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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
ranma-official
taxloopholes

libertarians: there’s a small elite class of people that shouldn’t have such a huge amount of control over the economy

me: yah

libertarians: it’s only the public sector

me: nah

triggeredmedia

Have you ever met a libertarian?

You are describing liberals. They believe public sector rules and we need more govt.

taxloopholes

…that’s not what this means. i explained it here: http://taxloopholes.tumblr.com/post/160617784322/the-libertarian-transhumanist-the-only

triggeredmedia

So you are against wealth?

Do you believe someone else being rich prevents you from being rich?

Do you believe their is any govt regulations that help people gain wealth?

Do you believe people do not have a right to be wealthy?

taxloopholes

that’s not what I said.

I’m pointing out that the argument from libertarians that it’s governments making corporations push their interests against the public good is bullshit because it disregards how and what brought about basic regulation in the first place and what corporations do overseas WITHOUT regulations protecting workers.

I also said it’s ridiculous that just 8 people have more wealth than 3.6 BILLION people is a bit ridiculous, especially considering Western corporations rely on global poverty for cheap labor. so yes I have a problem with multi billion dollar corporations paying people starvation wages and pushing the narrative that they earned that money without exploitation. even billionaires admit to this which is pretty ironic.

if you already disagree there’s not much I can do to change your mind, though.

ranma-official

The “8 people have more wealth than X billion” statisic is a bit disingenuous if I’m right about the exact statisic you’re citing.

It’s not that we can just redistribute that wealth amongst these X billion and fix poverty, because these X billion actually have zero or negative net worth, meaning it won’t even make a dent. So that’s a completely different problem that needs a completely different solution.

I’m not sure what kind, though.

mitigatedchaos

Only what is produced can be consumed. Need to keep teching up and expanding production.

Were I in charge I might also pursue development programs in stable militarily-allied countries in order to build a high-powered international bloc, transforming the national interest into one that could justify this kind of investment, buuut much of the Left would despise me.

Source: comcastkills politics the iron hand the black forest country the invisible fist

More you might like

slartibartfastibast
slartibartfastibast: “ anaisnein: “ It’s not just this, it’s a fundamental inability to *identify* with other people and realize that *that could be me*. Today I am 31 and healthy and always exercise regularly and eat well so why should I pay for...
anaisnein

It’s not just this, it’s a fundamental inability to *identify* with other people and realize that *that could be me*.

Today I am 31 and healthy and always exercise regularly and eat well so why should I pay for other people’s expensive preexisting conditions and disabilities? Because obviously it’s not possible that when I’m 34 I might get diagnosed with an autoimmune disease or a chronic leukemia and need expensive meds forever. Or that when I’m 36 I might have a child with cerebral palsy who is able to live a full, rich, happy and ~productive~ life but will need expensive healthcare and ongoing assistance to do so. Or that when I’m 48 I might get hit by a car and be left unable to work full time, in need of assistance, etc, myself. Or that when I’m 53 I might get some random-bad-luck cancer (let’s make it easy: not even talk about how lung cancer does in fact happen to nonsmokers or how in any case it’s disgusting to call it “fair” when it happens to a smoker because that punishment doesn’t fit the crime you sadists; instead, let’s consider one of the myriad cancers that hits at genuine fucking random or by some familial genetic vulnerability the individual can’t affect) for which a curative treatment actually exists but it costs $260,000 and without it the prognosis is eighteen months.

Same applies to poverty. (And for some of the same reasons as already sketched, as well as economic cycles and industrial shifts and automation and so on.)

It’s this pervasive prosperity-gospel belief that bad things by definition only happen to the undeserving and trying to help people who experience misfortune is hubris and interfering with the will of the great gods Natural Selection and The Market and doomed to create more problems than it solves because fate favors the lucky because the lucky are deserving because Gnon because *blithering evil*.

slartibartfastibast

I don’t know how to explain thermodynamics and free lunch stuff to people who don’t already have some acquired grounding in physical reality. I also keep saying that caring about other people isn’t the problem (Richard Spencer would probably say he “cares about people”). It’s caring about systems, some of which take care of people (and in a catastrophic failure would become unable to take care of people at all) that’s the problem. If you’re too nihilistically individualized, you’ll apparenrly fail to notice how systems fit together (and don’t). Screaming about it doesn’t seem to help, because systems still fail even when you scream at them. I don’t have an easy answer, but if the most widespread centrist position means ignoring Rotherham-type stuff, then fuck that too.

mitigatedchaos

The economy is like the tyranny of a rocket equation.  You only have so much fuel, the gravity between the worlds is already there and you can’t change it.  

