewer jobs that would have been created if you had simply left the money in the private sector, to be invested in efficiently producing goods and services that people actually *want*. So what you actually have is a net job *loss*.
It's just another variant of the Broken Window fallacy.
- aj
I think this short, succinct response beats all my much longer ones.
At least, for those who understand the history of command vs. free-market economies.
- aj
they then...
euphemize as...
people whom...
Sorry for the typos.
- aj
I don't really dispute anything that you wrote. I would point out that the examples you provide are pretty much all infrastructure related. Remember, for the most part, *even libertarians* -- who believe that the government should do a few things, and do them well -- agree that infrastructure IS one of these things.
The USPS is a little different animal. It was conceived as a way to ensure communication and the free flow of information/ideas -- considered critical to the new republic -- back when there was no other practical alternative. Now we have the internet, thriving private-sector package delivery, etc. Times do change, and you can make a perfectly cogent argument that we don't need government-sponsored mail delivery any more. As least, not as much as we used to. There are reasonable arguments both ways.
"The fallacy is that the private sector is *always* more efficient than anything else at solving problems."
Well, this is a fallacy, all right, but not in the sense you mean. It's a fallacy in the sense that it's a position that some people think other people hold, but in fact almost no one does. (Outside of a few capital-anarchists and the like.)
- aj
bennomatic -
wow -- where to begin.
The government certainly is "forcing" something -- they force you to pay taxes. They than offer your money to others -- which you neatly euphemize at "incentivizing the outcome" -- in a way that you, practically speaking, have no say over.
"Setting a goal ... defining the agenda ... educated people whome they believe know what they are doing." You do realize, right, that you've basically just defined a command economy? You know, the type that historically produces results that get utterly CRUSHED by free market economies? (The ones that let millions of individual consumers set their own "goals", define their own "agendas" and generally "know what they're doing" to a much greater degree than government experts.)
- aj
Read my replies to bennomatic and the other AC. I never said the government should never "invest" in anything. I pointed out that the government has a terrible track record.
I should also point out the the internet investment was almost purely R&D. It wasn't a consumer-oriented market manipulation like this proposal seems to be.
- aj
You describe Cash for Clunkers as "wildly successful." First, you do understand that this was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's characterization of the program, right? And that Ray LaHood is the political appointee with the single greatest interest in painting the program in a positive light?
Economists have a different understanding of Cash for Clunkers. It was "wildly successful" among the upper-middle-class types who actually used the program; and a raw deal for everyone else. Economists Amir Sufi (Cal Berkley) and Atif Mian (Chicago) studied the program extensively. They found that ultimately, the program simply accelerated the purchases of middle and upper class types who *would have soon purchased new vehicles anyway.*
The unintended side effect was taking hundreds of thousands of perfectly usable used vehicles off the market, decreasing supply and so increasing the price for people in the market for a used vehicle -- i.e., the poor. Used car prices went up an average of 10 percent.
And of course, the actual money used to subsidize the new vehicles didn't come from thin air: It was *taken from everyone else* -- i.e., other taxpayers.
Ultimately, it was Basqiat's Broken Window Fallacy writ large. *Destroying things* -- whether they be windows or old cars -- does not create wealth. All we did was destroy the value inherent in the used cars, then create the illusion of "wild success" by transferring some wealth from group A (public) to group B (program participants).
So the "wild success" thing is a tautology. Of COURSE it was successful -- among the people it benefited. That's like saying Jesse James' bank-robbery spree was "wildly successful." For Jesse, you bet. For the bank's customers, not so much.
- aj
Oh for Pete's sake. Electric cars face the same problem every other consumer product does: presenting the consumer with enough perceived value so that the consumer willingly trades a certain amount of cash for it.
I mean, you do realize that research on electric cars is taking place ALL OVER THE WORLD, right?
Google (Hint: THIRTEEN MILLION, SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND results.)
Someone in Big Oil's Innovative Research Disruption Unit seriously, seriously needs to be fired.
-aj
That's funny. I get two responses:
Anonymous Coward: Private sector investments aren't always good investments
bennomatic: Government investments are sometimes good investments.
What can I say, except DUH. I never said private sector investments are ALWAYS good; and I never said government investments are ALWAYS bad. I didn't say those things, because to do so would be idiotic. So idiotic, in fact, that I didn't think I had to belabor the point.
Over the long term, private sector investing CREAMS government investing, for precisely the reasons I articulated. If you feel otherwise, in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, feel free to sink all your money into government bonds.
- aj
That's funny. I get two responses:
Anonymous Coward: Private sector investments aren't always good investments
bennomatic: Government investments are sometimes good investments.
What can I say, except DUH. I never said private sector investments are ALWAYS good; and I never said government investments are ALWAYS bad. I didn't say those things, because to do so would be idiotic. So idiotic, in fact, that I didn't think I had to belabor the point.
Over the long term, private sector investing CREAMS government investing, for precisely the reasons I articulated. If you feel otherwise, feel free to sink all your money into government bonds.
- aj
50 years of political "investing" have left us with a record deficit added on, every year, to our already staggering debt.
Isn't an "investment" supposed to, you know, pay off?
More seriously, this is the problem with government "investing," as economists have understood for centuries. Politicians are "investing" *other people's money.* They don't have the same incentive to pick and choose their investments as you do. And the government lacks the price-signaling information that the free market does. This is why money is far better left in the hands of the people. Private-sector investments are far more likely to actually create wealth, leading to economic growth, creating jobs, etc. etc.
- aj
Could someone take a sec and explain to me how this system works? I submitted this earlier today:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1455260/EPA-Broken-CFL-Bulb-Better-read-this#comments
Now it's nowhere to be seen on the "recent" page. It just seems to have evaporated.
To make matters worse, I can't see anywhere in the FAQ where this is explained.
- aj
The climate in Southcentral Alaska is moderated by the Japan Current, a movement of warm water that rotates up from the eastern pacific.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_current
Don't get me wrong, interior Alaska is a complete bitch in winter. But southcentral isn't really that bad.
I will say, though, that when it gets down to around zero here, the extra humidity in the ocean air can make it feel a lot colder. Add in a good breeze and it can feel respectably brutal.
- aj
Same in most of southcentral Alaska. Another commenter references Anchorage. Do you know how often it gets down to -30 in Anchorage? Basically, never.
- AJ
This is one scenario. Here's another.
1. pine beetles (highly specialized insects that prey on one species of tree) attack pine trees (to be more accurate, they attack the species of conifer that they specialize in).
2. Many pine trees die
3. Another species of tree moves in to take their place. The ecosystem adjusts.
- aj