[HN Gopher] Why Governments Fail ___________________________________________________________________ Why Governments Fail Author : seriousquestion Score : 80 points Date : 2021-04-26 15:05 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.persuasion.community) (TXT) w3m dump (www.persuasion.community) | slibhb wrote: | Did the government fail? | | I don't know. We got a vaccine remarkably quickly and the | governments (federal and state) distributed it efficiently. I | don't blame the government for not taking the virus seriously to | start with. SARS and MERS didn't pan out and people, on the left | and right (including me), figured COVID would be the same. Some | people predicted COVID would be bad but it wasn't crazy to think | COVID wouldn't turn into a pandemic. | | The countries that did well with COVID are mostly islands and | East Asian countries. I doubt the "Chinese and Japanese are | really obedient"-type expanations. I wonder if some East Asian | countries had antibodies from similar viruses that flew under the | radar and granted partial immunity. That's pure | speculuation...but even if those countries suceeded due to law | and order, that's a double-edged sword. Do we really want to | build our society to survive viruses with the fewest causalities | or are there perhaps higher ideals (freedom, self determiniation) | that we should aspire to? And of course there's no freedom | without the freedom to be wrong. | | > And where the world needs to head is to establish new means of | producing credibility and good reputation that are robust to | current technologies. What we're now calling "populism" might | turn out to be the least of our problems. | | In terms of populism stuff, I think there's some truth to the | idea here that the internet has led to the unmasking of | leaders/government as incompetent. To some degree, modern | populism consists of people recoiling in horror after realizing | just how dumb you can be while holding power. But it's easy to | notice other people being wrong and quite hard to do any better | yourself. Mostly, these populist movements seem bereft of ideas | and are just expressing incoherent outrage. | | It will be interesting to see if the internet makes it possible | to have better, more accountable governments. I don't discount | the possibility. The thing that worries me is that, in my | opinion, more transparency is in some sense the problem. We learn | about governmental incompetence via the internet but the internet | also turns politicians into influencers, and that's a signiciant | part of the problem too. | luxuryballs wrote: | Also didn't they change the definition of a pandemic in 2009 | such that it wouldn't have even been a pandemic prior? I read | that somewhere standby... | https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173.pdf | shadowgovt wrote: | I think the Internet (in particular, the social media a lot of | people are consuming their news from) is really good at | providing anecdata, but really bad at giving perspective to | determine context and how to fit the anecdotes into a bigger | picture. Because of, for example, correlation algorithms | determining what someone reads in their Facebook feed and | trying to maximize the topic for engagement, a person chasing a | few threads of stories of incompetence can quickly end up with | a wall that is nothing _but_ such stories. And even if one | doesn 't use Facebook, other spaces are vulnerable to the same | effects... Chasing Reddit karma involves posting stories that | the majority will upvote, posting controversial-but-true | content in many topic-specific fora will result in some form of | moderation or loss of karma-equivalent, and so on. | | The unmasking of incompetence is real, but much less clear is | the degree to which it occurs and whether it's the exception or | the norm. But it's very easy to assume it's the norm from what | one sees on a Facebook wall (and on a different Facebook wall, | or in a different group, it's very easy to assume it never | happens or all reports of it are overblown). | mcculley wrote: | Yes, the U.S. government failed. | | We should have implemented testing at scale immediately, found | the infected, and paid them to stay home. While this would have | cost a lot of money, it would have been less than the PPP and | stimulus efforts. | slibhb wrote: | I think this implies a historicist perspective. In other | words, you tacitly demand that the government tell the future | and act accordingly. Well obviously the government can't do | that. | | I think "failure" should be a question of incompetent | administration. That is, once a policy is decided, how well | or poorly was it carried out? It may be that the government | failed at carrying out mass testing. | mcculley wrote: | I do not demand that the government successfully predict | the future. In March 2020, it was obvious what was | happening in other countries. We were informed by the past | and the present to determine how to respond. | slibhb wrote: | > While this would have cost a lot of money, it would | have been less than the PPP and stimulus efforts. | | This quote is demanding that the government has access to | future numbers, isn't it? | | I don't agree that it was obvious what was happening in | March. It's only obvious in retrospect. | mcculley wrote: | It was obvious to me and many others. I posted on March | 11, 2020 that we should get our shit together and test at | scale, as South Korea and other countries with effective | government were doing. I was not demanding supernatural | prognostication, just competence. | | Now we pay the price. | 8note wrote: | It was obvious to the government what was happening. | | They got rich off it | captaincurrie wrote: | I'm a moron and I realized in March 2020 that testing at | scale is the main pillar of any pandemic containment | strategy. | pessimizer wrote: | > In other words, you tacitly demand that the government | tell the future and act accordingly. | | This is a common excuse about every bad plan after the | fact; that the critics are expecting decisionmakers to have | been psychic. It scrupulously ignores that the critics were | offering the same critique at the time. | | It scrupulously ignores anything specific to the problem | being discussed. It's the "no one could have known" or the | "it's easy to be a backseat driver" defense. | | > I think "failure" should be a question of incompetent | administration. That is, once a policy is decided, how well | or poorly was it carried out? | | All people with responsibility agree with you, which is why | they carefully avoid formulating a policy. | slibhb wrote: | Doing nothing is a perfectly fine policy. In medicine | they say "first, do no harm". | mcculley wrote: | This is the most contrived apology for incompetence that | I have read. I am quite amazed. | | It would be different if we had never before experienced | a pandemic. It would be different if we did not have the | examples of countries and cultures with effective | implementation of testing at scale while we did nothing. | | This defense of inaction is like leaving potholes alone | because doing the obvious thing might cause harm somehow. | slibhb wrote: | I'm arguing for a distinction between _being wrong_ and | _failure_. I don 't see anything from you (or the other | poster) besides rhetoric. Apparently we should have "just | known" that this virus was going to be a disaster. And | evidence of this was "I knew" or "other countries knew". | Great, and half of HN "knows" there is imminent | hyperinflation. | | It may be fair to describe the lack of available tests a | failure. All the PCR testing sites near me were 100% | booked whenever I checked and the state did nothing (as | far as I know) to tell us where we could get tested. | Perhaps that could be described as a failure. But the | rhetoric from you and the other poster is post-hoc | silliness. Neither of you seem to be aware that you're | expecting the government to tell the future or what the | drawbacks of that might be. | | For a taste, consider that citizens blaming the | government for 9/11 plausibly led to a years-long illegal | wire-tapping and at least one clearly unnecessary war. | mcculley wrote: | "post-hoc silliness"? In March, we had seen what had | happened in China and Italy already. We were watching how | other countries were investing. We chose not to invest. | | When a government fails to do something about an entirely | predictable outcome, that is not just an error, it is | also a failure. | | You have a really surprising way to view things: All | governments can be excused for inaction or even the wrong | action with this logic. | slibhb wrote: | Not excused but forgiven. | giantg2 wrote: | "To some degree, modern populism consists of people recoiling | in horror after realizing just how dumb you can be while | holding power. _But it 's easy to notice other people being | wrong and quite hard to do any better yourself._" italics for | emphasis | | I think this is true in some cases, but not necessarily in all | the issues we today. We're all just human and we all make | mistakes. I think the part where it is ok to think we can do | better is in how we handle those mistakes. It seems that most | leaders tend to be hypocritical, blame the 'other side' for | failures, and even ignore failings. Of course, it seems that's | the way people get to be in power in the first place in the | current political environment, so the people who act | differently rarely stand a chance at the federal level. | yosito wrote: | > Do we really want to build our society to survive viruses | with the fewest causalities or are there perhaps higher ideals | (freedom, self determiniation) that we should aspire to? | | I don't see why these have to be mutually exclusive goals. | Arguably, there are better ways to get an entire society to | cooperate toward a goal without resorting to authoritarianism. | This sort of societal engineering is demonstrated in religions, | cults, and political tribes all the time. If we can harness it | at the scale of an entire country, or even a majority of the | world, we could accomplish quite a lot. It's been done before, | and today's technology could theoretically enable it at a level | that's never been seen in human history. Though we currently | seem to be experiencing more of the dark side of the whole | phenomenon. | slibhb wrote: | It seems clear to me that "religions, cults, and political | tribes" that enforce uniform behavior are by definition | restricting freedom. | | Which is not to say that freedom is never worth restricting. | My general point was that I prefer American notions of | freedom to East Asian notions of freedom. | yosito wrote: | Plato's famous works were about this. One of his ideas was | to create the perfect state in which good behavior didn't | have to be enforced by laws, by instilling people with an | internal sense of morality that they willingly want to | follow. Early Judeo-Christian societies were built around | this idea. If people are doing what they want to do, and | that aligns with what society needs them to do, then their | freedom doesn't have to be restricted. | slibhb wrote: | Yes, The Republic, and Plato's last dialogue is called | Laws and it describes a state governed by laws. Judeo- | Christian societies were and are based on deontology i.e. | the ten commandments. | | What you're talking about is the harmonization of all | interests around a single ideal, something that never | ends well (including Plato's attempt in Syracuse). It's | been criticized to death by liberal philosophers, in my | opinion rightly. | mcculley wrote: | This is a false dichotomy. We don't have only U.S. apathy | and East Asian collectivism as our choices. We could invest | in public health infrastructure. We won't, but that is | another topic. | ryandrake wrote: | I don't understand the whole "freedom" argument against basic | public health and safety guidance. Almost everyone wears | their seatbelt in a car and doesn't complain about how their | freedoms are being taken away in the name of safety. So why | is this not the same with masks and distancing? Why is it | that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them | into Braveheart, fighting for freedom against oppression? | Sensible precautions against an airborne deadly pandemic are | not attacks on self determination. