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I find it quite remarkable how deeply ingrained the notion is that limiting the agency of government limits "the people". Government isn't the only way people

I find it quite remarkable how deeply ingrained the notion is that limiting the agency of government limits "the people". Government isn't the only way people can get things done, and I think we should be resentful (and suspicious) of the argument that to fund and accomplish large tasks, we need to hold a gun to the heads of the people. Are we really so incapable of cooperation that we need tax men, followed by armed police, to ensure that businesses serve the customers who pay them? Just like Sears & Roebuck and Wells Fargo worked to bring good things from the cities to rural America, this situation could be resolved by private enterprise. I believe we would be farther along without government attempts to regulate the industry that have impeded its progress.

tracer4201 7y ago
The problem with government is accountability. The government apparatus can make all kinds of promises, meanwhile, the citizens are too busy blaming each other - getting into partisan games - while the incompetent people just keep getting re elected without making progress. Exhibit A: Congress. A lot of folks who prefer this seem to believe that the government will make progress on its promises that it won’t just waste away tax payer money. The problem with private enterprise is accountability too - they generally are accountable to someone, but that someone typically happens to be shareholders who truthfully don’t give a damn about much other than maximizing their returns. A lot of folks who blindly prefer this route are either the ones who have the most to gain (because they already have capital) or folks who just don’t understand the incentive structure. Saying one side is always inherently better than the other is short sighted and more of a tribal belief in my opinion. I don’t want FB to have my data and would prefer the government break up internet monopolies. I’m also not saying I want to live under Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, at least in America, we love to go towards extremes. The civic discourse is lacking.
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  A couple counterpoints: first, sustainable profit in general happens when you serve your customers well. If you don't satisfy your customers, you don't make money — at least for long. The perverse incentive structures you mention are largely the result of unwise legislation and regulation. Second, there's a real moral difference between the voluntary association among people in business and the coercive foundation of government. One is built on people wanting to trade value for value, and the other is built on armed military, police, and jailers. I would rather promote the former, even if it sometimes would be more efficient on the surface to force people to cooperate.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    > If you don't satisfy your customers, you don't make money — at least for long. Unless you have a monopoly or a cartel or capture government regulation of your industry.
  - tracer4201 7y ago
    You can serve your customers and make a profit either way because you have effectively a monopoly. In the example of social media, you see FB now open and even advocating the government regulate social media - because it only makes it that much harder for the new guy to jump through the hoops whereas FB is already at more than critical mass. I think your second point is overly simplifying a lot of complexity. I agree that government has this coercive function... However, it’s also true that unchecked private enterprise ends up influencing that government to meet their own special interests. You want to promote the former, but the former ends up making the large campaign contributions so they can have legislation written in their favor... laws that apply to the common person don’t apply to these big corporations. Hence, we socialize losses but privatize profits. The fat cats go to prisons (if ever) that are potentially comparable to high end hotels, nicer than the homes of many ordinary citizens.
    - JasonFruit 7y ago
      I understand your criticism of my second point, but notice that for your criticism to be valid, there needs to be a government involved in forcefully regulating private industry. I reject that sort of government.
      - tracer4201 7y ago
        I’m not sure what your comment is getting at. Government exists because we need courts, cops, enforcement of contracts, some level of infrastructure for society to function - and whether you reject it or not, it does exist. But to concede power to private enterprise without any set of rules to protect the common good has no merit. The obvious examples are monopolies... and that’s only one kind of market failure. As far as some moral conflict is concerned because of the policing powers of the state - that’s why we have something resembling a democracy, even if it’s imperfect.
jimbokun 7y ago
> Are we really so incapable of cooperation that we need tax men, followed by armed police, to ensure that businesses serve the customers who pay them? Empirically, the answer seems to "yes", at least in the USA. Hospitals and insurance companies, higher education, private prisons, private companies operating water systems, drug companies, local internet monopolies, all seem to have a business model of stepping right up to the line of outright defrauding their customers, occasionally crossing that line, and constantly finding ways to avoid competing with each other and extracting more money from their customers for worse quality and service. We have given the "free market" plenty of opportunities to provide improving quality at lower prices (the mantra of capitalist ideology), but in many of the most important markets, it has completely failed.
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  I'd like to point out that the industries you enumerate as serving the customers the worst are the most highly regulated. Is it possible that government intervention contributes to their poor quality and high prices?
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Can you draw plausible cause and effect lines from regulations to lower quality and higher costs? (If it's higher costs enforcing higher quality, arguably the regulations are working as desired.) Are there examples of countries with high quality outcomes and low costs where those industries are deregulated? I would add the Republican party in the US is so incompetent and dysfunctional, they are unable to create concrete policy proposals or pass legislation, even when they had full control of the federal government. What concrete steps did they take to fix fundamentally broken industries like health care and higher education? So I find myself drawn to Democrats like Bernie and Warren, at least they have plans to address these issues, and the status quo is unacceptable.
    - JasonFruit 7y ago
      First, I'm completely in agreement on the Republican party. Both the main parties are a disaster, and their competition is stunted and ineffective. Part of that is because the two main parties are given all sorts of regulatory advantages by state and federal governments, and their competition is unfairly hobbled by the same. The favored parties' competitive abilities atrophy, and their competition cannot fully develop. An analogous situation arises in business. When the government regulates quality and cost, it leaves businesses no natural path to profitability, so to allow them to survive, it must also interfere in competition, with subsidies, tariffs, and other measures, up to and including enforced monopoly. That keeps the natural economic processes that reward good quality and low price from operating --- the favored businesses cannot be displaced by their competition, and the effect of consumer dissatisfaction is blunted --- and provides the perverse incentives that create the problems you perceive in industry (and politics).

