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Comment by lokar | Hacker News Reader

I really want to see (good, competitive) candidates making the case for government, and taxes to support it. Most of what people value in public life is supported by taxes (in the sense it would be impossible without them).

But the other side has been allowed to criticize taxes and government unfairly with little to no effective opposition. IMO, there is a strong case to be made that waste and corruption is quite low (as a %), and that almost all non-defense spending is spent well and has a positive impact on society, benefiting everyone.

I see a growing narrative that successful people "earned" everything they have on their own. People think "I paid my way through university, no one gave me anything", obviously complete nonsense. "I built my business from nothing, with no help from the government", and so on.

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At one point there was an article or podcast (freakanomics?) that said most Americans are proud of paying taxes, and have a higher pay rate than most countries. I thought that was interesting. Curious where that’s trending.

>there is a strong case to be made that waste and corruption is quite low (as a %),

This is even worse, not better. If what we see around us were due to corruption and waste, then the corruption might be rooted out and the waste might be curtailed. But if instead what we see is unavoidable as some intrinsic characteristic of bureaucracy and overhead, then your opponents won't be satisfied until they burn it all down and dance naked in the ashes. And I'd be inclined to celebrate with them.

IME, what we see (when we see things we don't like), are things we don't understand. When you take the time to actually dig in and see what's going on, it makes more sense and is neither wasteful or ineffective.

The government is about as effective and efficient as the median large corporation, IMO.

How are you coming to that conclusion? Vibes?

Also why would you expect a large corporation to not be completely bogged down by bureaucracy and inefficiencies? That’s been my experience. The case against large government also applies to large business, it’s just that one has a monopoly on violence and the other has to compete in the market.

Right, all large human organizations have a base-line of inefficiency and corruption, with some amount of variance.

I'm not arguing that is great, or that we should simply expect it. But, that it's somewhat dishonest to portray government as unique in this.

>When you take the time to actually dig in and see what's going on, it makes more sense and is neither wasteful or ineffective.

I'm not disagreeing. So what? It's not wasteful, and it is effective at what the bureaucrats intended it to do. The Baby Stomping Machine 9000 is a marvel of efficiency and stomps babies much more effectively than the old way of stomping on babies. I get that. You're really, truly, factually correct when you say that.

And yet, I don't support it. I oppose it strongly, and I want to see it gone. And if the people who made it are punished afterwards, that's just a bonus. If they are heartbroken and forlorn with it being gone from the world, their tears are sweet nectar.

I get this. Why can't you? I can see it from your perspective. You can't see it from mine.

Large problems often require large groups of humans to address them. Large groups of humans are inefficient. That does not mean we should give up on addressing large problems, or doing the best we can to reduce the inefficiency.

The benefit from addressing the problems outweighs the cost in inefficiency.

Unfortunately the slopulist wing of the Democratic party now mostly favors magical tax-cut-and-programs electoral platforms. For example, all but two of the candidates for governor of California from the Democratic party have tax platforms similar or identical to those of the two Republicans in the race.

Yeah, getting flashbacks to Clinton era Democratic politics. Adopt the core of the Republican position so you can get into power and then do some stuff around the edges.

Wait, didn't Clinton actually balance the budget? That gets props from me; no government since then has actually given Americans an honest picture of what it actually takes to run a balanced budget, which will require some combination of higher taxes and/or decreased spending.

“If we just do a slightly lighter version of exactly what our opponent does everyone will vote for us. Sure, it didn’t work in the past. Sure, most people don’t realize that the ACA was basically Republican policy. Sure, we will never get any credit if we are tough on the border. But this time it will definitely work.”

I long for an actual progressive Democrat party whose ambitions go beyond being the Light Beer version of Republicans.

Agreed but it’s on us to show up more than just every 4 years in the general, which unfortunately I find most critics don’t do (not accusing you of this).

“Don’t vote, can’t complain” is reductionist BUT if you don’t vote every chance you can then it really holds true. Participate, folks! That candidate you like that “has no chance”? Go volunteer for their campaign! Make it possible! Primaries and local elections are often won on the margins. 1-5% changes, which are entirely possible, can change the course of a nation. This isn’t hyperbole, especially in a such hyper partisan times as these.

Hell, you never know when your efforts might lead a president 5-10 years later.

The issue is that it’s actually very difficult to make that pro-taxation argument, because that position doesn’t have much merit. Pretty much everyone’s experience with things ran by the government is purely negative. They waste billions (trillions?) and then print even more money and inflate the currency. And then you end up with completely subpar services at best.

Fun fact, Americans pay more in healthcare taxes than most Canadians. Our healthcare is free. Well, kinda, about ~75% is free, for Americans it’s more like %40.

But there is absolutely no argument that can be made that if we just raise taxes a little bit we can solve all our problems. The math just doesn’t work out.

Personally I favour the thinking of Adam Smith, John Locke, Rothbard and Friedman, the classical liberal tradition, and as governments balloon across the west, more and more people are coming to that same conclusion. Give us a small efficient government, stay out of the market as much as possible with little to no interference, stop printing money and trying to control the economy it from the top down, stop being technocrats, let people live their lives the way they wish.

Can you outline how you would apply that to healthcare?

Apply what to healthcare?

"Give us a small efficient government, stay out of the market as much as possible with little to no interference"

That’s your answer?

> Most of what people value in public life is supported by taxes

Citation needed. If you value something paid for by taxes you should pay for yourself. Feel free to pool your money with all the other people of value the same thing - should be easy if it's most people.

The tax cuts are fine, the only issue is funding them by deficit spending. The government services/entitlement should be cut instead.

Where have you seen that be effective at a large scale?

There are plenty or examples of people getting together and running fiber in their town, or building a road themselves.

If does not need to scale across the entire country, let people self interests drive the decisions instead of a faceless government body that doesn't give a damn about you and has a monopoly on voilence to make sure yoh pay your taxes.

You naively assume that there would be nothing else to fill the gap that would be created if the federal/state government just stopped existing tomorrow.

It's same argument as "who would build the roads if the government didn't exist??". Which is also quite naive, because the government doesn't actually build the roads. It forcefully takes tax payer money and then hires a contractor like any other business would to build the roads. If the government stopped existing businesses and individuals would still need a way to transport their goods, so they would just get together and hire contractors to pave roads so they can deliver goods to customers.

Same goes for just about every government program in existence. Before government welfare people would go to their local church or their community for assistance.

Government run schools have had dropping reading scores for decades even though they have more money being shoveled into them then ever before.

College Tuition costs are through the roof because the government got involved with giving out student loans.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

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