6 ms·

You're getting caught up in the noise, as I say take a step back. Theoretically what you say makes sense but again my argument is this is not the reality. For

You're getting caught up in the noise, as I say take a step back. Theoretically what you say makes sense but again my argument is this is not the reality. For every single one of those points. The whole inefficiency argument is futile if it's just a ruse to cut bluntly. Your point on the CFPB is moot, anti-trust and regulation are two sides of the same coin, the point is to level the playing field. It ensures consumers are treated fairly. Anti-trust law and evenly applied consumer law means there isn't captured supply or captured demand. It is possible some of the budget is missallocated, but again practically (by your own admission) some of the correctly allocated budget is being cancelled. This is not how government is intended to work, there are checks and balances intentionally. You cannot cut off and investigate, you investigate then cut off or else this process can be abused. The current evidence already indicates this may not be in good faith (see Verizon contract cancellation). The court is already blocking many of these actions. You're being very generous to them, a good analogy they have catchy marketing materials with great use of jargon and theoretical whitepapers, but client experience with the product is very different.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> The whole inefficiency argument is futile if it's just a ruse to cut bluntly. Not necessarily. Suppose you have a slew of programs and 50% of them aren't worthwhile. You cut all of them. This is bad in the sense that the other 50% of them were worthwhile, but the net effect of this is actually zero because eliminating the benefit of the good half is canceled by eliminating the losses from the bad half. Meanwhile the good programs get reintroduced again over time, if they can be justified. But then they have to go through the process again and get subject to a reevaluation that they wouldn't if they all just continued on through inertia, which allows the bad ones to be filtered out. Then the short-term result is a wash and the long-term result is net positive because the worthwhile programs come back and the unjustifiable ones get filtered out. This becomes net positive not just over time but immediately if you can produce even a slight bias toward removing net-negative programs over net-positive ones. > Your point on the CFPB is moot, anti-trust and regulation are two sides of the same coin, the point is to level the playing field. "Level the playing field" means that each competitor is on equal footing, instead of rules that e.g. favor incumbents or larger companies. Most "consumer protection" laws like that are actually either Faustian bargains or bad trade offs with high memetic fitness. The rule sounds good because it's presented as a free lunch rather than a trade off against an undisclosed cost. This is a Faustian bargain when it's an attempt to mitigate the consequences of an uncompetitive market without actually restoring competitiveness, because leaving the market uncompetitive is going to cause the consumer to get screwed in a hundred other ways regardless of what rule you pass. In that case you need to restore competitiveness rather than trying to mitigate uncompetitiveness. The mitigation -- purposely -- erodes support for the actual solution by making the abuses just tolerable enough to stymie a revolt, while still being worse than the actual solution. It's a bad trade off when the market is competitive, companies are offering both alternatives and some consumers are willingly choosing that option because of some countervailing benefit like lower prices or better interest rates. The market was already providing both alternatives and some consumers were willingly, purposely choosing that option for a reason, so prohibiting it is a harm. > This is not how government is intended to work, there are checks and balances intentionally. You cannot cut off and investigate, you investigate then cut off or else this process can be abused. Checks and balances are generally about preventing the government from doing something unless there is broad consensus, because the government is a monumentally dangerous beast and having it do nothing is far less dangerous than having it do something bad. "A major part of the government doesn't want to do this, therefore it doesn't happen" is checks and balances. > The current evidence already indicates this may not be in good faith (see Verizon contract cancellation). There is obviously a potential conflict of interest when the government changes suppliers and the new supplier is associated with a government official, but that isn't the end of the investigation. The next question is, what are the terms? Is the government paying Starlink more or less than they were paying Verizon? If it's more, now you have a real objection. If it's not more, what's the problem? In that case they would be saving the taxpayer money, which is what they're supposed to be doing. > You're being very generous to them, a good analogy they have catchy marketing materials with great use of jargon and theoretical whitepapers, but client experience with the product is very different. They're humans. Humans are imperfect and reality is complicated. A lot of people want them to fail, which is ridiculous. Let them succeed if they can manage it. Maybe they won't, but they're the ones who won the last election so they're the ones who get to make the attempt right now.
