> There's a problem here, which is that the latter is something they will have to execute on
That could be slicing it too thin. Either we trust them to work on legislation and regulatory matters or we don't. In which case we have an even larger problem. When I say "execute" I mean the act of creating, administering and running organizations. Yes, there are examples of what I will call corner cases where they do OK.
> Our government put men on the fucking moon
I'm going to pull the "that was a different era" card on that one (and a bunch of others).
One thing that seems to be painfully clear of our era is that we can't seem to get anything of note or scale done. Here in California they sold everyone on high speed rail. Ten billion dollars they said. LA to San Francisco or some such thing. Well, we are up to, I think, $100 billion and, as far as I know, we haven't even built ten miles. Even worse, what we built doesn't even qualify for "high speed" by any stretch of the imagination (and you can't even ride it because it isn't finished). If I remember correctly, the project started in 2008. Twelve years later and we spent ten times what it was supposed to cost and have absolutely nothing to show for it. At this rate we are going to end up spending a trillion dollars on this disaster.
That's what I mean by "government is bad at executing on just about everything". There are so many examples of this its a tragedy.
Here's another one that drives me insane. The postal treaty of 1879. This is the treaty that makes it so parcels from China travel across the US for free. Yes, taxpayers subsidize transit of Chinese shipments through the US. The intent, back then, was good: Help developing nations gain access to markets and grow. China is the second economy in the world. This treaty is beyond ridiculous. I, as a US-based manufacturer, cannot compete with Chinese counterparts along a number of vectors. And yet, if my cost structure was exactly the same and my COGS was exactly the same as theirs, I could not ship across the US for free...and they can.
How incompetent do politicians have to be not to understand something like this and rescind it 25 to 30 years ago, if not earlier? The only politician in memory who even spoke about this and wanted to rescind it was Trump. And, of course, because our politicians are far more interested in party warfare than actually delivering results for the nation, nobody supported him. And here we are, subsidizing China's businesses.
This is a failure of execution in the sense that, when a problem is identified you move to resolve it. Ignoring something like this handicaps every single US business and it is objectively wrong.
> The right answer isn't easy; it may not exist at all
I could not agree more. While I believe my analysis of the various scenarios we discussed has merit, I have completely failed at even imagining what a real executable solution could look like. The reason, I think, is that the system has so many moving parts, so many variables, and such history, that it is now nearly impossible to alter the course we are on. Well, until we crash into a bank and they have to dig us out of the mud. Sorry, didn't mean to be defeatist...I just haven't come across anyone who can conclusively demonstrate that we have path out of this mess.
> Unfortunately, your vision of government stepping back to let private enterprise (with a gentle guiding hand) create a utopia where all people are provided for in their every need seems just as hopelessly idealistic as anything else.
Likely so.
This is where we can start to get into a philosophical discussion, the start of which is a simple question that is likely almost impossible to answer completely:
Are human beings free; or are we meant to be controlled by a ruling class?
These are two extremes. At the "I am free, man" end of things you have a complete mess. All you have to do is look at what happens at a Walmart when people get desperate. And, of course, at the "submit to our rule" extreme you have pain and misery...because men are evil to each other and we do evil things to each other...that's why my grandparents had to face a genocide and the death of so many members of their family...just because they existed.
I don't believe we do well in a 100% free state. What I mean by that is that humanity has shown this framework doesn't deliver a better life for the community, much less a large nation. In fact, this has never reached the scale of an entire nation for a reason; it doesn't work.
We do have examples of the opposite extreme, and as I said, it ends badly. I think reading The Gulag Archipelago should be required reading (perhaps in abridged form) in order for our young adults to understand what some of these systems can turn into.
I can't tell you what the right balance between those extremes might be. The US seems to oscillate around a centroid that has, so far, delivered decent standards of living and a sense of future that does not exist in other parts of the world. And yet I shudder to think about what could happen here if and when unemployment doubles or triples due to the almost impossible-to-stop domination of business markets by China.
What then? How will we behave? How are our politics going to change?
I have my predictions --based on having lived in multiple cultures, including under military rule. I'll spare readers the gory details at this point. It's too depressing to write about.
Here's a painful and personal example of the dysfunction one can experience in our broken medical system.
My mother is dealing with stage four pancreatic cancer. She has done OK but, of course, there is no stage five for a reason.
She is currently in the hospital (I was with her yesterday; I typed my prior comment from the hospital) with some complications. Doing OK, we think.
Here's the bullshit: Her oncologist can't go see her at the hospital because he is not in the system. The best they can do is consult with him over the phone for his opinion and then make their own decisions. Yes, she is on the ACA.
The sheer lunacy of this scenario is hard to describe with words. Screaming is more in line with a proper description.
I am not going to blame government for this. I have no clue how this situation is so other than to understand that it is about money, about who gets paid for what. And yet, our government makes the laws and rules that govern such industries. They have fucked up healthcare beyond what any objective observer would, I suspect, think is a good system that serves patients as first class citizens in a healthcare system.
Even in third world countries your doctor can come see you at any hospital. Here, in the US. Not so.
If you were wondering why I am so down on what our politicians have done (or not done) over decades, it comes from far more than an academic thought exercise.
Really sorry to hear about your mom. I wish her the best.
I'd been meaning to write a more substantial reply to your last comment, but I've been underwater at work and haven't had the time; maybe this weekend. But I do think we have a lot of common ground, and you certainly won't hear me defending our current healthcare system or many of our current politicians.
No problem. Part of life. She is doing fine and out of the hospital for now. Thanks.
One of the issues I have with trying to have longer discussions on HN is that there are a lot of non-participants who have nothing better to do than to downvote rather than participate. I don't care about the little karma counter, could not care less. What I do care about is being able to have reasonably intelligent discussions where people might not necessarily agree without using karma violence to silence one or more participants by eventually having posts flagged, etc.
