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This is the best thing about Donald Trump being the President. Perhaps the only good thing. "We should fine people for saying untrue things." "You think it's

This is the best thing about Donald Trump being the President. Perhaps the only good thing. "We should fine people for saying untrue things." "You think it's a good idea to let Donald Trump determine what is true and levy fines against anyone he disagrees with?" I'm trying to turn this into a "thing." If you wouldn't let Donald Trump manage your 401k, maybe we shouldn't give our retirement funds (SS) to the government. How about your health insurance? Want him running that? etc.

colemannugent 9y ago
This is a great way to communicate these ideas to people who would otherwise be hostile to them. I think you're right about this being the best thing about his presidency. Let's make this a thing.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  It won't become A Thing since Trump's administration is an objectively abrupt departure from the mean. It's irrational to argue that democratically elected government (in the general sense, not the US instance in particular) is fundamentally less reliable than the private sector where accountability and influence are more narrowly distributed.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    Don't worry, maybe not the next term, but a Republican will win the Presidency again, and then we can switch to that name. Replace Donald Trump with Paul Ryan, or Mike Pence, or Newt Gingrich, or Sara Palin. The repulsion will be the same.
    - Sangermaine 9y ago
      A dishonest libertarian, what a surprise. Everyone, even Republicans, agrees that Trump is an anomaly. Liberals didn't like Romney, for example, but they didn't believe he was simply incompetent and incapable of basic governance in the way they do Trump. It's an almost childish view of the world to think that the fact that sometimes your side doesn't win means people should or will abandon faith in the ability of government to provide services. The very point of democracy is that you accept that sometimes you're not going to win.
      - Consultant32452 9y ago
        I absolutely LOVE that you've defined "win" here as associating with the person you as an individual desire to associate with. I wonder if we could devise some sort of mechanism by which each individual person could be free to choose this on their own, then everyone could win.
bsder 9y ago
> If you wouldn't let Donald Trump manage your 401k, maybe we shouldn't give our retirement funds (SS) to the government. How about your health insurance? Want him running that? etc. Your analogy is poor: I wouldn't want Trump running the fire department, but I want that as a government function. We know what privatizing a fire department does. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is a set of people willing to swallow propaganda and fear, uncritically.
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  >I wouldn't want Trump running the fire department, but I want that as a government function. This is not an either or proposition. >We know what privatizing a fire department does. Half of Denmark's population is served by private fire departments. What has it done, exactly? For the record, I'm not opposed to public fire departments, but this illustrates the benefit of pushing the power of government as locally as possible. Let's consider the 'face punch' theory of political discourse. If your county commissioner is really fucking things up, there's a fair chance you'll eventually run across them at the local coffee shop and you can punch them in the face. Maybe you wind up in jail for a few days, but enough face punches and things will start to change. If you try that on the President, you'll probably be killed before you ever lay a finger on him. Now, I'm not actually advocating violence here, just illustrating the differential of influence in a hopefully comical way.
chc 9y ago
This could just as well argue against the government doing anything at all — policing, running a military, prosecuting fraudsters, running the post office — and yet most people view those institutions as at least a conditional good and would not be happier if the government never did these things. Similarly, if my wife were a murderer, she could easily kill me in my sleep, but this doesn't mean I'm against the general idea of sharing a bedroom with my wife — it just means that marrying a crazy person is bad.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  It's certainly an argument to minimize the scope of government to as small as possible. >Similarly, if my wife were a murderer, she could easily kill me in my sleep, but this doesn't mean I'm against the general idea of sharing a bedroom with my wife — it just means that marrying a crazy person is bad. This is a perfect analogy because you are 100% in control of who you choose as your wife. You may make a bad choice, but you choosing a bad wife doesn't kill everyone. It just kills you. Meanwhile, less than 1/5 of us chose Trump and now he is managing your healthcare, your retirement, and your military.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > you are 100% in control of who you choose as your wife Don't I wish. You're 100% in control of who you don't choose as your wife; you have substantially less control over who you do choose.
wwweston 9y ago
> If you wouldn't let Donald Trump manage your 401k, maybe we shouldn't give our retirement funds (SS) to the government. Yes, obviously we should keep all retirement funds in the private sector, where clearly no one like Donald Trump would ever be in a position of authority.
- anth1988 9y ago
  Don't worry, if you pray hard the free market will take care of you.
- deltr0n 9y ago
  the point is that you've got choices in the private sector. if you don't want the private sector version of donald trump managing your money, then choose someone else.
  - wwweston 9y ago
    That's certainly a point among a number of others one could make, but it wasn't the point of the GP, which was that the risks involved with having the government manage anything are reasonably characterized by a Trump presidency. If Trump serves as a cautionary example of potential governance issues in the public sector, he serves better as a cautionary example of potential management issues in the private sector, given his long career there. There are better ones, of course. If we're picking tail events like Trump, one might just as well say the risks of having the private sector manage retirement funds are accurately characterized by the various market failures surrounding the 2008 crash (which were, however private, hard to avoid the effects of even with a surfeit of personal choice). On top of that, since you wanted to talk about personal choice... of course there's choice and accountability in public institutions, it just works differently: you have to select management cooperatively, and the collective decision might be different than your choice. That really has a fair bit in common with a number of private sector retirement vehicles (which are likely enough selected by your private employer), but there are others which are more individual and it's nice to be able to take your ball and go elsewhere. But even there, you don't necessarily get a clear signal when someone whose competence is as limited or anyone whose incentives are as misaligned with yours as Trump's are gets involved with your retirement fund's management. In fact, I'd go so far as to say in most cases you'd have less scrutiny and fewer journalistic resources to turn to in order to make that assessment than you would in the typical selection process for public office. Now what you often would have are claimed/recorded rates of return. But since we're thinking about that question, maybe we should talk about how a typical 401k compares to returns for Social Security: http://www.jameswrussell.com/?p=81 http://www.jameswrussell.com/?p=81

colemannugent 9y ago

This is a great way to communicate these ideas to people who would otherwise be hostile to them. I think you're right about this being the best thing about his presidency. Let's make this a thing.