It is physically impossible to meet all the goals - there just aren’t enough resources (natural resources * capital * labor * technology) to accomplish them all.

American GDP-per-capita is above $50,000.  Foreign GDPs outside of a few hyper-efficient places like Hong Kong or Singapore are lower.

If one person takes $3,000,000 to keep alive, you have effectively consumed the complete economic output of one person’s whole entire life.

But it’s worse than that, because our worker had to pay for housing, for food, for transport, for education, and taxes to support all the secondary systems required, and also raise a child to perpetuate the system.  If all that’s leftover after all that is $10,000 per year, then any $3,000,000 case consumes the total lifetime surplus resources of five workers.

And I look at many of these cases and do think “fuck, that could be me” - which is part of why I suggested a wage subsidy program!

But a lot of Leftist or Liberal language wants to allow people to create unlimited burdens on society.  They want us to pay for treatment while not allowing us to prohibit people from doing things that would require more treatment, or creating people that require more treatment.

You can’t have both!  You can’t have both!

The fewer the number of people that require expensive treatment, the more resources you can spend on them.  The more that need expensive treatment, relative to the size of the productive economy, the less you can spend on each one, until it falls below the level required for them to survive.

If is vitally important that society become more efficient and more technologically advanced.  We must produce more, and more efficiently.

And we can’t just throw aside social technologies.  If broken homes fuck people up, statistically, and cause them not to do well in the labor force, then the cost of that comes out of liver transplants, not just ferraris.

Source: resistdrumpf the invisible fist the iron hand flagpost policy my politics national technocracy politics
argumate
argumate

All the NTSB recommendations are technically trade offs that have costs; consider American Airlines Flight 191 which crashed on take off killing everyone on board and two people on the ground after an engine separated from the wing due to improper maintenance procedures had cracked the pylon.

While 273 people may have died, the improper shortcuts taken during engine maintenance saved 200 man hours per aircraft! Why, the meddling FAA banning this procedure may have done more harm than the original crash!

mitigatedchaos

Nah it’s alright fam,

If we assume that the GDP per capita is $55,000, and that the typical passenger has 35 working years remaining, we can just have the state bill the company and its shareholders $525,525,000 and put them into debt bondage and sell off their assets if they are unwilling or unable to pay.

Now you may object to the state rolling around and charging huge sums of money as payment for accidental deaths, but I have it on good authority that everyone signed over their trusteeship to the state rather than get kicked into the ocean, entirely of their own free will.  Quite remarkable, really.  So I assure that this plan is entirely Capitalist.

death shtpost the invisible fist the iron hand policy politics
ranma-official
ranma-official

Socialist countries have a really bad track record of human rights abuses and a strange set of failings that are either specific to them or unusually prominent compared to the general zeitgeist, so you can draw decent conclusions like “don’t break systems a lot of people depend on, just cuz” and “freedom of press is actually really important” and “science shouldn’t be controlled by the state’s ideology ever”


instead people realize that Marx was wrong about something and the Soviet Union killed people and then go become tankies but for capitalism

isaacsapphire

I guess the real question is, “is it possible to avoid these known horrible bugs in Communism/socialism, or is it time to go look for something else and try to make that work?”

The vast majority of Communists I’ve encountered in person or online don’t seem to be trying to avoid the known problems. They either ignore/don’t know/pretend to not know about the historical issues, or they consider eg. genocide a feature rather than a bug.

ranma-official

It’s certainly possible to try avoiding​ these bugs, or dramatically improve the current social order, or to try and build some other system entirely, but then/instead you get people like @redbloodedamerica openly​ celebrating fucked up shit because capitalism is good and cool and therefore bonded labor is good and cool also, hence, tankies but for capitalism.

mitigatedchaos

Anarchists say they’re against it, but I’ve never seen them lay out how they would prevent it from happening except to claim they wouldn’t have a state - but Catalonia had death squads, perhaps not Stalin-tier death squads, but apparently it did have them. I think the way to socialism now, the way to actually convince people, is to stop telling people to embrace a Communist revolution and instead buy up a huge tract of land in a country with a weak central government and demonstrate a real, working, unoppressive, prosperous model.

