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There are two unexamined assumptions in the article: first that the “we” in “we can solve everything” is synonymous with “government,” and next that “we” know t

There are two unexamined assumptions in the article: first that the “we” in “we can solve everything” is synonymous with “government,” and next that “we” know the correct answers. The former is a very twentieth century notion. The identification of government with society (“we”) went hand in hand with the idea that government should have power in every domain of human life and co-opt or liquidate every competing authority like academia or media or church. Here, it’s that “we” the government should take over healthcare (although regulatory approval of a cancer treatment was cited as one obstacle) and fiber-laying instead of leaving those to non-governmental authorities. Carl Schmitt in the early twentieth century had a great term for such a totalizing government: the Totalstaat. It’s not clear, however, that a Totalstaat is actually a good idea. Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind—-and it’s not clear that a government seeking to expand its power into previously non-governmental domains will serve its own interests best by solving problems rather than by providing treatments that abate problems without solving them. Treating a problem expands a state’s authority while preserving the problem as a reason for further government action; solving a problem would end that authority by ending the reason for it. Winning a war, for example, used to remove the need for a standing army until the twentieth century saw the invention of a “cold war” and “war on terror” and a perpetual standing army to treat the unsolved problem of a lingering threat. It’s not clear that this increase in government power was a good thing. Secondly, the idea that “we” (government) “know” the answers is hubris. The author claims that “we” know it would be good to send everyone to college for free, but is that actually best for everyone? Or does that just turn college to more high school, lower the quality of education, waste a lot of people’s time, slow down the creation of families and negatively impinge on demographic trends, etc? “Knowing” the solution presupposes knowledge of second-order effects, and people are generally very bad at that. Thinking that a total state “knows” the best solutions to problems is a good way to impose lots of (potentially negative) second-order effects without much recourse to do anything about it, since this total state has all the authority and no longer has competing authorities to check its hubris.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare.
- insickness 3y ago
  Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.
    - insickness 3y ago
      The true conditions of poverty in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy, with reports of famine, starvation, and human rights violations. The extent of homelessness is unknown, but defectors' stories don't paint a good picture. Homelessness affects children ("Kotjebi") and elderly individuals, often abandoned due to an inability to support them. The government denies their existence, and homeless individuals are rounded up, their destination unknown. https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/ https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/
- moring 3y ago
  > Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."? Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?
  - imtringued 3y ago
    You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution. The current money system heavily discourages equilibrium formation, which allows disequilibria like the geographical concentration of money to occur, which in turn make it harder to earn money outside of large city hubs with expensive real estate. It is not possible for these homeless people to move away and earn a living on their own, because it would mean distancing themselves from where the jobs are moving towards. However, even if you make jobs available outside of expensive locations, there are still going to be people who need to live in the expensive location for whatever non job related reason. Those still need a solution to densify the existing location so more people can live there. That is why you need to prevent land owners from extracting benefits created by the collective surrounded the plot of land. Again, the solution is too obvious for anyone to care about it. We can't demonize people, we can only demonize their ability to do bad things and set the incentives up in such a way that "greedy" people and "morally good" people do the same thing. If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.
abenga 3y ago
> ... competing authority like academia or media or church These are beholden to themselves, their owners, and to a deity, while the government (in theory at least) is supposed to be beholden to the governed. There are many problems solved by a government, it's easy to ignore them because we assume they are a given and only think about the marginal issues that ail us at present.

littlestymaar 3y ago

> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare.

insickness 3y ago
Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.
  - insickness 3y ago
    The true conditions of poverty in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy, with reports of famine, starvation, and human rights violations. The extent of homelessness is unknown, but defectors' stories don't paint a good picture. Homelessness affects children ("Kotjebi") and elderly individuals, often abandoned due to an inability to support them. The government denies their existence, and homeless individuals are rounded up, their destination unknown. https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/ https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/
moring 3y ago
> Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."? Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?
- imtringued 3y ago
  You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution. The current money system heavily discourages equilibrium formation, which allows disequilibria like the geographical concentration of money to occur, which in turn make it harder to earn money outside of large city hubs with expensive real estate. It is not possible for these homeless people to move away and earn a living on their own, because it would mean distancing themselves from where the jobs are moving towards. However, even if you make jobs available outside of expensive locations, there are still going to be people who need to live in the expensive location for whatever non job related reason. Those still need a solution to densify the existing location so more people can live there. That is why you need to prevent land owners from extracting benefits created by the collective surrounded the plot of land. Again, the solution is too obvious for anyone to care about it. We can't demonize people, we can only demonize their ability to do bad things and set the incentives up in such a way that "greedy" people and "morally good" people do the same thing. If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.

abenga 3y ago

> ... competing authority like academia or media or church These are beholden to themselves, their owners, and to a deity, while the government (in theory at least) is supposed to be beholden to the governed. There are many problems solved by a government, it's easy to ignore them because we assume they are a given and only think about the marginal issues that ail us at present.