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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

Tl/dr: Top-down control of a country doesn't work. But we already knew this; the 20th Century was a huge experiment, run in multiple countries, in trying to make top-down control work. It failed. The lesson we should be drawing from all this is to stop asking our government and our elected representatives to fix all problems. The government's role should be limited to protecting everyone's basic rights and maintaining an orderly civil society. Any problem solving after that should be on us, as citizens and using private means, not government fiat.

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FDR's administration was the most effective of the 20th century and was characterized by more top-down control than any other during the period in question. Maybe you don’t like the outcomes, but it can’t be argued that much was accomplished.

Effective at concentration camps, or supreme-court packing?

God save us from effective government.

> Effective at concentration camps, or supreme-court packing?

Like Guantanamo or what the GOP is currently doing (e.g., not giving Garland hearings "because it is too close to the election")?

Government, and political opportunists, can be effective in both good and bad policies/actions.

I'd blame those things on the Democrats too. You can't keep cheating and cheating, and then whine that the other side started cheating too just to keep up with you.

Obama even had the opportunity to close Guantanamo. Didn't consider it important enough to waste the political capital on. Was more concerned about his team retaining power than doing the right thing.

> Government, and political opportunists, can be effective in both good and bad policies/actions.

Effectiveness is only ever used with bad policies. I don't know that I've even come close to figuring out the mechanism for it, but there is one that inevitably tips effectiveness towards ends malevolent. If you were to plot out historical leaders for how effective they were on some sort of spectrum, and then plot them out for how evil they were, it'd be the same spectrum.

Worked great for USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, ...

FDR also had to deal with things like state's rights... But why worry about nuance?

None of those countries are ones that I think we should be eager to mimic. However, if we are talking about nuance, we should consider:

The USSR rapidly went from a relatively backwards nation that had been devastated by WW2 to a highly industrialized world superpower. That's a lot of success even if the costs weren't worth it.

Cuba has been hamstrung by US embargoes.

Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough about Venezuela to say.

> The USSR rapidly went from a relatively backwards nation that had been devastated by WW2 to a highly industrialized world superpower.

Imperial Russia was one of the most powerful countries in the world prior to WW1 and industrialising very rapidly. One of the reasons the Germans went for it when they did was because they knew that any later they could not beat the Russian Empire. To manage to become a “highly industrialised world superpower” starting with the Russian Empire of 1913 is not an achievement.

> Cuba has been hamstrung by US embargoes.

No other countries embargo the US and oceanic transport is so cheap they transport onions to Ireland from Australia at a profit. Cuba is a dump because of its government, not because of the US.

> Unfortunately I’m not knowledgeable enough about Venezuela to say.

Pretty standard communist story. Secret police, middle class and educated flee in their millions, economy collapses.

Imperial Russia was breaking down and on the brink of collapse ...until they violently collapsed. They were also behind western countries technologically and by pretty much all aspects. That includes military being one massive mess with horrible conditions for soldiers and comparatively larger looses.

Same thing, west can not go in and occupy current Russia either, but that does not make the country any less dysfunctional mess comparatively. Same with imperial Russia.

Unfortunately, we've also tried the privatization approach that you are advocating and it has failed miserably.

Inequality is skyrocketing, many working people lack access to medical care or financial security, many people have no choice but to work jobs that mistreat & demean them, global warming is ravaging the world, etc.

> we've also tried the privatization approach

Really? When? When has the government not put its thumb on the scale in thousands of different ways?

For example, someone downthread mentioned the ACA, as though before it was passed health care was "privatized" in the US. It was no such thing. Health care in the US has not been "privatized" at the very least since World War II, when the government prohibited private companies from competing for employees on wages and so the companies had to compete on benefits instead, with health insurance being the biggest benefit. Then the government started regulating the health care industry, and the whole mess evolved to what we have now.

To really find "privatized" health care in the US you have to to back to before WW II. What you will find is that, given the knowledge of the time, health care worked better in the US then. And even then it wasn't completely privatized: for example, the government still regulated the supply of doctors and other health care workers with licensing, which drives up costs and drives down accessibility to care.

But the government “solved” the medical care system with the ACA! /s

Exactly, private insurance companies with millionaire executives are the most efficient way to handle a fundamental human need for our society. /s (this means sarcasm).

Nobody in their right mind should be defending the ACA imo, and nobody here has done so as far as I can tell. Your comment is a special kind of annoying. Multiple strawmen.

You're right. Those little babies born with pre-existing conditions, denied coverage by insurance companies, would never defend the ACA.

The ACA was overwhelmingly a landslide giveaway to private insurance corporations, who have used that taxpayer money to multiply their lobbying influence. The # of insured Americans has only increased a hair more than the total US population, while the cost of insurance and cost of healthcare services have greatly increased in the time since.It's a classic case of Democratic Party means testing and bureaucratization.

The article was about a military project contracted out to a private corporation. Are you saying that the government shouldn't maintain a military? Because if you're not saying that then how is your comment even relevant here?

A country’s army should protect the country, not the foreign interests of a few wealthy or powerful citizens of that country. Non-interventionists would go as far to say they shouldn’t get involved in any foreign wars at all. I think it’s hard to expect allies that would help defend without the opposite, but that could be limited to aiding foreign defense.

I feel you should clarify that “TL/DR” means “too long, don’t read”, since what you’ve written is in no way a summary, but rather a statement of opinion in no way supported (and indeed assumed away) by the article.

> Top-down control of a country doesn't work.

Agreed. But:

> Any problem solving after that should be on us, as citizens and using private means, not government fiat.

That's just a libertarian ideological trope, and doesn't follow from the premise. Another way of avoiding top-down control is to devolve decision-making; to have a truly multi-polar government, where those exercising subsidiary powers can't be bullied (or sacked) by those at the centre.

In the UK, for example, it has become fashionable for an incoming government to try to rebuild the Civil Service in its own image. C.f. Truss firing Scholar, head of the Treasury, as her first act.

I’m not sure why this isn’t a more popular position on a board full of entrepreneurs. I’m all for a government that prevents people from screwing each other over, but it doesn’t mean it should enter that market and screw everyone over.

Considering actually reading the article. It's good!

Typo, can no longer edit. Meant to say “consider.”

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