4 ms·

Governments Are Faking It, and Copying Each Other – AIER

9 points by mrfusion 6y ago

LatteLazy 6y ago
The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) is a 501(c)(3) economic research institute located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The institute aims to promote individual sovereignty, limited government, and "a society based on property rights and open markets."[3]
kdamica 6y ago
I worked for AIER for about a year after college. They are (with a handful of exceptions) a bunch of clowns and the vast majority of their work is utterly vacuous. I don't even put it on my resume. On the plus side, lunch was served every day in their castle, and after lunch I would take walks around their private lake. Fun fact is that the organization was founded to commit tax fraud. They operated a for profit investment firm with nonprofit status from the mid 50s to the late 70s, and somehow got away with it when the feds finally came after them. Afterward they ended up as a tiny research group with a massive amount of money, which they used for decades to fund research that no one reads. I should write a article about them because there are some stories.
- verdverm 6y ago
  Please, in the spirit of transparency into the corrupt oligarchs!
georgebarnett 6y ago
The idea that governments should have a ready response for every circumstance is the height of human hubris. One would think that given there were readily available no pre-canned global responses, coupled with the fact NOBODY can predict the future, faking it/making it up is the only available option. Not to mention, one could also think of the haphazard response as “exploring the problem space”.
- Proven 6y ago
  Hubris is better exemplified by comments like yours: faking it while wasting taxpayer money (and hanging onto their useless, parasitic jobs) is supposedly a better option than collecting less tax and leaving it to private sector and individuals make their own decisions.
Barrin92 6y ago
>Governments Are Faking It, and Copying Each Other So finally government runs more like private business, AIER should be happy On a more serious note, the reason why governments have enacted measures in synchronicity and often had to correct after adopting measures that turned out not to be so great is quite obviously because this situation is fairly unprecedented and everybody is improvising and trying to learn as we go, and we're all acting on incomplete information. There is hardly as much evidence for anything as we'd like, so it might very well turn out that the criticised measures in the article are actually good or vice versa. So instead of somehow contextualising this as some sort of "bamboozling voters" it honestly is just what you would expect. I'm not sure if the author is expecting that every country does something different in the face of extreme risk.

9 points by mrfusion 6y ago

The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) is a 501(c)(3) economic research institute located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The institute aims to promote individual sovereignty, limited government, and "a society based on property rights and open markets."[3]

kdamica 6y ago

I worked for AIER for about a year after college. They are (with a handful of exceptions) a bunch of clowns and the vast majority of their work is utterly vacuous. I don't even put it on my resume. On the plus side, lunch was served every day in their castle, and after lunch I would take walks around their private lake. Fun fact is that the organization was founded to commit tax fraud. They operated a for profit investment firm with nonprofit status from the mid 50s to the late 70s, and somehow got away with it when the feds finally came after them. Afterward they ended up as a tiny research group with a massive amount of money, which they used for decades to fund research that no one reads. I should write a article about them because there are some stories.

verdverm 6y ago
Please, in the spirit of transparency into the corrupt oligarchs!

georgebarnett 6y ago

The idea that governments should have a ready response for every circumstance is the height of human hubris. One would think that given there were readily available no pre-canned global responses, coupled with the fact NOBODY can predict the future, faking it/making it up is the only available option. Not to mention, one could also think of the haphazard response as “exploring the problem space”.

Proven 6y ago
Hubris is better exemplified by comments like yours: faking it while wasting taxpayer money (and hanging onto their useless, parasitic jobs) is supposedly a better option than collecting less tax and leaving it to private sector and individuals make their own decisions.

Barrin92 6y ago

>Governments Are Faking It, and Copying Each Other So finally government runs more like private business, AIER should be happy On a more serious note, the reason why governments have enacted measures in synchronicity and often had to correct after adopting measures that turned out not to be so great is quite obviously because this situation is fairly unprecedented and everybody is improvising and trying to learn as we go, and we're all acting on incomplete information. There is hardly as much evidence for anything as we'd like, so it might very well turn out that the criticised measures in the article are actually good or vice versa. So instead of somehow contextualising this as some sort of "bamboozling voters" it honestly is just what you would expect. I'm not sure if the author is expecting that every country does something different in the face of extreme risk.