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It's really weird to me how commonplace the attitude of "It is what it is" and "Government can't do anything". The air and water quality in the US is vastly be

It's really weird to me how commonplace the attitude of "It is what it is" and "Government can't do anything". The air and water quality in the US is vastly better since the passage of laws that created and empowered the EPA (Created by the Republican President Nixon). The endangered species act has had many similar successes. I live on Maui. The waters are now filled with Green Sea Turtles and Humpback whales that were nearly non-existent just 30 years ago. Yet when development and global climate change are threatening our reefs, people look at you like you're crazy for thinking that laws can be effective in safeguarding the environment for the future.

baddox 11y ago
What are you referencing in regards to poverty? I would have guessed that the recent reduction in poverty is largely attributable to wealthy nations reducing efforts to centrally plan the economies of poor nations.
- manachar 11y ago
  While this article was more focused on poverty, the other major theme was that things and people are better now in many respects that people think it is. For me, the environmental successes of the last 30 years are a pretty amazing example of some of the awesome things humans can do when they put their minds to it. Additionally, the overly negative and pessimistic view of government and laws removes critical tools for that improvement. That move away from centrally planning poor nations was often achieved by changes in laws, and by the actions of a wide variety of organizational bodies and peoples. I'm not sure I have enough information in this article or elsewhere to state what has been effective at reducing the poverty.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    It's less than awesome, really - people got richer and demand rose for a cleaner environment.
- malchow 11y ago
  The conceit of the article -- borne out by economic history -- is exactly that: it's the reduction of efforts to centrally plan, and the rise of entrepreneurial, capitalistic efforts to advance, that has reduced poverty. [1] [2] [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/deirdre-mccloskey-ideas-not-capital-are-root-cause-development https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/deirdre-mccloskey-... [2] https://ricochet.com/perhaps-the-most-powerful-defense-of-market-capitalism-you-will-ever-read/ https://ricochet.com/perhaps-the-most-powerful-defense-of-ma...
  - Steko 11y ago
    The article is actually fairly silent on the reasons so read into it what you will. If anything the author is endorsing his friend's book without giving away the thesis and if the link is accurate it covers a wide range of factors. As for Deirdre McCloskey, as Noah Smith says,"do not believe things that Deirdre McCloskey says just because she says them." http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/deirdre-mccloskey-says-things.html http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/deirdre-mccloskey...
- Zigurd 11y ago
  > reducing efforts to centrally plan the economies "Reducing" is technically correct, even in China. But China still has a command economy in housing, infrastructure, telecommunication, transportation, etc., and is still run by a big 'C' Communist Party. That's where the uplift happened, and it needs to be explained in terms of local conditions.
lurkinggrue 11y ago
"Government can't do anything" meme tends to be pushed by organizations that actively want less government. The sort of groups that listen to people like Grover Norquest who said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." While there is a lot to be said about the idea of efficiency in government it isn't the same as wanting to burn our infrastructure down.
- manachar 11y ago
  American progressives can be just as guilty, if less organized. They tend to view big business with suspicion and incorrectly think that the American government is hopelessly corrupt and in the pocket of "Big Business and/or Wall Street".
  - bluthru 11y ago
    When money buys political speech, I don't think you can call the other side "just as guilty".
    - baddox 11y ago
      Which side has the actual ability to forcefully implement their desired policies over a large population?
      - deciplex 11y ago
        Both.
        baddox 11y ago
        Do you really suppose so? I suppose it's technically possible for both to try, but imagine the resistance one side would be met with.
      - Asbostos 11y ago
jqm 11y ago
While I don't disagree government has been at time effective (in making life better and improving the world), one doesn't have to look very hard to find to find instances where they have not been effective or even counterproductive. The government of today isn't necessarily the government of 30 years ago. It's bigger. Maybe slower. Maybe filled with worse people. I don't know that all these things are true but as they say in the stock trading commercials... "past performance is no guarantee of future success". But I do believe people shouldn't give up and should be informed and try to participate in elections and citizen activisms. I mean... if we don't try how can we keep the corrupt from running the show?
WalterBright 11y ago
It's the classic tragedy of the commons. Nobody owns the waterways and the air, and hence individuals have neither the power nor incentive to protect them.
- danharaj 11y ago
  It is reasonable to believe that the tragedy of the commons is caused by society being organized around private ownership, not the nature of the commons itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Critici...
  - webXL 11y ago
    Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. Politicians ultimately are left to figure that out (when they get around to it, of course).
    - danharaj 11y ago
      > Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. The language of economics is designed so that this is tautologically true and all empirical evidence that this is false is euphemized away with the term 'externality' or 'market failure'.
      - webXL 11y ago
        Externalities can only exist with public goods, such as the commons or air pollution. The more public goods, the more chances of externalities. Market failure is a subjective term that assumes a problem can be always be solved fairly (no one is made worse off). That euphemism tends to be used by those who believe "free market" (no such thing) solutions are inferior to state-imposed solutions, which often involve force and/or benefit the ruling class. There's plenty of empirical evidence to support that.
        11y ago
p_monk 11y ago
The creation of the EPA, (and OSHA, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, Highway Safety Act, FOIA) was created because people demanded it, not because a Republican President was benevolent. Ralph Nader, and the organizations who were influenced by his work, took advantage of the social upheaval in the late 60s/early 70s to make these laws pass. Even though activist voices are as loud as they've ever been, we have a government that no longer fears movements. I've heard the Nader generation of activists make this point regularly. Power has been sharply shifting from people (activists organizations, labor unions) to business since the late 70s.
- stefanix 11y ago
  See Lessig's campaign for why this is https://lessig2016.us/one-mission/ https://lessig2016.us/one-mission/
andyfleming 11y ago
What about the sea turtles with tumors in Hawaii? There is some concern that humans are to blame, right?
- manachar 11y ago
  Yes, and I actually just had dinner with some humans working on figuring it out. One possibility is that an invasive species of seaweed is throwing their diet out of whack. Humans can keep helping by gaining greater understandings of the impact our actions have on everything around us (negative externalities if you want economic-speak).
  - andyfleming 11y ago
    Fair enough. I'm not sure why I was downvoted. I'm not suggesting regulation or the EPA is bad. I saw a turtle with tumors, in person, and a local suggested that it was suspected that some sort of runoff was the cause of the issue. My thought was that there may not be enough regulation and accountability.
amelius 11y ago
Yes. And I think the following sentence best explains why: > When 95 percent of Americans are completely unaware of a transformation of this magnitude, that reflects a flaw in how we journalists cover the world — and I count myself among the guilty. Sometimes it is really maddening how far astray the common perceptions are with respect to reality. It is good to have an example here that shows this clearly.

