Can you convince me that government is inevitably incompetent?

[robartsd]

The government is better than private industry at doing some things . . . like environmental protection.

I'd argue that's not necessarily true.  The government has a tendency to not know about "good enough" or "cost/benefit analysis". 

Completely made up, let's say you can make a powerplant 99% clean with a filter that costs, I dunno, $10k a year per exhaust stack.  Then there is another filter or process that makes the same plant 99.5% clean, but costs $1M to implement.

I don't trust the government to stop at 99% and not chase that extra .5%, cost be damned.

And I don't trust industry to not go ahead and say, lets ditch the 10k per year solution and make our share price rise 25 cents by cutting costs.  After all, the pollution likely won't affect us for awhile and maybe by then there will be a more cost effective solution......It's not like industry has been doing that since its formation in the absence of government intervention.

That's why I always propose that government be funded by taxes on externalities. Say the tax on the pollution for the unfiltered exhaust is $20k - now putting a $10k filter on reduces the tax to $200, but putting the $1M filter would only save another $100, so it is not worth it. I oppose "Cap and Trade" not on the basis that we need financial incentives to conserve, but on the basis that someone gets to issue these valuable carbon credits that are bought and sold. I would have no problem with a tax on fossil fuels (but be sure it includes a tarif on imports to account for the fossil fuel that contributed to manufacture and transport).

[shenlong55]

Thanks for the questions, I appreciate the discussion.  Don't focus so much on the details of possible solutions to the specific problems, and don't think of it as tearing down government.  Look at UBI as an example.  I don't think UBI is a good idea.  I think it is a better alternative to the current social safety net.  That's an important distinction.  Where UBI is better is that it is the least interventionist way to have a largely unnecessary program.  I get it though, if you believe that modern society would let children starve to death absent government intervention, then yes, it's necessary to have that government intervention, I just don't have such a jaded view of the american public (or any other developed nation).

Re: scalpels.  That's the fallacy I'm trying to point out.  The lack of scalpels isn't a design flaw in our particular construction of government, it is impossible for government to work that way.  For it to work that way, it would have to be impossibly large and powerful, and would become so large that we instead call it the culture or the people.  The scalpel is the individual being personally responsible for making the right decision and being free to do so.  Go back to the milk example, the government simply cannot make the right decision for how to help you.  And so we get big clumsy things like the EITC or SNAP.

Actually, I think UBI is exactly the type of scalpel your looking for because of studies like the one discussed in this article.  I don't think modern society would let children starve in the streets because modern society is largely able to meet our basic needs, so we're not forced to make the types of horrible decisions that would lead to that.  Something like a UBI that covers basic necessities enables people to make the kinds of decisions that you are looking for.  It doesn't make any decisions for you, it just allows you to make the best decisions for your future without constantly needing to worry about surviving right now.  It's not big and complex, it would actually simplify the programs that we have now.  So I actually think it fits your description of a scalpel pretty well.

re: price fixing.  That would be a fair recasting of how I view it.  If you look at the effects of price fixing, the negative externalities, the temptation is to blame that on bad actors.  However, as their behavior is perfectly consistent with rational actors exposed to new conditions, it is wrong to do so.  It shouldn't be surprising that artificially fixing a price too low causes shortages, and too high causes surplus (any more than it shouldn't be surprising to realize we can't possibly fix it at "just right").  What might be a revelation is that if you take the negative externalities associated with explicit price fixing, and look at other things that also cause that same set of externalities to occur, you arrive at the total group of actions described as governmental market interventions.  So I lump them altogether not by what we intended to do (fix price) but by what we actually did (fuck everything up).

I suppose that's a fair view, but personally I feel that there's enough space between price fixing and subsidies to make a distinction.

Re: social security.  I said at the time it was a bad example because this is a pretty good program, and at the time it was something that really did make a huge difference to a lot of people.  Social security is probably the thing that created the middle class, as it freed people from their parents as burdens.  So there's no disputing the good that it did, which means I don't like bringing it up in this context because most people haven't really thought about what social security has done, and while some of it might be nice, doesn't mean it isn't wrong.

So the first thing:  There are old people eating catfood.  So as good as it is, it clearly is not enough.  And its failures aren't talked about, and its presence makes it harder to get help for what still remains: seniors do still live in poverty.  Nobody is working on that problem.  You see the occasional newspaper article talking about tips to live on social security, like getting a roommate or sharing a car with another senior, but the fact that it is hailed as a "solution" while being an underwhelming standard of living at best proves my point.

While I do view social security as a solution (particularly as it's a partial UBI) I never said that it was, currently, a perfect solution.  I know that it still needs work, that's why I want to improve and expand it.  So I don't view it as a failure, I view it as a work in progress.

For most of America, the generational household is a thing of the past.

