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In the US many have a very flawed way of thinking: if we give more power to companies, than we won't need government. I've met so many bright & creative progra

In the US many have a very flawed way of thinking: if we give more power to companies, than we won't need government. I've met so many bright & creative programmer types who even believe this. Government should exist to protect it's people and environment. It should have the long term in mind & work with other governments to do the same, creating a level playing field for the companies to be within.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>I've met so many bright & creative programmer types who even believe this. I would posit that they aren't very bright if they actually believe it.
- lumberjack 10y ago
  Just because somebody is very apt at one particular kind of mental skill, doesn't necessarily make them immune to believing very silly things.
seanp2k2 10y ago
Yeah, I was just having a conversation with someone today about how it never works out in practice. There is no free market, and in anything approaching it, companies simply e.g. collude to keep prices high or make things unnecessarily complex. Look at cell phone plans and what "unlimited" means, for example. Not that the wireless ISP industry is unregulated (far from it), but why not just start your own and fix it? Free market, right? Start a healthcare company and undercut everyone because free market. Start an ISP and take down Comcast, etc. The point of a business is to make a profit. This is many times at odds with what people actually need to e.g. Stay alive. I'm not sure why many people keep attempting to suggest businesses as a solution to the modern basic needs of humans. They're fundamentally misaligned. I guess there is still debate around if a modern society should let people suffer and die because they did not generate or inherit enough money to pay for medical care. It saddens me that our baseline of giving a shit about other people in our society is pretty low in America, even though we have far beyond the means to do so. Enough people with enough power here would rather have a few extra % in their shell company bank accounts instead of increasing the standard of living for the people of the society in which they exist. "A rising tide lifts all boats"
- icebraining 10y ago
  > why not just start your own and fix it? Because the State punishes you if you start emitting? It's called spectrum allocation. Just because you can technically start a company doesn't mean you have anything resembling a free market, and in fact the examples you gave (wireless and healthcare) are two of the most regulated industries. That doesn't mean the free market wouldn't be even worse than what we have now. It's just that you can't use that argument against it. > The point of a business is to make a profit. This is many times at odds with what people actually need to e.g. Stay alive. I'm not sure why many people keep attempting to suggest businesses as a solution to the modern basic needs of humans. They're fundamentally misaligned. And the point of the State is to further the ambitions of politicians and their pay masters (like those business owners who lobby them). You can never get real alignment, so that's an irrelevant argument. Even parents are often not aligned with the welfare of their children.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Yes I'm sure no FCC would surely mean that wireless spectrum would remain usable. Apparently the laws of physics are an invention of the state.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Like I said, maybe the result would be even worse. But that doesn't mean one can blame the current mobile internet situation on the free market, since it definitively isn't one.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
The US's entire concept of "freedom" is wrapped up in this too. If you take a service, for example household track/rubbish collection, that was being provided inexpensively via a mandatory household tax and move that service to a private company who bills households individually even if it costs more, Americans view this as "progress" that is "more free" (because you could theoretical "opt out"). A lot of other places simply view this as handing a private company a monopoly that used to be a public good (i.e. required but cheap); and because they as citizens now have less money and the same service level, they only lost in terms of quality of life ("freedom" isn't a metric here). Plus the externalities of making it optional, like having people illegally discard their trash by the side of the road. This same thinking is prevalent throughout the US, from HOAs, to utilities (electric, gas, water, trash), to healthcare, to public transport, and so on. And none of it is REALLY about capitalism as these companies aren't competing with anyone else by the nature of the deal that was struck when the public service was sold. All people care about is "Keep government out of my X (even if it costs 2x as much)."

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>I've met so many bright & creative programmer types who even believe this. I would posit that they aren't very bright if they actually believe it.

lumberjack 10y ago
Just because somebody is very apt at one particular kind of mental skill, doesn't necessarily make them immune to believing very silly things.

seanp2k2 10y ago

Yeah, I was just having a conversation with someone today about how it never works out in practice. There is no free market, and in anything approaching it, companies simply e.g. collude to keep prices high or make things unnecessarily complex. Look at cell phone plans and what "unlimited" means, for example. Not that the wireless ISP industry is unregulated (far from it), but why not just start your own and fix it? Free market, right? Start a healthcare company and undercut everyone because free market. Start an ISP and take down Comcast, etc. The point of a business is to make a profit. This is many times at odds with what people actually need to e.g. Stay alive. I'm not sure why many people keep attempting to suggest businesses as a solution to the modern basic needs of humans. They're fundamentally misaligned. I guess there is still debate around if a modern society should let people suffer and die because they did not generate or inherit enough money to pay for medical care. It saddens me that our baseline of giving a shit about other people in our society is pretty low in America, even though we have far beyond the means to do so. Enough people with enough power here would rather have a few extra % in their shell company bank accounts instead of increasing the standard of living for the people of the society in which they exist. "A rising tide lifts all boats"

icebraining 10y ago
> why not just start your own and fix it? Because the State punishes you if you start emitting? It's called spectrum allocation. Just because you can technically start a company doesn't mean you have anything resembling a free market, and in fact the examples you gave (wireless and healthcare) are two of the most regulated industries. That doesn't mean the free market wouldn't be even worse than what we have now. It's just that you can't use that argument against it. > The point of a business is to make a profit. This is many times at odds with what people actually need to e.g. Stay alive. I'm not sure why many people keep attempting to suggest businesses as a solution to the modern basic needs of humans. They're fundamentally misaligned. And the point of the State is to further the ambitions of politicians and their pay masters (like those business owners who lobby them). You can never get real alignment, so that's an irrelevant argument. Even parents are often not aligned with the welfare of their children.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Yes I'm sure no FCC would surely mean that wireless spectrum would remain usable. Apparently the laws of physics are an invention of the state.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Like I said, maybe the result would be even worse. But that doesn't mean one can blame the current mobile internet situation on the free market, since it definitively isn't one.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago

The US's entire concept of "freedom" is wrapped up in this too. If you take a service, for example household track/rubbish collection, that was being provided inexpensively via a mandatory household tax and move that service to a private company who bills households individually even if it costs more, Americans view this as "progress" that is "more free" (because you could theoretical "opt out"). A lot of other places simply view this as handing a private company a monopoly that used to be a public good (i.e. required but cheap); and because they as citizens now have less money and the same service level, they only lost in terms of quality of life ("freedom" isn't a metric here). Plus the externalities of making it optional, like having people illegally discard their trash by the side of the road. This same thinking is prevalent throughout the US, from HOAs, to utilities (electric, gas, water, trash), to healthcare, to public transport, and so on. And none of it is REALLY about capitalism as these companies aren't competing with anyone else by the nature of the deal that was struck when the public service was sold. All people care about is "Keep government out of my X (even if it costs 2x as much)."