baddox 11y ago

What are you referencing in regards to poverty? I would have guessed that the recent reduction in poverty is largely attributable to wealthy nations reducing efforts to centrally plan the economies of poor nations.

manachar 11y ago
While this article was more focused on poverty, the other major theme was that things and people are better now in many respects that people think it is. For me, the environmental successes of the last 30 years are a pretty amazing example of some of the awesome things humans can do when they put their minds to it. Additionally, the overly negative and pessimistic view of government and laws removes critical tools for that improvement. That move away from centrally planning poor nations was often achieved by changes in laws, and by the actions of a wide variety of organizational bodies and peoples. I'm not sure I have enough information in this article or elsewhere to state what has been effective at reducing the poverty.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It's less than awesome, really - people got richer and demand rose for a cleaner environment.
malchow 11y ago
The conceit of the article -- borne out by economic history -- is exactly that: it's the reduction of efforts to centrally plan, and the rise of entrepreneurial, capitalistic efforts to advance, that has reduced poverty. [1] [2] [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/deirdre-mccloskey-ideas-not-capital-are-root-cause-development https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/deirdre-mccloskey-... [2] https://ricochet.com/perhaps-the-most-powerful-defense-of-market-capitalism-you-will-ever-read/ https://ricochet.com/perhaps-the-most-powerful-defense-of-ma...
- Steko 11y ago
  The article is actually fairly silent on the reasons so read into it what you will. If anything the author is endorsing his friend's book without giving away the thesis and if the link is accurate it covers a wide range of factors. As for Deirdre McCloskey, as Noah Smith says,"do not believe things that Deirdre McCloskey says just because she says them." http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/deirdre-mccloskey-says-things.html http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/deirdre-mccloskey...
Zigurd 11y ago
> reducing efforts to centrally plan the economies "Reducing" is technically correct, even in China. But China still has a command economy in housing, infrastructure, telecommunication, transportation, etc., and is still run by a big 'C' Communist Party. That's where the uplift happened, and it needs to be explained in terms of local conditions.

