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I think what's holding back growth is inequality and the 40 hour work week. Imagine how much economic activity would be generated by fixing those things.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Be careful. Fixing inequality could be helpful. "Fixing" it may be disastrous. Remember that political changes often don't do what the label says.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  Indeed, we need a New Deal, not a Final Solution.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    That’s a Holocaust reference. How in the world is that appropriate to bring up in a discussion about fixing inequality?
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      History has shown that inequality, when left unchecked, tends to "fix itself" by way of blaming others (race, sex, creed) for the inequality (Germany) or through terrible, bloody revolutions (France, Russia). The US passing the New Deal and focusing on improving the life of workers let the steam off the inequality pressure cooker for a bit, and we need more of that now.
      - avgcorrection 4y ago
        Fascistic forces rise up when workers and hardliners like communists get active during times of inequality in order to protect capital from revolution. The New Deal is also something that can happen when the capitalists would rather resolve the situation peacefully than to lose everything. A New Deal won’t happen now because there aren’t enough actors who are forcing the hand of the capitalist class.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  You’re speaking in code. Something more concrete and non-code: Americans could start by redistributing some of the money belonging to people who earn 100K or more a year.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    There is a saying that "peace should not be the peace of a graveyard" - that is, it should not be made by killing everyone who disagrees with you. In the same way, we should not "fix inequality" by making everyone poor. That was the point of my post. You made a more concrete proposal than many ever do - "100K or more". But you're still partly speaking in code. Now, define "redistributing". Redistributing to who? To those making below 100K? Below 60K? Below 30K? And, how much is going to be lost in bureaucratic overhead? There's very little demand for taking money from those making 100K and using it to hire more bureaucrats making 150K. Next, define "some". How much are you going to take from someone making 100K? 200K? 1 million? 10 million? What are you going to do about those who make very little, but have large assets? Nothing, or something? And if something, then what is your definition of "large"? Finally, what do you mean by "start"? How much further are you going to go?
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      Lmao you just juxtaposed fixing inequality with “fixing inequality”. A totally opaque statement which is presumably only meant to be a wink and a nod to fellow political travellers if they happen to be in the same room so that they can agree with you. Or else (if they are not) just a totally deniable statement. But now I’m supposed to detail my armchair tax plan/redistribution plan when I started out being a thousand times more specific than you? Sure, seems fair. And then when I answer all of those inquisitive questions, then what? Maybe bring up how taxation is inherently violent? (Well, I have no idea what your politics are like since you are all about expressing them through “air quotes”). But sure. More concretely I think that specifically SC software engineers who work for data harvesting companies should be taxed pretty heavily. I also think that anyone with an IQ over 115 should get mandatory, shall we say, night courses on socialist/government theory and praxis. And anyone with an IQ above 125 should have to submit their big brains to 100 hours/yearly government-mandated Extracurricular Activities so that those big brains can do something good (less time for SSC (old name) and HN). Like making better government IT infrastructure so that there is less need for bureaucratic overhead (some EU countries have much better government IT which helps to streamline all kinds of services aimed at citizens). Is that specific enough for you?
fennecfoxen 4y ago
Indeed! The economy might grow significantly if people worked longer hours!! what do you mean that's not what you meant at all
javert 4y ago
The idea that government management of the economy can do better than private management and allocation of capital is utterly preposterous. This has been proven many times over by 20th century history, and is also immediately obvious if you've ever been to the DMV. Or if you know anything about the inner workings of a complex modern state apparatus, such as the US federal government. You might as well be calling the sky red. (And I know that's what you're advocating from a different comment you just made about the New Deal.) In a free market, the best allocators of resources are rewarded with more resources to continue allocating; the worse allocators are punished by losing their capacity to allocate. This is called capitalism. Contrast that to a system where goverment eliminates inequality: Government allocates resources, meaning the worst people, people who are best at graft and pull, are rewarded. This is a disaster. We can already see this happening in the US. One egregious offender is the Dept. of Homeland Security which is siphoning off more and more national resources and growing like a cancer. The university system (which is in reality Federally managed) is an egregious offender. The medical system (which is Federally managed but run for profit through graft) is an egregious offender. The latter system---the system of "government management," where the government doesn't let people receive unequal rewards for unequal success---is a path straight to the butcher's block.
- GeneralMayhem 4y ago
  The idea that private management and allocation of capital can do better than government management of the economy is utterly preposterous. This has been proven many times over by 21st century history, and is also immediately obvious if you've ever been to the airport. Or if you know anything about the inner workings of a complex modern commercial apparatus, such as any investment bank, or Enron. My local DMV provides dramatically better customer service than most private companies I've interacted with lately. Government entities are also required to at least pretend to account for efficiency, whereas private companies have an unknown - but known to be massive - amount of waste, corruption, and outright fraud. In any case, nobody is seriously advocating for a full socialist/government-planned economy. Looking at basic workers' rights and throwing a fit about OMG SOCIALISM is such a ludicrous level of libertarian delusion it borders on self-parody. In reality, it is very well known - by psychology, by statistics, and by empiricism - that societies that don't allow the most powerful to make unchecked decisions based on their current level of resources do better than those who do. There are a few pretty obvious reasons why this is true. First, "currently having resources" is not a good indicator of skill in resource allocation. Second, there are problems of misaligned value functions - what is "efficient" for one actor may be extremely inefficient for society as a whole, requiring action by a government (or some equivalently collective entity) to properly account for externalities. Third, mismatched negotiating power (because employees must agree to some employment or else starve) mean that even those actually party to any given agreement might not be maximizing their own resource allocation by doing so. And fourth (not finally, but finally off the top of my head), there are problems of diversification in the face of uncertainty - resource-havers can take maximum-expected-value actions even when they have low probability of payoff (e.g., risky business ventures that will pay off 10x 20% of the time but go bankrupt the other 80% of the time), because they can afford to make those bets enough times to even out the variance; non-resource-havers must settle for lower-expected-value but lower-variance options, which limits their success even with perfectly skillful allocation.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Be careful. Fixing inequality could be helpful. "Fixing" it may be disastrous. Remember that political changes often don't do what the label says.

