3 ms·

> 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

> 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
What do you feel is the appropriate role for government? I’d implore you to also not jump to conclusions about what my beliefs are by extrapolating to positions I haven’t explicitly defended. Your posts are coming across like you are actually having an argument with someone else. You seem more inclined to tell me what I think rather than ask
- briantakita 6y ago
  A good clue is to look into the systems (i.e. cybernetic) interpretation of the word "governor" or "government". Within a system, the "governor" is meant to ensure that the timing & operation of the other components is in order for the system to operate as designed. The "governor" should minimize intrusion into other components, or it will tax (a pun naturally formed here) the efficiency of the overall system. Which begs the question, what is this system, that we call civilization or society, designed for? If it's for the well-being & growth of all people, then it's the government's role to minimize intrusion into peoples' lives & to be be non-permanent; meaning the government should shrink after it grows to respond to a crisis. This is why early government did not have "professional" politicians or bureaucrats. Once it becomes somebody's livelihood to govern others, the teleology will always be a relationship of ever-increasing extraction until collapse. This is also why early government did not have "professional" armies. The "governor" (or political class) becomes the monarchy/aristocracy in a neo-feudalism state. One can see the state of American politics with it's two-tiered justice system as a proto-aristocracy which will eventually lead to a monarchy. Perhaps we should think twice before our celebration of giving James Bond a "license to kill". If there is a crisis of some type, the government may be useful in theory, though in practicality it's function is restricted by the autopoetic traits of people that run the government not being able to avoid being self-interested and self-selecting to form cartels. See the Stanford Prison Experiment & Milgram Obedience Experiment as references. Persistently high taxes are a good indicator of the breakdown of feedback loops re: the performance/utility/effectiveness vs the cost of the government.
  - bumby 6y ago
    >A good clue is to look into the systems (i.e. cybernetic) interpretation of the word "governor" A small pedantic nit but I think the word "governor" in systems engineering predates cybernetic systems. I think the centrifugal ball governor on steam systems was one of the first implementations. As a literal pressure regulating valve, the term "governor" can be derived from literally regulating a system for a desired outcome. >meant to ensure that the timing & operation So from this vantage point, the primary role of government is to facilitate coordination between constituent parts of society? I.e., you don't feel they have a role in terms of a service component? Can you give more concrete examples of exactly how this facilitation would be employed? (e.g., it reads to me that creating and maintaining a coherent monetary policy would fit this definition, but your previous comments lead me to believe you may be against that idea). Going way back to my original post, I'm trying to get an understanding of how this view moves from the theoretical to the practical. >This is also why early government did not have "professional" armies. Can you elaborate on which governments you are specifically referencing? Because my understanding of many "early" governments is that they were predicated on standing armies, particularly those governments that used them to protect commerce and/or expand their territory. >If it's for the well-being & growth of all people This is probably the biggest area where we diverge in opinion. I don't think the overall utility function is increased by getting rid of programs like Medicaid/Medicare, SNAP, etc. and other quality-of-life programs that are largely funded by the income tax you want to abolish. Is your aim to return back to resorting to charity to solve these problems? If everyone acted ethically, I agree that may work better than the current paradigm but I think we've already agreed we can't count upon everyone to act rationally or morally (leaving out the mental bandwidth necessary to understand the problem effectively to best allocate resources). It would be more useful if you could speak in pragmatic terms; this is the point where I (non-derisively) tried to avoid the "hand-wavy" free-market arguments about how the market will solve it. One area you haven't touched upon that I would be curious about your opinion is the role of government in fostering the growth of nascent industries, particularly those that have such a high-risk/low-reward that the market's individual players generally aren't willing to fund although the potential to benefit society as a whole is large (I'm thinking of industries like early aircraft or, more recently, the space industry). Do you think the government has a role in tragedy of the commons scenarios? (E.g., is it the governments role to price in externalities, to fund research in problems that are a large societal risk but small individual risk etc.?) I do agree that a real problem in government is the "self-licking ice cream cone" phenomenon. Although, I think my preference is that citizens correct this at the voting booth. How do you think about the ability of people to make rational decisions in that regard? (I.e., if government isn't working to the people's liking and they have the power to change it, why isn't either a) the change happening or b) the citizenry leaving? c) are we failing because of our individual cognitive biases?)

