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Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, it's neither. The debtors in this case are the people of Greece, yet the ones who got them indebted are politicians, who misled the population into believing that the expenses the government had were sustainable. Even more important is that the politicians were not voted in by 100% of people, which simply means that many people who lost their money didn't agree with the policy that led to them losing their money.

I don't think anyone with a straight face can now say that democracy is the best solution to running our society, when it, in fact, leads to the situation in which half the population (the ones who vote for the policy) unknowingly oblige the other half (and themselves) to lose their money. This situation is not an exception. This is what's going to happen sooner or later to every other country which has a substantial debt. You can't spend more than you earn without consequences.

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Reasonable points about democracy but as Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

> This is what's going to happen sooner or later to every other country which has a substantial debt.

Actually where the country controls its currency the effects are totally different and if the ECB could certainly step in for tiny Greece if there was a will.

> You can't spend more than you earn without consequences.

Actually the reverse is true for Governments which are like banks and create/destroy money. If they run a persistent surplus they cause the private sector to shrink or increase borrowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqzfOQXCwFg

> Actually where the country controls its currency the effects are totally different and if the ECB could certainly step in for tiny Greece if there was a will.

It's the same thing. If you don't have enough money in the bank to make creditors whole, you print more (thus devaluing what everybody has). If you can't print, you cut their deposits. Either way, creditors are robbed. There is no magical solution here. Mathematics cannot be amended at will of any government.

If you spend more than you earn, someone somewhere someday is paying for it. And the longer you conceal that truth, the harder it is going to hit.

If the creditor is a bank, they're also creating money when they loan it out. Who is being robbed again?

In theory, it's either the shareholders, boldholders, or the broader citizenry that carry the risk in the banking system. So far Europe's governments have hung the risk on its citizens because either the banking system is too fragile to handle large defaults, or they want to preserve their bond holder and shareholder friends. probably a mix of both since they convinced €140b worth of bondholders to take a 50% haircut on Greece back in 2012. the hedge funds really were the main case of anyone getting "robbed" but that's what we call "credit risk".

The ECB can't handle Greece on its own because it has much stricter rules than a sovereign central bank would. It's bad financial architecture.

Per your last statement, there are MANY U.S. States, especially in the south, that have spent more than they earn at times during the financial crisis. I don't mean government spending, I mean taxes vs. transfers - wherein the Federal government is keeping the people in that state afloat. You don't read about those as much in the papers because we have a fiscal union and automatic stabilizers designed to help our neighbours out when they have problems. Europe lacks this.

Economics is not a morality play of evil debtors and angelic creditors or vice versa. Creditors can and should be wiped out when they make stupid loans. Debtors can and should be held to account but given forgiveness when they screw up (with limits on their ability and size of future screw ups). Failures to do either lead to systemic failures and/or revolutions. This has happened throughout history and will continue to happen regardless of your political system - monarchy, democracy, oligarchy, and anarchy.

There is one difference. When you have a government, it indebts people, who do not necessarily agree or understand the terms and the consequences. You cannot reasonably argue that because 50% voted for that government, 100% should face the consequences.

In fact is 100% plus their children and grandchildren. The real percentage of people marked by the debt that voted for the corrupt government is much, much, lower.

Actually, I can reasonably argue that. We get the government the majority wants (subject to filtering by the property holding oligarchy). I would much rather have that than a libertarian dystopia, which would be pure oligarchy in practice.

That's not an argument. That's a preference to which you'd like to forcefully subject people who disagree with you.

It was an argument: it had premises and a conclusion. The premises happen to disagree with yours.

The premise might expose a preference but that's because we are debating politics, wherein at some points up the chain of logical reasoning, one needs to pick preferences among conflicting principles.

half the population ... oblige the other half

I'd love to see an experiment where democracy was modified. People should get multiple votes, proportional not to their income or their wealth, but to the amount of taxes they paid the previous year.

There would need to be some sort of limit. E.g. nobody gets less than 1 vote nor more than 10.

But something like that would create what some call "skin in the game". Those people who pay the most money will have the most influence on government.

It's been proposed before, but never implemented AFAIK. Still, "the usual stuff isn't working". Why not some experimenting?

Now, let's extend your idea. Everyone can vote with their dollars for what they want to have in their lives! That way, no one is forced to use products or services someone else imposes on them. Now wouldn't that be the fairest system of all?

How revolutionary! Will be cool to try it for real at least once! Pure capitalism is the form of government that haven't try yet. New Zealand is the closest. The US with 38% of the GDP being public spending hardly/halfly qualify.

I've tried a few times to suggest the idea that people should have more say in which sections/parts of the government their tax money goes to. Similar to the HumbleBundle, with of course the "total tax amount" not being an amount people can change at will. I.e. they still pay taxes, just that they determine where to put more/less.

I.e. let's assume all of government is composed of:

Welfare

Education

War/Military

Police/Protection

By default, individuals start off giving in 25% into each bucket. You know, you could even put limits... e.g. "no more than 70% into any single bucket" and "no less than 10% for any single bucket".

These are just examples, obviously it's not perfect and/or ideal. But the fact that in our modern/digital age we haven't even considered and tried such a thing smacks of absolute hypocrisy. We don't "govern" ourselves in any sort of remote way, and to tell us so by virtue of "noble democracy" is an outright smack in the face if you ask me.

So in other words you think that the wealthy do not yet have enough representation in government?

That's quite a bold claim.

Like I said, an "experiment". Really a "thought experiment" since I don't see this being constitutional anywhere in the USA, and I'm not familiar enough with other countries to know where it could be tried.

Here's something simpler: Look at your previous year Federal tax return. If it shows that you paid even $1 in taxes, you get a vote in Federal elections. If not, then no vote. Same with State taxes.

Simple enough? Or would that still give too much representation to "the wealthy"?

Edit: I suppose one could voluntarily pay $1 in taxes just to get a vote. But this would probably be considered a "poll tax", and that has definitely been ruled unconstitutional in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_%28United_States%29

>Here's something simpler: Look at your previous year Federal tax return. If it shows that you paid even $1 in taxes, you get a vote in Federal elections. >Simple enough? Or would that still give too much representation to "the wealthy"?

No, but then again it's not substantially different to what we already have, so I don't see the point.

WTF is up with your quotation marks anyway?

According to one article, 46% of US households didn't pay any Federal income taxes in 2011.[1]

That was the observation that got Romney in trouble. If those people weren't voting, that would be a very substantially different to what we have now. E.g. quite likely Romney would be president. (Let's not debate if Romney would have done better than Obama. Too much of a tangent.)

You're absolutely right about the "quotation marks". :) I went way overboard. Please accept an upvote as an apology.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/18/w...

Edit: I forgot that, to a considerable minority of people, Romney and Obama aren't substantially different. It's easy to think Republican vs Democrat is the entirety of the political spectrum, but it's not.

This is just begs the question of what the tax policy should be. If mainly income is taxed, then the rich get (proportionally) more votes. If mainly consumption is taxed, then everyone else (those who spend their income rather than save/invest it) gets more votes.

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