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Your original premise here was that 90% of these investments fail. You need to invest in the ones that fail to get the good ones. You can appreciate this dynami

Your original premise here was that 90% of these investments fail. You need to invest in the ones that fail to get the good ones. You can appreciate this dynamic when the funds are privately managed.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
One method of return is equity ownership, the other is taxes or low interest rates. I don't think the latter is nearly as viable to recoup the investment. Look at the numbers. We're talking about going from 1000+% to 5%. Additionally, I don't think the government could manage an investment fund without complete corruption. Would you trust the president or Congress to invest your money? VCs make money when they invest their money in winners. Politicians make money when they invest your money in their own pocket.
- James_K 2y ago
  There is a thing called "electing", which in democratic countries allows you to put trustworthy people in positions of power. Additionally, there is no real reason for a head of state to be personally managing a national bank, and within such an institution there may well be rewards for productive uses of funds. Again, the government doesn't need to recoup the money it loans out through interest because a government will always have sufficient funds through taxes to cover the deficit. Those taxes will, of course, be levied on the precipitants of said loans and raised through the increase in productivity derived from the loans. The government is not a person, it is all people. The objective of government lending is not to extract money from society and transfer it to the government, the objective is to increase productivity within society and thus make things better for those living in it. The issuance of loans and investments is not a practice of profit making, but one of management—deciding which projects are undertaken and by whom. The positive effect of this is to improve society, and the fact that investors profit is a negative outcome of the whole arrangement, as was pointed out earlier. For someone so concerned about government corruption, you seem to have no issue with private corruption. Investors are the people we task with managing our economies, yet their wages are massive. They extract huge quantities of funds from the enterprises they manage. The payment they receive is far greater than the actual value of their work in a free market, but they avoid such pressures by maintaining a monopoly on their wealth. The position of "shareholder" is not one for which there are job applications. The skilled workers actually managing money are paid far less for their work than the shareholder expects to make dividends. If you remove the shareholder, but maintain the person managing investments, you drastically streamline the entire system.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I don't think government is up for that task. I do not trust it to be free of corruption, and I do not think it will result in net positive productivity. I do not trust the democratic electoral process to keep politicians honest and effective. The idea seems almost laughable, all I have to do is look out my window or read a headline to disprove the idea. Similarly I don't trust the electorate. I think they aren't much better than the politicians. I think it has no problem destroying lives and robbing a minority blind if a majority thinks it can get away with it. The only thing keeping it in check is slowly eroding limitations on government power. It isn't that I trust private investment more than the government, but at least I can say no to one and not the other. What do you think would stop politicians from giving all the loans to their friends for fake companies, and just taxing everyone else more to make up for it? It would just be PPP loans, but permanent.
    - James_K 2y ago
      The same thing that stops them from doing whatever they want to the interest rate. The people managing the economy would not be politicians. Not every activity of the government is undertaken by politicians directly. In fact it would be entirely impossible to elect enough politicians to handle money at that scale. The matter of issuing loans would obviously have nothing to with politicians. I always find it a little stupid when people claim the government is too powerful. The governments of most countries are massively beholden to business interests. It is to the degree that people cannot separate the ideas of government and corruption. "The democratic electoral process" is not a real thing. Every country that claims to be democratic has a different way of going about this, with differing results. The system in America is one where politics is driven by whoever has the most money. If you gave government the power to subjugate private wealth, you might have an actual democracy. You seem to treat corruption as a fact of life, but it clearly isn't. You can make laws banning it.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        >The system in America is one where politics is driven by whoever has the most money. If you gave government the power to subjugate private wealth, you might have an actual democracy. I don't understand how you can make those statements about corporate capture of politics in parallel with advocating for a politically appointed body to hand out free government money. Why do you have no trust in the politicians, but do trust their agents? You seem to agree it is corrupt, but think giving more power to the corrupt will fix it. Do we need a dictator to drain the swamp?

Your original premise here was that 90% of these investments fail. You need to invest in the ones that fail to get the good ones. You can appreciate this dynamic when the funds are privately managed.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

One method of return is equity ownership, the other is taxes or low interest rates. I don't think the latter is nearly as viable to recoup the investment. Look at the numbers. We're talking about going from 1000+% to 5%. Additionally, I don't think the government could manage an investment fund without complete corruption. Would you trust the president or Congress to invest your money? VCs make money when they invest their money in winners. Politicians make money when they invest your money in their own pocket.

James_K 2y ago
There is a thing called "electing", which in democratic countries allows you to put trustworthy people in positions of power. Additionally, there is no real reason for a head of state to be personally managing a national bank, and within such an institution there may well be rewards for productive uses of funds. Again, the government doesn't need to recoup the money it loans out through interest because a government will always have sufficient funds through taxes to cover the deficit. Those taxes will, of course, be levied on the precipitants of said loans and raised through the increase in productivity derived from the loans. The government is not a person, it is all people. The objective of government lending is not to extract money from society and transfer it to the government, the objective is to increase productivity within society and thus make things better for those living in it. The issuance of loans and investments is not a practice of profit making, but one of management—deciding which projects are undertaken and by whom. The positive effect of this is to improve society, and the fact that investors profit is a negative outcome of the whole arrangement, as was pointed out earlier. For someone so concerned about government corruption, you seem to have no issue with private corruption. Investors are the people we task with managing our economies, yet their wages are massive. They extract huge quantities of funds from the enterprises they manage. The payment they receive is far greater than the actual value of their work in a free market, but they avoid such pressures by maintaining a monopoly on their wealth. The position of "shareholder" is not one for which there are job applications. The skilled workers actually managing money are paid far less for their work than the shareholder expects to make dividends. If you remove the shareholder, but maintain the person managing investments, you drastically streamline the entire system.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I don't think government is up for that task. I do not trust it to be free of corruption, and I do not think it will result in net positive productivity. I do not trust the democratic electoral process to keep politicians honest and effective. The idea seems almost laughable, all I have to do is look out my window or read a headline to disprove the idea. Similarly I don't trust the electorate. I think they aren't much better than the politicians. I think it has no problem destroying lives and robbing a minority blind if a majority thinks it can get away with it. The only thing keeping it in check is slowly eroding limitations on government power. It isn't that I trust private investment more than the government, but at least I can say no to one and not the other. What do you think would stop politicians from giving all the loans to their friends for fake companies, and just taxing everyone else more to make up for it? It would just be PPP loans, but permanent.
  - James_K 2y ago
    The same thing that stops them from doing whatever they want to the interest rate. The people managing the economy would not be politicians. Not every activity of the government is undertaken by politicians directly. In fact it would be entirely impossible to elect enough politicians to handle money at that scale. The matter of issuing loans would obviously have nothing to with politicians. I always find it a little stupid when people claim the government is too powerful. The governments of most countries are massively beholden to business interests. It is to the degree that people cannot separate the ideas of government and corruption. "The democratic electoral process" is not a real thing. Every country that claims to be democratic has a different way of going about this, with differing results. The system in America is one where politics is driven by whoever has the most money. If you gave government the power to subjugate private wealth, you might have an actual democracy. You seem to treat corruption as a fact of life, but it clearly isn't. You can make laws banning it.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      >The system in America is one where politics is driven by whoever has the most money. If you gave government the power to subjugate private wealth, you might have an actual democracy. I don't understand how you can make those statements about corporate capture of politics in parallel with advocating for a politically appointed body to hand out free government money. Why do you have no trust in the politicians, but do trust their agents? You seem to agree it is corrupt, but think giving more power to the corrupt will fix it. Do we need a dictator to drain the swamp?