Hacker News Reader

Comment by sparkling | Hacker News Reader

Its easy to point at a greedy billionaire who wants to ruin [insert public service here] so that he can squeeze out another dollar for himself.

But have you considered that they _genuinely_ belive that minimal government and more privatization leads to overall better results? It might just be that they have good intensions, that they really wish for a better outcome for all.

I don't share that view, but i do think that there is a fraction of hardcore liberterians that truly believe we'd be better of without many of the government-founded services such as libraries, schools etc. - and while i do not agree with that, those people are still entitled to their opinion and are allowed to lobby for it.

View on HN

> But have you considered that they _genuinely_ belive that minimal government and more privatization leads to overall better results? It might just be that they have good intensions, that they really wish for a better outcome for all.

Yes, and that makes it even worse. They’re so out of touch with common people and so insulated from routine everyday life, their opinion shouldn’t count for anything.

I don’t care if joe programmer on HN or Jeff the General Contractor at the bar are advocating for dismantling the post office because of libertarian ideology, because they have neither the power nor resources to affect change.

I do care when insanely wealthy billionaires who are completely insulated from the rest of society argue for horseshit like this because they have power to change it, and it’s for ideological reasons.

It’s pure narcissism to argue for a position that would negatively affect millions of people when the one arguing for change wouldn’t suffer one damn bit and in effect disregard everyone else’s suffering for their ideological bullshit position.

The existence of billionaires combined with Citizens United is an actual problem, the post office is not.

I agree with you in that wealthy people are given too much power in the U.S. In the U.S., becoming wealthy has somehow become a fast pass to do basically whatever you want and inflict change that could affect millions of people negatively or be self-beneficial (to the wealthy person) or both.

Allowing individuals to accumulate so much wealth is just not good for the common people, and the fact that our government is so inept at managing money isn't a good enough reason to allow individuals to reach such power and wealth. If they are allowed to accumulate such wealth, there should be much stronger laws preventing their influence in government policies.

Almost like a warlord. They have the power to rule us (albeit indirectly) with their wealth and lobbying power instead of weapons and fear.

When I saw that Jeff Bezos increased his wealth by $13 billion in a single day recently, when 28 million Americans are facing potential eviction, I just thought...we have kings again.

Americans understood this fully well 100 years ago. That's why we nowadays still have laws against monopolies (antitrust). The antitrust laws were created not just for an abstract reason, they were meant to curtail the power of the Robber Barons of the time, who managed to create powerful companies and control large parts of the country's economy and politics. Due to propaganda spread by the same kind of people, we are now almost in a similar situation, with a small group holding almost unmitigated power over the country. At this point billionaires are only disputing among themselves for the direction of the country, they really don't care the least for what you and me think.

It’s also extremely hypothetical. And counter examples on why it won’t work is plenty abound. The concept that market and competition will result in better services and price and efficient operations is true only when then there are checks and balances in place. Market collusion, using monopoly power to squish and consolidate power and extort people happen in almost every industry. I do share their concern that govt enterprises can become corrupt or complacent but I don’t share the the view that the solution is privatisation. Our elected government officials are also corrupt, should we throw away democracy?

Agreed, there are no truly free capitalist markets in the US, except maybe black markets.

The USPS is damn good at delivering the mail, I don’t trust any private company to treat a first-class letter with the care the USPS generally does.

The Post Office actually makes money, but they’re legally required to fund a new hire’s entire projected pension at the time of hiring which lets Republicans point at how the post office loses money when it was done that way on purpose.

What you're saying about pension payments is all wrong. They have the same obligation to fund promised benefits as any private company (which is different from government entities), and they haven't been making the payments.[1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

The situation of pensions is that the USPS is required by a law created by republicans to pre-pay their retirement fund for the next 75 years, something that no company in the world does. Not only this, but the money they pay is being diverted to the general government accounts, so it is possible that in the future the pension money is not there anyway, if the government decide not to provide the money in the future. The law had two draconian results: the USPS has to operate in the red, and the government has additional revenue that facilitated the tax cuts proposed by republicans.