HN, for the most part, is a decent community and they have done a great job of maintaining order. As someone who has been participating on discussion communities since the days of USNET I am equipped to fully appreciate the effort that has gone into HN.
That said --and I know this is hard-- I wish they could figure out a way to eliminate what I perceive as sophomoric punitive down-voting that is generally devoid of any substance and has, from my perspective, no value at all.
The only way we learn anything is to engage in substantive conversations where we openly explore ideas we might necessarily agree with. Canceling those we might not align with serves nobody, does not lead to anyone learning and all sides of an argument lose.
Yes, I know this is a hard problem.
-------------------
My general view of what government can accomplish and how tends to be very negative because I have seen them muck-up just about everything they touch. People will demand more from a fast food restaurant than the politicians they elected. It's crazy.
For example: Why is it that politicians suffer absolutely no consequences for lying to us? None. In fact, as a matter of law, if you or I lie to the federal government we go to jail. They can lie to us on a daily basis without consequences. How is that possible. You lie to a police officer and, same thing, the consequences to you are severe. The opposite is not true.
This asymmetry is very, very wrong. And yet, as I mentioned, we demand more of a fast food eatery than the politicians we elect. How does that happen? Lack of education? Lack of information? Indifference?
Same with the freedom of the press. Do we really think the bill of rights created this protection to include lies, fabrication and manipulation? I know this isn't an easy problem to solve. Sure. Well, how many centuries do we need to sort it out?
Oh, wait, these are things that require politicians to do their jobs. Never mind.
Yeah, the idea of having these people have full control of healthcare terrifies me.
That could be slicing it too thin. Either we trust them to work on legislation and regulatory matters or we don't. In which case we have an even larger problem. When I say "execute" I mean the act of creating, administering and running organizations. Yes, there are examples of what I will call corner cases where they do OK.
> Our government put men on the fucking moon
I'm going to pull the "that was a different era" card on that one (and a bunch of others).
One thing that seems to be painfully clear of our era is that we can't seem to get anything of note or scale done. Here in California they sold everyone on high speed rail. Ten billion dollars they said. LA to San Francisco or some such thing. Well, we are up to, I think, $100 billion and, as far as I know, we haven't even built ten miles. Even worse, what we built doesn't even qualify for "high speed" by any stretch of the imagination (and you can't even ride it because it isn't finished). If I remember correctly, the project started in 2008. Twelve years later and we spent ten times what it was supposed to cost and have absolutely nothing to show for it. At this rate we are going to end up spending a trillion dollars on this disaster.
That's what I mean by "government is bad at executing on just about everything". There are so many examples of this its a tragedy.
Here's another one that drives me insane. The postal treaty of 1879. This is the treaty that makes it so parcels from China travel across the US for free. Yes, taxpayers subsidize transit of Chinese shipments through the US. The intent, back then, was good: Help developing nations gain access to markets and grow. China is the second economy in the world. This treaty is beyond ridiculous. I, as a US-based manufacturer, cannot compete with Chinese counterparts along a number of vectors. And yet, if my cost structure was exactly the same and my COGS was exactly the same as theirs, I could not ship across the US for free...and they can.
How incompetent do politicians have to be not to understand something like this and rescind it 25 to 30 years ago, if not earlier? The only politician in memory who even spoke about this and wanted to rescind it was Trump. And, of course, because our politicians are far more interested in party warfare than actually delivering results for the nation, nobody supported him. And here we are, subsidizing China's businesses.
This is a failure of execution in the sense that, when a problem is identified you move to resolve it. Ignoring something like this handicaps every single US business and it is objectively wrong.
> The right answer isn't easy; it may not exist at all
I could not agree more. While I believe my analysis of the various scenarios we discussed has merit, I have completely failed at even imagining what a real executable solution could look like. The reason, I think, is that the system has so many moving parts, so many variables, and such history, that it is now nearly impossible to alter the course we are on. Well, until we crash into a bank and they have to dig us out of the mud. Sorry, didn't mean to be defeatist...I just haven't come across anyone who can conclusively demonstrate that we have path out of this mess.
> Unfortunately, your vision of government stepping back to let private enterprise (with a gentle guiding hand) create a utopia where all people are provided for in their every need seems just as hopelessly idealistic as anything else.
Likely so.
This is where we can start to get into a philosophical discussion, the start of which is a simple question that is likely almost impossible to answer completely:
Are human beings free; or are we meant to be controlled by a ruling class?
These are two extremes. At the "I am free, man" end of things you have a complete mess. All you have to do is look at what happens at a Walmart when people get desperate. And, of course, at the "submit to our rule" extreme you have pain and misery...because men are evil to each other and we do evil things to each other...that's why my grandparents had to face a genocide and the death of so many members of their family...just because they existed.
I don't believe we do well in a 100% free state. What I mean by that is that humanity has shown this framework doesn't deliver a better life for the community, much less a large nation. In fact, this has never reached the scale of an entire nation for a reason; it doesn't work.
We do have examples of the opposite extreme, and as I said, it ends badly. I think reading The Gulag Archipelago should be required reading (perhaps in abridged form) in order for our young adults to understand what some of these systems can turn into.
I can't tell you what the right balance between those extremes might be. The US seems to oscillate around a centroid that has, so far, delivered decent standards of living and a sense of future that does not exist in other parts of the world. And yet I shudder to think about what could happen here if and when unemployment doubles or triples due to the almost impossible-to-stop domination of business markets by China.
What then? How will we behave? How are our politics going to change?
I have my predictions --based on having lived in multiple cultures, including under military rule. I'll spare readers the gory details at this point. It's too depressing to write about.