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Your assessment falls prey to classic self-serving statist blunders in logic, such as the state has the ultimate monopoly on ethics & it's enforcement. Even if

Your assessment falls prey to classic self-serving statist blunders in logic, such as the state has the ultimate monopoly on ethics & it's enforcement. Even if information is asymmetric & humans don't always make rational decisions, you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries, irrational decisions, & bouts of dishonesty. With government having the ultimate monopoly of power & acting "for the greater good", it's not surprising that government officials will always act in their own interests at the expense of the citizenry. Every system is ultimately gamed over time. Even if the government official is 100% benevolent, maintains 100% benevolence over the entire career, & gains sufficient power to make decisions (probably impossible), that official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices.

bumby 6y ago
>you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries I may need you to elaborate a bit on this for me to really understand your point. Am I claiming that politicians are magically immune from cognitive biases? Absolutely not; I'm actually claiming the opposite: nobody is immune from them. That is exactly why laws and regulations exist to provide the guardrails for better decisions. There's certainly a point where overreach happens, but I don't think you've yet made a very concrete argument about how the extreme of no government somehow is an improvement over some government. Or are you claiming government can't alleviate the asymmetries of information (the actual 'asymmetry' in my OP)? I do think the government is better at this via regulations. See the Sarbanes-Oxley Act about disclosing accurate financial information passed in the wake of Enron as a concrete example. >official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices. Except it's not a case of a lone official. It tends to be a case of groups of officials and experts. And yes, each has their own biases, but with a diverse group there's a lesser chance that a single bias will overrule the decision (unlike at the individual level). With modern society as complicated as it is, do you think an individual has the bandwidth to properly gauge risk in terms of items like public health, transportation, engineering, etc.? The mechanism chosen by citizenry in most Western countries is to choose the constituent politicians and policies via a voting mechanism rather than shoulder the burden of making all those decisions individually. The utopian ideal you espouse seems better suited to fun though experiments than a large society that must also factor in pragmatism. It's a bit of a privileged indulgence in that sense. I suspect that's why it hasn't ever been implemented in a large, diverse, and complicated society facing tough problems. I understand the seductive allure of libertarianism; it feels like a straightforward and simple way to maximize freedom. Unfortunately, most people in society want to optimize across more domains than just freedom. They want security as well as other objectives that may be in conflict with absolute freedom. You can see this play out in countries that are borderline failed states. Unfortunately, I think the framework you advocate to maximize freedom almost naively over-simplifies the model of the human condition.
- briantakita 6y ago
  > extreme of no government somehow is an improvement over some government I'm giving the argument to remove the income tax, not to remove government completely. I'm aware that power vacuums will be filled one way or another. However, the government has grow unchecked due to self-interested officials (bureaucrats, politicians, contractors, etc.) & lobbyists. > Or are you claiming government can't alleviate the asymmetries of information (the actual 'asymmetry' in my OP)? I do think the government is better at this via regulations. See the Sarbanes-Oxley Act about disclosing accurate financial information passed in the wake of Enron as a concrete example. As stated in my other post, you statists are very predictable. Sarbanes-Oxley is simply the same interests that perpetrated the centralization & speculation that led to the stock market crash to be the industry regulators. The same revolving door is in EVERY SINGLE regulatory body. The revolving door between regulator and industry effectively allows the large industry players to regulate the industry, thereby adding undue stress to competitors. > It tends to be a case of groups of officials and experts. And yes, each has their own biases That the "officials and experts" have common interests that are at odds with those who they are regulating. The word "political class" means something. Do some research on the implications of the "political class" & it's numerous examples of circling the wagons against any grass-roots citizen oversight. > The utopian ideal you espouse seems better suited to fun though experiments than a large society that must also factor in pragmatism. It's a bit of a privileged indulgence in that sense. I suspect that's why it hasn't ever been implemented in a large, diverse, and complicated society facing tough problems. If you study history, the Income tax was introduced to raise money for a war that ultimately killed about 100 Million people. Before the income tax & before the FED, the world had unmatched growth. We are the beneficiaries of this innovation, that occurred BEFORE THE INCOME TAX & BEFORE THE FED. The surplus created by the innovation of the population, not the government, created the "privileged indulgence" of the government to siphon money away from the population to support the income of self-interested parties. You statists are also predictable, in that you forget who pays the bills of the state. So you justify your theft of the population by claiming that the population is somehow spoiled or privileged. You statists have contempt for the people who support you, which is why the state has a terrible history of perpetrating mass genocide against it's own population many times in history. Your naively over-simplistic historically revisionist ideal that the state is somehow the source of innovation, ingenuity, & human progress is simply incorrect. People make things happen. The state is an expense & will almost always do tasks in a more expensive, more bloated, less effective way. Why? Because there is no feedback loop to incentivize good behavior while disincentivizing bad behavior of government officials & processes. Let's be real, the state, despite it's high minded rhetoric, always devolves into an organized criminal enterprise & conquerors siphoning the energy away from the people who do the real work in making the world a better place.