I don’t actually think they have that model, so I don’t see myself supporting Communism over Boring Welfare Capitalism any time soon.

politics the invisible fist the red hammer the iron hand
argumate
argumate: “ heavilyarmedvirtue: “ And then he’s shocked and horrified when people accuse him of being a reacto ” The head-slapping part of this is that it assumes that the difficult part about running a government is all the gosh-darned records...
heavilyarmedvirtue

And then he’s shocked and horrified when people accuse him of being a reacto

argumate

The head-slapping part of this is that it assumes that the difficult part about running a government is all the gosh-darned records processing, and not the bit about maintaining the consent of the governed.

States don’t fail because they can’t process paperwork efficiently enough, they fail because the people decide that an alternative offering is more compelling.

(or more uncharitably: this is the most ignorant post X has ever made, and will remain so until X posts again).

mitigatedchaos

Oh, Eliezer, honey kun,

Culture is a wave, government is a wave, nations are a wave, and they’re all a web.

Libertarianism is not the default policy position into which society falls if it isn’t interrupted.  Democracy is not the default policy position into which society falls if it isn’t interrupted.  

They are both high-level ideological constructs that require constant reinforcement and social, cultural, and material support to maintain.

Source: heavilyarmedvirtue politics the invisible fist the iron hand
slartibartfastibast
wirehead-wannabe: “ mailadreapta: “ neoliberalism-nightly: “ e8u: “ im-a-map-im-a-map: “ e8u: “ americansylveon: “ ryanlewisandclark: “Seriously though, the amount of inherent ways I capitalism is garbage. ” So, when bananas are regulated to the...
ryanlewisandclark

Seriously though, the amount of inherent ways I capitalism is garbage.

americansylveon

So, when bananas are regulated to the point where bananas are discarded for failing to meet arbitrary requirements, you blame capitalism. Brilliant.

e8u

I doubt it’s regulation.  Probably people just don’t want to buy misshapen bananas when there are prettier ones right next to them.

I’d like to see OP’s proposed solution here.  Tell grown adults, “You’re going to eat this ugly banana whether you like it or not!” and send government thugs to beat them up if they disobey?

im-a-map-im-a-map

I mean a simple solution is have companies buy them for a reduced price, have them sell for a reduced price Then people who are poorer can eat more fruits and veggies and others who dont care how they look can get a deal 👍👍 and companies can make some profit too

e8u

That’s exactly what you’d expect to happen.  For some reason, it didn’t.  I was speculating that there might be some weird psychological effect making it impossible to sell ugly bananas in the same room as pretty bananas for a profitable price.

But fortunately, @americansylveon came back with a source.  Apparently EU regulations require that bananas be “free of malformation or abnormal curvature”, but then specifies that class 1 or class 2 bananas are allowed to have “slight defects of shape”, or “defects of shape”.  Presumably that’s interpreted as a relaxation of the minimum standards? IDK how much of a defect is allowed.

Then they go so far as to regulate the number of bananas in a bunch. To which I can only say, “I hate the fuck government.”

@oktavia-von-gwwcendorff this is your sort of thing I think.

neoliberalism-nightly

Keep in mind that in this case the cost of transportation may not make it economical to even ship the malformed bananas if flooding the supermarket results in a really high price reduction.

mailadreapta

What I’m perplexed about is why no one builds a processing plant close to the growers and uses it to process the excess bananas into various banana products that don’t care about presentation. Banana flavoring, banana puree, etc. As I understand it this is what happens to second-grade fruit in most industries. Why not here?

wirehead-wannabe

Wasn’t there a post about how processed goods are taxed differently than raw goods, keeping e.g. Africa out of certain markets?

mitigatedchaos

Speaking of governments and Africa and development, this presents an opportunity for a government or NGO to buy the misshappen bananas and distribute them to poor people in other countries who won’t give a damn about the shape, bringing money into the source nation’s economy. EA might want to look at this.