Quote from the Forbes article I linked to:

>"FACT: ALL companies are required to fund any pension promises they make to their employees. (The only exceptions are for top executives, who can lose their pensions if a company goes bankrupt, and for entities that aren’t actually “companies” - state and local governments and churches.) NONE of them are permitted to take a “pay as you go” approach but must contribute to a pension fund an amount equivalent to what a worker has accrued that year in benefit promises, regardless of how far into the future that worker will be retiring, and must make up for any shortfalls due to asset losses or other reasons. The USPS and private sector companies use the same general actuarial principles to do so, though there are differences in assumptions, particulars of the calculations, etc."

The lie in this article is hidden here: "though there are differences in assumptions, particulars of the calculations..."

Companies need to fund their pension plans, but only for the portion of time the worker has been employed by them. For example, for FY 2020, the company needs to set aside money corresponding to an additional year of work. But for the USPS, the law requires it to set aside money assuming that the worker will work his entire career for USPS, and project all retirement costs 75 years into the future, even for workers that they haven't even hired yet. In actuary, this is the difference between "actual vested liability", and "total projected liability". The result is clearly absurd. Moreover, this money is not staying in USPS retirement accounts, is going to the government. So it doesn't even guarantee that the money will be there for USPS workers. To add to the injury, USPS is allowed only to invest on treasury bonds, which means that they need to raise even more money than a private company, which is free to invest in any high grade bond.

https://www.businessinsider.com/usps-rise-fall-post-office-c...

>USPS is required by a law created by republicans to pre-pay their retirement fund for the next 75 years

The USPS is required to pre-pay the pension costs they have incurred. It's not pre-paying the retirement fund for 75 years. It's putting money aside so that you have the money to pay your 25 year old worker the money you promised them when they're 100.

Incorrect, please do some research and see that it is not like this. For example, here is the article from Business Insider:

"[the law] required the post office to calculate all of its retiree pension and healthcare costs for the next 75 years, including for people it hadn't even hired yet, and put away enough over the next 10 years to cover them. To put this in perspective, that'd be like you only working from age 18 to 28 and then expecting to live on that income until you were 103 years old."

>MYTH: the USPS is required to fund pensions for the next 75 years, for workers who haven’t even been born.

>“[T]he PAEA required the Postal Service to calculate all of its likely pension costs over the next 75 years, and then sock away enough money between 2007 and 2016 to cover most of them.” The Week, April 16, 2018.

>FACT: the actuarial valuation methods used by the USPS are based only on accruals attributed to past service, no different than any other such valuation.

>The Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund (PSRHBF) is a USPS-specific fund, and its 10-K report specifies that it uses the “aggregate entry age normal acturarial cost method.” For pension benefits, employees participate in the CSRS and FERS general civil servant pensions, using the same method. In this method, yes, the actuary calculates the value of all benefits to be paid out in the future, due to past and future service, and then subtracts out the value of the future accruals, to calculate the actuarial liability. In addition, the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund calculates a projection of liabilities 75 years into the future in its annual report, but this does not mean that 75 years’ worth of future accruals are advance-funded, only that the long-term sustainability of the system is measured over a 75-year period.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

This is saying basically the same thing in a different language.

> In this method, yes, the actuary calculates the value of all benefits to be paid out in the future, due to past and future service, and then subtracts out the value of the future accruals, to calculate the actuarial liability.

I.e., the USPS has to raise the money to fund liabilities for 75 years, and it had to do so in 10 years, which essentially meant that they had to operate in the red making its financial situation even more complicated.

No, it's very different.

Your cite says they had to put aside money for all their pension costs over the next 75 years. Including people they haven't even hired yet.

