How many times is Slashdot going to post about this topic? It's a question that can never be answered and even when answered has no value. This is like the sixth time I've seen this same damn topic here and it's boring me. Then again, maybe I'm in control of the computer and want you stop obsessing about this or I'll hit the reset button!;)
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it.
I think you meant corporations
No, corporations only have one incentive, money. They have no quibbles about fucking you over in the process of getting more money.
For example, a for-profit corporation that does dialysis also discourages patients from getting a kidney transplant while omitting the fact that a kidney transplant would likely improve your quality, lengthen your lifespan while ultimately costing less. The reason for this? The more patients they treat, the more money they get. That's not hypothetical, it's actually still happening.
You seem to favor forceful coercion.
Not at all. I'm against incentivising people to hurt me when their objective is supposed to be helping me. Behavior is determined by feedback loops and money is a strong feedback loop. This is why you don't pay firefighters based on the number of fires the put out because it's been shown that's a quick way to start having them commit arson.
You need to stop thinking in ideological terms in start thinking in terms of motive (aka feedback loops). Also, don't delude yourself into believing laws will prevent bad behavior when there is a strong motive to break those laws.
The difference is that the government is not rewarded for cutting corners so they don't cut corners until it hurts.
And your point is?
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it. What I'm saying is that privatizing everything is not a good idea because the profit motive can encourage working against the interest of the people.
What is the value of making this type of statement to me?
As I understand it, Libertarians seek to minimize government because they believe businesses will result in a superior outcome and minimize waste. What I'm trying to explain is that this train of thought is flawed.
Look, I get it. You have what you consider to be some morally superior philosophy.
This isn't about morality, it's about what is best for the people.
you could just get over that the world is not perfect and never has been and do the best you can with the one life you get to live.
I'm trying to do what's best for all people because the world is not perfect. I'm trying to help people, not just myself.
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
That may be, but the burden is on you or your elected officials to substantiate the claim and hold them accountable. We are all afforded the same rights of due process of law.
This is exactly why we need regulation which was my point. You are making my point, not disproving it.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent
No honest Libertarian ever said corporations are all inherently benevolent or malign. That's intellectually dishonest.
When constructing any system, you should always assume that parts of it may behave improperly thus you should assume that corporations are going to act malevolently. You don't build robust systems by assuming everything is going to do what it claims.
Corporations are however mostly focused on self interest, as we all are. Be honest, the change you want is based on your own self interest. You want to tip the scales in your favor.
Actually, no, I'm not. I want what is best for all people, not just the people that can afford it. I want the human race to succeed as a whole, not small segments of it. I'm not interested in getting a big fancy house or a shiny new thing by taking from or exploiting other people. That kind of thinking is what has gotten our world into it's current position. I'm not looking to build a utopia, just something that is better than what we have now.
You are merely representing a different different competing interest from your subjective perspective. What we are all doing is trying to find compromise among all these competing interests.
No, I'm afraid not everyone thinks the way you do.
Milton Friedman argues let the consumer decide whether they want to take the risk and that what's at issue is whether the producer adequately discloses all the information to allow the consumer to make an informed choice. Not doing so is fraud.
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
You'd like to think Libertarians are anarchists or support completely unregulated Capitalism but that's simply not true. That's just misinformation and demagoguery.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent and when all else fails you claim it's "big government"'s fault that XYZ happens. The truth is that corporations are systems that are optimized to extract money from people and the more sociopathic a person is, the more successful they can become by doing what others may consider objectionable. After several cycles of job replacements, you end up with people controlling corporations without empathy. The result is that corporations are extremely opportunistic, quick to exploit and will do anything to avoid responsibility. So when you say it can be done better by private business, you mean you are trusting a sociopaths to do what is in your interest, somehow thinking it's also in there interest when the truth is that their only interest is getting the most money by investing the least amount of work and resources. This is good in theory until you realize they will cut every corner and promote bad customer outcome (including unnecessary deaths) if it means they will get more money. GM saved $0.53 cents on every car and all they had to do was sacrifice the lives of dozens of people. Equifax blames open source for their security woes but didn't invest a dime into investigating if the applications were secure. Corporations don't give a shit about people.
These were bought-and-paid-for politicians doing what their masters wanted, which was a bailout at taxpayer expense and with little change to how they do business
Then shouldn't the first order of business be campaign finance reform?
Citation needed because people are still dying because they can't afford medication.