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | > Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask | transforms them into Braveheart, fighting for freedom | against oppression? | | 1) In my country, some of the same scientific advisors to | the government on the COVID response, are also criticizing | the government for requiring masks to be worn outdoors in | deserted streets, even though the science says that the | risk of transmission there is negligible. They say that | this kind of "hygiene theatre" can ultimately diminish the | state's authority to mount efforts that truly matter to | stopping the spread. A problem is that the outdoor mask law | also appears to discourage outdoor exercise (even if people | could exercise in a mask, the psychological barrier is | real), and exercise is something public-health experts | naturally want to encourage, even during the pandemic. | | 2) In some countries, the authorities have eased up on | restrictions, or kept them on the books but ceased | enforcing them, after the broad population flaunted them. | Ruling parties are sensitive to what the population is | willing to accept, lest unpopular restrictions cost them | the next election. | | Now put those two facts together, and people refusing en | masse to wear a mask outdoors (while continuing to | responsibly wear masks in crowded open areas and in indoor | spaces like shops and other people's homes) might be | effective in ending a measure that even actual public- | health experts say is pointless and oppressive. | shuntress wrote: | >Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask | transforms them into Braveheart | | Because that was the message in the echo chamber they | didn't know they were in. | throwawayboise wrote: | Because masks were promoted as protecting others, not the | wearer. This didn't recognize that people put their own | needs ahead of others. Seat belts can protect _me_ in an | accident. So I wear them. With masks, (especially if I am | young and not at much risk) I think "if someone is afraid | of the virus, they can just stay home, why do I need to | change what I do?" | ModernMech wrote: | It's just because masks are new. People had the same | negative reaction to seatbelts when they were first | introduced, citing inane things like "it might wrinkle my | shirt" as a reason not to wear them. | | https://www.businessinsider.com/seatbelt-car-habit- | obligatio... | tut-urut-utut wrote: | Is it a problem when a government fails? Is it an ultimate goal | to have "good" government that doesn't fail? What if "failed" | government is sometimes a feature and not a bug? | | We have some examples of "failed states" where the average people | still live better than in many of the states with "good and | responsible" government. | | Some examples from Europe, which may have been controversial: | | - Italy & Greece - big country debt, corrupt government, but | average people still own more property ("richer") than people in | north European countries like Germany with "better" and "more | competent" governments. | | - Russia, Belorusia, Serbia - corrupt government that tends to | suppress human rights of its citizens, but still during the covid | pandemic the restrictions of basic human freedoms were much less | than in countries where human rights are most important, without | significant impact on the corona casualties. | ceejayoz wrote: | https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4975 | | > Covid-19: Russia admits to understating deaths by more than | two thirds | | > Russia's true death toll from the novel coronavirus pandemic | is not about 57 000, as official figures claim, but more than | 180 000, the country's deputy prime minister, Tatiana Golikova, | conceded at a press conference. | | > The figures mean Russia ranks third in the world in terms of | deaths from covid-19, behind only the US and Brazil. It would | also give Russia the fourth highest per capita death rate, | about 1273 deaths per million population, behind only San | Marino, Belgium, and Slovenia. | | Maybe good government matters more than you thought. | vagrantJin wrote: | Eh. Not be disrespectful of the talk but the US excelled in the | one thing it excels at more than most. Money. Raising enough | money to buy vaccines en-masse. That was to be expected. The | parts that didn't need money, ie closing down key sectors of | public life, restricting freedoms of civilians in state of | crisis, wearing masks, social distancing led to one of the most | atrocious response to a pandemic this side of the past century. | Even Central African ebola outbreaks are generally well contained | (Reasonably) and those governments really don't have the money to | invest in science and medicine as the US. Other than that tid bit | I disagree with, the talk really doesnt talk about state-craft | how I imagined they would, more focused on specific examples and | instances. Trees in the forest if you will but a great talk to | listen to while doing some work! | | Really enjoyed it. | varispeed wrote: | The problem is that nobody cares about corruption, or the so- | called "lobbying". Big companies get their way at the expense of | regular citizens meanwhile police and other agencies are busy | enforcing big pharma monopoly on drugs. Most governments run | until they are exposed and people are mad enough to march on the | streets, or they simply run out of "their" monopoly money. To | improve that we need a ruthless agency that will remove | corruption from politics once and for all. | naravara wrote: | This misses the actual mechanism by which political corruption | works. Lobbying is merely any person going in to press their | interests with their representatives. Where large, monied | interests rig the game is because they run election campaigns | and implant narratives in the media. | | In other words, the mechanism by which lobbyists get their way | is by weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their | interests. It's marketing and mass manipulation rather than the | "quid pro quo" corruption people imagine it is. | dane-pgp wrote: | > weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their | interests. It's marketing and mass manipulation | | Which means there is a problem even if the money never even | touches a politician's / campaign's bank account. It's too | easy for a politician to say something like "If elected, I | will remove burdensome regulations on airlines" as a dog | whistle for "I want the airline industry to buy ads that | attack my opponent". | | The only obvious ways to prevent that are to somehow prove | that the politician coordinated their position with the | industry (which seems impossible) or banning companies from | ever expressing a political opinion (which apparently some | politicians would like to achieve, but only those political | opinions that they disagree with). | | Fortunately there does exist one slightly less obvious way of | preventing this, which doesn't require nullifying all the | freedom of speech principles of the First Amendment. What is | needed is a law (and probably an enabling Amendment) which | limits political advertisements to N dollars per person per | year (with N being 1% of the median US income). | | Importantly, other forms of political speech and expression | wouldn't be restricted. This way the law is targeted at the | specific loophole that lobbying exploits, which is that | people can be bombarded with a message against their wishes, | generating an "illusory truth effect". People can still go | out and find information, or march in the street to spread | awareness of a political cause, but having more money | wouldn't give you a greater ability to get your message in | front of people who aren't interested in it. | | The idea above is basically the core of CFR28 which is | explained more in the relevant Wikipedia article: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the. | .. | billytetrud wrote: | I think there is a lot more quid pro quo than you think. | Lobbiests are NOT usually just regular people. They're | usually paid agents. | imtringued wrote: | I think he made a distinction between lobbying which anyone | can do and a lobbyist which is a career whose sole goal is | to do nothing but lobbying. | fossuser wrote: | Yeah - I basically agree with this framing. | | I think Lessig's talk is the best summary of this: https://ww | w.