5 ms·

I think you are very much wrong when talking about efficiencies. There are no examples in the history of the world of charity sufficiently providing for the nee

by suture 4y ago

I think you are very much wrong when talking about efficiencies. There are no examples in the history of the world of charity sufficiently providing for the needs of the poor at a national scale. There are lots of examples of government programs providing the basic needs of the poor at scale.

maccard 4y ago
I'm definitely in the pro-government-involvement camp but > There are no examples in the history of the world of charity sufficiently providing for the needs of the poor at a national scale. This is just false. Literally right now we have the case where food banks are filling in the gaps of the UK government at a national scale.
- suture 4y ago
  Remove UK government support for food for the poor. This includes school lunches and whatnot. Will the charities be able to fill the need? The answer is no. Charities can fill gaps but not beyond that.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    This is true in the same way that US rail wouldn't be able to fill commuter demand if every ICE car disappeared. It should surprise no one that an organization accustomed to, and thus built for, one thing would fail to instantaneoulsy shift to doing a somewhat similar thing on a completely different scale.
    - suture 4y ago
      I disagree. My claim is not that charity wouldn’t be able to fill the demand right now in the scenario I presented. My claim is that it would never be able to fill the demand. Indeed, charity has never fulfilled the basic needs of the poor in any country ever.
BobbyJo 4y ago
> There are lots of examples of government programs providing the basic needs of the poor at scale. I'm not sure what you're comparing here. Are you saying governments are more efficient because they are bigger? Are you saying they are more efficient because they've filled a need more completely? The first is non-sense and the second is more a function of size and power than efficiency. Efficiency is about benefit per dollar, and governments are really really bad a that, typically making up for how bad they are by simply throwing more dollars at the problem.
- axlee 4y ago
  > The first is non-sense and the second is more a function of size and power than efficiency. Efficiency is about benefit per dollar, and governments are really really bad a that, typically making up for how bad they are by simply throwing more dollars at the problem. This is definitely not an ideological and dogmatic statement obscuring centuries of experience across hundreds of government systems, oh no-no-no. Government is bad at everything, get it?
- suture 4y ago
  Efficiency at solving the problem at scale. What good does it do to have the most efficient system in terms benefit per dollar spent if it helps only a few people? Government is the most efficient at providing help at scale. For example helping Ukraine defeat Putin requires government and not charity. Want clean water across the country? Need government intervention. Want to provide universal healthcare? Need government intervention. Want everyone to read and write? Need government intervention. Charity is not sufficient to provide the needs of the populace. For one thing, relying on charities quickly runs into the free rider problem.
- lostcolony 4y ago
  People love to say governments are inefficient, but I always find that an interesting claim. It invariably relies on comparing government to much smaller scale organizations (such as charity), which obviously isn't comparable. That is, I can be 100% efficient with my donation to charity by just...giving $20 to a homeless person. Oh look, 100% of my donation went to someone in need. A charity can be 90% efficient by collecting and distributing donations citywide; it's more widespread, and donations are less centralized, but there's cost in paying people to actually do the legwork. A government is doing stuff nationwide, distributing unequally based on need (measured in a flawed way, yes, but still requiring measurement, since it's politically untenable to do simple things), and is less efficient still. But that's...to be expected. You see the same thing in private sector; the larger a company is, the less efficiently it runs. Walmart is the largest private employer; no one is claiming it's a well oiled machine of efficiencies comparable to a lean startup. Necessarily; it's just like with technology, the more distributed the system is, the less efficient it is. Saying that governments are inefficient and just throw money at the problem is like saying distributed systems are inefficient and just throw compute at the problem. While true, it nevertheless is still the only way to solve many problems at that scale, and comparing the 'inefficiencies' of hardware of, say, Google, to the hardware for local search on my home PC, isn't particularly meaningful rhetoric.

by suture 4y ago

maccard 4y ago

I'm definitely in the pro-government-involvement camp but > There are no examples in the history of the world of charity sufficiently providing for the needs of the poor at a national scale. This is just false. Literally right now we have the case where food banks are filling in the gaps of the UK government at a national scale.

suture 4y ago
Remove UK government support for food for the poor. This includes school lunches and whatnot. Will the charities be able to fill the need? The answer is no. Charities can fill gaps but not beyond that.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  This is true in the same way that US rail wouldn't be able to fill commuter demand if every ICE car disappeared. It should surprise no one that an organization accustomed to, and thus built for, one thing would fail to instantaneoulsy shift to doing a somewhat similar thing on a completely different scale.
  - suture 4y ago
    I disagree. My claim is not that charity wouldn’t be able to fill the demand right now in the scenario I presented. My claim is that it would never be able to fill the demand. Indeed, charity has never fulfilled the basic needs of the poor in any country ever.

BobbyJo 4y ago

> There are lots of examples of government programs providing the basic needs of the poor at scale. I'm not sure what you're comparing here. Are you saying governments are more efficient because they are bigger? Are you saying they are more efficient because they've filled a need more completely? The first is non-sense and the second is more a function of size and power than efficiency. Efficiency is about benefit per dollar, and governments are really really bad a that, typically making up for how bad they are by simply throwing more dollars at the problem.

axlee 4y ago
> The first is non-sense and the second is more a function of size and power than efficiency. Efficiency is about benefit per dollar, and governments are really really bad a that, typically making up for how bad they are by simply throwing more dollars at the problem. This is definitely not an ideological and dogmatic statement obscuring centuries of experience across hundreds of government systems, oh no-no-no. Government is bad at everything, get it?
suture 4y ago
Efficiency at solving the problem at scale. What good does it do to have the most efficient system in terms benefit per dollar spent if it helps only a few people? Government is the most efficient at providing help at scale. For example helping Ukraine defeat Putin requires government and not charity. Want clean water across the country? Need government intervention. Want to provide universal healthcare? Need government intervention. Want everyone to read and write? Need government intervention. Charity is not sufficient to provide the needs of the populace. For one thing, relying on charities quickly runs into the free rider problem.
lostcolony 4y ago
People love to say governments are inefficient, but I always find that an interesting claim. It invariably relies on comparing government to much smaller scale organizations (such as charity), which obviously isn't comparable. That is, I can be 100% efficient with my donation to charity by just...giving $20 to a homeless person. Oh look, 100% of my donation went to someone in need. A charity can be 90% efficient by collecting and distributing donations citywide; it's more widespread, and donations are less centralized, but there's cost in paying people to actually do the legwork. A government is doing stuff nationwide, distributing unequally based on need (measured in a flawed way, yes, but still requiring measurement, since it's politically untenable to do simple things), and is less efficient still. But that's...to be expected. You see the same thing in private sector; the larger a company is, the less efficiently it runs. Walmart is the largest private employer; no one is claiming it's a well oiled machine of efficiencies comparable to a lean startup. Necessarily; it's just like with technology, the more distributed the system is, the less efficient it is. Saying that governments are inefficient and just throw money at the problem is like saying distributed systems are inefficient and just throw compute at the problem. While true, it nevertheless is still the only way to solve many problems at that scale, and comparing the 'inefficiencies' of hardware of, say, Google, to the hardware for local search on my home PC, isn't particularly meaningful rhetoric.