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The government not fulfilling its core responsibilities, of preventing pollution, assault, fraud and other private acts that victimize people, would allow for a

The government not fulfilling its core responsibilities, of preventing pollution, assault, fraud and other private acts that victimize people, would allow for all sorts of private harms, it's true. But that is generally not a problem in the advanced economies. In those societies, the major problem is the government going beyond its core responsibilities and consequently causing most of the major problems facing society. This includes the 2008 financial crisis, which was entirely created by the government. The two largest actors in the residential mortgage market in the US are both government sponsored enterprises and collectively guarantee 50% of the market. In 1999 they moved into the subprime market in a big way: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-aid-mortgage-lending.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases... The Federal Reserve did the rest, with its low interest rate policy that Krugman himself suggested be used to "create a housing bubble": https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-di... >By amount of harm caused, the two things that have caused the most damage to societies are individual persons seeking power for themselves (Putin etc), The harm caused by government is primarily due to individuals seeking power for themselves. The harm caused by the Russian state is due to Putin and company's personal ambitions. The same applies to the harm caused by public sector unions. It is due to self-serving people working in government. Bad actors are every bit as capable of exploiting society through government as they are through the private sector. And the damage from the former has very few limits due to the state's monopoly on violence.

doctorwho42 3y ago
The advanced economies you so cherish require government oversight to get to where they are, otherwise you would have a country suffering from the tragedy of the commons a few orders of magnitude worse than anything seen today.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  Those interventions I am referencing did not get the advanced economies to where they are. They are causing stagnation in housing, healthcare, etc. The US didn't become an advanced economy due to government restrictions — what you euphemize as "oversight" — on building houses, investing in companies and providing healthcare.
vouwfietsman 3y ago
Financial crisis was caused by: "widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision", including the Federal Reserve's failure to stem the tide of toxic assets "dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions" including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk. "a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency" by financial institutions and by households that put the financial system on a collision course with crisis. ill preparation and inconsistent action by government and key policy makers lacking a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw that "added to the uncertainty and panic". a "systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics" at all levels Note how government is only named in failing to prevent and fix the issue, hence the root cause lying absolutely with corporate/private greed. Blaming government for not better regulating and preventing corporate/private greed is a weird criticism for government. It's like saying the government causes domestic violence by not putting a camera in everyone's house. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_cr...
- Ray20 3y ago
  For 20 years before the crisis, the American government promoted numerous policies to lower mortgage lending standards. The 2008 crisis is a natural price for such policies. "Corporate/private greed" - is an explanation aimed at children, I don’t understand how a mentally capable person can seriously listen to this BS.
  - vouwfietsman 3y ago
    > the American government promoted numerous policies to lower mortgage lending standards Again, where do you think these reforms come from, exactly? Grassroots movements? Where do you think the standards were before they were lowered and why were they initially higher? Do you think these ideas are voted into effect by individual citizens well informed on the facts of how it would affect the economy? Or based on advice by experts who did the same? If corporations and private firms were so appalled by the government lowering the standards, they could've easily formed internal agreements to simply not lower their own standards or lobbied against it. But they didn't, did they? Again and again, companies exert enormous effort to create and find loopholes and weaknesses in law, abandoning all ethics in the process and causing massive problems for society. And somehow this is blamed on government? It's ridiculous. A cat and mouse game between legislation and reckless behavior is not a moral equilibrium where both sides are responsible for the outcome. Sometimes an explanation aimed at children is the right explanation, and all the adults are just shifting the blame and hiding behind the status quo.
the_why_of_y 3y ago
No, the financial crisis was created by private financial institutions securitizing sub-prime mortgages, without considering that failures can be highly correlated, which is what happened when the bubble burst and prices fell across the board at the same time. The main contribution of government to the crisis was that they didn't do anything to pop the bubble at an earlier time, when it would have caused less damage. I can't read the Krugman opinion article you linked because it's paywalled, but I found that Dean Baker wrote about claims like yours about exactly this article, and he titled his article "When Someone Says Paul Krugman Called for Greenspan to Create a Housing Bubble Back in 2002, They are Trying to Say That They are Either a Fool or a Liar". http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-someone-says-paul-krugman-called-for-greenspan-to-create-a-housing-bubble-back-in-2002-they-are-trying-to-say-that-they-are-either-a-fool-or-a-liar http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-some... > The same applies to the harm caused by public sector unions. It is due to self-serving people working in government. > And the damage from the former has very few limits due to the state's monopoly on violence. It depends... I don't see an issue with say teacher's unions, but police unions can be highly problematic and often work to protect police officers who deliberately broke the law from consequences.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  You can see the Krugman take for yourself: https://archive.is/Vqw6x https://archive.is/Vqw6x There is no honest take that can conclude that he wasn't endorsing the creation of a bubble: The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. What Krugman endorsed is exactly what the Federal Reserve ended up doing: The Federal Reserved lowered interest rates and created a housing bubble. And what followed is a vast network of unionized academics and journalists engaging in historical revisionism to deny what actually happened, and falsely accuse the private sector of creating the systemic conditions that led to the bubble so as to further vilify the private sector that at every turn they look to exploit through government coercion. >It depends... I don't see an issue with say teacher's unions, but police unions can be highly problematic and often work to protect police officers who deliberately broke the law from consequences. That's the standard take of the coalition of unions. Justice is what they want to see undermined, since their grift depends on the normalization of injustice and the demoralization of private citizens, so they point out the harms of police unions so that police can be vilified more, but then they overlook the harm caused by all other types of unions.

