3 ms·

No, we're not. It just seems like there's excess because the costs of running social programs are being paid with runaway debt. Those bills will eventually re

No, we're not. It just seems like there's excess because the costs of running social programs are being paid with runaway debt. Those bills will eventually require settling, and it will become obvious how much excess there really is.

Telaneo 2mo ago
There are truckloads of perfectly good food and clothes being incinerated every day since that's somehow cheaper for the owners of capital. The excess is there. It's just not ending up in the pockets of those who need it.
- nate_meurer 2mo ago
  Food and clothing are actually an argument against you here. Sure we waste a lot of both, and yet food insecurity is rare in the First World, and lack of clothing is pretty much the least significant part of poverty. Plus, government-forced redistribution reliably increases prices overall due to the increased costs of logistics and administration. There is no free lunch. If you want to argue your point, you have to address the real fiscal burdens on modern societies, and the real drivers of debt across the West. The biggest components of government debt are medical care and pensions (including Social Security in the US). These are the things that are bankrupting us, not food and clothing.
  - Telaneo 2mo ago
    Pensions probably ought to be reduced/readjusted in accordance with life time expectancy, or some other maths that actually ends up in the green somehow while still allowing those who cannot take care of themselves to live a decent life. I've seen enough rich pensioners (my own grandmother among them...) to come to that conclusion. The US spends an inordinate amount on healthcare since the system is covered in leeches (17~% of GDP compared to 10~ in Europe).[1] If a significant part of US debt is caused by healthcare costs, then that sounds like a political own-goal. That's not to say the costs in Europe are insignificant. We can probably do better here too. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26746...
    - aianus 2mo ago
      The US healthcare system is incredible compared to socialized systems if you can afford it. That's at least part of the reason it represents 17% of GDP. The same procedure I needed had a 2 day wait time in the US and a 10 month wait time in Canada.
      - juvvel 2mo ago
        If you have the money, you can get excellent healthcare in almost any civilized country. You're free to pay for your treatment in Canada, too.
        WarmWash 2mo ago
        The US has (without much debate) the absolute best healthcare on Earth if money isn't an issue. There are so many more experts in so many more fields with access to so much more cutting edge technology that...well rich people travel to the US to get care.
        MiguelX413 2mo ago
        Yeah, what does it matter that the best healthcare, only available to the globally rich, American or not, is in the US? A much better measurement of a given country's healthcare system in more meaningful terms is average outcomes of the whole population, like life expecrsncy, child mortality rates, etc.
      - sharts 2mo ago
        “If you can afford it” is not efficient. It’s merely priority queue vs FIFO wherein it is decided that some folks get to skip lines based on some arbitrary merit. If it were efficient it would clear the queue with max throughput. This is not so.
      - psd1 2mo ago
        Are you getting faster or better outcomes in America than when taking _private_ treatment in Canada, or do you need the treatment in Canada to he public for your claim to hold? I imagine that you can pony up to be seen in two days in Canada too, and also that the single-payer system keeps those private practice honest, so you'd pay less for your fast turnaround than in Freedonia. I may be wrong, of course.
  - ibobev 2mo ago
    The real fiscal burdens on your society are your military spending and the interest on the debt you have already taken on.
    - nate_meurer 2mo ago
      Interest and military and take a distant third and fourth place respectively. Here are the rough proportions of the top US federal budget expenditures according to the Treasury Department: - Healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid): 24% - Social Security: 23% - Net Interest on Federal Debt: 15% - National Defense: 13% And I'll point out that the enormous bill for the interest on debt is a pretty good reason to avoid ringing up so much debt in the first place.
- germandiago 2mo ago
  Oh, and you think everyone will continue prpducing all the things you need for you to use them forever withiut contributing anything back to anyone? Then get ready to be a slave, bc noone, absolutely noone gives things for free, which is, in my view, reasonable.
  - Telaneo 2mo ago
    > Oh, and you think everyone will continue prpducing all the things you need for you to use them forever withiut contributing anything back to anyone? Why would I believe this?
    - hogehoge51 2mo ago
      You don't have to believe it. It is a risk, you simply have to mitigate it.
      - germandiago 2mo ago
        I think historic records of production have a lot of wisdom. For whoever it is interested.
  - lenkite 2mo ago
    > Oh, and you think everyone will continue prpducing all the things you need for you to use them forever withiut contributing anything back to anyone? What happens when labour-based production is fully replaced by automated factories? Then ?
    - germandiago 2mo ago
      [dead]
amanaplanacanal 2mo ago
Debt is just accounting, and has nothing to do with whether or not a surplus exists and who gets to consume it. The surplus exists, it doesn't magically appear because of your accounting system.
- nate_meurer 2mo ago
  My point is not that economic surpluses don't ever exist, but that the perceived surpluses that people invoke in order to defend the present welfare state are unsustainable, and that the system will inevitably collapse without a miraculous increase in economic productivity. Debt (both private and sovereign) is literally the thing that tells us whether a society is able to pay for the things it demands. That's not an accounting trick any more than plain arithmetic is.
  - amanaplanacanal 2mo ago
    You appear to only be looking at the debt, and not that those debts are held by other people as assets. Do you think it's still a net negative if you add that in too?
    - nate_meurer 2mo ago
      Well yeah, it's still debt. It's still the unpaid balance of the cost of goods and services. The essential purpose of a market for IOUs is to allow us to issue a lot more IOUs. This is critical to the industrial and technological development that has allowed us to stop living in the dirt. But liquid debt markets can also be weapons of mass destruction by allowing misallocation to compound into ruinous financial crises. Sort of like, oh I don't know, bloated, inefficient government entitlement programs funded by massive debt that can only be dealt with by a.) confiscating the labor and assets of the population by force, or b.) monetizing the debt and inflating it away, which is itself a backdoor tax on the same population.
- hogehoge51 2mo ago
  The accounting system is what ensures that we can ACCOUNT for if such a statement is true or not. It also allows us to characterize and understand how the capability to generate surplus has been distributed etc etc. There is no single lump of goods and services, or a single lump of surplus. There is an economic problem of ensuring such are created in surplus and distributed to those who need them. A surplus of lawn mowing and shopping services (such as disability welfare has created in my country) could easily be accompanied by a shortage in housing. In fact one could be caused by the other. The economy has capacity today and surplus from yesterday. Beyond that takes vigilance and accountability to maintain the system. The fundamental question is why exactly you think a system can have some fundamental governing and observation mechanism such as debt (or equity accounting) removed and it would still maintain the same system characteristics that produce said surplus? This is basic engineering and system architecture 101 and I would expect technologists to have more than a surface level expectation that systems do not operate magically nor label components as redundant without detailed reasoning.
_DeadFred_ 2mo ago
[flagged]
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  Starving the beast and gorging the beast both accomplish the same thing.
one33seven 2mo ago
We're producing enough to feed everyone and throw it away if it is not paid for. This cruel system has to end.
- hogehoge51 2mo ago
  Anthropomorphising a system to give it attributes such as cruelty is silly. Entertaining a lump of monolithic production fallacy is also silly. There are any number of detailed and specific problems that need to be solved to solve the greater economic problem you describe. A system that promotes direct effort to solve specific problems is required. Your naivety only exacerbates the cruelty.