candiddevmike 4y ago
Indeed, we need a New Deal, not a Final Solution.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  That’s a Holocaust reference. How in the world is that appropriate to bring up in a discussion about fixing inequality?
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    History has shown that inequality, when left unchecked, tends to "fix itself" by way of blaming others (race, sex, creed) for the inequality (Germany) or through terrible, bloody revolutions (France, Russia). The US passing the New Deal and focusing on improving the life of workers let the steam off the inequality pressure cooker for a bit, and we need more of that now.
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      Fascistic forces rise up when workers and hardliners like communists get active during times of inequality in order to protect capital from revolution. The New Deal is also something that can happen when the capitalists would rather resolve the situation peacefully than to lose everything. A New Deal won’t happen now because there aren’t enough actors who are forcing the hand of the capitalist class.
avgcorrection 4y ago
You’re speaking in code. Something more concrete and non-code: Americans could start by redistributing some of the money belonging to people who earn 100K or more a year.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  There is a saying that "peace should not be the peace of a graveyard" - that is, it should not be made by killing everyone who disagrees with you. In the same way, we should not "fix inequality" by making everyone poor. That was the point of my post. You made a more concrete proposal than many ever do - "100K or more". But you're still partly speaking in code. Now, define "redistributing". Redistributing to who? To those making below 100K? Below 60K? Below 30K? And, how much is going to be lost in bureaucratic overhead? There's very little demand for taking money from those making 100K and using it to hire more bureaucrats making 150K. Next, define "some". How much are you going to take from someone making 100K? 200K? 1 million? 10 million? What are you going to do about those who make very little, but have large assets? Nothing, or something? And if something, then what is your definition of "large"? Finally, what do you mean by "start"? How much further are you going to go?
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Lmao you just juxtaposed fixing inequality with “fixing inequality”. A totally opaque statement which is presumably only meant to be a wink and a nod to fellow political travellers if they happen to be in the same room so that they can agree with you. Or else (if they are not) just a totally deniable statement. But now I’m supposed to detail my armchair tax plan/redistribution plan when I started out being a thousand times more specific than you? Sure, seems fair. And then when I answer all of those inquisitive questions, then what? Maybe bring up how taxation is inherently violent? (Well, I have no idea what your politics are like since you are all about expressing them through “air quotes”). But sure. More concretely I think that specifically SC software engineers who work for data harvesting companies should be taxed pretty heavily. I also think that anyone with an IQ over 115 should get mandatory, shall we say, night courses on socialist/government theory and praxis. And anyone with an IQ above 125 should have to submit their big brains to 100 hours/yearly government-mandated Extracurricular Activities so that those big brains can do something good (less time for SSC (old name) and HN). Like making better government IT infrastructure so that there is less need for bureaucratic overhead (some EU countries have much better government IT which helps to streamline all kinds of services aimed at citizens). Is that specific enough for you?

