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The idea that governments spend their money responsibly and according to the wishes of their citizens is... The kindest thing I can say is that it's not a unive

The idea that governments spend their money responsibly and according to the wishes of their citizens is... The kindest thing I can say is that it's not a universally held opinion (or even, in my experience, a significant-minority held opinion).

dangus 5y ago
A billionaire is a single unelected person. Only a pure dictatorship is less representative than that. I’d take a flawed government with some semblance of an electoral process and representative taxation over dependence on a benevolent individual. For every Bill Gates there is a Charles Koch.
- endominus 5y ago
  The other, important, difference being that I am not required to fund the billionaire. If I object to the actions of a billionaire, it's not my money that's being misused.
  - dangus 5y ago
    I’m not? How should I stop using Comcast for my Internet? What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s besides IE on an ActiveX page? What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple phone? How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands? These are just a few examples of the negatives of capitalist consolidation.
    - endominus 5y ago
      >What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s besides IE? Netscape? Opera? Lynx? All of which predate IE. >What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple phone? A dumb one. Or install something like LineageOS. And if your complaint is that they're not as nice, well, they're not required to be. Philosophical positions and moral boundaries have a price, and convenience is a small one to pay. >How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands? Yes. That's exactly what you do. With the exception of certain pharmaceuticals, the vast majority of the stuff they sell is not necessary. If you don't want to support billionaires, don't be suckered into the consumerist trap. It's not hard to live with, and want, less stuff. Honestly, the sibling comment about billionaires capturing critical infrastructure and monopolizing it is a much better argument than this. But you're not even trying to look at the issue from my perspective. If you object to the way your government is spending its money, as many citizens have done over the past twenty years, what can you actually do about it? The consequences of withholding your money from the tax man is much more severe than doing so from Bill Gates or Charles Koch.
    - abfan1127 5y ago
      Comcast maintains their monopoly through state power. Through licensing, easement access, and other regulations, no one takes on Comcast.
  - 310260 5y ago
    >I am not required to fund the billionaire. Except, of course, when whatever elaborate mousetrap they used to gain their billions becomes a monopoly and also critical infrastructure.
    - endominus 5y ago
      An excellent point! But that is something that a billionaire may do. And often the answer to that is government action - see how often a government will actually take said action. It is something the government by its very nature will do, and there is no counterbalancing force. The immediate rebuttal that comes to mind is that the government does not dismantle the billionaire's monopolistic scheme because of regulatory capture, and because the billionaire has effectively suborned the government. If you are about to make that argument, I suggest you introspect a little, as you would only be making my point; the "representative government" is not spending its resources according to the will of the people in any case.
  - developer93 5y ago
    Most of them are tax avoiding, so yes, they are using your money. Or at least causing your money to be spent on other things than it would if they contributed proportional to their advantage.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
You know, it feels that way to citizens because the government is spending money in ways that other citizens want, but not them specifically. Iowa corn growers love corn subsidies and politicians make ethanol pledges to appease them, home owners love mortgage tax deductions so no politician will dare threaten them, military equipment manufactures love that we spend ludicrous amounts of money on our arguably insanely-too-big military, etc. Sure, there's some straight-up corruption too, but personally I think the waste from that pales in comparison to the waste of politicians simply trying to appeal to as many constituents as possible for votes. Representative government is, unsurprisingly, a pretty good reflection of the people it governs. What we are saying when we say we don't think that government spends money responsibly is that our society loves to create inefficiencies to exploit for their own gain and don't care about the consequences to others.
- endominus 5y ago
  I understand the point that preferences are not homogeneous across the population, and therefore there will always be a portion - often a significant portion - of government spending that any given citizen will disagree with. But I would argue that a significant amount of spending by the government is purely wasteful. Furthermore, one of the most useful roles of government, in my opinion, should be the efficient allocation of societal resources. Appeasement strategies for special interest groups are the furthest you can possibly get from that. Ethanol pledges that deepen dependence on inefficient and damaging businesses, zoning laws that create hard and increasingly intraversible class splits between property-owning Eloi and the forever wage-slaving Morlocks, and continued investment in an unreasonably sized military infrastructure are good for certain interests, but overall bad for society as a whole. If the government consistently makes decisions that are bad for society as a whole, I would posit that it is failing at a critical role. If that is the case, then a certain portion of wealth going to actually good causes rather than the government would be a good thing, not an ethical violation. If the government cannot be relied on to spend the wealth of its people responsibly - if instead it fritters that resource away in power games and appeasement - then avoiding said taxes is not, fundamentally, immoral. Off the top of my head for other bad and expensive government programs, there's the TSA and other Department of Homeland Security initiatives that fall under the umbrella of Security Theater; the support, both legal and economic, of the private prison industry; arms sales to ethically dubious partners; political vanity projects like the "Bridge to Nowhere"; ideologically driven propaganda (Reefer Madness, anyone?); and straight-up war crimes. Representative government may be a good reflection of the people - I have misgivings about that claim, but I'll let them go - but the people should demand better than a reflection. I don't want my moral equal leading me; I want someone better. I want someone who isn't afraid to make an unpopular decision when it's the right thing to do.

