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Comment by MisterDizzy | Hacker News Reader

This is the main difference in politics, as far as I can tell: Some people push for things that seem really compassionate and intuitively good and right, but actually make the problem a lot worse. But to argue this is almost always futile because all most people seem able to absorb is that you're disagreeing with their intuitively compassionate position, not that you're trying to posit a solution that actually functions, so in their eyes you're an existential threat to them.

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> “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

A robber baron’s cupidity may at some point be satiated? That’s why check notes billionaires keep increasing their share of total wealth year on year?

There are ideologues and there are pragmatists. Partisans are, to varying degrees, ideologues who see the world not as it is but how it must be based upon their presuppositions.

Ideologies gave us freedom, democracy, and nearly every genocide. They can be useful, to a degree, but like any model they break down and cause problems when taken to the extreme.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

People dislike actual data so much, in this case they have flagged the item because it goes counter to their narrative.

Actually, I think there's a pretty legitimate reason to flag this.

The actual article is from the quite biased libertarian Reason Magazine: https://reason.com/2024/09/26/rents-fall-and-listings-increa..., but it's being laundered through msn.com, which obscures that.

Your post seems like an example of what GP is talking about. A source being biased doesn't mean it can't make a valid point, nor does it mean that MSN can't do their own vetting.

> Your post seems like an example of what GP is talking about.

No it isn't. The GP accused the flaggers of flagging it for ideological reasons, because it goes "counter to their narrative." I'm saying that it's legitmate to flag because it's been posted using the wrong url, because awareness of the true source and knowledge of its biases is useful for evaluating the content.

>But to argue this is almost always futile because all most people seem able to absorb is that you're disagreeing with their intuitively compassionate position

What's your point, and what does that have to do with the specific url that's used in the post?

At best Rent Control is a mixed bag. See history of NYC. For those lucky enough to "get in on the ground floor" its great. For others, not so much, as the landlords jack the rent to cover their "losses" on the controlled rent.

I would say Rent Control causes more harm than good overall.

It always has. With rent control there is no incentive for landlords to rent, repair, or improve. Which actually reduces the amount of available properties, and dissuades building more housing (because what’s the point?) If you can’t make money doing it then you’re probably losing money.

If you consider soviet housing blocks as having operated under rent control, they illustrate the problem. There was little maintenance done by the state --often it was up to the occupants to improve the building. Also, the state didn't build enough units and people had to accommodate multiple families in one unit.

It's a failure but people wish it to be otherwise. They wish for things to spring out of the aether by wishing it so.

> not that you're trying to posit a solution that actually functions

Give me an example of a "solution that actually functions," to any problem you know a lot about, during a period of high inflation.

Legalizing floating market exchange rates.

Tariffs on imports.

I saw FIRST HAND that overnight we went from only quoting in China and Taiwan, to quoting and getting deals in USA.

I was writing the quotes, I was approving them. It turned right back around in 2021.

Tariffs are a tax on Americans. The stuff still gets imported -- at a higher cost to cover the tariff.

But it incentivizes making things in the US. This is probably a good thing if the CCP hits hard times.

Thank you for correcting my first-hand experiences. You know what we didn’t do? We didn’t “tax Americans” by continuing to use China, we made what we could in the US.

Great, you're in the minority of companies that did so.

A counterpart at GM was going the same as me. Yea, small company tho.

What I love is that you can’t admit that you could be wrong - when someone on the street is this case is telling you directly.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Just a stubborn ideologue that could never admit Trump was right on this.

Can you define the problem?

> actually make the problem a lot worse

You need to get rid of the actual problem: Capitalism

The context of all these good/bad arguments is that they're good/bad solutions under Capitalism.

With what shall we replace it? Communism doesn’t work. It’s so hard to do that it has supposedly never been tried.

I don't have an answer to that.

But Communism was never implemented in it's "described" (or "pure", if you want to frame it that way) form. The Soviet Union was clearly heavily corrupted, among many other issues that diverge from what Communism is "supposed" to be.

Perhaps a system that favors people over corporations?

A system that centralises power over everything into the hands of a single government will ALWAYS end in corruption, surely that’s obvious?

Under capitalism, individuals are allowed to own enterprises. If they’re corrupted, they’ll fail and other enterprises will supersede them. Under socialism and communism, state monopolies deny ownership and accountability to the public. If they’re corrupted, there is nowhere else to turn.

Join the queue for your turnip rations and be happy you’re equal to all the other miserable people stuck under the regime (except the government officials of course - they’re never equal to the plebs)

How anyone can support far-left ideology after the lessons of the 20th century is beyond me.

> A system that centralises power over everything into the hands of a single government will ALWAYS end in corruption, surely that’s obvious?

See: United States government

See: American police/CJS

See: City governments

> Under capitalism, individuals are allowed to own enterprises.

I live under this system, you don't need to explain it. I can see how it has failed for millions of Americans while propping up the very few.

> How anyone can support far-left ideology after the lessons of the 20th century is beyond me.

I never said I supported Communism. But Capitalism is a failure for the proles due to corruption, favoritism, and purchasing of the [American] government.

I’m not sure the scale of corruption in US government really compares to the scale of corruption that existed in Soviet Russia.

> it has failed for millions of Americans while propping up the very few

It only “fails” for people that lack the capacity or the will to contribute to society.

Whereas far-left ideology destroys wealth, freedom and happiness for everyone except the ruling class.

And the “very few” you describe is actually hundreds of millions of people who enjoy a world class high standard of living in America compared to the rest of the world.

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