My cite says that they had to calculate pension costs payable over the next 75 years that they already incurred. That's a much smaller number and matches the requirements for private companies.

What is the part of "calculates the value of all benefits to be paid out in the future, due to past and future service" that you don't understand? Congress required all possible benefits present and future be calculated (subtracting only future accruals, i.e., gains in investments) and then that money had to be raised over 10 years. That is never required from companies, which have to fund only the portion of pensions that they effectively supposed to pay based on current liabilities, not what they will be projected to owe in the future.

You can find the explanation in several articles, for example:

"[the law] requires the self-supporting U.S. Postal Service, which receives not one dime in taxpayer subsidies, to fully fund its retirees’ health benefits for 75 years into the future. It also requires that money be set aside over a 10-year period, at a rate of more than $5 billion per year.

That means the postal service is now paying for the future health care of retirees it has not yet hired, and who in some cases have not yet been born. No other public or private company in the nation bears any kind of financial burden like that.

Even worse, none of that money is truly being set aside. Instead, it is going directly into the U.S. government’s general fund, and it’s being spent on current government operations. The set-aside is a theoretical accounting gimmick. Those future retirement liabilities are actually being added to the national debt."

https://roanoke.com/news/local/casey-the-most-insane-law-by-...

>What is the part of "calculates the value of all benefits to be paid out in the future, due to past and future service" that you don't understand?

Because pensions go up with years of service you have to account for the worker continuing to work when calculating pension liability. As an example, say a pension vests after 5 years. What should the pension cost be for an employee in year 2? The best answer is something like 1/5 of the NPV of their pension.

That's what they mean by "benefits to be paid out... due to .. future service".

>That means the postal service is now paying for the future health care of retirees it has not yet hired,

Did you not see the part of my cite where that is specifically called a myth?

It is very difficult to debate with someone who doesn't understand the very logic of how pensions work. No company in the world will pay the NPV of a future pension. Like any other person or institution, they will start making contributions over time to meet the requirements of that pension 20, 30, 50 years from now. To require otherwise is absurd. For example, suppose you are retiring 30 years from now. You cannot assume that you have to calculate the NPV of the required pension in 30 years and then contribute that value today. Like any normal person you will setup a plan to contribute towards a pension that will be available 30 from now, with the required amount. The same happens with any company. In fact, when you hear someone calculating the NPV of pensions that will be paid 20 to 50 years in the future, you most probably are talking to a republican who wants to "prove" that public pensions are insolvent. This is the pattern I've seen.

>You cannot assume that you have to calculate the NPV of the required pension in 30 years and then contribute that value today

Did you not read my post where it said:

> The best answer is something like 1/5 of the NPV of their pension.

Of course nobody is required to pay the entire NPV of the pension today. For an employee that is retiring in 30 years they are required to pay 1/30th of the NPV of their pension each year. That's what the USPS is required to do. They're not being required to pay the entire cost of their employee pensions up front.

Let's run the numbers and see if it works the way you say: In 2005, the last year used by the 2006 congress law, the unfunded liabilities of USPS were determined as between $50 and 59 billion [1]. In 2006, congress required USPS to make 10 payments of $5.5 billion. This doesn't meet your characterization os a 1/30th of NPV each year! It is basically paying to whole NPV in a staggered 10 years pre-payment plan.

1: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/... (page 26)

The USPS is damn good at delivering the mail

That hasn’t been my experience in the least. Terrible customer service, packages lost, packages requiring signatures left on door step.

And the best is when my package says “delivered” yet shows up 3 days later.

Thanks for sharing your anecdote, but you left out the rest of the sentence that provides context for the word ‘mail’ when you quoted me. I was explicitly referring to first-class letters, not packages. I believe first-class mail is better left to the USPS.

Meh... I’ve had issues with first class mail as well. My neighbor getting my letters, I even had a letter torn open and the check taken. Turns out it was a postal employee but at least the postmaster followed up.