Source: ithelpstodream the iron hand the invisible fist the red hammer politics
collapsedsquid

Single-Payer Health Care Thought Experiment

simonpenner

Today I saw this

http://khn.org/news/tab-for-single-payer-proposal-in-california-could-run-400-billion/

I’m working on a higher quality blog post for the main site on this, but for right now I’d like to point out a novel idea. Consider this quote from the article

A single-payer system likely “would be more efficient in delivering health care,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. (California Healthline is produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

But the proposal expands coverage to all and eliminates premiums, copayments and deductibles for enrollees, and that would cost more money, Levitt said. “You can bet that opponents will highlight the 15 percent tax, even though there are also big premium savings for employers and individuals,” he added.

We always hear this. “Single payer health care will save so much money because of all the efficiencies that you can get from central management”

Is this true? Well it just so happens we have a real-world example: HMOs. For example, Kaiser Permanente, the entity referenced in the above quote.

(an aside for non-US readers: in the US, health care is generally privately provisioned, and fee-for-service. That is, if you want a doctor to do a thing, you give them money, and they do the thing. Most people have some kind of health insurance, and this tends to take one of two forms: HMO or PPO.

PPOs are standard, and flexible. In a PPO, the insurance company develops a “network of providers”, a set of doctors who have agreed to work with the insurance company. You are strongly encouraged to go see one of these doctors. If you choose to see a different doctor, “out of network”, your insurance will cover a smaller fraction of the cost. This remains fee-for-service, it’s just that insurance pays.

HMOs, on the other hand, take a very centralized approach. They are one large company responsible for catering to your health needs. In an HMO, you can only go to doctors at facilities run by the HMO. If you need a specialist, you must get a referral to a specialist who works for the HMO. Since everything is integrated, it’s easier for multiple doctors to coordinate and work together. However, your choice of doctor is severely limited. With a PPO, if you don’t like your doctor you can get a new one. Under HMOs, your choices are limited)

The description of HMOs sound a lot like single-payer health care writ small. You give lots of money upfront to an organization like Kaiser (you pay lots of money in taxes to the government to support health care), and in return you go to Kaiser-affiliated facilities (government-funded hospitals) where all of your care is provided to you by one entity. The centralization facilitates efficiencies as bureaucracies are cut, and your needs are taken care of as best they can.

So, approaching the problem from a different point of view: Single-payer government-provided health care is more-or-less the same as if everybody signed up for Kaiser. 

This gave me a deliciously trollish idea, an argument to bring out whenever relevant. Let’s say you’re arguing with some commies who insist that single-payer is the best/only solution. Pose to them this hypothetical:

“Would you be in support of a law that gave $HEALTH_INSURANCE_COMPANY a legally-mandated monopoly in health care, at the cost of forcing them to become a non-profit organization?”

Imagine one way to implement single-payer government-provided universal health care:

1) Give Kaiser a legal monopoly on health insurance

2) Legally require Kaiser to be a non-profit.¹

I suspect that most of your commie friends would be incredibly opposed to this idea, and yet it is fundamentally the same thing as a state-run single-payer health, with two caveats

a) You aren’t legally required to opt-in. You can still pay expenses out-of-pocket instead. 

b) Instead of the health system being run by whoever is friendliest with our elected representatives, it’s run by people with a proven track record of success in that field. 

I suspect this argument generalizes, too. You could apply it to any realm of government service provision that you can think of. It might help a handful of the smarter, more intellectually ethical folks see things from a different perspective.

1. Kaiser IS ALREADY A NON-PROFIT. So much for “greedy health insurance corporations ruining everything in their greedy corrupt quest for more profit”

collapsedsquid

The way single payer works is that it negotiates prices with providers which it can do because it’s the only buyer.  It’s the same way Singapore does it, it’s just there they set legally prices but don’t pay them. Maybe you should look at how this shit works instead of just imagining how it works.

mitigatedchaos

I still laughed. TBH I don’t understand why the Repubs don’t spring for healthcare vouchers. Well, okay, I understand why but …

Source: simonpenner politics the invisible fist the red hammer the iron hand
gcu-sovereign
argumate

GiveWell is like a test case for a centrally planned and managed economy; if they can accurately assess the return on investment and direct funding in the most socially profitable direction in a non-market driven way, then that demonstrates that at least some economic activities are amenable to this approach.

gcu-sovereign

Disagree on the first sentence.  Givewell’s planning is not substantially different from the planning executed by any ordinary firm, as the crucial distinction between a planned economy and market economy is use of force.  Givewell has no guns, interest in using coercive force, or a democratic mandate, therefore it is not a prototype for a managed economy.

mitigatedchaos

The distinction is perhaps more that more unprofitable organizations die and profitable organizations are rewarded. That’s the real magic. Property is defined by control and exclusion through force, that’s how it exists in the real world. Force was not actually removed, just moved a step back - the case with all law.