It used to be that churches, benevolent organizations, and private charities filled the role of healthcare safety net before the massive expansion of government entitlement programs as regular people could afford to give to charities because they were not being taxed to the edge of insolvency to pay for bloated, corrupt, and hugely wasteful government entitlement programs and the massive bureaucracy that goes hand-in hand with them.
That is not a citation, it's a claim.
People give more when they aren't forced under threat of deadly force or imprisonment as government "charity" is.
Citation needed. In order to match taxes, the rich would have to give away waaaay more than anyone else. Some of them do but to my knowledge the vast majority are not so liberal with their money.
The basic idea of privatization is sound from an economic standpoint,
And if the world were purely economics, it would be great. However, the world isn't pure economics because lives are at stake.
the problem is with trying to implement such a system within a bloated, corrupt government that has grown far too large & powerful as the US government has.
Are you claiming that they would not be trying to maximize the number of inmates if the government were smaller? I would love to read the argument for that.
Crony corruption occurs in every form of government.... It is not endemic to capitalism, it is endemic to governments which have grown too large & powerful.
Yes, corruption occurs in all governments. Then why not see to root out the corruption rather than thinking it will magically go away with fewer people involved?
It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
Well, not too long ago East Germany had this little tourist attraction called the "Berlin Wall".
I recall... they didn't have automated machine gun turrets because those are still fictional weaponry. Also, that's a single instance out of thousands of years of governments.
Milton Friedman even said the Free Market Enterprise system is far from perfect and we should endeavor to make it better. He challenged critics to present a better system. To my knowledge, no one has ever done so.
Uhh... what do you call regulation? Besides, the free-market ideology is inappropriate in any area where the customer has no choice. You don't shop around for the best deal when the doctor says you need a quadruple bypass immediately or you are likely to die.
So yeah, there are a LOT of systems better than the free market, it just depends on the context.
Indeed, but interestingly large parts of textbook macroeconomics performed (and continue to perform) very well during the crisis. ISLM / ISMP style models have accurately predicted the behavior of economic actors of all different scales this past decade. Some economic programs had neglected these approaches for some time, while others had continued them, but moved them onto a more rigorous mathematical framework. (See for example Romer's treatment of ISMP).
IMHO any movement in economics towards empirical validation and towards more robust models (i.e. less overfitting) is for the better.
The NTSB is also expected to find that Tesla Inc could have taken additional steps to prevent the system's misuse
Of course they could have taken additional steps to prevent the system's misuse before the crash because that's exactly what they did right after the crash.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
So, instead of a year or three of depression and then a return to a healthier market
If anyone seriously believed that would be the case, they wouldn't have voted for the bailouts.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
This is where in the past private charity stepped in
Citation needed because people are still dying because they can't afford medication.
Yeah, it was terrible in Houston with all those people who brought boats from across the US demanding cash payments up front and abandoning those who couldn't pay to die...oh, wait....
Exactly my point, the free-market ideology wasn't there.
Yeah, those roving bands of private-prison guards snatching people off the street and throwing them in prison must stop...oh, wait....
Congratulation on knowing jack shit about the problem.
You're confusing and/or conflating capitalism with crony corruption,
I believe the words you meant to write was crony capitalism. Why do you think the free-market ideology is somehow independent?
It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught
[Golf clap].
it's quite frustrating when what they teach in economics doesn't match reality. Students didn't demand change because the economics theories they were taught were perfect but because they were flawed.
What a bunch of drivel. We need more emphasis on free-market doctrines and how/why the system we have currently isn't. The more we try to add Marxist ideology to today's society, the more problems we introduce.
Allow me to point out some of the issues that make show how problematic the free-market ideology really is.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
* Disaster events: according to the free-market ideology, we shouldn't help those who are now homeless because they did not pay for the proper insurance.
* The prison system: according to the free-market ideology, private prisons should be attempting to maximize the number of inmates by any means. This results in a higher prison population with longer sentences. This is actually happening.
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
Slashdot Mirror
How many times is Slashdot going to post about this topic? It's a question that can never be answered and even when answered has no value. This is like the sixth time I've seen this same damn topic here and it's boring me. Then again, maybe I'm in control of the computer and want you stop obsessing about this or I'll hit the reset button! ;)
When the money stops moving around, the financial sector of the US economy withers and dies within weeks.
It would almost be worth it just to have that happen. The financial sector is a parasite.
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it.
I think you meant corporations
No, corporations only have one incentive, money. They have no quibbles about fucking you over in the process of getting more money.
For example, a for-profit corporation that does dialysis also discourages patients from getting a kidney transplant while omitting the fact that a kidney transplant would likely improve your quality, lengthen your lifespan while ultimately costing less. The reason for this? The more patients they treat, the more money they get. That's not hypothetical, it's actually still happening.