- KoolKat23 2y ago
  Your last point is the basis of my argument. Humans are imperfect and reality is complicated. Cutting and reintroducing programs has real implications in the short term for those individuals at the receiving end, even if it is ultimately reintroduced in the long term. People have monthly mortgages and have to eat daily. This also goes for the second point. It is not a Faustian bargain as there is no such thing as a perfect market in the real world, primarily because of imperfect information. Humans are also a resource interacting in that market, leave it to the free market and people will literally die, as resources can be made redundant/obsolete in the market. This is simply untenable and no market can ever truly be laissez-faire. Your comment on checks and balances is exactly my point, the government cannot willy nilly go in a different direction, the scale of government means there is inertia and displacement that can impact individuals. Our governments ever since the enlightenment have been crafted with progressivism in mind. What point is a market in a democracy if it is cruel and serves only a select set of individuals, a lottery rather than there to improve the human condition. I would never want someone to fail so long as they're acting in good faith and it doesn't screw me or others over. But in the same breath if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > Cutting and reintroducing programs has real implications in the short term for those individuals at the receiving end, even if it is ultimately reintroduced in the long term. People have monthly mortgages and have to eat daily. The same goes for the programs or rules that should be removed. The existing social assistance system has overlapping benefits phase outs that prevent lower income people from making a little more money because they money is then lost to the phase outs. It's a poverty trap. Likewise, a lot of poorly-crafted regulations destroy jobs and then people can't make ends meet because they're unemployed or had to take a job with lower pay. These people have to eat too. > It is not a Faustian bargain as there is no such thing as a perfect market in the real world, primarily because of imperfect information. It isn't expected to be perfect. It's expected to be better than the alternative. The general problem is that imperfect information applies more to the government trying to make rules for strangers than it does to people who are steeped in the details of their own lives. Nobody has perfect information but people know their own lives better than members of Congress do. > Your comment on checks and balances is exactly my point, the government cannot willy nilly go in a different direction, the scale of government means there is inertia and displacement that can impact individuals. The issue is that it goes in both directions. If the inertia is in the wrong direction then there needs to be a way to promptly stop it. Whereas if the government doesn't prohibit you from doing something which is nominally bad for you, you still have the option to not do it of your own volition. If it's actually not in your interest to do it. > What point is a market in a democracy if it is cruel and serves only a select set of individuals, a lottery rather than there to improve the human condition. A lottery is better than the house deciding when to put their finger on the scale.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> The whole inefficiency argument is futile if it's just a ruse to cut bluntly. Not necessarily. Suppose you have a slew of programs and 50% of them aren't worthwhile. You cut all of them. This is bad in the sense that the other 50% of them were worthwhile, but the net effect of this is actually zero because eliminating the benefit of the good half is canceled by eliminating the losses from the bad half. Meanwhile the good programs get reintroduced again over time, if they can be justified. But then they have to go through the process again and get subject to a reevaluation that they wouldn't if they all just continued on through inertia, which allows the bad ones to be filtered out. Then the short-term result is a wash and the long-term result is net positive because the worthwhile programs come back and the unjustifiable ones get filtered out. This becomes net positive not just over time but immediately if you can produce even a slight bias toward removing net-negative programs over net-positive ones. > Your point on the CFPB is moot, anti-trust and regulation are two sides of the same coin, the point is to level the playing field. "Level the playing field" means that each competitor is on equal footing, instead of rules that e.g. favor incumbents or larger companies. Most "consumer protection" laws like that are actually either Faustian bargains or bad trade offs with high memetic fitness. The rule sounds good because it's presented as a free lunch rather than a trade off against an undisclosed cost. This is a Faustian bargain when it's an attempt to mitigate the consequences of an uncompetitive market without actually restoring competitiveness, because leaving the market uncompetitive is going to cause the consumer to get screwed in a hundred other ways regardless of what rule you pass. In that case you need to restore competitiveness rather than trying to mitigate uncompetitiveness. The mitigation -- purposely -- erodes support for the actual solution by making the abuses just tolerable enough to stymie a