I'm going to posit that this isn't necessarily a good thing.  I get it, living with your parents sucks.  But it is economically devastating to a multitude of people that moving out before you can support yourself is "normal."  That transition began as a direct result of social security.  You could kick out your ungrateful scumbucket teenager kid (because you wouldn't need them in your old age), you could kick out your ungrateful scumbucket parent (because now they don't need you).

Social security kicked off a generational arms race, where now parents don't have to maintain relationships with their children and children don't have to feel guilty about providing for their parents.

This is great!  This is also terrible.

It was necessary.  People suddenly able to live a lot longer but work still not being something one can (or would want) to do post becoming old and decrepit.  But here it is 60 something years later (I didn't do the math on that just, whatever, it's been around awhile), and rather than figuring out something better than social security, we've just glossed over these aspects, say its the greatest thing, joke about how it is unsustainable, and carry on.  Anyone who grew up with a grandparent that lived with them can probably relate to how foreign and strange that was to all of their friends.  All of those grandparents, if they didn't grow up with a grandparent living with them it was because the grandparent was dead.  The greatest generation, were raised by their whole families, not just parents.  Our parents, by contrast, saw their grandparents twice a year at most.

All so we can spend as much possible to live in half-empty houses as far from each other as possible.  Worth it.

It's almost as though the negative externalities in government get ignored at the expense of the public while the entrenched governmental interest carries on.  I thought that was something that was only true of evil corporations trashing the environment.  Hmmm.

This is something that I probably hadn't thought about as much as you and will likely spend some time thinking about in the next few days.  However, my first reaction would be to say that I want families to stay together because they want to stay together, not because they have to.  Like you, I happen to think a lot of humanity and believe that when given the opportunity we will make good decisions.  When our basic necessities are not met, then whether it's true or not, we often don't feel like we have a choice.  I think that if our basic necessities are taken care of we would be able to spend more time with family and do other things that we both would probably like to see more of.  I know I would see my family more if I wasn't stuck a state a way having to be here for work everyday and I'd like to think that others would make similar choices when given the opportunity.

[TheOldestYoungMan]

Well, and its worth noting that people did make the choice to not live in generational households before, and not everyone had children, and not everyone was outlived by their children, thus the old people living in poverty in the first place at the founding of social security.  Having the freedom to go off on your own is definitely a great thing.  But if you choose not to, you can't take advantage of numerous tax advantages and breaks that come from incurring certain expenses.  In essence, if you don't live the life envisioned by the nanny state, you are paying extra taxes to subsidize those who do.

As for social security being a work in progress, well, it's been quite a long time since life expectancy significantly outstripped viable working life, and we've made zero improvements to social security (and there's solid arguments it has gotten worse) and also zero progress on financial literacy.  As someone who had to take a standardized test every single year in school starting at grade 2, but was never once required to take a personal finance or home economics class, I'm just glad I encountered enough people who cared about me to start me on the path to FI before I was too far in debt to be saved.

I also don't see steps towards integrating seniors into the workplace more.  Most of the seniors I know who retired would be fine to keep working, they just can't do full days/5 days per week.  Fuck that, most people I know period would rather not have to work 5+days/wk, myself included.  I'd happily take a 60% pay cut and work only two days a week, if I could find that job.  But if you really want to go down a government regulation rabbit hole, "standard work week" and all of its ramifications is a great place to start.

The complexity of the world we live in is such that virtually any failure you want to point to in society and blame on a company or on people, government isn't some powerless thing standing by that would help if only you vote for the right politician, rather it is a complicit and active participant, if not initially, then certainly now.  The thing that was started to keep people from having to do more than that becomes a thing that requires them to do at least that.  And so you find out pretty quickly if you try any nontraditional business model that swimming against the grain is heavily discouraged.  You are "avoiding your obligations" by hiring only part time workers, etc.

Re: UBI.  Like I said, I like UBI, but where it fails to be a scalpel is that the level of tax required to support any meaningful UBI would itself be a fairly large hurdle to overcome.  As a blanket applied to everyone it is definitionally not scalpel-esque (of or pertaining to scalpels, let's spell scalpel one more time!).  So UBI gives the person making $2billion/yr the same as one making $0/yr.  That's equal but it isn't what the person making 2bil needs or wants.  She'd prolly prefer the right to park anywhere or a couple free murders in this lifetime.  What you're talking about is after we've decided to have a social safety net, and I 100% agree that UBI is the best way to have that safety net.  But the tax burden of maintaining the social safety net will be high, and arguably it will be high regardless of how productive we as a society become.  Maybe that's OK, maybe it's the best way, but taxes are to the free man what burdens are to the slave, no shame in shirking them.