That’s unfortunate to hear, sounds like you’ve had some bad luck with the USPS. I can see why you took issue with my claim that the USPS is good about delivering the mail, I’d be frustrated if I was you as well.

> Agreed, there are no truly free capitalist markets in the US, except maybe black markets.

Are you kidding? They're all the markets nobody talks about because they're working.

Go to the store and buy a chair. There are a hundred different kinds. Any kind you like. The barrier to entry is low. There are many competitors.

> The Post Office actually makes money

The problem with the Post Office isn't that they don't make money (though having to be bailed out by the taxpayer is unacceptable for any reason, and the pension thing was at the behest of the USPS union rather than the Republicans). The problem with it is that they have a monopoly on carrying mail which prevents customers from enjoying the benefits of competition.

> Are you kidding? They're all the markets nobody talks about because they're working. Go to the store and buy a chair. There are a hundred different kinds. Any kind you like. The barrier to entry is low. There are many competitors.

I was operating under the assumption that a market that has tariffs on foreign goods [0] is not ‘truly free’ but perhaps you disagree.

[0] https://myhfa.org/tariff-relief-doesnt-apply-to-furniture-fr...

> USPS problem is a lack of competition

Do you expect a private company to service every single rural address that currently receives mail for the same or lower price? We can’t even get ISPs to wire the entire country.

> I was operating under the assumption that a market that has tariffs on foreign goods [0] is not ‘truly free’ but perhaps you disagree.

But now you're just being pedantic. You could make the same argument about taxes, where some states have higher property taxes so factories there have a competitive disadvantage and so on. But then you can't even make the same claim of black markets because their illegality increases costs.

In practice what matters is not whether there is some kind of ideologically pure anarchist vision of freedom which requires no government to exist anywhere in the world, but rather whether there exists competition sufficient to keep margins thin and make companies responsive to customer demands. Which there is, for things like chairs. Some might even say for things like package delivery.

> Do you expect a private company to service every single rural address that currently receives mail for the same or lower price?

They would surely provide service to every address at a price which pays their costs and a market rate of return. Whether that's lower than the existing price in every single case whatsoever doesn't seem like a very strong argument to hinge the entire existence of the USPS on. Especially when there isn't any obvious reason why that subsidy should be a moral imperative, or if it somehow was why it couldn't be satisfied with an explicit subsidy rather than operating an entire national business as a monopoly just to create an implicit one.

> We can’t even get ISPs to wire the entire country.

The incumbents that have captured the regulators? Of course not. And they've had regulations put into place to keep anyone else from doing it either.

Meanwhile, Starlink.

>Do you expect a private company to service every single rural address that currently receives mail for the same or lower price?

I don't quite understand why that's something we need to do. Those that live in rural addresses that can't be efficiently delivered to can pick up their mail in town. Sure, it's less convenient but lack of conveniences is part of living in the country.

Because you don’t agree with his position. I bet when Bloomberg offers hundreds of millions of dollars to support green energy you suddenly feel great about billionaires working to save the planet.

Promoting alternative energy is not equal to dismantling a public service used by every single person in the US that would almost certainly be worse, or more expensive if privatized.

I’ll take the bait and offer you my position on green energy. My employer performs alternative energy work, so that part would make me feel good, but I don’t have a strong left position on energy. I’m fine with nuclear, natural gas, wind, solar, and hydro for generating electricity. I believe reducing the amount of coal we use is generally a good thing. That about sums it up.

In theory yes, they should be allowed for their opinion. However their hold on society is much bigger than the 1 vote they are allowed. With their billions, they can contribute to elect and influence politicians. So while the view to destroy the USPS is well funded, what about the small business or lower income people that rely on USPS as an affordable and needed service (in the middle of a pandemic no less)? Who can they lobby? They just have 1 vote and not billions.

So while in theory I agree with your premise that they are allowed to lobby for whatever they want, the reality is that their influence on society is way overboard and should be limited (limited political contributions!).

