6 ms·

Of course, giving people money to buy these things is easier and probably cheaper than giving either the things themselves or special vouchers that the merchant

Of course, giving people money to buy these things is easier and probably cheaper than giving either the things themselves or special vouchers that the merchants for approved necessities can exchange for money. Someone has to administer all of these things and come up with rules for them and monitor compliance. I mean, look at SNAP and the ridiculous recurring argument over what parts of a cow it is permissible to purchase with a voucher. With vouchers, you are ultimately giving someone with a gun the power to enforce that the voucher is spent correctly, with cash you are not (although the why is proving hard to articulate, I'm pretty sure this is true)

jacalata 10y ago
Vouchers are central planning (each person should spend this much money on this particular good). Cash is distributed planning.
- monknomo 10y ago
  That's a pretty catchy way of phrasing what I was trying to get at. I'm pretty sure central planning is inherently coercive and tends to be more expensive than distributed planning. I also think distributed planning is generally more efficient
runT1ME 10y ago
No i'm literally talking about eliminating the free market from the equation for the bare necessities. No vouchers, you give people the minimum required nutrition, whoever wants it. Soylent or whatnot. Not vouchers for housing, you build specific housing for this purpose. Basically communism for the bottom rung of society, though anyone is free to participate in the capitalistic parts of society anytime they wish. High wealth individuals coudl just as easily decide to reap the benefits of free housing and/or nutrition. Just a thought.
- monknomo 10y ago
  That's even harder to do than vouchers. Instead of centrally managing certificates you have an entire country's worth of logistic problems. I can't even begin to imagine the government structure needed to buy store and cart Soylent from Puerto Rico to Alaska. Let alone government built housing keeping up with population distribution changes. I like how your proposal doesn't imply a big public -> private wealth transfer, but I think what you are suggesting is much, much harder than making it rain on everybody
  - monknomo 10y ago
    Hold up on my last line ^ Where do you get the soylent/electricity/housing/phone/internet from? Are you proposing that the government fire up soylent plants, buy power plants, build, own and maintain housing and become a telecom provider? Or is the government going to buy from private companies?
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Yep, this is a very bad idea for the most part; these things already exist with private industry, so it's much easier for government to just allocate and distribute money, and let people buy things from existing providers instead of getting the government into the distribution of goods business. There's definitely room for more government regulation, especially with housing (that one's a mess, with all the foreign investors pumping up the realty prices; some simple laws should fix that), and also telecom (basically we need to copy whatever Europe's doing there).
      - monknomo 10y ago
        Euro-style telecoms do seem to be kicking US style telecom ass, from a consumer perspective. I know I'm jealous. I think it's hard to untangle foreign investment from local real estate prices without running into some of the US's fundamental "freedom" tenets, but I haven't looked very closely into what we might do. I feel like it is more of a NIMBY problem, most places
        10y ago
Grishnakh 10y ago
It depends on what it is. Giving people money to buy food is much easier and cheaper than setting up and administering a system to provide food for people, monitor compliance, etc. Food is available just about anywhere from an enormous number of vendors, producers, suppliers, etc. There's no reason to get government too closely involved there, except of course for food-safety inspections and the like, which we already have. Food is a very competitive industry. Healthcare, on the other hand, is totally different, and we're already seeing how trying to use a free-market approach there just doesn't work. This is an industry that needs some kind of nationalization (like single-payer coverage, plus a lot of regulation to keep costs down). No one calls up 3 different ERs and ambulance companies when they have a heart attack to see which one offers the best price and service.
- monknomo 10y ago
  I'm on board with central healthcare. I think the government excels at organizing people and distributing people and tasks across the country, but I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to handle inventory or do construction that doesn't lean on private industry (I mean, I'm sure they could, it's just not what the government is set up to do right now) Of course, the military is a great logistics machine, but it's also a specialist branch of the government
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    The military is great at logistics, but it also doesn't do any construction (unless it's on a battlefield): all that stuff is contracted out, as is manufacturing of weapons. They have a big hand in the nitty-gritty details of these things, but ultimately they're done by private companies. Government doesn't even need to be in the healthcare business per se: that can all be done by private providers. Government's role is to regulate it to keep costs down (similar to however they do it in places like Belgium), and to provide the funding. If Belgium can do it, we should be able to do it too. But maybe we need to hire the Belgians to help us set up the system....