anigbrowl 9y ago
It won't become A Thing since Trump's administration is an objectively abrupt departure from the mean. It's irrational to argue that democratically elected government (in the general sense, not the US instance in particular) is fundamentally less reliable than the private sector where accountability and influence are more narrowly distributed.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  Don't worry, maybe not the next term, but a Republican will win the Presidency again, and then we can switch to that name. Replace Donald Trump with Paul Ryan, or Mike Pence, or Newt Gingrich, or Sara Palin. The repulsion will be the same.
  - Sangermaine 9y ago
    A dishonest libertarian, what a surprise. Everyone, even Republicans, agrees that Trump is an anomaly. Liberals didn't like Romney, for example, but they didn't believe he was simply incompetent and incapable of basic governance in the way they do Trump. It's an almost childish view of the world to think that the fact that sometimes your side doesn't win means people should or will abandon faith in the ability of government to provide services. The very point of democracy is that you accept that sometimes you're not going to win.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      I absolutely LOVE that you've defined "win" here as associating with the person you as an individual desire to associate with. I wonder if we could devise some sort of mechanism by which each individual person could be free to choose this on their own, then everyone could win.

bsder 9y ago

> If you wouldn't let Donald Trump manage your 401k, maybe we shouldn't give our retirement funds (SS) to the government. How about your health insurance? Want him running that? etc. Your analogy is poor: I wouldn't want Trump running the fire department, but I want that as a government function. We know what privatizing a fire department does. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is a set of people willing to swallow propaganda and fear, uncritically.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Consultant32452 9y ago
>I wouldn't want Trump running the fire department, but I want that as a government function. This is not an either or proposition. >We know what privatizing a fire department does. Half of Denmark's population is served by private fire departments. What has it done, exactly? For the record, I'm not opposed to public fire departments, but this illustrates the benefit of pushing the power of government as locally as possible. Let's consider the 'face punch' theory of political discourse. If your county commissioner is really fucking things up, there's a fair chance you'll eventually run across them at the local coffee shop and you can punch them in the face. Maybe you wind up in jail for a few days, but enough face punches and things will start to change. If you try that on the President, you'll probably be killed before you ever lay a finger on him. Now, I'm not actually advocating violence here, just illustrating the differential of influence in a hopefully comical way.

chc 9y ago

This could just as well argue against the government doing anything at all — policing, running a military, prosecuting fraudsters, running the post office — and yet most people view those institutions as at least a conditional good and would not be happier if the government never did these things. Similarly, if my wife were a murderer, she could easily kill me in my sleep, but this doesn't mean I'm against the general idea of sharing a bedroom with my wife — it just means that marrying a crazy person is bad.

Consultant32452 9y ago
It's certainly an argument to minimize the scope of government to as small as possible. >Similarly, if my wife were a murderer, she could easily kill me in my sleep, but this doesn't mean I'm against the general idea of sharing a bedroom with my wife — it just means that marrying a crazy person is bad. This is a perfect analogy because you are 100% in control of who you choose as your wife. You may make a bad choice, but you choosing a bad wife doesn't kill everyone. It just kills you. Meanwhile, less than 1/5 of us chose Trump and now he is managing your healthcare, your retirement, and your military.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > you are 100% in control of who you choose as your wife Don't I wish. You're 100% in control of who you don't choose as your wife; you have substantially less control over who you do choose.

wwweston 9y ago

> If you wouldn't let Donald Trump manage your 401k, maybe we shouldn't give our retirement funds (SS) to the government. Yes, obviously we should keep all retirement funds in the private sector, where clearly no one like Donald Trump would ever be in a position of authority.

anth1988 9y ago
Don't worry, if you pray hard the free market will take care of you.
deltr0n 9y ago
the point is that you've got choices in the private sector. if you don't want the private sector version of donald trump managing your money, then choose someone else.
- wwweston 9y ago
  That's certainly a point among a number of others one could make, but it wasn't the point of the GP, which was that the risks involved with having the government manage anything are reasonably characterized by a Trump presidency. If Trump serves as a cautionary example of potential governance issues in the public sector, he serves better as a cautionary example of potential management issues in the private sector, given his long career there. There are better ones, of course. If we're picking tail events like Trump, one might just as well say the risks of having the private sector manage retirement funds are accurately characterized by the various market failures surrounding the 2008 crash (which were, however private, hard to avoid the effects of even with a surfeit of personal choice). On top of that, since you wanted to talk about personal choice... of course there's choice and accountability in public institutions, it just works differently: you have to select management cooperatively, and the collective decision might be different than your choice. That really has a fair bit in common with a number of private sector retirement vehicles (which are likely enough selected by your private employer), but there are others which are more individual and it's nice to be able to take your ball and go elsewhere. But even there, you don't necessarily get a clear signal when someone whose competence is as limited or anyone whose incentives are as misaligned with yours as Trump's are gets involved with your retirement fund's management. In fact, I'd go so far as to say in most cases you'd have less scrutiny and fewer journalistic resources to turn to in order to make that assessment than you would in the typical selection process for public office. Now what you often would have are claimed/recorded rates of return. But since we're thinking about that question, maybe we should talk about how a typical 401k compares to returns for Social Security: http://www.jameswrussell.com/?p=81 http://www.jameswrussell.com/?p=81