100% with you on limited political contributions and other forms of kickbacks

They can have all the opinions they want. Ultimately, a handful of billionaires' opinions and lobbying efforts should not be enough to destroy public institutions.

Sure, but with the amount of wealth and power that they have, it goes beyond lobbying. If there were any sense of the other side getting equal bargaining power, maybe people would be less upset.

I agree, and I will add that once someone's net worth and exaggerated power are quite apparent, there should be some serious oversight if they are utilizing their money to vote like a block of x billion people. I think there should be more oversight at the government level as well...but the government isn't just one person's opinion.

Of course they can have whatever opinion they want. But what demonstrate the big danger of billionaires is that they have the resources to fund any number of think tanks, lobbyists, ONGs, TV shows, newspapers, and what not to sway legislation to their particular, minority view.

Billionaires and governments are natural enemies.

Why would I care about Koch's views towards government?

Would I ask Harvey Weinstein about sexual assault and harassment?

Would I ask a creationist about evolution?

Would I ask a pro-lifer about women's reproductive rights?

Would I ask an Iowan farmer about agricultural subsidies?

Would I ask Coca Cola about diabetes?

Would I ask a reality TV star about presidential powers?

Would I ask Rupert Murdock about journalism?

Would I ask The Sinclair Group about media consolidation?

Would I ask a white supremacist about race relations?

Would I ask members of John Birch Society about voting rights?

Would I ask members of The Federalist Society about balance of powers?

This is tough because I don't want to straw man them, but I'm not sure I've ever heard a hardcore libertarian really argue that their policies would be better for the whole of society.

Generally it seems like they think that minimal government leads to better results in a social Darwinism or "get rid of the parasites" sense.

I've also never really seen them seriously recon with the question of what you do with people who cannot compete, and at some point I feel like that crosses the line into intellectual negligence.

Again, I don't want to try to demonize the other side and I really wish I could think of a good example, but I really cannot.

> I've also never really seen them seriously recon with the question of what you do with people who cannot compete, and at some point I feel like that crosses the line into intellectual negligence.

It absolutely is intellectual negligence, and there's nothing wrong with pointing it out. The standard answer trotted out is "charity" which is disingenuous at best, and completely impractical at worst.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out the logical flaws of people who secretly wish they were feudal lords or a pater familias in Ancient Rome, and wildly overestimate what their position or level of success in a theoretical 'Libertarian Society' would be.

If they wanted a better outcome for all then they wouldn't be billionaires, IMO. The fact that they exist is the sign of a problem that they're happy to exploit and automatically warrants suspicion about their motives.

Just to be clear, we don't have any problem with schools or libraries. We just think the model of having governments collect taxes and then pay for those things is broken. In consequentialist terms, it's broken because it removes competition from the equation, and competition generally leads to progressively improving products and services, and/or lower cost goods and services. In deontological terms, it's broken because taxation is theft.

In deontological terms, taxation is not theft, because theft is the unlawful taking of property, and taxation is lawful. To argue otherwise requires a fundamental rejection of the legitimacy of the state, and most people are not going to accept that premise, which is why libertarian rhetoric in practice tends to rely on casuistic arguments about waste-fraud-and-abuse, red tape, and so on.

Even the libertarian theoretical argument for the illegitimacy of the state depends on a mode of analysis that is incompatible with with things that US libertarians advocate for in practice, such as private property.

and taxation is lawful.

And that notion is what many of us reject.

To argue otherwise requires a fundamental rejection of the legitimacy of the state

Not exactly, although plenty of Libertarians do reject the legitimacy of the State out of hand. I find the issue to be more nuanced than that. If you hold, as Bastiat did, that "the law" (aka "the State") can be something like - but no more than - the "collective extension to our individual right to self defense" and that no mere aggregation of individuals can have a right to do anything that a single individual doesn't have a right to do, then you can conceptualize a State that does things like, say, protecting private property, but which can't lawfully require payment of taxes.