Telaneo 2mo ago

There are truckloads of perfectly good food and clothes being incinerated every day since that's somehow cheaper for the owners of capital. The excess is there. It's just not ending up in the pockets of those who need it.

nate_meurer 2mo ago
Food and clothing are actually an argument against you here. Sure we waste a lot of both, and yet food insecurity is rare in the First World, and lack of clothing is pretty much the least significant part of poverty. Plus, government-forced redistribution reliably increases prices overall due to the increased costs of logistics and administration. There is no free lunch. If you want to argue your point, you have to address the real fiscal burdens on modern societies, and the real drivers of debt across the West. The biggest components of government debt are medical care and pensions (including Social Security in the US). These are the things that are bankrupting us, not food and clothing.
- Telaneo 2mo ago
  Pensions probably ought to be reduced/readjusted in accordance with life time expectancy, or some other maths that actually ends up in the green somehow while still allowing those who cannot take care of themselves to live a decent life. I've seen enough rich pensioners (my own grandmother among them...) to come to that conclusion. The US spends an inordinate amount on healthcare since the system is covered in leeches (17~% of GDP compared to 10~ in Europe).[1] If a significant part of US debt is caused by healthcare costs, then that sounds like a political own-goal. That's not to say the costs in Europe are insignificant. We can probably do better here too. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26746...
  - aianus 2mo ago
    The US healthcare system is incredible compared to socialized systems if you can afford it. That's at least part of the reason it represents 17% of GDP. The same procedure I needed had a 2 day wait time in the US and a 10 month wait time in Canada.
    - juvvel 2mo ago
      If you have the money, you can get excellent healthcare in almost any civilized country. You're free to pay for your treatment in Canada, too.
      - WarmWash 2mo ago
        The US has (without much debate) the absolute best healthcare on Earth if money isn't an issue. There are so many more experts in so many more fields with access to so much more cutting edge technology that...well rich people travel to the US to get care.
        MiguelX413 2mo ago
        Yeah, what does it matter that the best healthcare, only available to the globally rich, American or not, is in the US? A much better measurement of a given country's healthcare system in more meaningful terms is average outcomes of the whole population, like life expecrsncy, child mortality rates, etc.
    - sharts 2mo ago
      “If you can afford it” is not efficient. It’s merely priority queue vs FIFO wherein it is decided that some folks get to skip lines based on some arbitrary merit. If it were efficient it would clear the queue with max throughput. This is not so.
    - psd1 2mo ago
      Are you getting faster or better outcomes in America than when taking _private_ treatment in Canada, or do you need the treatment in Canada to he public for your claim to hold? I imagine that you can pony up to be seen in two days in Canada too, and also that the single-payer system keeps those private practice honest, so you'd pay less for your fast turnaround than in Freedonia. I may be wrong, of course.
- ibobev 2mo ago
  The real fiscal burdens on your society are your military spending and the interest on the debt you have already taken on.
  - nate_meurer 2mo ago
    Interest and military and take a distant third and fourth place respectively. Here are the rough proportions of the top US federal budget expenditures according to the Treasury Department: - Healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid): 24% - Social Security: 23% - Net Interest on Federal Debt: 15% - National Defense: 13% And I'll point out that the enormous bill for the interest on debt is a pretty good reason to avoid ringing up so much debt in the first place.
germandiago 2mo ago
Oh, and you think everyone will continue prpducing all the things you need for you to use them forever withiut contributing anything back to anyone? Then get ready to be a slave, bc noone, absolutely noone gives things for free, which is, in my view, reasonable.
- Telaneo 2mo ago
  > Oh, and you think everyone will continue prpducing all the things you need for you to use them forever withiut contributing anything back to anyone? Why would I believe this?
  - hogehoge51 2mo ago
    You don't have to believe it. It is a risk, you simply have to mitigate it.
    - germandiago 2mo ago
      I think historic records of production have a lot of wisdom. For whoever it is interested.
- lenkite 2mo ago
  > Oh, and you think everyone will continue prpducing all the things you need for you to use them forever withiut contributing anything back to anyone? What happens when labour-based production is fully replaced by automated factories? Then ?
  - germandiago 2mo ago
    [dead]

