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If I could give away all my hn points and apply them as up-votes to this, I would. The op explains very succinctly the problem in this quote: > what is happen

If I could give away all my hn points and apply them as up-votes to this, I would. The op explains very succinctly the problem in this quote: > what is happening is that the ultra-wealthy are using their disposable income to buy political influence, then using that influence to get laws passed that allow them to collect rents. My primary beef with American politics is the "solutions" are always in the form of bandaids - they focus on the effect, not the root cause. The recent healthcare laws are a prime example. How to handle the rise of ISIS is another. Both were caused, or at least compounded by misinformed short-sighted policy. The answer is rarely "more laws". Especially when more laws was what lead to most of these problems in the first place. It's like writing more code around terrible code when what is really needed is a total refactor and proper test coverage. Ending cronyism is fairly straight-forward. But stacking on more law is only going to exacerbate the issue, because like the op explained - the well-connected are just going to buy more political influence and have the laws crafted to benefit them. Taxation is more complex. Increasing taxes is often a solution proposed. Fine, but first - the government needs to prove that they are good stewards of our money before reaching into my back pocket for more. Otherwise, that increase is going to end up as farm subsidies and in the pockets of "defense" contractors.

vonklaus 11y ago
Interesting perspective. I wonder how much "cronyism" costs. It is a problem, but how big? Sort of the issue is that their is a systemic change taking place globally and it moves at a compounding rate. Most governments on a micro scale, are inefficient snd comprised of largely unaccountable people. They make (benevolent/naive view) decisions but are ill equipped with the skills to make the proper ones or (cynical) intentionally extract bwnefit. On a macro stage, we are still dumping money into infrastructure in competition with eachother. If we had all the best engineers working on space for example and collaborating, this would be good, or working to solve things collaboratively. Luckily as PG notes there is a massive defragmentation. I would argue this is great. Agency is redestributed to people in this way and the effects of this will be evident in ~5 years when the laggard affects of technology overtake many legacy industries. Cable is being challenged. The monetary system is being challenged. This election cycle will highlight apathy. It will be realized soon enough that the government will have much less power and is thus, less neccessary. Etc. Also, I just saw The Big Short. The L3 money supply (which is super complicated and I don't pretend to fully grasp) is basically mbs in ~2005.
- cpursley 11y ago
  Yeah! I'm pretty positive. We're at a pinnacle point where for a lot of big problems, technology / private industry is going to be more effective than the solutions any nation state will be able to provide. Interesting times ahead; governments will need to adapt and focus on what they're good at rather than react defensively.
- thatcat 11y ago
  >Cable is being challenged. cable tv is being replaced by internet service through the same provider, with the fiber optic deployments being limited by legislation lobbied for by the original cable tv providers. >The monetary system is being challenged. Total BTC is about 4 billion usd, much smaller than most nations currency circulation.
  - mhluongo 11y ago
    Nitpick- BTC's market cap is ~$6.4B right now.
  - vonklaus 11y ago
    i would have to disagree. SpaceX and OneWeb are making strides to do LEO satellite internet[0] and the successful recapture of the F9 rocket means that launch costs are going down. Couple that with the commoditization of cellphone hardware and there will be many distributed systems in space by 2020. Google has bid on spectrum bandwith, don't have time to cite but Chris Sacca mentions it in basically every interview, just to keep Telecom players in check. They are an ISP now and have other holdings in the space. Facebook is trying to bring internet to india. People are building their own networks. NYC announced it would put wifi in where phonebooths once stood. > BTC marketcap is 4B It has a cap of ~6.5[1] according to coinmarket. Obviously not a lot however the upside potential is large and there are many uses for the technology. Ethereum and Stellar are pretty awesome and Patrick Collison helming stripe might be keen to expand their BTC. So if stripe increases the infrastructure and people become more receptive it will become larger. I am not saying that it will replace u.s currency next year but obviously paper money isn't the currency of the future and clearly there needs to be oversite on how money is created. So something like BTC will obv win long term. [0]http://www.wired.com/2015/06/elon-musk-space-x-satellite-internet/ http://www.wired.com/2015/06/elon-musk-space-x-satellite-int... http://coinmarketcap.com http://coinmarketcap.com
zby 11y ago
"Ending cronyism is fairly straight-forward" - I don't think so. Surely you can end one kind of cronyism by replacing it by another one - but it is practically impossible to have a system where those who are better off cannot use their resources for political ends. The bandaids is all there can be done. And by the way it is also possible that democracy was only possible because of mass conscription - the state needed the masses so the masses got some share in power.