Source: argumate politics the iron hand the invisible fist
sadoeconomist
anunreliablesource

The article about “why we need price gouging in times of crisis”, is some odd shit. I can assure you that there is plenty of water to go round, even if it isn’t as much as normal. Many people did buy ahead of time, however when you get 28 inches of water in 3 hours instead of 3 days and you have to leave your home, you are not carrying the case of water. So kindly fuck off with you random garbage articles, I disconnect with most ancaps when it comes to compassion. Do I believe we need laws, nope, but I believe we need compassion, and Joe Blow selling water for $42 is anything but compassionate. This is the very reason a lot of people do not believe an anarchist, free market, voluntary society can work. I am watching my neighbors who have never flooded be plucked from their homes in boats, losing their entire life, and I got to read that fucking trash. Kindly fuck off. Want to show the world anarchy can work, do like the countless people out lending a hand, donate a case of water, come help me cook for the shelter, and STFU.

sadoeconomist

This is precisely when people attack the price system, though, because people have the moral intuition that someone selling at higher-than-normal prices is doing something wicked and must be responsible for the price being that high, when they aren’t at all. The authorities interfering to stop local prices from being allowed to rise during a crisis is exactly why famines happened historically, it’s something that turns a localized temporary disaster into something worse. Price ceilings always create shortages, and that’s precisely what you don’t want in an emergency situation.

The choice isn’t between the guy selling water bottles for $42 or him giving them away, it’s between letting him sell them for $42 or not having water bottles there at all. Yeah, he isn’t being altruistic, but his greed is actually leading him to contribute to disaster relief efforts by showing up with water instead of staying home. You’re not being compassionate to disaster victims by telling those people to stay home if they’re not going to help for free, you’re taking away their opportunity to buy water that they apparently need badly enough they’re willing to pay $42 for it. The greedy asshole who was induced to drive from several states away with a truck full of water bottles just to try to make a quick buck is possibly making the difference between life and death for some people in need, even if he doesn’t have an ounce of compassion. The moral intuition you’ve got about price-gougers is backwards - that’s the important insight those articles are spreading, and this is exactly the time to spread it. If anti-gouging laws get passed after this hurricane, those guys won’t risk jail time to show up for the next one, and there will be a shortage where people can’t find drinkable water at any price. Trying to prevent that is beneficial as well.

Compassion is great, but one of anarchy’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t actually require compassion to work, that people without any compassion in their hearts are still led by greed to work for the benefit of others anyway. A system that only works when people are eager to sacrifice their self-interest to serve others doesn’t work at all.

mitigatedchaos

Okay, but “no price-gouging laws” isn’t incompatible with improved civil defense infrastructure, and calling it “anarchy” is stretching it.  If the situation destabilized enough they’d call in the army, and there is still very much the risk of prosecution if you kill the man selling waters for $42 and take all of his waters, once the disaster clears.

Rebellion and break down in law & order in any area of the country undermines the authority of the state as the ruler and monopolizer of force and arbiter of law.  Desperation is a key factor in breaking down law & order.  Therefore, it would be prudent to create caches of limited, key supplies (such as clean water, water filters, and MREs) at various points in the country, cycling them out as donations to poverty organizations (or selling them) as they near expiration.

This serves both the internal (preventing looting, rioting, and loss of faith in the government) and external (decreasing the amount of death and dysfunction in the event of enemy attack) security primary functions of the state, and increases the scale of hazardous events required to bring down the government.  Improvements in civil defense infrastructure also act as a multiplier on available military force as a credible threat for use in international politics.

Source: anunreliablesource evil statist politics the invisible fist the iron hand
ranma-official
theonion: “SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass....
theonion

SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.

Source: theonion queue
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