11 ms·

We should be way more willing to straight up kill multi-billion dollar industries. Without that willingness, most modern problems are impossible for governments

by advael 2y ago

We should be way more willing to straight up kill multi-billion dollar industries. Without that willingness, most modern problems are impossible for governments to solve, and such industries and even their potential competitors are incentivised mostly to exacerbate the problem. I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems markets will never solve

WorkerBee28474 2y ago
That's too disruptive, and there's too high a chance of unintended consequences. Instead of that what you'll see is a 'we'll kill this multi-billion dollar industry over the course of the next 30 years'
- mrfox321 2y ago
  China does this, for better or for worse.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Not really. Entrenched and connected types tend to exit industries before the gavel hits, and enforcement from the CCDI isn't impartial, with plenty of bribery to remain off their radar. Truly Schumpterian creative destruction is good in a vacuum, but reality isn't a vacuum.
  - daedrdev 2y ago
    They are not a supportive example, their one child policy doomed their demographics and future economic growth.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      They stopped the one child policy nine years ago; they had it in the first place because demographic projections had them severely overpopulated if they didn't. During the period in which it was active, their GDP increased by a factor of about 62. Not percentage, multiple.
      - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
        They reversed the policy too late. Their rapid growth was them seizing the low hanging fruit upgrading from a country of almost entirely peasants to slightly fewer peasants, all funded by Western greed. Those gains will never happen again.
- advael 2y ago
  With all due respect, fuck that. We do disruptive stuff with unintended consequences for millions of people as a matter of policy all the time, and the idea that it'll disrupt some finance goons' ponzi scheme does not bother me
  - halfcat 2y ago
    > some finance goons' ponzi scheme If you mean banks, there’s the problem that “let it die” often translates to “shift the obligation”, which typically gets shifted to the tax payers, either in plain sight after a bailout, or under the table by devaluing the currency (basically taxation without having to say it).
  - freshtake 2y ago
    This is the problem with a ton of policy thinking. The idea that we can solve a problem of this magnitude with disruption, and somehow prevent market forces from reacting, is incredibly short sighted. It's incredibly expensive to run a university, and many people feel entitled to attend any university they can get into (not a bad thing, btw), but you can't suddenly erase the bill without drastically cutting costs, changing supply/demand, or otherwise altering the economics first. The college level education system in the US employs almost 3.8 million people. Decisions here absolutely affect their employment, tax rates, employment rates, bank loans, financial industry solvency, etc. This problem is incredibly far away from the space of YOLO tactics.
  - WorkerBee28474 2y ago
    > We do disruptive stuff with unintended consequences for millions of people as a matter of policy all the time And many, many of the outcomes of that are bad
candiddevmike 2y ago
Multi-billion dollar industries represent jobs, stocks, and campaign contributions. The US government is not designed to beat those forces. It's the same reason we'll never see universal healthcare unfortunately.
- advael 2y ago
  It isn't set up to now, but it has been before and it can be again
- radpanda 2y ago
  Same reason we have TurboTax instead of a government website to type our taxable income numbers into.
anovikov 2y ago
We shouldn't see the government as solution to too many problems. If we overdo on it, we get socialism. And we know how it always ends. Let the market forces decide. Eventually people will realise college doesn't work and will stop going there. Seriously problem is that too many people think they are smart and can benefit from a degree, when most can't. If 10% top graders go to college from school as it was in the boomers' era, ROI of higher education will be enormous (as there won't be an oversupply of useless graduates), and costs will be low (as low demand always reduces prices). We shouldn't punish people who take the money because people are willing to pay it. Who's fault it is that they are dumb? Do we see much say, annoying advertisement to the tune of "go study X with us, you'll be rich and women will love you"? No. People are doing it because they are dumb. If we try to build a system that prevents smart people from taking money put on the table by dumb people, we will make the whole system dumber by incentivising dumbness.
- BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
  I question utility of that reduction. When you reduce complex situations to simple words like 'socialism' you lose nuance and predictive power. It's not binary. It's more or less. Canada is more socialist than USA. Norway is more socialist than Canada. Reducing to "is" or "isn't" doesn't help understand the problem or come up with viable solutions.