revolt, while still being worse than the actual solution. It's a bad trade off when the market is competitive, companies are offering both alternatives and some consumers are willingly choosing that option because of some countervailing benefit like lower prices or better interest rates. The market was already providing both alternatives and some consumers were willingly, purposely choosing that option for a reason, so prohibiting it is a harm. > This is not how government is intended to work, there are checks and balances intentionally. You cannot cut off and investigate, you investigate then cut off or else this process can be abused. Checks and balances are generally about preventing the government from doing something unless there is broad consensus, because the government is a monumentally dangerous beast and having it do nothing is far less dangerous than having it do something bad. "A major part of the government doesn't want to do this, therefore it doesn't happen" is checks and balances. > The current evidence already indicates this may not be in good faith (see Verizon contract cancellation). There is obviously a potential conflict of interest when the government changes suppliers and the new supplier is associated with a government official, but that isn't the end of the investigation. The next question is, what are the terms? Is the government paying Starlink more or less than they were paying Verizon? If it's more, now you have a real objection. If it's not more, what's the problem? In that case they would be saving the taxpayer money, which is what they're supposed to be doing. > You're being very generous to them, a good analogy they have catchy marketing materials with great use of jargon and theoretical whitepapers, but client experience with the product is very different. They're humans. Humans are imperfect and reality is complicated. A lot of people want them to fail, which is ridiculous. Let them succeed if they can manage it. Maybe they won't, but they're the ones who won the last election so they're the ones who get to make the attempt right now.

KoolKat23 2y ago
Your last point is the basis of my argument. Humans are imperfect and reality is complicated. Cutting and reintroducing programs has real implications in the short term for those individuals at the receiving end, even if it is ultimately reintroduced in the long term. People have monthly mortgages and have to eat daily. This also goes for the second point. It is not a Faustian bargain as there is no such thing as a perfect market in the real world, primarily because of imperfect information. Humans are also a resource interacting in that market, leave it to the free market and people will literally die, as resources can be made redundant/obsolete in the market. This is simply untenable and no market can ever truly be laissez-faire. Your comment on checks and balances is exactly my point, the government cannot willy nilly go in a different direction, the scale of government means there is inertia and displacement that can impact individuals. Our governments ever since the enlightenment have been crafted with progressivism in mind. What point is a market in a democracy if it is cruel and serves only a select set of individuals, a lottery rather than there to improve the human condition. I would never want someone to fail so long as they're acting in good faith and it doesn't screw me or others over. But in the same breath if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Cutting and reintroducing programs has real implications in the short term for those individuals at the receiving end, even if it is ultimately reintroduced in the long term. People have monthly mortgages and have to eat daily. The same goes for the programs or rules that should be removed. The existing social assistance system has overlapping benefits phase outs that prevent lower income people from making a little more money because they money is then lost to the phase outs. It's a poverty trap. Likewise, a lot of poorly-crafted regulations destroy jobs and then people can't make ends meet because they're unemployed or had to take a job with lower pay. These people have to eat too. > It is not a Faustian bargain as there is no such thing as a perfect market in the real world, primarily because of imperfect information. It isn't expected to be perfect. It's expected to be better than the alternative. The general problem is that imperfect information applies more to the government trying to make rules for strangers than it does to people who are steeped in the details of their own lives. Nobody has perfect information but people know their own lives better than members of Congress do. > Your comment on checks and balances is exactly my point, the government cannot willy nilly go in a different direction, the scale of government means there is inertia and displacement that can impact individuals. The issue is that it goes in both directions. If the inertia is in the wrong direction then there needs to be a way to promptly stop it. Whereas if the government doesn't prohibit you from doing something which is nominally bad for you, you still have the option to not do it of your own volition. If it's actually not in your interest to do it. > What point is a market in a democracy if it is cruel and serves only a select set of individuals, a lottery rather than there to improve the human condition. A lottery is better than the house deciding when to put their finger on the scale.