bumby 6y ago

>you are running under the assumption that human government officials are somehow immune from these asymmetries I may need you to elaborate a bit on this for me to really understand your point. Am I claiming that politicians are magically immune from cognitive biases? Absolutely not; I'm actually claiming the opposite: nobody is immune from them. That is exactly why laws and regulations exist to provide the guardrails for better decisions. There's certainly a point where overreach happens, but I don't think you've yet made a very concrete argument about how the extreme of no government somehow is an improvement over some government. Or are you claiming government can't alleviate the asymmetries of information (the actual 'asymmetry' in my OP)? I do think the government is better at this via regulations. See the Sarbanes-Oxley Act about disclosing accurate financial information passed in the wake of Enron as a concrete example. >official lacks the ability to model every citizen's unique set of preferences & optimizations better than that individual citizen's ability to make their own choices. Except it's not a case of a lone official. It tends to be a case of groups of officials and experts. And yes, each has their own biases, but with a diverse group there's a lesser chance that a single bias will overrule the decision (unlike at the individual level). With modern society as complicated as it is, do you think an individual has the bandwidth to properly gauge risk in terms of items like public health, transportation, engineering, etc.? The mechanism chosen by citizenry in most Western countries is to choose the constituent politicians and policies via a voting mechanism rather than shoulder the burden of making all those decisions individually. The utopian ideal you espouse seems better suited to fun though experiments than a large society that must also factor in pragmatism. It's a bit of a privileged indulgence in that sense. I suspect that's why it hasn't ever been implemented in a large, diverse, and complicated society facing tough problems. I understand the seductive allure of libertarianism; it feels like a straightforward and simple way to maximize freedom. Unfortunately, most people in society want to optimize across more domains than just freedom. They want security as well as other objectives that may be in conflict with absolute freedom. You can see this play out in countries that are borderline failed states. Unfortunately, I think the framework you advocate to maximize freedom almost naively over-simplifies the model of the human condition.

briantakita 6y ago
> extreme of no government somehow is an improvement over some government I'm giving the argument to remove the income tax, not to remove government completely. I'm aware that power vacuums will be filled one way or another. However, the government has grow unchecked due to self-interested officials (bureaucrats, politicians, contractors, etc.) & lobbyists. > Or are you claiming government can't alleviate the asymmetries of information (the actual 'asymmetry' in my OP)? I do think the government is better at this via regulations. See the Sarbanes-Oxley Act about disclosing accurate financial information passed in the wake of Enron as a concrete example. As stated in my other post, you statists are very predictable. Sarbanes-Oxley is simply the same interests that perpetrated the centralization & speculation that led to the stock market crash to be the industry regulators. The same revolving door is in EVERY SINGLE regulatory body. The revolving door between regulator and industry effectively allows the large industry players to regulate the industry, thereby adding undue stress to competitors. > It tends to be a case of groups of officials and experts. And yes, each has their own biases That the "officials and experts" have common interests that are at odds with those who they are regulating. The word "political class" means something. Do some research on the implications of the "political class" & it's numerous examples of circling the wagons against any grass-roots citizen oversight. > The utopian ideal you espouse seems better suited to fun though experiments than a large society that must also factor in pragmatism. It's a bit of a privileged indulgence in that sense. I suspect that's why it hasn't ever been implemented in a large, diverse, and complicated society facing tough problems. If you study history, the Income tax was introduced to raise money for a war that ultimately killed about 100 Million people. Before the income tax & before the FED, the world had unmatched growth. We are the beneficiaries of this innovation, that occurred BEFORE THE INCOME TAX & BEFORE THE FED. The surplus created by the innovation of the population, not the government, created the "privileged indulgence" of the government to siphon money away from the population to support the income of self-interested parties. You statists are also predictable, in that you forget who pays the bills of the state. So you justify your theft of the population by claiming that the population is somehow spoiled or privileged. You statists have contempt for the people who support you, which is why the state has a terrible history of perpetrating mass genocide against it's own population many times in history. Your naively over-simplistic historically revisionist ideal that the state is somehow the source of innovation, ingenuity, & human progress is simply incorrect. People make things happen. The state is an expense & will almost always do tasks in a more expensive, more bloated, less effective way. Why? Because there is no feedback loop to incentivize good behavior while disincentivizing bad behavior of government officials & processes. Let's be real, the state, despite it's high minded rhetoric, always devolves into an organized criminal enterprise & conquerors siphoning the energy away from the people who do the real work in making the world a better place.