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    If we go along the route of "asking the government to ban every line of business where people waste money getting no value for it or even getting harmed, being driven by systematic delusion", as it is with the higher education - we will shoot ourselves in the foot in a massive massive way as this will kill almost all web startups as this is what they are - use manipulative tactics, knowingly false expectation and social effects to force people to spend money on... well nothing really. And the lower your chance of getting something in return, the more you pay (classic example are dating apps). I go to startup events frequently. Took me a few years to accept the truth that speaking about any industry (their slang for it is "vertical") - well, any except porn - like dating, pharma, so-called "nutra", etc. they actually mean "scam in the field of X", and the main idea of every successful one is "a genius way to obscure it is a scam". For God's sake, it will even kill custom software development which most people sitting here, do for a living - because it is the same exact thing - vast majority of clients never get what they want and even if they did they won't be able to make the money on the useless "products" they invented, because this is nothing but a systematic delusion that's moving them. Almost all of them see themselves as genius inventors of the next world-changing thing but they are in fact random nobodies who raised cash from other random nobodies, to waste it on something that makes their contractors laugh so badly they even refrain from doing video calls. It's even worse than higher education. I seen multiple software dev companies throwing lavish parties on the April Fool's day as "professional holiday of our clients". Should we first look at ourselves in the mirror before blaming the college cabal for doing the same as we do ourselves, just more successfully?
mchusma 2y ago
But…the whole point is that it is NOT a market. If student debt is dischargeable and the government guarantee is removed or dramatically reduced, pretty much all problems are “solved”. Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. Universities that provide a poor ROI will shut down. Universities will need to reduce costs for traditional coursework, cut courses with poor returns, add courses with higher returns. The inflation in higher education that has run rampant due to subsidized demand being removed.
- tway_GdBRwW 2y ago
  > Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt. The problem with the ROI approach is it still places too much burden on the student, and, well, life happens. Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you. And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you. That's why the article's saying you should be able to declare bankruptcy. > And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI. Teaching is relatively well paid and there are huge numbers of jobs. It's highly likely that a teacher could repay loans. There are plenty of degrees far less capable of providing employment than teaching.
    - Cyph0n 2y ago
      Teaching as in school teachers? In the US? Not even close to being well paid.
AndyKelley 2y ago
You seem to imply that a general willingness is what would allow this to happen when the article spells it out pretty clearly: it's powerful organizations clinging to power. Your sentiment amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking. It's tempting to just agree with your sentiment, but I think that day dreaming about an unrealistic solution sucks energy away from more effective actions. The main challenge of solving a difficult puzzle is to avoid dead ends and red herrings. A more promising plan involves explicitly strategizing against the agents who have the opposite agenda.
- d0mine 2y ago
  A viral meme/tiktok/xkcd/etc could educate many 18 years old on how bad the deal is.
brigadier132 2y ago
> I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems markets will never solve The problem with student loans is that they are not driven by markets. If they were, absolutely nobody would give a loan to an 18 yo to spend 4 years and $160k to study psychology.
jmyeet 2y ago
We should do (at least) three things: 1. Provide a counterbalance to private industries by having the government player to be a significant player in that market. That means a free or near-free high-quality state higher education system like the California system used to be until it was made an explicit political goal to avoid an "educated proletariat" [1]. It also goes for housing, hospitals, banks, ISPs and so on; 2. Nationalize failing industries rather than providing them loans for no reason. Banks fail in 2008? Well, you belong to the state now. Just like the FDIC does with failing banks. 3. Federal dollars for pharma research should come with an equity stake in the private corporations that monetize it. Most drugs are developed with Federal grants. > I love a good market as much as anyone Just curious: where do you see markets actually working? [1]: https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educated-proletariat-created-the-student-debt-crisis/ https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educate...
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > 2. Nationalize failing industries rather than providing them loans for no reason. Banks fail in 2008? Well, you belong to the state now. Just like the FDIC does with failing banks. I kind of agree with this, but as a taxpayer, I don't necessarily want the government to have an equity stake in a failing or horribly-run business. We need the government to grow a backbone and allow large businesses and even entire sectors of the economy to FAIL when they suck. I hate the narrative "We have to keep ShittyCo alive because it provides 10,000 jobs!!" as if those jobs would just disappear if ShittyCo got flushed down the toilet like it should be. Taxpayers should not bail out GM and Chrysler and AIG and US Airways and these shit companies. We should have let them fail, let their careless shareholders eat it, and created a regulatory environment that allowed better-run competitors to spring up.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Can you imagine if we could kill MLMs, pay day loan sharks, bail-bondsmen (My state fully banned this lunacy), Psudoscientific medicine (chiropractors), Scientology and other useless trash from society? God going after just one is liable to get you a fate worse than Daphne Caruana Galizia