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_... | | Lobbying itself is fine - we want experts with deep domain | expertise interacting with law makers. We just don't want | them also funding their campaigns. | tacocataco wrote: | I must have watched a different ted talk he did on the same | subject. I think it was called "the green primary" | User23 wrote: | Put more simply, lobbyists are just the bag men. They | facilitate payoffs that are laundered through junkets, book | deal advances, insider trading opportunities, and who knows | what else. The lobbying firms certainly have little or no | idea why the proposed bill they are selling was crafted. | | It's a sobering realization that none of our elected | legislators are competent to actually write laws. | Occasionally you'll see an example where they'll have a staff | attorney draft something for the purpose of political | grandstanding, but that's a sideshow compared to the amount | of legislation written by the people with the real power. | | The dynamic of how the sausage is made in DC is why, | incidentally, Trump had to go. For all his many many faults, | one thing he did right was bring buying legal privilege in | the form of laws or federal regulations to a grinding halt. | naravara wrote: | > It's a sobering realization that none of our elected | legislators are competent to actually write laws. | Occasionally you'll see an example where they'll have a | staff attorney draft something for the purpose of political | grandstanding, but that's a sideshow compared to the amount | of legislation written by the people with the real power. | | Even if they wanted to, they couldn't. Their staff offices | don't have the payroll budgets to pay a decent analyst a | living wage so their offices are staffed by the rich | children of donors who can afford to be paid a pittance | while living in one of the highest cost-of-living metros in | the country. Smart legislative analysts are expensive, but | none of them can afford to pay off student loans and raise | a family at the payscales available to them. So they end up | going into advocacy, big law, or lobbying once they cut | their teeth on the Hill. | User23 wrote: | That's more strong evidence that the system really | doesn't work as advertised. If it did then the people | that supposedly have the power of the purse and control | trillions of dollars in spending might vote themselves | enough budget to do their jobs. | salawat wrote: | They certainly voted themselves out of the legislative | work of actually understanding technology. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Asse | ssm... | loki49152 wrote: | Lobbying is a form of self-defense against the real corruption | - a government that has assigned itself the power to interfere | in our day-to-day lives. Most people today take it for granted | that "regulations" must exist because they solve some actual | problem. | | Usually, the "problem" they exist to solve is that some | government functionary wants to look like they're "doing | something", which is itself a form of corruption. Regulations | also commonly serve ideologically-motivated belief that some | faction has managed to force on everyone else. Everything else | that is "corrupt" about proscriptive regulations follows from | the fact that the belief in proscriptive regulations is a | corrupt belief (and illegal under the US Constitution as it was | actually written). | simonh wrote: | Just for clarity, it seems that when you say regulations, | you're really talking about laws. | salawat wrote: | Specifically of the Administrative form (read: delegated to | the executive in their definition by Congress) | | These are the types of regulations that can change on a | moments notice, and that the American citizen has no knob | to turn to influence once the paper to establish the Agency | in question is inked. | | Executive lawmaking was never supposed to be a thing. | jrwoodruff wrote: | >a ruthless agency that will remove corruption from politics | once and for all. | | Used to be called a free press, until we allowed massive | mergers creating single companies with control of a massive | media market share, and journalism trade unions to be | eliminated, leaving journalists no choice but to cover what | they're told. | sbacic wrote: | There's a funny joke about that. | | "Where do rich people hide their wealth in the West?" | | "In tax havens." | | "And where do they hide it in Eastern Europe?" | | "In plain sight". | | A free press won't do squat if there is no consequence for | the behavior they expose. If neither the public nor the | courts punish such behavior having a free press cover it will | amount to very little. | dane-pgp wrote: | I think you're missing the other half of the problem, which | is that people actively seek out "journalism" that confirms | their world view, regardless of whether it is true. | | Despite the mergers, there are still news outlets that | produce accurate and in depth reporting, and of course it's | possible to consume news from multiple opposing sources, but | most people either don't care about the news or only care if | it gives them a reason to hate the other side. | billytetrud wrote: | This is only a problem for hype-based ad funded news. Our | news is so bad today because it's ad funded, instead of | subscription based. With a subscription, you read a source | you trust and that source has an incentive to keep you | trusting it by giving you interesting information. | | By contrast, ad based news gets most of it's revenue from | vitality, shares, and clicks. They create hyperbolic | headlines aimed to create an emotional response (usually | highly negative) in order to induce people to click in a | rage. | pietrrrek wrote: | One could argue that subscription based news