dangus 5y ago

A billionaire is a single unelected person. Only a pure dictatorship is less representative than that. I’d take a flawed government with some semblance of an electoral process and representative taxation over dependence on a benevolent individual. For every Bill Gates there is a Charles Koch.

endominus 5y ago
The other, important, difference being that I am not required to fund the billionaire. If I object to the actions of a billionaire, it's not my money that's being misused.
- dangus 5y ago
  I’m not? How should I stop using Comcast for my Internet? What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s besides IE on an ActiveX page? What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple phone? How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands? These are just a few examples of the negatives of capitalist consolidation.
  - endominus 5y ago
    >What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s besides IE? Netscape? Opera? Lynx? All of which predate IE. >What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple phone? A dumb one. Or install something like LineageOS. And if your complaint is that they're not as nice, well, they're not required to be. Philosophical positions and moral boundaries have a price, and convenience is a small one to pay. >How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands? Yes. That's exactly what you do. With the exception of certain pharmaceuticals, the vast majority of the stuff they sell is not necessary. If you don't want to support billionaires, don't be suckered into the consumerist trap. It's not hard to live with, and want, less stuff. Honestly, the sibling comment about billionaires capturing critical infrastructure and monopolizing it is a much better argument than this. But you're not even trying to look at the issue from my perspective. If you object to the way your government is spending its money, as many citizens have done over the past twenty years, what can you actually do about it? The consequences of withholding your money from the tax man is much more severe than doing so from Bill Gates or Charles Koch.
  - abfan1127 5y ago
    Comcast maintains their monopoly through state power. Through licensing, easement access, and other regulations, no one takes on Comcast.
- 310260 5y ago
  >I am not required to fund the billionaire. Except, of course, when whatever elaborate mousetrap they used to gain their billions becomes a monopoly and also critical infrastructure.
  - endominus 5y ago
    An excellent point! But that is something that a billionaire may do. And often the answer to that is government action - see how often a government will actually take said action. It is something the government by its very nature will do, and there is no counterbalancing force. The immediate rebuttal that comes to mind is that the government does not dismantle the billionaire's monopolistic scheme because of regulatory capture, and because the billionaire has effectively suborned the government. If you are about to make that argument, I suggest you introspect a little, as you would only be making my point; the "representative government" is not spending its resources according to the will of the people in any case.
- developer93 5y ago
  Most of them are tax avoiding, so yes, they are using your money. Or at least causing your money to be spent on other things than it would if they contributed proportional to their advantage.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

You know, it feels that way to citizens because the government is spending money in ways that other citizens want, but not them specifically. Iowa corn growers love corn subsidies and politicians make ethanol pledges to appease them, home owners love mortgage tax deductions so no politician will dare threaten them, military equipment manufactures love that we spend ludicrous amounts of money on our arguably insanely-too-big military, etc. Sure, there's some straight-up corruption too, but personally I think the waste from that pales in comparison to the waste of politicians simply trying to appeal to as many constituents as possible for votes. Representative government is, unsurprisingly, a pretty good reflection of the people it governs. What we are saying when we say we don't think that government spends money responsibly is that our society loves to create inefficiencies to exploit for their own gain and don't care about the consequences to others.

endominus 5y ago
I understand the point that preferences are not homogeneous across the population, and therefore there will always be a portion - often a significant portion - of government spending that any given citizen will disagree with. But I would argue that a significant amount of spending by the government is purely wasteful. Furthermore, one of the most useful roles of government, in my opinion, should be the efficient allocation of societal resources. Appeasement strategies for special interest groups are the furthest you can possibly get from that. Ethanol pledges that deepen dependence on inefficient and damaging businesses, zoning laws that create hard and increasingly intraversible class splits between property-owning Eloi and the forever wage-slaving Morlocks, and continued investment in an unreasonably sized military infrastructure are good for certain interests, but overall bad for society as a whole. If the government consistently makes decisions that are bad for society as a whole, I would posit that it is failing at a critical role. If that is the case, then a certain portion of wealth going to actually good causes rather than the government would be a good thing, not an ethical violation. If the government cannot be relied on to spend the wealth of its people responsibly - if instead it fritters that resource away in power games and appeasement - then avoiding said taxes is not, fundamentally, immoral. Off the top of my head for other bad and expensive government programs, there's the TSA and other Department of Homeland Security initiatives that fall under the umbrella of Security Theater; the support, both legal and economic, of the private prison industry; arms sales to ethically dubious partners; political vanity projects like the "Bridge to Nowhere"; ideologically driven propaganda (Reefer Madness, anyone?); and straight-up war crimes. Representative government may be a good reflection of the people - I have misgivings about that claim, but I'll let them go - but the people should demand better than a reflection. I don't want my moral equal leading me; I want someone better. I want someone who isn't afraid to make an unpopular decision when it's the right thing to do.