by advael 2y ago

WorkerBee28474 2y ago

That's too disruptive, and there's too high a chance of unintended consequences. Instead of that what you'll see is a 'we'll kill this multi-billion dollar industry over the course of the next 30 years'

mrfox321 2y ago
China does this, for better or for worse.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Not really. Entrenched and connected types tend to exit industries before the gavel hits, and enforcement from the CCDI isn't impartial, with plenty of bribery to remain off their radar. Truly Schumpterian creative destruction is good in a vacuum, but reality isn't a vacuum.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  They are not a supportive example, their one child policy doomed their demographics and future economic growth.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    They stopped the one child policy nine years ago; they had it in the first place because demographic projections had them severely overpopulated if they didn't. During the period in which it was active, their GDP increased by a factor of about 62. Not percentage, multiple.
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      They reversed the policy too late. Their rapid growth was them seizing the low hanging fruit upgrading from a country of almost entirely peasants to slightly fewer peasants, all funded by Western greed. Those gains will never happen again.
advael 2y ago
With all due respect, fuck that. We do disruptive stuff with unintended consequences for millions of people as a matter of policy all the time, and the idea that it'll disrupt some finance goons' ponzi scheme does not bother me
- halfcat 2y ago
  > some finance goons' ponzi scheme If you mean banks, there’s the problem that “let it die” often translates to “shift the obligation”, which typically gets shifted to the tax payers, either in plain sight after a bailout, or under the table by devaluing the currency (basically taxation without having to say it).
- freshtake 2y ago
  This is the problem with a ton of policy thinking. The idea that we can solve a problem of this magnitude with disruption, and somehow prevent market forces from reacting, is incredibly short sighted. It's incredibly expensive to run a university, and many people feel entitled to attend any university they can get into (not a bad thing, btw), but you can't suddenly erase the bill without drastically cutting costs, changing supply/demand, or otherwise altering the economics first. The college level education system in the US employs almost 3.8 million people. Decisions here absolutely affect their employment, tax rates, employment rates, bank loans, financial industry solvency, etc. This problem is incredibly far away from the space of YOLO tactics.
- WorkerBee28474 2y ago
  > We do disruptive stuff with unintended consequences for millions of people as a matter of policy all the time And many, many of the outcomes of that are bad

candiddevmike 2y ago

Multi-billion dollar industries represent jobs, stocks, and campaign contributions. The US government is not designed to beat those forces. It's the same reason we'll never see universal healthcare unfortunately.

advael 2y ago
It isn't set up to now, but it has been before and it can be again
radpanda 2y ago
Same reason we have TurboTax instead of a government website to type our taxable income numbers into.

anovikov 2y ago

We shouldn't see the government as solution to too many problems. If we overdo on it, we get socialism. And we know how it always ends. Let the market forces decide. Eventually people will realise college doesn't work and will stop going there. Seriously problem is that too many people think they are smart and can benefit from a degree, when most can't. If 10% top graders go to college from school as it was in the boomers' era, ROI of higher education will be enormous (as there won't be an oversupply of useless graduates), and costs will be low (as low demand always reduces prices). We shouldn't punish people who take the money because people are willing to pay it. Who's fault it is that they are dumb? Do we see much say, annoying advertisement to the tune of "go study X with us, you'll be rich and women will love you"? No. People are doing it because they are dumb. If we try to build a system that prevents smart people from taking money put on the table by dumb people, we will make the whole system dumber by incentivising dumbness.

BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
I question utility of that reduction. When you reduce complex situations to simple words like 'socialism' you lose nuance and predictive power. It's not binary. It's more or less. Canada is more socialist than USA. Norway is more socialist than Canada. Reducing to "is" or "isn't" doesn't help understand the problem or come up with viable solutions.
- anovikov 2y ago
  If we go along the route of "asking the government to ban every line of business where people waste money getting no value for it or even getting harmed, being driven by systematic delusion", as it is with the higher education - we will shoot ourselves in the foot in a massive massive way as this will kill almost all web startups as this is what they are - use manipulative tactics, knowingly false expectation and social effects to force people to spend money on... well nothing really. And the lower your chance of getting something in return, the more you pay (classic example are dating apps). I go to startup events frequently. Took me a few years to accept the truth that speaking about any industry (their slang for it is "vertical") - well, any except porn - like dating, pharma, so-called "nutra", etc. they actually mean "scam in the field of X", and the main idea of every successful one is "a genius way to obscure it is a scam". For God's sake, it will even kill custom software development which most people sitting here, do for a living - because it is the same exact thing - vast majority of clients never get what they want and even if they did they won't be able to make the money on the useless "products" they invented, because this is nothing but a systematic delusion that's moving them. Almost all of them see themselves as genius inventors of the next world-changing thing but they are in fact random nobodies who raised cash from other random nobodies, to waste it on something that makes their contractors laugh so badly they even refrain from doing video calls. It's even worse than higher education. I seen multiple software dev companies throwing lavish parties on the April Fool's day as "professional holiday of our clients". Should we first look at ourselves in the mirror before blaming the college cabal for doing the same as we do ourselves, just more successfully?

mchusma 2y ago

But…the whole point is that it is NOT a market. If student debt is dischargeable and the government guarantee is removed or dramatically reduced, pretty much all problems are “solved”. Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. Universities that provide a poor ROI will shut down. Universities will need to reduce costs for traditional coursework, cut courses with poor returns, add courses with higher returns. The inflation in higher education that has run rampant due to subsidized demand being removed.

tway_GdBRwW 2y ago
> Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt. The problem with the ROI approach is it still places too much burden on the student, and, well, life happens. Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you. And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you. That's why the article's saying you should be able to declare bankruptcy. > And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI. Teaching is relatively well paid and there are huge numbers of jobs. It's highly likely that a teacher could repay loans. There are plenty of degrees far less capable of providing employment than teaching.
  - Cyph0n 2y ago
    Teaching as in school teachers? In the US? Not even close to being well paid.

AndyKelley 2y ago

You seem to imply that a general willingness is what would allow this to happen when the article spells it out pretty clearly: it's powerful organizations clinging to power. Your sentiment amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking. It's tempting to just agree with your sentiment, but I think that day dreaming about an unrealistic solution sucks energy away from more effective actions. The main challenge of solving a difficult puzzle is to avoid dead ends and red herrings. A more promising plan involves explicitly strategizing against the agents who have the opposite agenda.

d0mine 2y ago
A viral meme/tiktok/xkcd/etc could educate many 18 years old on how bad the deal is.

brigadier132 2y ago

> I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems markets will never solve The problem with student loans is that they are not driven by markets. If they were, absolutely nobody would give a loan to an 18 yo to spend 4 years and $160k to study psychology.

jmyeet 2y ago

We should do (at least) three things: 1. Provide a counterbalance to private industries by having the government player to be a significant player in that market. That means a free or near-free high-quality state higher education system like the California system used to be until it was made an explicit political goal to avoid an "educated proletariat" [1]. It also goes for housing, hospitals, banks, ISPs and so on; 2. Nationalize failing industries rather than providing them loans for no reason. Banks fail in 2008? Well, you belong to the state now. Just like the FDIC does with failing banks. 3. Federal dollars for pharma research should come with an equity stake in the private corporations that monetize it. Most drugs are developed with Federal grants. > I love a good market as much as anyone Just curious: where do you see markets actually working? [1]: https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educated-proletariat-created-the-student-debt-crisis/ https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educate...

ryandrake 2y ago
> 2. Nationalize failing industries rather than providing them loans for no reason. Banks fail in 2008? Well, you belong to the state now. Just like the FDIC does with failing banks. I kind of agree with this, but as a taxpayer, I don't necessarily want the government to have an equity stake in a failing or horribly-run business. We need the government to grow a backbone and allow large businesses and even entire sectors of the economy to FAIL when they suck. I hate the narrative "We have to keep ShittyCo alive because it provides 10,000 jobs!!" as if those jobs would just disappear if ShittyCo got flushed down the toilet like it should be. Taxpayers should not bail out GM and Chrysler and AIG and US Airways and these shit companies. We should have let them fail, let their careless shareholders eat it, and created a regulatory environment that allowed better-run competitors to spring up.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

Can you imagine if we could kill MLMs, pay day loan sharks, bail-bondsmen (My state fully banned this lunacy), Psudoscientific medicine (chiropractors), Scientology and other useless trash from society? God going after just one is liable to get you a fate worse than Daphne Caruana Galizia