Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

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I care. It's little things like not having all my stuff taken from me by armed thugs and not getting murdered that are important to me.

I guess you value information freedom over basic living conditions huh.

I also like this thing called democracy and freedom of speech, which a bunch of people, normal everyday people like me, round the world really don't like. There's a hell of a lot of them.

And even if they do like democracy, they also rather like this totally bizarre idea to me called religion. In my sovereign state is pretty insignificant. I can poke fun at it. They makes a lot, billions of people, not very happy. Just not in my little sovereign state.

It's great being in my country. There's a social state, which a bunch of American's think is a really bad idea but which I, and a lot of my sovereign state, happen to think is pretty nifty.

So before you start saying that the sovereignty of your nation is really only important to your sovereign, take a look at all the people in England who love being English, France, who love being French, Iranians, who love being Iranian, Indians, who love being Indian, Chinese, who love being Chinese, Russians, who love being Russians. You get the idea.

I personally think you and reality are very far divorced in your views of sovereignty. A lot of people like it.

I'm pretty sure thats the same reasoning Kings and Queens used for thousands of years to describe all the horrible things that would happen should the people be put in charge.

Go ask your average cop how many people they arrested for armed robbery and murder, then ask them how many seat belt tickets they handed out.

Many horrible things have happened when "the people" WERE put in charge. The difference with democracy is not that you pick better leaders, it's that the majority is free to pick the leaders they want. It is arguably as easy to pick a scoundrel as bloodline was.

If you are referring to events like the Russian Revolution I think it's more accurate to say that a bunch of thugs who said they were acting for "the people" got in control (somewhat to their own surprise) and did anything they deemed necessary to maintain their grip on power - mostly by killing anyone who could conceivably be an opponent.

> If you are referring to events like the Russian Revolution I think it's more accurate to say that a bunch of thugs who said they were acting for "the people" got in control

And this time things are going to be different because ....?

A huge fraction, if not most, revolutions end badly.

Badly for whom?

"The people". They get lower living standards, more political oppression, and bad art.

It's almost like revolutions are intended to demonstrate that "it can't get worse" is horribly wrong.

I was not particularly thinking about the Russian Revolution. On the "scourge of humanity" side, there's always Hitler, who was popularly elected multiple times. On the scoundrel side, there are folks like Nixon. Every U.S. president since 1960 has also presided over a lot of death and misery, and propped up "friendly" dictators in various global locales, plus a huge proliferation in armaments, often as part of proxy battles in the Cold War.

Are you an anarcho-capitalist? (Genuine question, not being snarky).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Not quite. A lot of the core components of government are subject to well-known areas of market failure, examples include a well-regulated militia and the justice system.

Gov't is a tool that can be used for good or for evil. I'm also with Lord Acton in my belief that power corrupts. Therefore I tend to think that the responsible role of government is very limited in scope. I'm of the opinion that the budgets of gov't in G8 states could be slashed by 75% to 90% whilst providing a major boost to the economy.

To cut beyond that would involve cutting services that are subject to market failure in which we'd end up destroying a lot of the value in our governing institutions.

One of the most effective things we could do to bring about these changes in a realistic manner is to setup Special Economic Zones or something like that where the normal rules of society do not apply and instead we'd use a more liberal set of rules. Perhaps we could find a smaller city with overwhelming popular support for these rules. Or an uninhabited area that capital could flow into to build the infrastructure from the ground up. Basically use a scientific approach to government where we run experiments to see what the effect of various rules are.

Ultimately I could be wrong and a gov't that allocates 50% of the resources in an economy provides better allocation than the market could achieve but I tend to doubt it.

A lot of the core components of government are subject to well-known areas of market failure, examples include a well-regulated militia and the justice system.

When were market solutions ever tried for these problems? Not being an ass, im just looking for info.

Globalization could be argued to be a market solution for war. If your economies are interdependent you're much less willing or able to enter war. Seems to have worked in Western Europe.

The questions implied by your last question seem to be:

a) do markets always provide better allocation? b) are there cases where economic efficiency is not the primary determinant of how resources are allocated?

