Comment by webnrrd2k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by webnrrd2k | Hacker News Reader

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Re: state power... ”Follow our rules or you lose benefits. What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits.”

How is this different than private power? Honestly, I've had to put up with far more arbitrary bs from my HMO than state or federal programs. With my state and the feds at least there is a clear statement of benefits, a clear procedure to appeal, and a solid attempt to deliver on promises.

How well does that compare to, say, your cable company? Or how well have big companies done respecting your privacy? In other words, lots of people get directly screwed by private companies, too.

I'm not trying to say that government programs are the ideal answer to everything. In the USA there is a serious need for reasonable debate, responsible budgets, and a commitment to good government.

There is plenty of potential for abuse with government over reach. But there is also plenty of abuse from government under-reach, too. Isn't it in everybody's interests to have a functioning government? One that that operates under good-faith intentions to follow it's mandate?

My guess is that right-leaning people are more comfortable with private corporations having that sort of power because they presume that the people in charge of the corporations must be competent and wise to get to their position. Possibly also that the dynamics of the free market will somehow protect people's rights.

Competition is what keeps private corporations well behaved. Governments are monopolies and thus unchecked.

Governments are checked by the wavering legitimacy of any given representative within the government. In our system, we have a direct check on that legitimacy through elections.

Meanwhile, corporations frequently do not have to compete, having either become a monopoly or having agreed upon "standards" without which they insist solvency in their given area would be impossible (as they rake in untold riches in profit). The only check on that power is indirectly through refusing to transact with them en masse. However, as long as their credit is good, they can continue to exist and operate with impunity.

In the end, the question is of the accumulation of which currency determines who is "good" enough to run your life: political clout or money.

Franklu, people who have to be nice to me tend to do better by me than people who just happen to have a lot of money.

Governments are checked by the democratic process. And competition is not working as well as it should. There are plenty of corporate monopolies, Varsity being one of the most obvious at the present time.

Neither is perfect but we can easily see that private competition works better by far by comparing the results: all the modern life products and services vs the mess that governments and governmental services are in various parts of the world.

The question is not which is more efficient, but which is more responsible with power.

Governments have incomparably more power and thus their abuses are incomparably worse: famines, pogroms, wars, asset confiscation, incarceration, murder.

Companies are controlled by the market, it's governments we need to worry about and find ways to control and regulate.

Still, the question is not which currently have more power, but which is more responsible with that power in a democratic society.

Companies are remarkably good at finding ways to control the market. That's why antitrust legislation is needed to protect consumers.

The only unbeatable way companies control the market is through government-granted monopoly. Any other way is eventually defeated by the market itself.

Every government intervention in the market will benefit established players and will hinder startups and thus the markets's self-regulating mechanisms.

This is an extreme counterexample, but doesn't the fact that the government will prosecute large companies that order hit squads to assassinate startup employees count as an "intervention"?

There are many other cases where I'd be very uncomfortable trusting these so-called "self-regulatinf mechanisms", e.g. the abolition of slavery, child labour, and racial/sexual employment discrimination.

All that is illegal behavior. Markets require the rule of law too and nobody is disputing the role of governments to implement and uphold the law.

Price fixing is also illegal behaviour, but my impression is that you're more relaxed about that?

Moreover, none of those things were always illegal. There was a time where it was not obvious that they should be illegal. Yet, despite the relatively laisez faire economics of the 19th century (in the UK at least), these behaviours were not simply self-regulated away. That required government intervention in the form of passing laws and ensuring that the law was followed.

So the proposition is which "check/balance" is better: Market competition or Elections.

Modern economics research shows that the efficient markets hypothesis is not true and definitely requires government regulation to operate in the way that Chicago School econ describes it. So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.

> So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.

This is a non-sequitor. The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency. I personally don’t believe in the efficient market (it’s why I’m an active trader). But elections, where ill-informed people vote on topics they barely have any knowledge about, risking nothing in the process, seem significantly worse at guaranteeing acceptable outcomes.

> The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency.

Can you go into more detail on how that could be for me? If the EMH is untrue, then there must be some other mechanism besides competition that checks the private sector, no? What would that be?

I'm implicitly lumping "regulation" as part of the Elections mechanism, btw, so I'm assuming you didn't mean regulation as the mechanism.

Yeah, we've seen the remarkable result of elections with Putin, Venezuela, China and now Trump.

Meanwhile unregulated fields like software, computers and communication have enjoyed the fastest and most remarkable progress in modern history. Progress which benefits us all every day.

Quite a straw man you put forward here.

First of all, You seem to be confused because you are mistaking what happens in Russia, Venezuela and China for actual elections. Whatever happens in those places is certainly not what I meant by the term "elections."

Second, You point to "three" (or are those 3 things really the same thing?) successes in competition, each of which were aided by investment authorized by elected legislators. Then you point to one failure of elections and proceed to conclude that competition is the better of the two. It doesn't follow, I'm afraid.

As for Trump, yes, that was the elections mechanism failing. I never said it was perfect. But the Market competition mechanism fails more often, in my estimation. Neither is perfect, but competition seems to create much higher probability for imperfection, abuse, flaws, and suffering.

Russia, Venezuela and USA all had actual democratic elections at some point. But they elected dictators which took power and never let go. The results were horrifying: imprisoned people, children in concentration camps and death, countless deaths. Destroying a country's economy leads to famine and, yes, death.

The effects of free market "failures" are comparatively laughable and always corrected by the free market itself sooner or later.

There is no contest which one is graver. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality and evidence all around us.

No, IMO it's because generally speaking the govt has much more power over you than any private entity. You don't have to follow the rules of any particular private entity unless you choose to. You can't choose not to pay your taxes (legally) or escape the surveillance state.

There are exceptions to this of course, such as government-sponsored monopolies (healthcare, ISPs, utilities). But a lot of that is regulatory capture IMO - we've ceded a lot of power to MegaCorp Inc. which I'm not comfortable with either.

As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc) and demand everything they have on you like the feds can. No one holds a candle to the potential of govt tyranny, everyone is at the mercy of "the man".

At the end of the day, massive consolidation of power at the top levels of society is never healthy, whatever form it may take.

As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc)

This in an amusing statement considering that many people consider Google and Facebook to be terrible big private companies.

And note, their power doesn't come from government-sponsored monopolies.

Also, calling utilities and ISPs government-sponsored utilities is grossly misleading; both are natural monopolies due to the capital costs that are involved.

Even more people consider Google and FB useful and valuable and gladly (and voluntarily) use their services. Otherwise those "terrible companies" wouldn't be so big anymore.

Capital costs do not create monopolies, just an obstacle solved by raising capital. Government regulations create monopolies - there is no way to fix those.

I recommend you actually read up on natural monopolies. It's a well understood and universally accepted phenomenon (at least academically; obviously there are vested interests who prefer to deny their existence despite clear facts).

Every time people show me a "natural" monopoly I find regulations around it that corrupt the market.

People believing in the so-called natural monopolies lack fate in the entrepreneurial drive, creativity and innovation of the free individuals working hard in their own interest, for their own betterment.

I'd say it's because corporate power is much more fragily held than goverment power. A startup can ruin a corporation - it takes a revolution to ruin a government.

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