vonklaus 11y ago

Interesting perspective. I wonder how much "cronyism" costs. It is a problem, but how big? Sort of the issue is that their is a systemic change taking place globally and it moves at a compounding rate. Most governments on a micro scale, are inefficient snd comprised of largely unaccountable people. They make (benevolent/naive view) decisions but are ill equipped with the skills to make the proper ones or (cynical) intentionally extract bwnefit. On a macro stage, we are still dumping money into infrastructure in competition with eachother. If we had all the best engineers working on space for example and collaborating, this would be good, or working to solve things collaboratively. Luckily as PG notes there is a massive defragmentation. I would argue this is great. Agency is redestributed to people in this way and the effects of this will be evident in ~5 years when the laggard affects of technology overtake many legacy industries. Cable is being challenged. The monetary system is being challenged. This election cycle will highlight apathy. It will be realized soon enough that the government will have much less power and is thus, less neccessary. Etc. Also, I just saw The Big Short. The L3 money supply (which is super complicated and I don't pretend to fully grasp) is basically mbs in ~2005.

cpursley 11y ago
Yeah! I'm pretty positive. We're at a pinnacle point where for a lot of big problems, technology / private industry is going to be more effective than the solutions any nation state will be able to provide. Interesting times ahead; governments will need to adapt and focus on what they're good at rather than react defensively.
thatcat 11y ago
>Cable is being challenged. cable tv is being replaced by internet service through the same provider, with the fiber optic deployments being limited by legislation lobbied for by the original cable tv providers. >The monetary system is being challenged. Total BTC is about 4 billion usd, much smaller than most nations currency circulation.
- mhluongo 11y ago
  Nitpick- BTC's market cap is ~$6.4B right now.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  i would have to disagree. SpaceX and OneWeb are making strides to do LEO satellite internet[0] and the successful recapture of the F9 rocket means that launch costs are going down. Couple that with the commoditization of cellphone hardware and there will be many distributed systems in space by 2020. Google has bid on spectrum bandwith, don't have time to cite but Chris Sacca mentions it in basically every interview, just to keep Telecom players in check. They are an ISP now and have other holdings in the space. Facebook is trying to bring internet to india. People are building their own networks. NYC announced it would put wifi in where phonebooths once stood. > BTC marketcap is 4B It has a cap of ~6.5[1] according to coinmarket. Obviously not a lot however the upside potential is large and there are many uses for the technology. Ethereum and Stellar are pretty awesome and Patrick Collison helming stripe might be keen to expand their BTC. So if stripe increases the infrastructure and people become more receptive it will become larger. I am not saying that it will replace u.s currency next year but obviously paper money isn't the currency of the future and clearly there needs to be oversite on how money is created. So something like BTC will obv win long term. [0]http://www.wired.com/2015/06/elon-musk-space-x-satellite-internet/ http://www.wired.com/2015/06/elon-musk-space-x-satellite-int... http://coinmarketcap.com http://coinmarketcap.com

zby 11y ago

"Ending cronyism is fairly straight-forward" - I don't think so. Surely you can end one kind of cronyism by replacing it by another one - but it is practically impossible to have a system where those who are better off cannot use their resources for political ends. The bandaids is all there can be done. And by the way it is also possible that democracy was only possible because of mass conscription - the state needed the masses so the masses got some share in power.