orgs are | incentivesed to provide you news which would ensure that | you stay subscribed. For some people these news would | have to be factual, but, for IMO most people news which | are either not fully factual, or omit some information | would be "preferred" as long as they (the news) conform | to the opinion of the subscriber. | billytetrud wrote: | People have their biases, and people like to be | validated. I agree. I just don't believe that people | satisfying their biases would have much of a market in | primarily subscriber-oriented news. Even todays | subscription news is driven by clicks and shares in a | misguided effort to compete with free news. | haecceity wrote: | It's not a problem! Maybe it is a problem but China is even | more corrupt!! They're gonna fall apart any day now! We don't | have to be worry about ourselves look at China!!! | paulpauper wrote: | If otherwise young, healthy ppl were dropping dead in droves | because of this, then I think there would have been more more | mobilization, cooperation, and compliance, but the later data | showed Covid only being slightly more deadly than the flu for | young and middle-aged people instead of 40x as deadly as | originally feared.So the urgency and concern began to dissipate | by mid-2020 when the studies came about affirming a much lower | IFR than originally feared. Second, many of these European | counties, which early on seemed to have contained the virus owing | to superior policy decisions and praised by the media while Trump | was heavily criticized, had major second, third and even forth | wages by late 2020 and 2021. This show the difficulty of | ascribing blame either way due to the inherent unpredictability | and virulence of Covid. | watwut wrote: | > Covid only being slightly more deadly than the flu for young | and middle-aged people | | That is not true. Flu is significantly less deadly for the same | age bracket. You have to compare young healthy people dying | from flu with young heathy people dying from covid. | giantg2 wrote: | Do you have the numbers? I would specifically be interested | in the 09 swine flu, which is one of the strains which | affected younger people more than normal. | oddmiral wrote: | Every organisation has 3 major stages: newborn, mature, and old. | When competition is present, old organizations are eaten by | newborn organizations. Government is monopoly, so no competition, | thus old organization must die first. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | > old organizations are eaten by newborn organizations | | I would argue that what happens in practice is newborn | organizations are eaten by old organizations. In fact, startups | are being born these days with the express purpose of being | eaten by a multinational. | | There is no competition whatsoever between the old mammoths and | the new things, and in fact it is the exception rather than the | rule to see an "old mammoth company" disappear, fail, or be | eaten. | TrispusAttucks wrote: | I have to agree. | | Governments seem like legacy code bases. Technically the laws | are a form of code. People and institutions are the hardware | the code runs on. | | Changing requirements of the environment the machine runs in | (reality) mean we must refactor and maintain the code. | | If the environment changes too quickly and the code is too | fragile to change at the required rate then some part of the | system will crash. Enough crashes and the whole thing | collapses. | | Then we have to rewrite the thing from scratch with the lessons | we learned from the previous version. Unfortunately some | governments make use of dark patterns that are bad for users | but good for a few. | | I'm done ranting... | kspacewalk2 wrote: | This doesn't seem in agreement with the parent comment, and | is a much better analogy than a mere 'government as something | that will eventually die'. | | Sure, governments are organizations that will eventually | 'die' in some form, but how is that a useful observation? The | British government has a lot of 'legacy code' going back to | the deep middle ages, and yet (in its current 'state of the | codebase', which can improve or worsen over time) it is much | further away from 'death' than many newcomers in the third | world who had no codebase to speak of 60 years ago. Theirs | are badly maintained forks and occasionally the whole thing | blows up and needs to be monkey-patched to keep creaking on | in some fashion. | | Age is thus no impediment at all to having a well- | functioning, efficient government, and 'startups' are often | in the most disadvantageous position of all. So even the | software analogy fails us at some point, and cannot be taken | any further. | johnchristopher wrote: | When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. | nslice wrote: | Yes I agree. It's difficult to switch to a new code base | (government) because the legacy system (current government) | also has authority (most citizens recognize government with | the most enforcement), incentive (lawmakers want to keep | their power), and power (military) to keep itself there | indefinitely. | lbriner wrote: | Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? | Interesting idea! | | Unfortauntely, I think the states are too high at government | level. Nothing too bad will happen when one trash company takes | over from another trash company but what would happen if some | random group took over the defence policy for a country because | the current government didn't seem to be doing very well at it? | gen220 wrote: | This is what federalism is! | | (Competing state and local governments, federated together | and governed by a centralized federal government, which grows | over time as citizens of the states agree on what laws they | want to enforce). | | Most laws passed by the federal government were first | experimented with at the local or state level, until a | majority of the peoples' representatives believed they should | be applied universally with a centralized implementation. Of | course there are many loopholes and exceptions in the US's | system, but this was one of the foundational ideas of the | current constitution. | dane-pgp wrote: | I can't help but wonder how the American political system | would look if an amendment passed which gave the individual | states the ability to decide for themselves: | | 1. What constitutes a well regulated militia | | 2. Whether certain drugs should be legal to consume | | 3. At what stage of development human life begins | | Moreover, I can't help wondering how popular such an | amendment would be with voters, and with the two main | parties. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | You'd have drug and gun smuggling between states, and | abortion tourism between states. | gen220 wrote: | This was tried with Slavery, it was very popular with the | two political parties, and it led to a civil war, whose | conclusion was: no, states do not get to decide on | slavery, and additionally they do not get to secede if | they disagree with the federal government. | | That being said, I don't think any of these three | particular things would become the underpinning of a | society or an economy, to the extent that slavery was in | the antebellum South. So, there probably wouldn't be | another Civil War fought over it. | | I think the 2nd amendment one is the most interesting one | to me, since our interpretation of it has become so | distorted with the passage of time, and since we don't | seem to be converging over time on a consensus (unlike | the other two, which were basically contrived for | political purposes in the last generation). It's almost | impossible to imagine what the founding fathers would | think about its application today. | oddmiral wrote: | Some form of competition is nice to have. For example, it's | better to have a parliament than a dictator, because parties | will compete with each other to fit people needs (or oligarch | needs, if democracy is broken). | | In Canada, police forces are compete. For example, | municipality can sign contract with one of provincial police | force or municipal police force, or create their own police | force. This competition creates a positive feeback loop. | virgil_disgr4ce wrote: | > Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? | | If you have multiple different policies (i.e. laws) with no | clear indication of what is legal/illegal, you have neither | law nor government | paulpauper wrote: | >. I'm just saying the observed increase in wealth inequality in | these nations goes away when you abstract from land. So capital | is not the problem. Let's deregulate building. | | Yeah cuz the fortune 500 list is dominated by land-owners such as | Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. Wealth inequality arises from | capital concentration, of which land is just one of several forms | of concentration. But the ability of large, powerful companies to | protect intellectual property and harness network effects to | derive large, reliable recurring revenues, which are passed on to | shareholders, are other contributing factors. Tyler is a smart | guy but is he like a fire hydrant at time that spews out things | that are wrong or incomplete. | billytetrud wrote: | > Wealth inequality arises from capital concentration | | No. Wealth inequality _is_ capital concentration. What you 're | saying is that rain causes rain. In actuality what causes | wealth inequality is corruption. The financial sector has been | extracting wealth from the people since the 70s. That's what | causes wealth inequality. | anikan_vader wrote: | > What you're saying is that rain causes rain. | | It's a little ironic to use that as an example, because rain | actually does cause rain. Falling water droplets induce a | down draft which causes other water droplets to fall out of | the sky as well. This is why water precipitates rather | suddenly rather than as a constant gradual drip. | billytetrud wrote: | Well, that's interesting to know. I still wouldn't say rain | causes rain. Rain may be self-reinforcing, but there is | generally some other far more significant catalyst. | Regardless, I hope you got my point. | giantg2 wrote: | There's a lot in here. I was going to make some quotes and | comment about some of this, but it's a pretty diverse set of | topics. | | The main thing is that I didn't see a solid definition on how a | failing government is defined or a concrete connection between | that and the topics covered. It seems to be Q&A about a bunch of | loosely affiliated topics. | jonathannat wrote: | The discussion is a bit all over the place. The main points are | that EU failed vaccination, and US failed covid testing | (Statista disagrees https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645 | /covid19-testing-...) , as well as having a decline of | innovation and movement (disagrees here, people moved | everywhere during covid, and US came up with tons of effective | vaccines) | | It's pretty hilarious both ignored discussing the current | failing government: China. | | - Came up with a 50% effective vaccine sinovac, and forces its | citizens to take it | | - Wolf warrior politics has infuriated almost every democratic | countries on Earth, and alienated China. When Merkel steps down | in Sept, the Green party candidate is most likely to succeed. | And the newcomer will act tough against China and Russia | | - Ballooning debt (they don't own global currency, unlike US), | declining marriage/birth rate, middle income trap, unrest in | many provinces | | - The CCP is so insecure that they banned broadcast of oscars | because of Chloe Zhao, because she mentioned CCP as failing one | time in 2013 | fossuser wrote: | > "The CCP is so insecure that they banned broadcast of | oscars because of Chloe Zhao, because she mentioned CCP as | failing one time in 2013" | | They're even here downvoting you. | | When they're willing to censor pooh bear there's nothing that | doesn't cross that insecurity threshold. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the- | Pooh#Censorship_in_... | jonathannat wrote: | > They're even here downvoting you | | Nah, if I had to guess, it's some of those patriotic | Mainland Chinese living in beautiful democratic countries | like US and Canada. | imtringued wrote: | > Ballooning debt | | What does the debt buy them? If it buys them increased growth | why even care? Assuming you can grow forever, you can get | into infinite debt. | hungryhobo wrote: | > Came up with a 50% effective vaccine sinovac, and forces | its citizens to take it | | is this worse than not having your own capacity to | manufacture vaccine and having to beg other countries for | vaccines? 