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No. When the government fails to delivery what people need (not necessarily wants), you have a bad government. When gangs and bandits (or drugs, or diseases, or

No. When the government fails to delivery what people need (not necessarily wants), you have a bad government. When gangs and bandits (or drugs, or diseases, or whatever) takes on the street, it's not about people's view, it's just bad stuff that the government need to address or there's no point on having a government.

pona-a 1y ago
The 50s~70s are idealized by many as an American golden age, despite higher reported crime. Law enforcement back then did not have AI-powered surveillance camera networks, widely deployed IMEI stingrays, private data-brokers, or the ability to remotely activate any phone's microphone with 0-click RCE.
- crumpled 1y ago
  What's the 0-click RCE thing?
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    A type of exploit (Remote Code Execution) that can be used to secretly infect your device with spyware without requiring any interaction from you (0-click).
  - pona-a 1y ago
    Pegasus [0] and the like — commercial spyware updated with the latest exploit chains, developed in-house or purchased from markets like Zerodium, sold as terrorism-prevention tools to such trustworthy states as Russia, UAE, and Hungary. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Agreed. There are problems that governments solve and if a government can't solve them it's a bad one. Maybe consensus shifts (or goes away) about which problems are the domain of government, buy ultimately it's about efficacy against those. The rest is a distraction.
jbstack 1y ago
Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be solved without creating other problems. For example, people "need" access to healthcare, but there's essentially an unlimited amount of money you could spend to keep improving healthcare (e.g. opting for increasingly expensive treatments with diminishing returns on health outcomes). The more money you allocate to healthcare, the less you have available to spend on other things that people "need". Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. As another example, people "need" criminals to be punished in order to be able to live in a safe a crime-free society. People also "need" to not be put in prison when they are innocent. But you can never be 100% sure that a convicted criminal actually committed the crime. Locking up criminals implies by necessity that you will also lock up some innocent people. No government can solve both of these problems simultaneously which means they are all "bad". Even the most competent "good" government ultimately has to select among which "bad" things it is going to allow to continue and which it will solve.
- danans 1y ago
  > Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.
  - jbstack 1y ago
    > Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less Who is "we"? We're talking about governments in general ("good" vs "bad" ones), and I have no idea what jurisdiction you are referring to. In any case, I didn't say the tap is dry. I said if you keep raising taxes it will eventually run dry. Or to put it another way, taxes are not an unlimited resource that you can keep increasing as much as you'd like. At some point you'll hit a ceiling where raising taxes any further doesn't produce additional tax revenue. For example, as you raise income tax rates, people have less incentive to advance their careers (e.g. by chasing promotions or improving their skills), and people have more incentive to leave the jurisdiction and go somewhere with lower taxes. Up to a point, the increase in tax rates produces a net extra revenue for the government. Above a certain point, the number of people who stop paying taxes (e.g. by leaving or by working less) outweighs the gains from those who continue to pay. This is why you'll rarely see any government with excessively high top-bracket tax rates (e.g. 60 - 100%), because it results in tax losses.
dizhn 1y ago
"people" being their own citizens. Many governments do not limit their activities to their own people and they have almost opposite rules for their own people vs others. Not that the picture is so clear for their own people either.
jMyles 1y ago
> there's no point on having a government Can we just use this as our point of agreement?
netdevphoenix 1y ago
This sounds extremely simplistic. Countries are isolated universes. Actions of a government in a country affect other countries. Some problems require multiple governments to work together (see global warming and supply chain issues). Different governments have different priorities at any given time even if they all have roughly the same absolute list of issues

pona-a 1y ago

The 50s~70s are idealized by many as an American golden age, despite higher reported crime. Law enforcement back then did not have AI-powered surveillance camera networks, widely deployed IMEI stingrays, private data-brokers, or the ability to remotely activate any phone's microphone with 0-click RCE.

crumpled 1y ago
What's the 0-click RCE thing?
- dns_snek 1y ago
  A type of exploit (Remote Code Execution) that can be used to secretly infect your device with spyware without requiring any interaction from you (0-click).
- pona-a 1y ago
  Pegasus [0] and the like — commercial spyware updated with the latest exploit chains, developed in-house or purchased from markets like Zerodium, sold as terrorism-prevention tools to such trustworthy states as Russia, UAE, and Hungary. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

Agreed. There are problems that governments solve and if a government can't solve them it's a bad one. Maybe consensus shifts (or goes away) about which problems are the domain of government, buy ultimately it's about efficacy against those. The rest is a distraction.

jbstack 1y ago

Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be solved without creating other problems. For example, people "need" access to healthcare, but there's essentially an unlimited amount of money you could spend to keep improving healthcare (e.g. opting for increasingly expensive treatments with diminishing returns on health outcomes). The more money you allocate to healthcare, the less you have available to spend on other things that people "need". Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. As another example, people "need" criminals to be punished in order to be able to live in a safe a crime-free society. People also "need" to not be put in prison when they are innocent. But you can never be 100% sure that a convicted criminal actually committed the crime. Locking up criminals implies by necessity that you will also lock up some innocent people. No government can solve both of these problems simultaneously which means they are all "bad". Even the most competent "good" government ultimately has to select among which "bad" things it is going to allow to continue and which it will solve.

danans 1y ago
> Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.
- jbstack 1y ago
  > Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less Who is "we"? We're talking about governments in general ("good" vs "bad" ones), and I have no idea what jurisdiction you are referring to. In any case, I didn't say the tap is dry. I said if you keep raising taxes it will eventually run dry. Or to put it another way, taxes are not an unlimited resource that you can keep increasing as much as you'd like. At some point you'll hit a ceiling where raising taxes any further doesn't produce additional tax revenue. For example, as you raise income tax rates, people have less incentive to advance their careers (e.g. by chasing promotions or improving their skills), and people have more incentive to leave the jurisdiction and go somewhere with lower taxes. Up to a point, the increase in tax rates produces a net extra revenue for the government. Above a certain point, the number of people who stop paying taxes (e.g. by leaving or by working less) outweighs the gains from those who continue to pay. This is why you'll rarely see any government with excessively high top-bracket tax rates (e.g. 60 - 100%), because it results in tax losses.

dizhn 1y ago

"people" being their own citizens. Many governments do not limit their activities to their own people and they have almost opposite rules for their own people vs others. Not that the picture is so clear for their own people either.

jMyles 1y ago

> there's no point on having a government Can we just use this as our point of agreement?

netdevphoenix 1y ago

This sounds extremely simplistic. Countries are isolated universes. Actions of a government in a country affect other countries. Some problems require multiple governments to work together (see global warming and supply chain issues). Different governments have different priorities at any given time even if they all have roughly the same absolute list of issues