So, 75% of the U.S. budget is made up of mandatory payments (debt interest), medicare (for the elderly), medicaid (for the poor), social security (for the elderly), and defence.

1. Health care services are notoriously subject to market failure due to a variety of problems: moral hazard, unpredictable and highly skewed demand (a small number of people take up the bulk of national costs), adverse selection, insurance free riding, plus geometrically rising costs due to increased innovation, a culture of litiguousness, and the demographics of an aging populace.

Besides all of this, all developed nations share a sense that humans deserve a minimum standard of care, that collectively we are rich enough, and the demand small enough, that we can cover everybody (subject to the caveats above).

EVEN if you decided there is no fundamental human right to health care, then the most efficient allocation (a) is subject to predominantly non-market controls & regulations due to moral hazard & free riding; (b) someone other than the customer makes the buying decisions due to adverse selection.

2. Defence is often subjected to market forces in the specifics of contracts, but the overall spending levels and results of defence clearly can't be measured by a market, since the mission and goal is about survival, not wealth.

Could the U.S. cut it? Sure. Which elected official would take the risk they'll be blamed for the next [insert tragic event here], though?

3. Social security, again, has to do with a shared sense that the elderly deserve a safety net when they are too infirm to continue working. It's a flawed, imperfect approach, but seems better than just letting people live off the streets in their twilight years, as was done for over a hundred years prior to Otto von Bismark's creation of the welfare state.

I have no doubt the market makes (some) activities more efficient. The challenge is that reality is more complicated than that.

While I understand your point, your comparison is pointless. There are about 15,000 murders and 410,000 robberies in the US per year. How many people don't wear a seatbelt?

A quick search shows that about 100,000 seat belt tickets were issued for the state of Wisconson, and assuming that every instance of driving without a seatbelt was ticketed, then there are about 6 million ticketable instances per year.

Thus, "your average cop" tickets about 10 people for each reported robbery or murder.

What do you think the answer should be, were the people put in charge?

I'm a bit late on the reply but what you're describing is called feudalism and monarchism. It's very, very different to the relatively new trend of nationalism that has swept the globe in the last century.

I don't mean this to be insulting, it's just that nationalism is pretty fundamentally different to monarchy or feudalism which you seem to be confusing the present state of the world with.

You had it in Rome for a bit mixed with Imperialism but then it died out. Imperialism rose again, but then Nationalism rose pretty violently in opposition to it. Although it brought about Fascism it also brought about an end to Imperialism.

It's at the heart of the Napoleonic wars to WW2. There are still echoes of the struggle in the Israel/Palestine mess.

There's a lot, and I mean a hell of a lot, that's gone on in the last two centuries from the common man's point of view that has fundamentally shifted the power balance of rulers and subjects.

It's very, very different to the 'reasoning Kings and Queens used for thousands of years'.

It's little things like not having all my stuff taken from me by armed thugs and not getting murdered that are important to me.

In my country (the U.S.) neither the federal nor state governments have any obligation to protect me from criminals (1). In fact, if the statistics are accurate, my country has a higher murder rate (5 per 100K) than the "libertarian paradise" of Somalia (3.2 per 100K) (2) who have no central government (3).

1) See DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia

In fact, if the statistics are accurate, my country has a higher murder rate (5 per 100K) than the "libertarian paradise" of Somalia (3.2 per 100K) (2) who have no central government (3).

There have been over 4,200 civilians killed in the fighting in Mogadishu in just the last 2 years (1). Even if that were the extent of violent crime in Somalia it would amount to an annual rate of ~23 per 100k. By all accounts, however, violent crime remains extraordinarily high throughout the entire country, we just can't put numbers to it because there are no authorities to report to. Here's some more context: over 1.5 million Somalis have been internally displaced by the violence, and over 600,000 have fled to other countries (2).

That number on Wikipedia is so low because it came from a 2004 WHO report which was compiled using data from national authorities - the vast majority of violent crime in Somalia never gets reported to any authority.

1) http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article782458.ece/4200-Som... 2) http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e483ad6.html

Fair enough, thanks for the correction to the data. I think the Wikipedia article could use an edit to note the discrepancy.

Armed.... Internet thugs?

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