fennecfoxen 4y ago

Indeed! The economy might grow significantly if people worked longer hours!! what do you mean that's not what you meant at all

javert 4y ago

The idea that government management of the economy can do better than private management and allocation of capital is utterly preposterous. This has been proven many times over by 20th century history, and is also immediately obvious if you've ever been to the DMV. Or if you know anything about the inner workings of a complex modern state apparatus, such as the US federal government. You might as well be calling the sky red. (And I know that's what you're advocating from a different comment you just made about the New Deal.) In a free market, the best allocators of resources are rewarded with more resources to continue allocating; the worse allocators are punished by losing their capacity to allocate. This is called capitalism. Contrast that to a system where goverment eliminates inequality: Government allocates resources, meaning the worst people, people who are best at graft and pull, are rewarded. This is a disaster. We can already see this happening in the US. One egregious offender is the Dept. of Homeland Security which is siphoning off more and more national resources and growing like a cancer. The university system (which is in reality Federally managed) is an egregious offender. The medical system (which is Federally managed but run for profit through graft) is an egregious offender. The latter system---the system of "government management," where the government doesn't let people receive unequal rewards for unequal success---is a path straight to the butcher's block.

GeneralMayhem 4y ago
The idea that private management and allocation of capital can do better than government management of the economy is utterly preposterous. This has been proven many times over by 21st century history, and is also immediately obvious if you've ever been to the airport. Or if you know anything about the inner workings of a complex modern commercial apparatus, such as any investment bank, or Enron. My local DMV provides dramatically better customer service than most private companies I've interacted with lately. Government entities are also required to at least pretend to account for efficiency, whereas private companies have an unknown - but known to be massive - amount of waste, corruption, and outright fraud. In any case, nobody is seriously advocating for a full socialist/government-planned economy. Looking at basic workers' rights and throwing a fit about OMG SOCIALISM is such a ludicrous level of libertarian delusion it borders on self-parody. In reality, it is very well known - by psychology, by statistics, and by empiricism - that societies that don't allow the most powerful to make unchecked decisions based on their current level of resources do better than those who do. There are a few pretty obvious reasons why this is true. First, "currently having resources" is not a good indicator of skill in resource allocation. Second, there are problems of misaligned value functions - what is "efficient" for one actor may be extremely inefficient for society as a whole, requiring action by a government (or some equivalently collective entity) to properly account for externalities. Third, mismatched negotiating power (because employees must agree to some employment or else starve) mean that even those actually party to any given agreement might not be maximizing their own resource allocation by doing so. And fourth (not finally, but finally off the top of my head), there are problems of diversification in the face of uncertainty - resource-havers can take maximum-expected-value actions even when they have low probability of payoff (e.g., risky business ventures that will pay off 10x 20% of the time but go bankrupt the other 80% of the time), because they can afford to make those bets enough times to even out the variance; non-resource-havers must settle for lower-expected-value but lower-variance options, which limits their success even with perfectly skillful allocation.