All of that said, I didn't come here to write pages and pages on political theory. There are entire books that treat this entire topic much better than I could. I'd refer anybody who is interested in this to The Law [2]by Bastiat, as well as the works of Lysander Spooner[2] among others.

[1]: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner

> If you hold, as Bastiat did, that "the law" (aka "the State") can be something like - but no more than - the "collective extension to our individual right to self defense" and that no mere aggregation of individuals can have a right to do anything that a single individual doesn't have a right to do, then you can conceptualize a State that does things like, say, protecting private property, but which can't lawfully require payment of taxes.

You can only do that for the specific case if you believe that either (1) the specific concrete details of property rights are matters of self-evident and immutable natural law, not contextual judgements that involve a balancing of interests, or (2) each individual is empowered to define and impose their version of property rights on others. Otherwise, a state with no power that isn't exactly that held by individuals comprising the state cannot define property laws, much less enforce them. (Technically, it can't define property laws in the first case, either, but it can recognize the concrete and specific elements of, and enforce, the laws that were carved on stone tablets by the invisible hand.)

Right, so your entire analysis is useless. You're not rejecting the state because of any real principle, but rejecting it axiomatically. And then, you also axiomatically decide that private property is fine. This doesn't come from any social analysis.

Also, Lysander Spooner literally is against private property. He was part of the Socialist Internationale. The validity of his rejection of the state on basis of unjustified hierarchy also led to his rejection of capitalism on grounds of unjustified hierarchy. Instead, he was a mutualist. You know, the political economy for which one of it's foundational texts is What is property, which coined the slogan : "La propriété, c'est le vol", by Proudhon.

Bastiat attempted to use this essentially anarchist analysis of the state, but exempt private property from it by inventing some weird standard of government action that has no deeper justification and is pretty much axiomatic.

This is a huge simplification, but if you want more detail you can read "Why Anarcho-capitalism is not Anarchism" either on the Anarchist Library or, if you use Debian, via apt-get install anarchism.

Everything is "just axiomatic" at some level of regress, so calling something "axiomatic" isn't much of a dismissal.

As for Spooner: I am not saying I agree with his analysis on everything (same for Bastiat as far as that goes). I'm just pointing out that those two represent some useful sources of thought on the illegitimacy of the State. That was intended mainly for people who weren't already involved in studying this particular issue.

The question of "what is property" is an interesting and fundamental one for sure. I'm still chewing on that, honestly. Some days I think I know, other days I'm convinced I was wrong before. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Not really. If you have to state your conclusions as axiomatic then your philosophy has no point, at all.

If you have to axiomatically state that private property is good and government is bad, then I don't really see why anyone would have to follow your arguments, because not only are such axioms ridiculous, as seen by the attempt to create a rationalization for it. If the argument according to which the state is illegitimate has as a consequence that so is private property, but you still axiomatically state that private property is legitimate, you've also invalidated the original argument that the state is illegitimate, and now your entire worldview is based on two absurd axioms, and not any logic.

A moral philosophy or political economy is only ever valid and worthwhile if it is based on axioms/values that the rest of society share. For example - negative freedom is good, positive freedom is good, prosperity is good, and so on, which you'll find that people tend to agree with inherently. I don't think that there's anyone for which "private property is good" and "the state is bad" is an axiom.

Private property is a monopoly on the use of natural resources granted by law and enforced by the threat of physical harm. As soon as you admit the possibility of competition for natural resources you have introduced law, and at that point the only question is who shall enforce the law and for whose benefit. There is no answer to that question that is provably correct, but so far "states, for the benefit of their political constituency" has been the answer that has overwhelmingly outcompeted all others, and the vast majority of effective political disagreement in the modern era is between statists regarding exactly how a state's political constituency should be defined and how best to benefit it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com