tracer4201 7y ago

The problem with government is accountability. The government apparatus can make all kinds of promises, meanwhile, the citizens are too busy blaming each other - getting into partisan games - while the incompetent people just keep getting re elected without making progress. Exhibit A: Congress. A lot of folks who prefer this seem to believe that the government will make progress on its promises that it won’t just waste away tax payer money. The problem with private enterprise is accountability too - they generally are accountable to someone, but that someone typically happens to be shareholders who truthfully don’t give a damn about much other than maximizing their returns. A lot of folks who blindly prefer this route are either the ones who have the most to gain (because they already have capital) or folks who just don’t understand the incentive structure. Saying one side is always inherently better than the other is short sighted and more of a tribal belief in my opinion. I don’t want FB to have my data and would prefer the government break up internet monopolies. I’m also not saying I want to live under Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, at least in America, we love to go towards extremes. The civic discourse is lacking.

JasonFruit 7y ago
A couple counterpoints: first, sustainable profit in general happens when you serve your customers well. If you don't satisfy your customers, you don't make money — at least for long. The perverse incentive structures you mention are largely the result of unwise legislation and regulation. Second, there's a real moral difference between the voluntary association among people in business and the coercive foundation of government. One is built on people wanting to trade value for value, and the other is built on armed military, police, and jailers. I would rather promote the former, even if it sometimes would be more efficient on the surface to force people to cooperate.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  > If you don't satisfy your customers, you don't make money — at least for long. Unless you have a monopoly or a cartel or capture government regulation of your industry.
- tracer4201 7y ago
  You can serve your customers and make a profit either way because you have effectively a monopoly. In the example of social media, you see FB now open and even advocating the government regulate social media - because it only makes it that much harder for the new guy to jump through the hoops whereas FB is already at more than critical mass. I think your second point is overly simplifying a lot of complexity. I agree that government has this coercive function... However, it’s also true that unchecked private enterprise ends up influencing that government to meet their own special interests. You want to promote the former, but the former ends up making the large campaign contributions so they can have legislation written in their favor... laws that apply to the common person don’t apply to these big corporations. Hence, we socialize losses but privatize profits. The fat cats go to prisons (if ever) that are potentially comparable to high end hotels, nicer than the homes of many ordinary citizens.
  - JasonFruit 7y ago
    I understand your criticism of my second point, but notice that for your criticism to be valid, there needs to be a government involved in forcefully regulating private industry. I reject that sort of government.
    - tracer4201 7y ago
      I’m not sure what your comment is getting at. Government exists because we need courts, cops, enforcement of contracts, some level of infrastructure for society to function - and whether you reject it or not, it does exist. But to concede power to private enterprise without any set of rules to protect the common good has no merit. The obvious examples are monopolies... and that’s only one kind of market failure. As far as some moral conflict is concerned because of the policing powers of the state - that’s why we have something resembling a democracy, even if it’s imperfect.

jimbokun 7y ago

> Are we really so incapable of cooperation that we need tax men, followed by armed police, to ensure that businesses serve the customers who pay them? Empirically, the answer seems to "yes", at least in the USA. Hospitals and insurance companies, higher education, private prisons, private companies operating water systems, drug companies, local internet monopolies, all seem to have a business model of stepping right up to the line of outright defrauding their customers, occasionally crossing that line, and constantly finding ways to avoid competing with each other and extracting more money from their customers for worse quality and service. We have given the "free market" plenty of opportunities to provide improving quality at lower prices (the mantra of capitalist ideology), but in many of the most important markets, it has completely failed.

JasonFruit 7y ago
I'd like to point out that the industries you enumerate as serving the customers the worst are the most highly regulated. Is it possible that government intervention contributes to their poor quality and high prices?
- jimbokun 7y ago
  Can you draw plausible cause and effect lines from regulations to lower quality and higher costs? (If it's higher costs enforcing higher quality, arguably the regulations are working as desired.) Are there examples of countries with high quality outcomes and low costs where those industries are deregulated? I would add the Republican party in the US is so incompetent and dysfunctional, they are unable to create concrete policy proposals or pass legislation, even when they had full control of the federal government. What concrete steps did they take to fix fundamentally broken industries like health care and higher education? So I find myself drawn to Democrats like Bernie and Warren, at least they have plans to address these issues, and the status quo is unacceptable.
  - JasonFruit 7y ago
    First, I'm completely in agreement on the Republican party. Both the main parties are a disaster, and their competition is stunted and ineffective. Part of that is because the two main parties are given all sorts of regulatory advantages by state and federal governments, and their competition is unfairly hobbled by the same. The favored parties' competitive abilities atrophy, and their competition cannot fully develop. An analogous situation arises in business. When the government regulates quality and cost, it leaves businesses no natural path to profitability, so to allow them to survive, it must also interfere in competition, with subsidies, tariffs, and other measures, up to and including enforced monopoly. That keeps the natural economic processes that reward good quality and low price from operating --- the favored businesses cannot be displaced by their competition, and the effect of consumer dissatisfaction is blunted --- and provides the perverse incentives that create the problems you perceive in industry (and politics).