You seem to favor forceful coercion.
Not at all. I'm against incentivising people to hurt me when their objective is supposed to be helping me. Behavior is determined by feedback loops and money is a strong feedback loop. This is why you don't pay firefighters based on the number of fires the put out because it's been shown that's a quick way to start having them commit arson.
You need to stop thinking in ideological terms in start thinking in terms of motive (aka feedback loops). Also, don't delude yourself into believing laws will prevent bad behavior when there is a strong motive to break those laws.
Not surprising that there's ~200k car fires in the US alone every year
I think it's past time we call a carbecue a carbecue. ;)
Seems the trolls came to Slashdot after the ban.
Good sir, they prefer to be called Libertarians! ;)
The difference is that the government is not rewarded for cutting corners so they don't cut corners until it hurts.
And your point is?
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it. What I'm saying is that privatizing everything is not a good idea because the profit motive can encourage working against the interest of the people.
What is the value of making this type of statement to me?
As I understand it, Libertarians seek to minimize government because they believe businesses will result in a superior outcome and minimize waste. What I'm trying to explain is that this train of thought is flawed.
Look, I get it. You have what you consider to be some morally superior philosophy.
This isn't about morality, it's about what is best for the people.
you could just get over that the world is not perfect and never has been and do the best you can with the one life you get to live.
I'm trying to do what's best for all people because the world is not perfect. I'm trying to help people, not just myself.
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
That may be, but the burden is on you or your elected officials to substantiate the claim and hold them accountable. We are all afforded the same rights of due process of law.
This is exactly why we need regulation which was my point. You are making my point, not disproving it.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent
No honest Libertarian ever said corporations are all inherently benevolent or malign. That's intellectually dishonest.
When constructing any system, you should always assume that parts of it may behave improperly thus you should assume that corporations are going to act malevolently. You don't build robust systems by assuming everything is going to do what it claims.
Corporations are however mostly focused on self interest, as we all are. Be honest, the change you want is based on your own self interest. You want to tip the scales in your favor.
Actually, no, I'm not. I want what is best for all people, not just the people that can afford it. I want the human race to succeed as a whole, not small segments of it. I'm not interested in getting a big fancy house or a shiny new thing by taking from or exploiting other people. That kind of thinking is what has gotten our world into it's current position. I'm not looking to build a utopia, just something that is better than what we have now.
You are merely representing a different different competing interest from your subjective perspective. What we are all doing is trying to find compromise among all these competing interests.
No, I'm afraid not everyone thinks the way you do.
Corporations don't give a shit about people.
That may be but I'll tell you what, the government doesn't either.
The difference is that the government is not rewarded for cutting corners so they don't cut corners until it hurts.
But 97 out of 100 economists agree
[citation needed]
Milton Friedman argues let the consumer decide whether they want to take the risk and that what's at issue is whether the producer adequately discloses all the information to allow the consumer to make an informed choice. Not doing so is fraud.
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
You'd like to think Libertarians are anarchists or support completely unregulated Capitalism but that's simply not true. That's just misinformation and demagoguery.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent and when all else fails you claim it's "big government"'s fault that XYZ happens. The truth is that corporations are systems that are optimized to extract money from people and the more sociopathic a person is, the more successful they can become by doing what others may consider objectionable. After several cycles of job replacements, you end up with people controlling corporations without empathy. The result is that corporations are extremely opportunistic, quick to exploit and will do anything to avoid responsibility. So when you say it can be done better by private business, you mean you are trusting a sociopaths to do what is in your interest, somehow thinking it's also in there interest when the truth is that their only interest is getting the most money by investing the least amount of work and resources. This is good in theory until you realize they will cut every corner and promote bad customer outcome (including unnecessary deaths) if it means they will get more money. GM saved $0.53 cents on every car and all they had to do was sacrifice the lives of dozens of people. Equifax blames open source for their security woes but didn't invest a dime into investigating if the applications were secure. Corporations don't give a shit about people.
Your argument at face value would apply to many things like food, water, housing, electricity, etc.
You are beginning to get the picture.
These were bought-and-paid-for politicians doing what their masters wanted, which was a bailout at taxpayer expense and with little change to how they do business
Then shouldn't the first order of business be campaign finance reform?
Citation needed because people are still dying because they can't afford medication.
It used to be that churches, benevolent organizations, and private charities filled the role of healthcare safety net before the massive expansion of government entitlement programs as regular people could afford to give to charities because they were not being taxed to the edge of insolvency to pay for bloated, corrupt, and hugely wasteful government entitlement programs and the massive bureaucracy that goes hand-in hand with them.
