5 ms·

An awful lot of this list is less than 100 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_na

An awful lot of this list is less than 100 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutio...

bhupy 6y ago
Of the items in that list < 100 years old, the vast majority came about through violence via revolution, civil war, genocide, or regime change. That's a bug, and not a feature. Peaceful restructuring of government is rare, and when it happens, it’s noteworthy. In contrast, peaceful restructuring of private enterprise (via startup incorporation, bankruptcy, or M&A) is just a way of life. People didn't die when PanAm, TWA, and Circuit City went out of business. People didn’t die when GM was restructured.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  This criticism and comparison is ridiculous, there is no such thing as 'violent restructuring of private enterprise' because companies don't have armies, governments do. And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    > This criticism and comparison is ridiculous It's really not. We have more than enough history to corroborate. > And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare. Right, and these events are rare and noteworthy also — the only other time that had happened before that was during the 1930's. The same cannot be said for structural changes in government. In addition, if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars in the Middle East, the Balkan Kosovo War, the World Wars (and Holocaust), or what's going on in Central Africa...I really don't know what to say.
    - jahaja 6y ago
      > if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars There's more people dying each year due to lack of health care access in the US alone than multiples of the Kosovo War. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin... Add to that all the drug overdoses in the US for just 2019: > Drug overdose deaths in the United States rose 4.6% in 2019 to 70,980 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdose-deaths-46-2019 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdo... That's over 100k deaths per year that's definitely strongly linked to economic despair.
      - bhupy 6y ago
        1. There is definitely a difference between indirect/preventable deaths and direct deaths due to war/murder. If you died of cancer tomorrow because you couldn't afford treatment, it would be different than if I straight up shot you in the head. The cumulative deaths caused by motor accidents also outnumbers the Kosovo casualty count (by a lot), and yet we do not consider the former to be worse than the latter. Also, drug overdose deaths, while sad, are less devastating to society than war and genocide. 2. Even if indirect/preventable deaths were somehow comparable to war/revolution/genocide, this is pretty much unique to the US, whose government inefficiently allocates welfare. Canada, Germany, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Taiwan, Belgium, Netherlands etc etc etc all rely on the private sector to deliver the majority of their goods & services. The fact that the US has an inefficient welfare system is somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand: whether the (peaceful) creative destruction yields more efficient outcomes than structural rigidity and institutional sclerosis. If the US instituted a UBI or more efficiently allocated its public health spending to include those that may be unable to afford healthcare, it doesn't change the fact that in the majority of liberal democracies that rely predominately on the private sector, structural change doesn't need to be brought about through violence, even if the governments and their institutions remain rigid.
        jahaja 6y ago

An awful lot of this list is less than 100 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutio...

bhupy 6y ago

Of the items in that list < 100 years old, the vast majority came about through violence via revolution, civil war, genocide, or regime change. That's a bug, and not a feature. Peaceful restructuring of government is rare, and when it happens, it’s noteworthy. In contrast, peaceful restructuring of private enterprise (via startup incorporation, bankruptcy, or M&A) is just a way of life. People didn't die when PanAm, TWA, and Circuit City went out of business. People didn’t die when GM was restructured.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
This criticism and comparison is ridiculous, there is no such thing as 'violent restructuring of private enterprise' because companies don't have armies, governments do. And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > This criticism and comparison is ridiculous It's really not. We have more than enough history to corroborate. > And 2008 has killed plenty of people, by rendering them homeless, hungy, and unable to afford healthcare. Right, and these events are rare and noteworthy also — the only other time that had happened before that was during the 1930's. The same cannot be said for structural changes in government. In addition, if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars in the Middle East, the Balkan Kosovo War, the World Wars (and Holocaust), or what's going on in Central Africa...I really don't know what to say.
  - jahaja 6y ago
    > if you think the scale and severity of economic deaths of despair caused by 2008 can be compared with the civil wars There's more people dying each year due to lack of health care access in the US alone than multiples of the Kosovo War. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin... Add to that all the drug overdoses in the US for just 2019: > Drug overdose deaths in the United States rose 4.6% in 2019 to 70,980 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdose-deaths-46-2019 https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2020-07-16-cdc-drug-overdo... That's over 100k deaths per year that's definitely strongly linked to economic despair.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      1. There is definitely a difference between indirect/preventable deaths and direct deaths due to war/murder. If you died of cancer tomorrow because you couldn't afford treatment, it would be different than if I straight up shot you in the head. The cumulative deaths caused by motor accidents also outnumbers the Kosovo casualty count (by a lot), and yet we do not consider the former to be worse than the latter. Also, drug overdose deaths, while sad, are less devastating to society than war and genocide. 2. Even if indirect/preventable deaths were somehow comparable to war/revolution/genocide, this is pretty much unique to the US, whose government inefficiently allocates welfare. Canada, Germany, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Taiwan, Belgium, Netherlands etc etc etc all rely on the private sector to deliver the majority of their goods & services. The fact that the US has an inefficient welfare system is somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand: whether the (peaceful) creative destruction yields more efficient outcomes than structural rigidity and institutional sclerosis. If the US instituted a UBI or more efficiently allocated its public health spending to include those that may be unable to afford healthcare, it doesn't change the fact that in the majority of liberal democracies that rely predominately on the private sector, structural change doesn't need to be brought about through violence, even if the governments and their institutions remain rigid.
      - jahaja 6y ago