Comment by bendotc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bendotc | Hacker News Reader

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> Government spending does improve the economy, but not as much as tax cuts do. If you give money back to the market, it is guaranteed to be spent efficiently.

That's debatable. For example, Moody's Economy believes otherwise (see page 9 of http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/Economic_Stimulu...).

Now, I'm not saying one or the other is correct (I know enough to know I don't have the tools to judge), but you say this as a statement of fact when it's not a settled question at all.

> Government spending involves special interests (spending that benefits a small amount of people at the expense of everyone) and incurs some wasteful spending. Example: John Murtha airport http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/23/murtha.airport/index.....

Yes, and so do tax cuts. In the US, we have a menagerie of various taxes and exceptions and brackets, etc., and it's very easy to tweak it to benefit special interests, like we have many times in the past. That doesn't invalidate the idea of passing tax cuts just like earmarks don't invalidate the idea of government spending.

> I thought the article was good in comparing a household (something everyone can compare to) to a government made up of the people. No household could ever keep up that deficit without forcefully taking money from someone else.

I'm not advocating for the deficit, but just because you like the analogy doesn't make correct. Likening a household's budget to the United States' budget is like likening a photon to a race-car: any similarities there are are very shallow, and you're likely to come away with huge misconceptions.

This is actually precisely why I hate seeing economics articles on social news sites: it's a lot of propagation of (often wrong) ideas within a community of people with insufficient knowledge to be able to sort the good from the bad.

I really wish we'd just stick to what we're good at, rather than getting into the subject of macroeconomics and politics around here.

The problem with your argument is that there are huge sections of human knowledge in which we really don't know that much -- even experts. In fact, I'd wager there's a hell of a lot more stuff that's debatable than most people would be comfortable knowing about.

I've said it before: I don't think any topics should be off-limits as long as people can reasonably discuss them. In fact, I think it's a test of a community to see what it can productively discuss and what it can't.

Startups are full of people acting under intense pressure with incomplete information. As such, these topics are just little baby toys, artificial constructs of arguments that have little real impact on people's lives. Being able to have reasonable conversations about emotional and important things with incomplete information is something we should all strive for, not something we should be afraid of.

"The problem with your argument is that there are huge sections of human knowledge in which we really don't know that much -- even experts. In fact, I'd wager there's a hell of a lot more stuff that's debatable than most people would be comfortable knowing about."

I don't see how this is a problem with my argument. I didn't claim that we should only discuss things about which we have complete information, I was instead suggesting that this community is so information-poor on this subject that we lack the tools to separate right from wrong or reasonable from unreasonable. I was also objecting to the claim of opinion as fact, which I find misleads (usually unintentionally, as often these opinions are believed to be fact).

And to be clear, I'm not talking about us not being steeped in theoretical economics, but rather that most of us couldn't answer questions which have factual, discoverable answers, such as how modern banking works, how money is created, what the role and powers of the Federal Reserve are, etc. These are questions with real, factual answers, but the way these things work is often incredibly complex and counterintuitive, and cannot be gleaned from a couple hours with an introductory book or Wikipedia.

And in case I'm coming across as being condescending, I'd just like to say that I don't consider myself to be an economist and I don't think it's reasonable for anyone to be an expert at everything.

"I've said it before: I don't think any topics should be off-limits as long as people can reasonably discuss them."

Agreed, and I have seen very few reasonable discussions of economics around here.

"Startups are full of people acting under intense pressure with incomplete information. As such, these topics are just little baby toys, artificial constructs of arguments that have little real impact on people's lives."

So, we may as well be debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

"Being able to have reasonable conversations about emotional and important things with incomplete information is something we should all strive for, not something we should be afraid of."

And forming or refining beliefs in the absence of information is something we should be afraid of, not strive for.

And forming or refining beliefs in the absence of information is something we should be afraid of

I think this gets to the heart of our differences. I don't know things, so I ask people. Or I take up positions which others can criticize. As part of a discussion, I learn more. If modern banking practices are germane, educate me on them.

You, I think, seem to feel that there is some threshold of knowledge that one must reach in order to talk reasonably about something. I, on the other hand, acknowledge that more information is better than less, but that doesn't give me the freedom to not act on things. I learn by both conversing and experimentation.

There is a concept called "strong opinions, weakly held" You might want to look into it.

As a side note, the internet is full of folks spouting off about things they know little about. So is life. Democracy is built on the concept of average voters voting on policies about complicated matters. Either learn to deal with these topics as part and parcel of community life or prepare to be frustrated a lot.

"I think this gets to the heart of our differences. I don't know things, so I ask people. Or I take up positions which others can criticize. As part of a discussion, I learn more. If modern banking practices are germane, educate me on them."

"There is a concept called 'strong opinions, weakly held' You might want to look into it."

These are fine methods of learning when you're surrounded by people significantly more knowledgeable than yourself. The problem is precisely the situation I was discussing: when you don't have a critical mass of knowledgeable people, it's the blind leading the blind, and thanks to the Dunning-Krueger effect, it's unlikely that you'll be able to tell who among the chorus of voices knows what they're talking about, and may even have trouble recognizing that you're going down the wrong path.

"As a side note, the internet is full of folks spouting off about things they know little about. So is life. Democracy is built on the concept of average voters voting on policies about complicated matters."

And direct democracy isn't terribly prevalent. Representative democracy, however, is based on electing representatives who are either themselves more knowledgeable or who can talk to (or employ) those who are on a whole range of subjects. And even on this count, I would argue we generally need to work on finding ways around our biases to make better selections.

"Either learn to deal with these topics as part and parcel of community life or prepare to be frustrated a lot."

You think my options are "live with it" or "be frustrated?" I choose the third option, to advocate for improvement, to advocate for greater education where it makes sense in the public sphere (such as economics), and to advocate for systems of government that are more resistant to direct action on matters that are likely to be adversely affected by common misunderstandings.

You think my options are "live with it" or "be frustrated?" I choose the third option, to advocate for improvement

Then you've chosen my second choice, living with it. Advocating for improvement is exercising your options to participate in the conversation, even if your participation only amounts to acknowledging our collective lack of knowledge.

Isn't it great that reasonable people can discuss things that are complicated? Think of how many intractable problems have been solved because people were too stupid not to know they were insolvable?

Expertise is easy -- you can rent it when you need it. Highly-effective teams working tough problems are not easy. It's perfectly legitimate to say something along the lines of "hey, we're sadly lacking in knowledge here, and here are the steps we should take to improve things" but that is a just another form of participation.

You're conflating what I was saying with the idea that we should just say "it's complicated, everyone should give up," which is just silly. What I'm saying is that if we don't stand on the shoulders of giants, there is a limit to how far we can go. And specifically, I'm talking about subjects which are counterintuitive at a basic level, and are not well learned by informal discussion, but instead demand rigorous study. The pernicious thing about these subjects is that it is hard for an outsider to judge good from bad without doing the math or scientific experiments themselves. Most subjects thankfully don't fall into this category, but economics, quantum physics, a lot of medicine, and a lot of math do.

This, by the way, is precisely why it is so difficult for us to "rent" certain expertise when you need it: non-technical people have a hard time hiring a good programmer because they don't have a basis to judge programmers off of. As it turns out, the guy who can talk the most convincingly is often not the person who is the most knowledgeable or skilled.

An aside:

"Then you've chosen my second choice, living with it."

That's ridiculous. The idiomatic phrase "live with it" means that you put up with or endure it. It is pretty much the opposite of working to change something. By your logic, "be frustrated" would also be "living with it" as anything short of killing myself or becoming a hermit would. This is just being obtuse.

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