5 ms·

An Empire At Risk

22 points by jganetsk 17y ago

Alex3917 17y ago
It seems like ever since Obama was elected, the three things Newsweek complains about most are the Iraq war, the death of civil liberties, and the fact that fiat money is about to destroy the American empire by making the dollar worthless. If only there were some presidential candidate who had those as his top three issues before the election, I'm sure Newsweek would have been 100% behind him. /sarcasm
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  I assume you're talking about Ron Paul. Much of what Ron Paul said sounds great to armchair economists, armchair social scientists, armchair international political scientists, and so on. Nearly all of his proposals were simple solutions to exceedingly complex problems, and in practice, complex problems more often require complex solutions. (Disclaimer: I liked Ron Paul a whole lot during the early stages of the primaries, but on later reflection concluded that an RP presidency more likely would have been disastrous.)
  - dpatru 17y ago
    A Ron Paul presidency would have economically hurt people who make money by relying on the government to enforce anti-market policies. For example, the military spends a lot of money maintaining troops throughout the world. If troop levels were reduced and bases closed, a lot of the people involved, especially military contractors, would suffer, at least until they could find a way to serve private interests. Also, banks that rely on the ability to create fiat money that the government forces people to use would suffer as people begin to use hard currency. Also, a lot of government employees would have to transition to private employment. Since a lot of people are employed by the government, banks, and the military, RP-style changes in these sectors would create a lot of tumult. But this would be temporary until people readjust. The end result would be a richer society because more people would be employed privately and resources would be better distributed. Society would also be more free, which is a quality worth having even if there were no economic benefits.
    - ubernostrum 17y ago
      Assuming that by "hard" currency you mean a gold standard or something similar, I'd suspect you've not thought your cunning plan all the way through. I've commented before on the problems with gold, and they generalize to many other things which are proposed to back "hard" currencies: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=629390 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=629390
  - tc 17y ago
    complex problems more often require complex solutions When you apply that sort of thinking to code, the result is an explosion of special cases, and you get buggy, slow, and unmaintainable software. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the best societal innovations have been as simple and neat as the best code hacks. "All men are created equal," rather than, "Some men are created with more rights than others -- there's a complex hierarchy to be followed. We have rules for this!" Edit: Yes, the analogy to code was not to be taken too seriously, though I don't think it should be completely dismissed either. Do the complex problems that a large organization faces require a ton of complex rules? Netflix doesn't think so. As for my implied argument that "simpler rules make for a better society," if you don't like the Jefferson example, there are plenty of other historical examples you can find. The Constitution is an extremely short document considering the magnitude of what it set out to accomplish. It structured an entire federal government in only a tiny fraction of the words found in the currently proposed healthcare bill.
    - potatolicious 17y ago
      > When you apply that sort of thinking to code Politics and sociology is not code. Appreciating this very simple assertion, the rest of your claim falls apart. > "All men are created equal," I cannot think of a more contrived, irrelevant example. Trying to model policy and social behaviour on, say, OOP, is a really bad idea. I know this is HN and all, but not everything has an analogue to programming. The "hacker mentality" is not a panacea to the world's ills.
      - tc 17y ago
        You seem pretty touchy about the analogy. I understand that the 'hacking' meme has been overplayed here. Above though, I'm just pointing out that simpler is often better in a number of different fields, even for complex problems. The Supreme Court spends a great deal of time trying to lay down the simplest tests and precedents they can. The Bill of Rights was a simple document which addressed centuries of complex abuses. Smart companies try to find the simplest policies and procedures that could possibly work. And yes, in technology we often find that a simpler process scheduler works better than a more complex one.
  - dasil003 17y ago
    Disastrous by what measure? I think the biggest problem we have in this country is that everyone is addicted to easy credit and living beyond their means. The government is moving heaven and earth to prevent the housing bubble from fully deflating even though the high prices were all based on loans couldn't people afford in the first place. Any time someone suggested letting the investment banks fail, they raised the spectre of global economic collapse, even though A) no one really knows what would happen in that kind of systemic collapse, and B) the people responsible for predicting that had unfathomably huge incentives to paint it as a doomsday scenario. After all, those are the people who made billions from the bubble economy, and who stood to lose not only their millions, but also their prestige and employability in the future. I do agree that electing Ron Paul would have caused some short term pain, but I'm more convinced that by not taking our medicine we are greatly diminishing our long-term prospects. However the weakness of democracy—especially in the digital age—is that people will always elect the feel-good candidate over the one with real long-term vision no matter how brilliant the latter or how ignorant the former.
  - nathanwdavis 17y ago
    Are you not an armchair economist? Do you think the current solution for our economic crisis (printing money & encouraging more debt) is a complex one? It seems to me to be just an expensive band-aid where something more invasive and temporarily painful is needed.
thaumaturgy 17y ago
America's priorities, on the whole, have shifted in recent decades from embracing risk and ingenuity to seeking safety and security at any cost. For much of the population, education is less important than faith, and "freedom" has been twisted perversely into something that actually means "safety". Those trends began America's downfall as an empire. It was inevitable, all empires come to an end eventually, supplanted by a new one, full of people willing to explore and take great risks.
- UncleOxidant 17y ago
  "For much of the population, education is less important than faith, and "freedom" has been twisted perversely into something that actually means "safety"." Spot on.
known 17y ago
In one page http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/output/print http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/output/print