50% efficacy is for transmission prevention, | however when you consider effectiveness against deaths and | hospitalization, it's >90% | | > Wolf warrior politics has infuriated almost every | democratic countries on Earth, and alienated China. When | Merkel steps down in Sept, the Green party candidate is most | likely to succeed. And the newcomer will act tough against | China and Russia | | oh god forbid a country standing up for its own interest. | | > Ballooning debt (they don't own global currency, unlike | US), declining marriage/birth rate, middle income trap, | unrest in many provinces | | something that's been touted for the past 30+ years. can we | just wait until it happens? | | > The CCP is so insecure that they banned broadcast of oscars | because of Chloe Zhao, because she mentioned CCP as failing | one time in 2013 | | funny that indian government asked twitter to remove anything | critical of its handling over COVID, with 350k daily cases, | but they are democratic so they get a pass. no this isn't | whataboutism, this is pointing out the double standard. | nradov wrote: | The Indian government hasn't gotten a pass, they are being | widely criticized in international news and social media. | But there are significant difference in degree. China | clearly is far worse on censorship and punishes dissent | more harshly. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | People have been predicting China's government to fail since | 1948. If Mao couldn't do it with his disastrous communist | nonsense it's going to take a lot. The CCP has cleverly | pivoted to Chinese nationalism (the wolf warrior diplomacy is | for internal consumption). | | I think it would be best to have a backup plan for what | happens if China doesn't implode. | lbriner wrote: | > I didn't see a solid definition on how a failing government | is defined | | I was going to say the same thing! | | I would be interested in breaking down the question into much | more comprehensible chunks such as, "What does a Government do | that they are unable to do effectively by definition?"; "Is | there a balance between public and private sector providing | services to the taxpayer and how do we decide the balance?"; | "If a Government is necessarily slow-moving, what is the | correct way to achieve fast-acting and tactical solutions that | will be accepted by the public when the time comes to do them?" | | I think a really common issue is that Governments are seen as a | single entity, when in fact they are more like an ever-changing | combination of ideals, abilities and pragmatism. The UK | Government is not the same now as it was even 6 months ago, so | learning lessons never really works. Any retired Politicians | going to face the music for a decision made 10 years ago? | paulpauper wrote: | >Cowen: There's been a decline in entrepreneurship, a decline in | the rate of innovation, a decline in people moving across the | country. People are bringing up their children in highly paranoid | ways. Just general risk aversion is going up quite strongly. | | yeah it's hard to be risk-taking when you aren't a tenured | professor, I suppose. Moving is expensive and time consuming. | Tyler says this same line in every interview, about how people | need to move more and how people are too averse to risk and | complacent. But there is plenty of risk-taking though. Look at | all the speculation in crypto, or young people making huge, | speculative options bets on r/wallstreetbets, or the web 2.0 tech | scene. Coinbase went public a few weeks ago. To say there is | stagnation or aversion to risk taking , goes against the | empirical evidence otherwise. Also, entrepreneurship has a high | failure rate and is very expensive on an inflationary-adjusted | basis (insurance,eadvertising, rent, marketing, etc all very | expensive). Unless the VC bears the risk by writing the check, I | cannot blame people for choosing to not start businesses. | billytetrud wrote: | People have gotten poorer in the last 40 years in the US. | Quality of everything has gone down, the most expensive things | in life (housing, health care, transportation) have all gotten | more expensive in comparison to incomes and more difficult. | | People want to take lucrative risks, but they don't have the | money to do it right, and the opportunities just aren't out | there. It's not that people need to move more or take more | risks, it's that there is demonstrably less opportunity out | there today because our governments are corrupt and have | destroyed the economy. | dillondoyle wrote: | Still need money to own stock. Huge % of Americans are food | insecure let alone able to put money into Robinhood. | | I do think there is some underlying insight here in terms of | risk ability. | | From my view a lack of safety net, healthcare specifically tied | to employment, is a big reason people can't afford to take | those risks like you mention. | | I wonder if there is further research? hard to control.. | | One counter argument I found this pdf has some hard stat | examples despite our failings US still leads entrepreneurship: | | - expect to start new business US 16.4, UK 11.1, France 17.2 - | 3 Month new business US 8.9, UK 5.1, France 3.1 - France | slightly wins survival .8, UK US tied .7 | | Towards the end of the article, he seems to argue GDP lifts all | boats? | | But the Fed seems to acknowledge that they specifically took | their 'foot off the gas' because inflation was #1 priority, and | that black and brown Americans were not actually 'lifted.' | | Monetary policy alone isn't enough because so many Americans | don't own the means (stock) nor the land (seems basically free | infinite money driving up housing and valuations). | | But good news Fed seems to have changed, will now use race and | income equity as a policy factor for the future. | | https://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017... | pradn wrote: | The crypto/wallstreetbets world shows there is some extreme | risk-taking at the margins. But this is not the sort that's | important, I think. The rate of entrepreneurship is declining | in the US, perhaps due to higher corporate concentration or the | cost of not having regular benefits (healthcare primarily). The | effect of such a decline is much more pronounced when | multiplied by the hundreds of thousands of communities that | small businesses like restaurants impact. | spencerrodgers wrote: | Out of all the comments here, I'm glad to see so many bring up | the one and only reason any governments ever fail on their own - | corruption. | | I spent three years with my company selling into the Trump | administration. I had a solution to the American energy crisis. | After my company closed, because I couldn't get a call back to | save my life, I learned that there were no people at the offices | I was calling. Trump left 35% of the renewable energies offices | unappointed. | | I'm bringing this up because no one here is mentioning the | elephant in the room. Trump completely eviscerated the CDC | epidemic watchdog groups, the CDC funding allocated for emergency | response, and the FEMA funding for epidemic response. Our | government didn't fail. We lacked infrastructure to chase the | answer we needed in a timely