lurkinggrue 11y ago

"Government can't do anything" meme tends to be pushed by organizations that actively want less government. The sort of groups that listen to people like Grover Norquest who said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." While there is a lot to be said about the idea of efficiency in government it isn't the same as wanting to burn our infrastructure down.

manachar 11y ago
American progressives can be just as guilty, if less organized. They tend to view big business with suspicion and incorrectly think that the American government is hopelessly corrupt and in the pocket of "Big Business and/or Wall Street".
- bluthru 11y ago
  When money buys political speech, I don't think you can call the other side "just as guilty".
  - baddox 11y ago
    Which side has the actual ability to forcefully implement their desired policies over a large population?
    - deciplex 11y ago
      Both.
      - baddox 11y ago
        Do you really suppose so? I suppose it's technically possible for both to try, but imagine the resistance one side would be met with.
    - Asbostos 11y ago

jqm 11y ago

While I don't disagree government has been at time effective (in making life better and improving the world), one doesn't have to look very hard to find to find instances where they have not been effective or even counterproductive. The government of today isn't necessarily the government of 30 years ago. It's bigger. Maybe slower. Maybe filled with worse people. I don't know that all these things are true but as they say in the stock trading commercials... "past performance is no guarantee of future success". But I do believe people shouldn't give up and should be informed and try to participate in elections and citizen activisms. I mean... if we don't try how can we keep the corrupt from running the show?

WalterBright 11y ago

It's the classic tragedy of the commons. Nobody owns the waterways and the air, and hence individuals have neither the power nor incentive to protect them.

danharaj 11y ago
It is reasonable to believe that the tragedy of the commons is caused by society being organized around private ownership, not the nature of the commons itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Critici...
- webXL 11y ago
  Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. Politicians ultimately are left to figure that out (when they get around to it, of course).
  - danharaj 11y ago
    > Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. The language of economics is designed so that this is tautologically true and all empirical evidence that this is false is euphemized away with the term 'externality' or 'market failure'.
    - webXL 11y ago
      Externalities can only exist with public goods, such as the commons or air pollution. The more public goods, the more chances of externalities. Market failure is a subjective term that assumes a problem can be always be solved fairly (no one is made worse off). That euphemism tends to be used by those who believe "free market" (no such thing) solutions are inferior to state-imposed solutions, which often involve force and/or benefit the ruling class. There's plenty of empirical evidence to support that.
      - 11y ago

p_monk 11y ago

The creation of the EPA, (and OSHA, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, Highway Safety Act, FOIA) was created because people demanded it, not because a Republican President was benevolent. Ralph Nader, and the organizations who were influenced by his work, took advantage of the social upheaval in the late 60s/early 70s to make these laws pass. Even though activist voices are as loud as they've ever been, we have a government that no longer fears movements. I've heard the Nader generation of activists make this point regularly. Power has been sharply shifting from people (activists organizations, labor unions) to business since the late 70s.

stefanix 11y ago
See Lessig's campaign for why this is https://lessig2016.us/one-mission/ https://lessig2016.us/one-mission/

andyfleming 11y ago

What about the sea turtles with tumors in Hawaii? There is some concern that humans are to blame, right?

manachar 11y ago
Yes, and I actually just had dinner with some humans working on figuring it out. One possibility is that an invasive species of seaweed is throwing their diet out of whack. Humans can keep helping by gaining greater understandings of the impact our actions have on everything around us (negative externalities if you want economic-speak).
- andyfleming 11y ago
  Fair enough. I'm not sure why I was downvoted. I'm not suggesting regulation or the EPA is bad. I saw a turtle with tumors, in person, and a local suggested that it was suspected that some sort of runoff was the cause of the issue. My thought was that there may not be enough regulation and accountability.

amelius 11y ago

Yes. And I think the following sentence best explains why: > When 95 percent of Americans are completely unaware of a transformation of this magnitude, that reflects a flaw in how we journalists cover the world — and I count myself among the guilty. Sometimes it is really maddening how far astray the common perceptions are with respect to reality. It is good to have an example here that shows this clearly.