[shenlong55]

Well, and its worth noting that people did make the choice to not live in generational households before, and not everyone had children, and not everyone was outlived by their children, thus the old people living in poverty in the first place at the founding of social security.  Having the freedom to go off on your own is definitely a great thing.  But if you choose not to, you can't take advantage of numerous tax advantages and breaks that come from incurring certain expenses.  In essence, if you don't live the life envisioned by the nanny state, you are paying extra taxes to subsidize those who do.

I don't necessarily disagree with you here, but I do think that the state has a legitimate interest in encouraging some actions over others, at least for now.  I always prefer rewarding good behavior over punishing bad behavior when possible though.  So I'm always looking for ways to lessen punishments and improve rewards while still achieving the goals that we want to achieve.

As for social security being a work in progress, well, it's been quite a long time since life expectancy significantly outstripped viable working life, and we've made zero improvements to social security (and there's solid arguments it has gotten worse) and also zero progress on financial literacy.  As someone who had to take a standardized test every single year in school starting at grade 2, but was never once required to take a personal finance or home economics class, I'm just glad I encountered enough people who cared about me to start me on the path to FI before I was too far in debt to be saved.

I would argue that we have been electing people who aren't really interested in improving it for a while now and it doesn't surprise me that's it's gotten worse since we didn't initially design it to account for the changes that have happened since.  Had we done that or had we been making small changes as we discovered the problems with it then it would probably be in a better place now. 

As to progress on financial literacy, I would say this very website shows some progress on that front.  Not as much as I would like, but I can see the potential for more in the future.  Your not the only one who would love to see personal finance/home economics taught in school.  If I didn't need to work as much to provide for me and my family I might even volunteer to teach such things at school.  I imagine others might do the same.

I also don't see steps towards integrating seniors into the workplace more.  Most of the seniors I know who retired would be fine to keep working, they just can't do full days/5 days per week.  Fuck that, most people I know period would rather not have to work 5+days/wk, myself included.  I'd happily take a 60% pay cut and work only two days a week, if I could find that job.  But if you really want to go down a government regulation rabbit hole, "standard work week" and all of its ramifications is a great place to start.

The complexity of the world we live in is such that virtually any failure you want to point to in society and blame on a company or on people, government isn't some powerless thing standing by that would help if only you vote for the right politician, rather it is a complicit and active participant, if not initially, then certainly now.  The thing that was started to keep people from having to do more than that becomes a thing that requires them to do at least that.  And so you find out pretty quickly if you try any nontraditional business model that swimming against the grain is heavily discouraged.  You are "avoiding your obligations" by hiring only part time workers, etc.

Have you heard of ROWE?  Again, it's admittedly not as big of a movement as I would like it to be.  But it does seem like progress to me.  And I imagine that I would agree with you about getting rid of a lot of workplace regulations, I just think we need something like a UBI first.  One of many reasons I love the idea of UBI is because once you remove the possibility of someone feeling like they have to sacrifice their health/future to survive I no longer mind getting rid of most if not all workplace regulations.  If people don't rely on their jobs to survive then I believe they will leave horrible workplaces ending those businesses and ensuring that other businesses don't take up similar bad practices.  As long as workers need jobs to survive though, the market can't eliminate bad business practices against workers because workers will take bad jobs to survive.

Re: UBI.  Like I said, I like UBI, but where it fails to be a scalpel is that the level of tax required to support any meaningful UBI would itself be a fairly large hurdle to overcome.  As a blanket applied to everyone it is definitionally not scalpel-esque (of or pertaining to scalpels, let's spell scalpel one more time!).  So UBI gives the person making $2billion/yr the same as one making $0/yr.  That's equal but it isn't what the person making 2bil needs or wants.  She'd prolly prefer the right to park anywhere or a couple free murders in this lifetime.  What you're talking about is after we've decided to have a social safety net, and I 100% agree that UBI is the best way to have that safety net.  But the tax burden of maintaining the social safety net will be high, and arguably it will be high regardless of how productive we as a society become.  Maybe that's OK, maybe it's the best way, but taxes are to the free man what burdens are to the slave, no shame in shirking them.

I realize that something like a UBI would require redistributing resources from those that have the most to those that have the least.  But first, I don't think the burden of maintaining it would be as much as you probably think it would for a variety of reasons.  That would be a whole other big discussion though, so I won't go into it unless your interested in discussing it further.  Partially due to that belief though, I think that it would be worth taking some amount of resources from those of us that have the most in order to raise the living standard of those who have the least, at least until everyone has their basic needs met.  The amount that is reasonable to take and the amount that is reasonable to give is definitely debatable and is likely to change over time, but I think the overall proposition is workable.

ETA: I should probably mention that I'm not talking about making this change overnight.  I realize it would require a lot of changes to our current society, I just think that it's something worth working towards.