amanaplanacanal 2mo ago

Debt is just accounting, and has nothing to do with whether or not a surplus exists and who gets to consume it. The surplus exists, it doesn't magically appear because of your accounting system.

nate_meurer 2mo ago
My point is not that economic surpluses don't ever exist, but that the perceived surpluses that people invoke in order to defend the present welfare state are unsustainable, and that the system will inevitably collapse without a miraculous increase in economic productivity. Debt (both private and sovereign) is literally the thing that tells us whether a society is able to pay for the things it demands. That's not an accounting trick any more than plain arithmetic is.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo ago
  You appear to only be looking at the debt, and not that those debts are held by other people as assets. Do you think it's still a net negative if you add that in too?
  - nate_meurer 2mo ago
    Well yeah, it's still debt. It's still the unpaid balance of the cost of goods and services. The essential purpose of a market for IOUs is to allow us to issue a lot more IOUs. This is critical to the industrial and technological development that has allowed us to stop living in the dirt. But liquid debt markets can also be weapons of mass destruction by allowing misallocation to compound into ruinous financial crises. Sort of like, oh I don't know, bloated, inefficient government entitlement programs funded by massive debt that can only be dealt with by a.) confiscating the labor and assets of the population by force, or b.) monetizing the debt and inflating it away, which is itself a backdoor tax on the same population.
hogehoge51 2mo ago
The accounting system is what ensures that we can ACCOUNT for if such a statement is true or not. It also allows us to characterize and understand how the capability to generate surplus has been distributed etc etc. There is no single lump of goods and services, or a single lump of surplus. There is an economic problem of ensuring such are created in surplus and distributed to those who need them. A surplus of lawn mowing and shopping services (such as disability welfare has created in my country) could easily be accompanied by a shortage in housing. In fact one could be caused by the other. The economy has capacity today and surplus from yesterday. Beyond that takes vigilance and accountability to maintain the system. The fundamental question is why exactly you think a system can have some fundamental governing and observation mechanism such as debt (or equity accounting) removed and it would still maintain the same system characteristics that produce said surplus? This is basic engineering and system architecture 101 and I would expect technologists to have more than a surface level expectation that systems do not operate magically nor label components as redundant without detailed reasoning.

_DeadFred_ 2mo ago

[flagged]

WarmWash 2mo ago
Starving the beast and gorging the beast both accomplish the same thing.

one33seven 2mo ago

We're producing enough to feed everyone and throw it away if it is not paid for. This cruel system has to end.

hogehoge51 2mo ago
Anthropomorphising a system to give it attributes such as cruelty is silly. Entertaining a lump of monolithic production fallacy is also silly. There are any number of detailed and specific problems that need to be solved to solve the greater economic problem you describe. A system that promotes direct effort to solve specific problems is required. Your naivety only exacerbates the cruelty.