22 points by jganetsk 17y ago

It seems like ever since Obama was elected, the three things Newsweek complains about most are the Iraq war, the death of civil liberties, and the fact that fiat money is about to destroy the American empire by making the dollar worthless. If only there were some presidential candidate who had those as his top three issues before the election, I'm sure Newsweek would have been 100% behind him. /sarcasm

thaumaturgy 17y ago
I assume you're talking about Ron Paul. Much of what Ron Paul said sounds great to armchair economists, armchair social scientists, armchair international political scientists, and so on. Nearly all of his proposals were simple solutions to exceedingly complex problems, and in practice, complex problems more often require complex solutions. (Disclaimer: I liked Ron Paul a whole lot during the early stages of the primaries, but on later reflection concluded that an RP presidency more likely would have been disastrous.)
- dpatru 17y ago
  A Ron Paul presidency would have economically hurt people who make money by relying on the government to enforce anti-market policies. For example, the military spends a lot of money maintaining troops throughout the world. If troop levels were reduced and bases closed, a lot of the people involved, especially military contractors, would suffer, at least until they could find a way to serve private interests. Also, banks that rely on the ability to create fiat money that the government forces people to use would suffer as people begin to use hard currency. Also, a lot of government employees would have to transition to private employment. Since a lot of people are employed by the government, banks, and the military, RP-style changes in these sectors would create a lot of tumult. But this would be temporary until people readjust. The end result would be a richer society because more people would be employed privately and resources would be better distributed. Society would also be more free, which is a quality worth having even if there were no economic benefits.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Assuming that by "hard" currency you mean a gold standard or something similar, I'd suspect you've not thought your cunning plan all the way through. I've commented before on the problems with gold, and they generalize to many other things which are proposed to back "hard" currencies: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=629390 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=629390
- tc 17y ago
  complex problems more often require complex solutions When you apply that sort of thinking to code, the result is an explosion of special cases, and you get buggy, slow, and unmaintainable software. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the best societal innovations have been as simple and neat as the best code hacks. "All men are created equal," rather than, "Some men are created with more rights than others -- there's a complex hierarchy to be followed. We have rules for this!" Edit: Yes, the analogy to code was not to be taken too seriously, though I don't think it should be completely dismissed either. Do the complex problems that a large organization faces require a ton of complex rules? Netflix doesn't think so. As for my implied argument that "simpler rules make for a better society," if you don't like the Jefferson example, there are plenty of other historical examples you can find. The Constitution is an extremely short document considering the magnitude of what it set out to accomplish. It structured an entire federal government in only a tiny fraction of the words found in the currently proposed healthcare bill.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    > When you apply that sort of thinking to code Politics and sociology is not code. Appreciating this very simple assertion, the rest of your claim falls apart. > "All men are created equal," I cannot think of a more contrived, irrelevant example. Trying to model policy and social behaviour on, say, OOP, is a really bad idea. I know this is HN and all, but not everything has an analogue to programming. The "hacker mentality" is not a panacea to the world's ills.
    - tc 17y ago
      You seem pretty touchy about the analogy. I understand that the 'hacking' meme has been overplayed here. Above though, I'm just pointing out that simpler is often better in a number of different fields, even for complex problems. The Supreme Court spends a great deal of time trying to lay down the simplest tests and precedents they can. The Bill of Rights was a simple document which addressed centuries of complex abuses. Smart companies try to find the simplest policies and procedures that could possibly work. And yes, in technology we often find that a simpler process scheduler works better than a more complex one.
- dasil003 17y ago
  Disastrous by what measure? I think the biggest problem we have in this country is that everyone is addicted to easy credit and living beyond their means. The government is moving heaven and earth to prevent the housing bubble from fully deflating even though the high prices were all based on loans couldn't people afford in the first place. Any time someone suggested letting the investment banks fail, they raised the spectre of global economic collapse, even though A) no one really knows what would happen in that kind of systemic collapse, and B) the people responsible for predicting that had unfathomably huge incentives to paint it as a doomsday scenario. After all, those are the people who made billions from the bubble economy, and who stood to lose not only their millions, but also their prestige and employability in the future. I do agree that electing Ron Paul would have caused some short term pain, but I'm more convinced that by not taking our medicine we are greatly diminishing our long-term prospects. However the weakness of democracy—especially in the digital age—is that people will always elect the feel-good candidate over the one with real long-term vision no matter how brilliant the latter or how ignorant the former.
- nathanwdavis 17y ago
  Are you not an armchair economist? Do you think the current solution for our economic crisis (printing money & encouraging more debt) is a complex one? It seems to me to be just an expensive band-aid where something more invasive and temporarily painful is needed.

thaumaturgy 17y ago

America's priorities, on the whole, have shifted in recent decades from embracing risk and ingenuity to seeking safety and security at any cost. For much of the population, education is less important than faith, and "freedom" has been twisted perversely into something that actually means "safety". Those trends began America's downfall as an empire. It was inevitable, all empires come to an end eventually, supplanted by a new one, full of people willing to explore and take great risks.

UncleOxidant 17y ago
"For much of the population, education is less important than faith, and "freedom" has been twisted perversely into something that actually means "safety"." Spot on.

known 17y ago

In one page http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/output/print http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/output/print