That is not a citation, it's a claim.
People give more when they aren't forced under threat of deadly force or imprisonment as government "charity" is.
Citation needed. In order to match taxes, the rich would have to give away waaaay more than anyone else. Some of them do but to my knowledge the vast majority are not so liberal with their money.
The basic idea of privatization is sound from an economic standpoint,
And if the world were purely economics, it would be great. However, the world isn't pure economics because lives are at stake.
the problem is with trying to implement such a system within a bloated, corrupt government that has grown far too large & powerful as the US government has.
Are you claiming that they would not be trying to maximize the number of inmates if the government were smaller? I would love to read the argument for that.
Crony corruption occurs in every form of government. ... It is not endemic to capitalism, it is endemic to governments which have grown too large & powerful.
Yes, corruption occurs in all governments. Then why not see to root out the corruption rather than thinking it will magically go away with fewer people involved?
It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
Well, not too long ago East Germany had this little tourist attraction called the "Berlin Wall".
I recall... they didn't have automated machine gun turrets because those are still fictional weaponry. Also, that's a single instance out of thousands of years of governments.
Milton Friedman even said the Free Market Enterprise system is far from perfect and we should endeavor to make it better. He challenged critics to present a better system. To my knowledge, no one has ever done so.
Uhh... what do you call regulation? Besides, the free-market ideology is inappropriate in any area where the customer has no choice. You don't shop around for the best deal when the doctor says you need a quadruple bypass immediately or you are likely to die.
So yeah, there are a LOT of systems better than the free market, it just depends on the context.
Don' worry, though, the latest version of Apple's iPhone will have an app to fix that! :-)
Oh no! But I choose healthcare instead. ;)
“Maybe rather than getting that new iPhone” Americans “should invest in their own healthcare” - Rep. Jason Chaffetz
Who has caused the most damage for American citizens?
NORTH KOREA or THE NSA?
Microsoft.
Indeed, but interestingly large parts of textbook macroeconomics performed (and continue to perform) very well during the crisis. ISLM / ISMP style models have accurately predicted the behavior of economic actors of all different scales this past decade. Some economic programs had neglected these approaches for some time, while others had continued them, but moved them onto a more rigorous mathematical framework. (See for example Romer's treatment of ISMP).
IMHO any movement in economics towards empirical validation and towards more robust models (i.e. less overfitting) is for the better.
Umm... ;)
The NTSB is also expected to find that Tesla Inc could have taken additional steps to prevent the system's misuse
Of course they could have taken additional steps to prevent the system's misuse before the crash because that's exactly what they did right after the crash.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
So, instead of a year or three of depression and then a return to a healthier market
If anyone seriously believed that would be the case, they wouldn't have voted for the bailouts.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
This is where in the past private charity stepped in
Citation needed because people are still dying because they can't afford medication.
Yeah, it was terrible in Houston with all those people who brought boats from across the US demanding cash payments up front and abandoning those who couldn't pay to die...oh, wait....
Exactly my point, the free-market ideology wasn't there.
Yeah, those roving bands of private-prison guards snatching people off the street and throwing them in prison must stop...oh, wait....
Congratulation on knowing jack shit about the problem.
You're confusing and/or conflating capitalism with crony corruption,
I believe the words you meant to write was crony capitalism. Why do you think the free-market ideology is somehow independent?
It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
Nobody has those, so what's your point?
That doesn't mean the changes they demand won't make it even more flawed.
Where did you read their demands? All i saw was that they demanded an overhaul, not anything specific.
"Do something, even if it's wrong" is a really stupid way to run an economy.
"Keep teaching what has been proven wrong" is a worse alternative.
Being a libertarian
Color me surprised, another idealistic idiot on the internet that is detached from reality.
I always thought the best way to learn econ was countless hours of Dopewars.
Sure... if you have zero capacity for empathy and think sociopathy is a gift.
[Golf clap].
it's quite frustrating when what they teach in economics doesn't match reality. Students didn't demand change because the economics theories they were taught were perfect but because they were flawed.
What a bunch of drivel. We need more emphasis on free-market doctrines and how/why the system we have currently isn't. The more we try to add Marxist ideology to today's society, the more problems we introduce.
Allow me to point out some of the issues that make show how problematic the free-market ideology really is.
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
Your data wouldn't have been given to criminals if they had invested that $500K in security.
We already know Windows security is crap which is why malware for Linux systems would be far more interesting.