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Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? It seems to always require more resources. In fact, I don't think I've heard of a case where

by daenz 5y ago

Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? It seems to always require more resources. In fact, I don't think I've heard of a case where some government initiative requires less resources and downsizes itself (I would welcome being proven wrong). There is a perverse incentive in government to use all of the "resources" (tax dollars) that they have access to. Normally this kind of incentive is counter balanced by competition (the competitor that can do more with less has a better chance of winning), but in this case, the government is a monopoly. They have no competitor threatening to usurp their role. And where is the accountability? When things aren't getting accomplished with tax dollars, the answer is always "more." Who is holding the spenders accountable for us?

patcon 5y ago
> Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? My take on this is that it's because government doesn't scale in a simple way with the biological population size, unless we understand government as simply serving the biological needs of the population. The government serves the noosphere: kinda like a biosphere, but the sum of all ideas, reason, language, memes, thought and innovation of the society. The noosphere just happens to live [mostly] in the biological minds of the population, but it's not growing linearly like population is, and is probably becoming more complex and higher dimensional in a nonlinear way. The world doesn't just accrue humans, but rather it accrues (often via tech augmentations) the capacity of each human to process more, and so the world complexifies (is that a word? ha) Anyhow, not saying this is how it should be, or needs to be, but I def am not personally surprised or indignant about government failing to see scaling benefits we see elsewhere. I also suspect this is related to how government's in charge of many more things than corporations, which often can't be re-classified as externalities I dunno maybe I'm wrong-headed here * shrug *
trident1000 5y ago
Theoretically there will be a point (if not already) where its govt employees and contractors vs private citizens not tied into the system in a monetary way. If you work for the govt in one way or another and your salary depends on it, or you're getting a handout, you're more likely to vote in a way that supports big government, programs, and the political body that enabled it. A natural mechanism of taxing more, printing more, and handing that money to payrolls, contractors, and handout recipients who vote for it is a persistent trend and probably a systemic risk for a functioning private sector. And we see this in countries like Russia for instance where working for the govt means you have, while being a private citizen with no ties means you're most likely a have not.
canjobear 5y ago
Should the government scale linearly with population? It’s not obvious. For example. If you think the role of government is to regulate pairwise interactions among people, then government should scale as O(N^2) where N is population.

by daenz 5y ago

patcon 5y ago

> Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? My take on this is that it's because government doesn't scale in a simple way with the biological population size, unless we understand government as simply serving the biological needs of the population. The government serves the noosphere: kinda like a biosphere, but the sum of all ideas, reason, language, memes, thought and innovation of the society. The noosphere just happens to live [mostly] in the biological minds of the population, but it's not growing linearly like population is, and is probably becoming more complex and higher dimensional in a nonlinear way. The world doesn't just accrue humans, but rather it accrues (often via tech augmentations) the capacity of each human to process more, and so the world complexifies (is that a word? ha) Anyhow, not saying this is how it should be, or needs to be, but I def am not personally surprised or indignant about government failing to see scaling benefits we see elsewhere. I also suspect this is related to how government's in charge of many more things than corporations, which often can't be re-classified as externalities I dunno maybe I'm wrong-headed here * shrug *

trident1000 5y ago

Theoretically there will be a point (if not already) where its govt employees and contractors vs private citizens not tied into the system in a monetary way. If you work for the govt in one way or another and your salary depends on it, or you're getting a handout, you're more likely to vote in a way that supports big government, programs, and the political body that enabled it. A natural mechanism of taxing more, printing more, and handing that money to payrolls, contractors, and handout recipients who vote for it is a persistent trend and probably a systemic risk for a functioning private sector. And we see this in countries like Russia for instance where working for the govt means you have, while being a private citizen with no ties means you're most likely a have not.

canjobear 5y ago

Should the government scale linearly with population? It’s not obvious. For example. If you think the role of government is to regulate pairwise interactions among people, then government should scale as O(N^2) where N is population.