doctorwho42 3y ago

The advanced economies you so cherish require government oversight to get to where they are, otherwise you would have a country suffering from the tragedy of the commons a few orders of magnitude worse than anything seen today.

ETH_start 3y ago
Those interventions I am referencing did not get the advanced economies to where they are. They are causing stagnation in housing, healthcare, etc. The US didn't become an advanced economy due to government restrictions — what you euphemize as "oversight" — on building houses, investing in companies and providing healthcare.

vouwfietsman 3y ago

Financial crisis was caused by: "widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision", including the Federal Reserve's failure to stem the tide of toxic assets "dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions" including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk. "a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency" by financial institutions and by households that put the financial system on a collision course with crisis. ill preparation and inconsistent action by government and key policy makers lacking a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw that "added to the uncertainty and panic". a "systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics" at all levels Note how government is only named in failing to prevent and fix the issue, hence the root cause lying absolutely with corporate/private greed. Blaming government for not better regulating and preventing corporate/private greed is a weird criticism for government. It's like saying the government causes domestic violence by not putting a camera in everyone's house. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_cr...

Ray20 3y ago
For 20 years before the crisis, the American government promoted numerous policies to lower mortgage lending standards. The 2008 crisis is a natural price for such policies. "Corporate/private greed" - is an explanation aimed at children, I don’t understand how a mentally capable person can seriously listen to this BS.
- vouwfietsman 3y ago
  > the American government promoted numerous policies to lower mortgage lending standards Again, where do you think these reforms come from, exactly? Grassroots movements? Where do you think the standards were before they were lowered and why were they initially higher? Do you think these ideas are voted into effect by individual citizens well informed on the facts of how it would affect the economy? Or based on advice by experts who did the same? If corporations and private firms were so appalled by the government lowering the standards, they could've easily formed internal agreements to simply not lower their own standards or lobbied against it. But they didn't, did they? Again and again, companies exert enormous effort to create and find loopholes and weaknesses in law, abandoning all ethics in the process and causing massive problems for society. And somehow this is blamed on government? It's ridiculous. A cat and mouse game between legislation and reckless behavior is not a moral equilibrium where both sides are responsible for the outcome. Sometimes an explanation aimed at children is the right explanation, and all the adults are just shifting the blame and hiding behind the status quo.

the_why_of_y 3y ago

No, the financial crisis was created by private financial institutions securitizing sub-prime mortgages, without considering that failures can be highly correlated, which is what happened when the bubble burst and prices fell across the board at the same time. The main contribution of government to the crisis was that they didn't do anything to pop the bubble at an earlier time, when it would have caused less damage. I can't read the Krugman opinion article you linked because it's paywalled, but I found that Dean Baker wrote about claims like yours about exactly this article, and he titled his article "When Someone Says Paul Krugman Called for Greenspan to Create a Housing Bubble Back in 2002, They are Trying to Say That They are Either a Fool or a Liar". http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-someone-says-paul-krugman-called-for-greenspan-to-create-a-housing-bubble-back-in-2002-they-are-trying-to-say-that-they-are-either-a-fool-or-a-liar http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-some... > The same applies to the harm caused by public sector unions. It is due to self-serving people working in government. > And the damage from the former has very few limits due to the state's monopoly on violence. It depends... I don't see an issue with say teacher's unions, but police unions can be highly problematic and often work to protect police officers who deliberately broke the law from consequences.

ETH_start 3y ago
You can see the Krugman take for yourself: https://archive.is/Vqw6x https://archive.is/Vqw6x There is no honest take that can conclude that he wasn't endorsing the creation of a bubble: The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. What Krugman endorsed is exactly what the Federal Reserve ended up doing: The Federal Reserved lowered interest rates and created a housing bubble. And what followed is a vast network of unionized academics and journalists engaging in historical revisionism to deny what actually happened, and falsely accuse the private sector of creating the systemic conditions that led to the bubble so as to further vilify the private sector that at every turn they look to exploit through government coercion. >It depends... I don't see an issue with say teacher's unions, but police unions can be highly problematic and often work to protect police officers who deliberately broke the law from consequences. That's the standard take of the coalition of unions. Justice is what they want to see undermined, since their grift depends on the normalization of injustice and the demoralization of private citizens, so they point out the harms of police unions so that police can be vilified more, but then they overlook the harm caused by all other types of unions.