jacalata 10y ago

Vouchers are central planning (each person should spend this much money on this particular good). Cash is distributed planning.

monknomo 10y ago
That's a pretty catchy way of phrasing what I was trying to get at. I'm pretty sure central planning is inherently coercive and tends to be more expensive than distributed planning. I also think distributed planning is generally more efficient

runT1ME 10y ago

No i'm literally talking about eliminating the free market from the equation for the bare necessities. No vouchers, you give people the minimum required nutrition, whoever wants it. Soylent or whatnot. Not vouchers for housing, you build specific housing for this purpose. Basically communism for the bottom rung of society, though anyone is free to participate in the capitalistic parts of society anytime they wish. High wealth individuals coudl just as easily decide to reap the benefits of free housing and/or nutrition. Just a thought.

monknomo 10y ago
That's even harder to do than vouchers. Instead of centrally managing certificates you have an entire country's worth of logistic problems. I can't even begin to imagine the government structure needed to buy store and cart Soylent from Puerto Rico to Alaska. Let alone government built housing keeping up with population distribution changes. I like how your proposal doesn't imply a big public -> private wealth transfer, but I think what you are suggesting is much, much harder than making it rain on everybody
- monknomo 10y ago
  Hold up on my last line ^ Where do you get the soylent/electricity/housing/phone/internet from? Are you proposing that the government fire up soylent plants, buy power plants, build, own and maintain housing and become a telecom provider? Or is the government going to buy from private companies?
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Yep, this is a very bad idea for the most part; these things already exist with private industry, so it's much easier for government to just allocate and distribute money, and let people buy things from existing providers instead of getting the government into the distribution of goods business. There's definitely room for more government regulation, especially with housing (that one's a mess, with all the foreign investors pumping up the realty prices; some simple laws should fix that), and also telecom (basically we need to copy whatever Europe's doing there).
    - monknomo 10y ago
      Euro-style telecoms do seem to be kicking US style telecom ass, from a consumer perspective. I know I'm jealous. I think it's hard to untangle foreign investment from local real estate prices without running into some of the US's fundamental "freedom" tenets, but I haven't looked very closely into what we might do. I feel like it is more of a NIMBY problem, most places
      - 10y ago

Grishnakh 10y ago

It depends on what it is. Giving people money to buy food is much easier and cheaper than setting up and administering a system to provide food for people, monitor compliance, etc. Food is available just about anywhere from an enormous number of vendors, producers, suppliers, etc. There's no reason to get government too closely involved there, except of course for food-safety inspections and the like, which we already have. Food is a very competitive industry. Healthcare, on the other hand, is totally different, and we're already seeing how trying to use a free-market approach there just doesn't work. This is an industry that needs some kind of nationalization (like single-payer coverage, plus a lot of regulation to keep costs down). No one calls up 3 different ERs and ambulance companies when they have a heart attack to see which one offers the best price and service.

monknomo 10y ago
I'm on board with central healthcare. I think the government excels at organizing people and distributing people and tasks across the country, but I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to handle inventory or do construction that doesn't lean on private industry (I mean, I'm sure they could, it's just not what the government is set up to do right now) Of course, the military is a great logistics machine, but it's also a specialist branch of the government
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  The military is great at logistics, but it also doesn't do any construction (unless it's on a battlefield): all that stuff is contracted out, as is manufacturing of weapons. They have a big hand in the nitty-gritty details of these things, but ultimately they're done by private companies. Government doesn't even need to be in the healthcare business per se: that can all be done by private providers. Government's role is to regulate it to keep costs down (similar to however they do it in places like Belgium), and to provide the funding. If Belgium can do it, we should be able to do it too. But maybe we need to hire the Belgians to help us set up the system....