bumby 6y ago

What do you feel is the appropriate role for government? I’d implore you to also not jump to conclusions about what my beliefs are by extrapolating to positions I haven’t explicitly defended. Your posts are coming across like you are actually having an argument with someone else. You seem more inclined to tell me what I think rather than ask

briantakita 6y ago
A good clue is to look into the systems (i.e. cybernetic) interpretation of the word "governor" or "government". Within a system, the "governor" is meant to ensure that the timing & operation of the other components is in order for the system to operate as designed. The "governor" should minimize intrusion into other components, or it will tax (a pun naturally formed here) the efficiency of the overall system. Which begs the question, what is this system, that we call civilization or society, designed for? If it's for the well-being & growth of all people, then it's the government's role to minimize intrusion into peoples' lives & to be be non-permanent; meaning the government should shrink after it grows to respond to a crisis. This is why early government did not have "professional" politicians or bureaucrats. Once it becomes somebody's livelihood to govern others, the teleology will always be a relationship of ever-increasing extraction until collapse. This is also why early government did not have "professional" armies. The "governor" (or political class) becomes the monarchy/aristocracy in a neo-feudalism state. One can see the state of American politics with it's two-tiered justice system as a proto-aristocracy which will eventually lead to a monarchy. Perhaps we should think twice before our celebration of giving James Bond a "license to kill". If there is a crisis of some type, the government may be useful in theory, though in practicality it's function is restricted by the autopoetic traits of people that run the government not being able to avoid being self-interested and self-selecting to form cartels. See the Stanford Prison Experiment & Milgram Obedience Experiment as references. Persistently high taxes are a good indicator of the breakdown of feedback loops re: the performance/utility/effectiveness vs the cost of the government.
- bumby 6y ago
  >A good clue is to look into the systems (i.e. cybernetic) interpretation of the word "governor" A small pedantic nit but I think the word "governor" in systems engineering predates cybernetic systems. I think the centrifugal ball governor on steam systems was one of the first implementations. As a literal pressure regulating valve, the term "governor" can be derived from literally regulating a system for a desired outcome. >meant to ensure that the timing & operation So from this vantage point, the primary role of government is to facilitate coordination between constituent parts of society? I.e., you don't feel they have a role in terms of a service component? Can you give more concrete examples of exactly how this facilitation would be employed? (e.g., it reads to me that creating and maintaining a coherent monetary policy would fit this definition, but your previous comments lead me to believe you may be against that idea). Going way back to my original post, I'm trying to get an understanding of how this view moves from the theoretical to the practical. >This is also why early government did not have "professional" armies. Can you elaborate on which governments you are specifically referencing? Because my understanding of many "early" governments is that they were predicated on standing armies, particularly those governments that used them to protect commerce and/or expand their territory. >If it's for the well-being & growth of all people This is probably the biggest area where we diverge in opinion. I don't think the overall utility function is increased by getting rid of programs like Medicaid/Medicare, SNAP, etc. and other quality-of-life programs that are largely funded by the income tax you want to abolish. Is your aim to return back to resorting to charity to solve these problems? If everyone acted ethically, I agree that may work better than the current paradigm but I think we've already agreed we can't count upon everyone to act rationally or morally (leaving out the mental bandwidth necessary to understand the problem effectively to best allocate resources). It would be more useful if you could speak in pragmatic terms; this is the point where I (non-derisively) tried to avoid the "hand-wavy" free-market arguments about how the market will solve it. One area you haven't touched upon that I would be curious about your opinion is the role of government in fostering the growth of nascent industries, particularly those that have such a high-risk/low-reward that the market's individual players generally aren't willing to fund although the potential to benefit society as a whole is large (I'm thinking of industries like early aircraft or, more recently, the space industry). Do you think the government has a role in tragedy of the commons scenarios? (E.g., is it the governments role to price in externalities, to fund research in problems that are a large societal risk but small individual risk etc.?) I do agree that a real problem in government is the "self-licking ice cream cone" phenomenon. Although, I think my preference is that citizens correct this at the voting booth. How do you think about the ability of people to make rational decisions in that regard? (I.e., if government isn't working to the people's liking and they have the power to change it, why isn't either a) the change happening or b) the citizenry leaving? c) are we failing because of our individual cognitive biases?)