fashion. | | Looking back at all we've lost, this grave time will actually | spur a much larger scope of growth over the next 20-30 years. We | will have another roaring twenties. Yet, here in the US, people | walk around talking about how little the government works or how | incompetent lawmakers are. Well, it's not all of them. Just | enough of them that they keep the system gummed up. | | Term limits are the singular answer the US needs, now more than | ever. It could beat back the corruption we see from the likes of | McConnell and Pelosi, two people more concerned with their grip | on power than actual for-goodness changes. But as long as Trump | remains relevant, we will see a vast division among lawmakers, | which will destroy infrastructure built by the government to help | people. The voting rights laws being rolled back in Georgia are a | fantastic example. However, on the grand stage, those same | supporters can never win any real gains. This boils down to the | fact that his backers do so based on a lie. As long as that lie | exists McConnell and Cruz, and their like, can never engage in | any advancements for fear of being killed by Trump's base. | | If Trump had followed his supporters to the Capital on Jan. 6th, | our government would have failed. We were close. It's a good | thing he's more interested in tv ratings than reality. | tacocataco wrote: | CGP Grey's "Rules for rulers" is worth a watch. (like everything | he posts, favorite YouTuber by far) | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs | jasonvorhe wrote: | Thanks for the recommendation! | captaincurrie wrote: | Why Governments Fail: The CIA overthrows them or the US destroys | them. | jl2718 wrote: | These are all reasons why governments fail to do anything useful. | But we have numerous modern examples of dysfunctional | kleptocracies persisting for generations. Governments fail, as | in, stop functioning entirely, for only one reason: they go | broke. If the money keeps flowing, they don't care about any of | this stuff. Sure, go ahead and vote. If that had worked in those | countries, they wouldn't have become dysfunctional kleptocracies | in the first place. Just watch; they'll all go broke before even | considering reform, and then only in exchange for more money. | drummer wrote: | Persuasion is mind manipulation. It seems like the intentions of | this group are good, but you know what they say about the road to | hell. In any case, governments fail because they are founded on | corruption, that is, the belief in authority outside of the | individual. Which is basically slavery. Such a corrupt system | that goes against the universal right to life will always fail. | fabbari wrote: | Something about the statement 'So inequality is not the problem, | poverty is the problem' is wrong. I can't quite put my finger on | it -- it sounds along the lines of 'So falling from the 20th | floor is not the problem, hitting the sidewalk is the problem'. | | Can someone explain me to myself? | ls612 wrote: | You implicitly (and are not alone in this) place negative value | on the "wrong people" or even on other people in general having | more, even if you are no worse off. It stems from the human | brain being very perceptive of hierarchy and wanting to move up | the totem pole by any means necessary. | lordloki wrote: | I don't think that's a good analogy for the statement given. I | think a better analogy would be "the difference between your | floor and the top floor isn't the problem, falling out the | window is the problem." | ssivark wrote: | Nice analogy. I think that Tyler Cowen statement is a symptom | of Procrustean thinking from someone who starts reasoning not | with an understanding of how humans _are_ , but starts | _"logically"_ from the principles of economics and how humans | _ought to be_ per the economics rule book. | | IMHO, (too much) inequality is fundamentally a problem because | respective people's power/influence in a market society (which | we're tending to) is proportional to their wealth -- and that | is intrinsically incompatible with the notion of participative | democracy. | dv_dt wrote: | Inequality as some level of uneven distribution is not a | problem iff that distribution keeps the lowest percentile above | poverty. In the real world this doesn't happen, because not | only is the distribution not bounded for minimal fairness, it | has been shifting by those who have capital to further push | value upwards - so it's a problem that never self corrects. | | Imho Cowen makes obscure arguments to inequality not being a | problem because he is paid from the Koch empire (for at least a | significant portion of his career w/ George Mason University) | which has put in significant resources into developing multiple | Economic arguments their their wealth and influence are not a | problem. | petermcneeley wrote: | I appreciate the honesty when it comes to the naming of this | group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion | kspacewalk2 wrote: | Here's the rationale[0] for the naming of the group: | | >"Persuasion" stands for: | | >1) A commitment to a free society in which _everyone_ gets to | pursue a dignified life. | | >2) A belief in the social practice of persuasion, which | necessitates free speech. | | >3) A determination to persuade, not to mock or troll, those | who disagree with us. | | In my view, they are succeeding admirably in meeting these 3 | goals. | | [0] https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/1278707858188664832 | the_benno wrote: | Personally, I'm a little less convinced of the 1st bullet | point. | | In particular, I see many obstacles to a "free society in | which everyone gets to pursue a dignified life": healthcare | costs, ongoing climate disaster, erosion of labor rights, | rising nativism and authoritarianism on the far-right, etc. | chief among them. To be as monomaniacally focused on "cancel | culture" as Mounk (and many others on the center/right of the | American political spectrum) strikes me as misguided at best | and disingenuously self-serving at worst. | | Persuasion seems to me a massive over-reaction to the minor | injustice that is "cancel culture" wrapped in some self- | important and grandiose rhetoric. | petermcneeley wrote: | A quick glance at the contributing authors makes it obvious | as to what one is being persuaded of. | throwaway823882 wrote: | Clickbait title is clickbait. Not a single mention of why | government fails from the past 5,000 years of history. The entire | discussion is US-centric. And they don't conclude why governments | fail. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-26 23:02 UTC)