One of the hidden assumptions I was thinking of is the assumption that government built roads have been a net benefit for America. The highway system has been a large implicit subsidy for all kinds of business models and lifestyle choices that are not obviously optimal. America’s dependence on oil and outsize energy demands are in large part a function of the incentives created by huge government expenditure on highways. Suburban sprawl, McMansions, retail parks and long commutes are all unintended consequences of the implicit subsidies inherent in large scale government road construction.
American culture and society would probably look quite different without a history of government road construction. It’s not obvious to me that it would not look better by many measures.
Not necessarily. If you’ve ever been to Disney World, it’s not like that. And hell, government roads in the states and Japan often dissolve into a complex and inefficient series of toll roads, at least in some areas.
I’m much more worried about uncompetitive practices, like powerful local monopolies and rent seeking behavior.
Disney world owns the land, they can do whatever they want. But here in order to make efficient roads, we have to use eminent domain. A private company wouldn’t be able to do that. In order to have a governmentless society, you have to a) create a nearly impossible to maintain system of total anarchy like exists in parts of Afghanistan today or b) create a very corrupt and broken society ruled by private corporations, which is essentially a government anyways.
But here in order to make efficient roads, we have to use eminent domain.
The Kelo case allows government to use its eminent domain powers on the behalf of private companies. Why couldn’t a private road builder borrow this government power?
Why do you assume I support the Court’s decision? All I did was state that under current United States law, Houshalter’s objection was possible to overcome.
The government does use private contracters in many cases for different projects. It might work on roads, I’m not sure if they already use it, but its still alot differnet from asking a private corporation to decide when and where to build roads.
They do. And private corporations or councils already decide where to build the roads for some things, it’s just that all of those things only work if they’re already connected to other infrastructure, which, in the US, means public federal, state and locally built roads.
Well, I think you aren’t really imaginative enough in your view of anarchy, but… I’m not an anarchist and I’m not going to defend anarchy.
I disagree with the idea that efficient roads require imminent domain. It’s not even hard to prove. All I have to do is give one example of a business that was made without imminent domain. The railroad system, which I brought up before.
I still mostly think a nation of private roads is a bad idea, since it’s hard to imagine a way or scenario in which they wouldn’t be a local monopoly.
Which is part of the reason I think it’s a bad idea. The railroads constantly petitioned for those rights, that money and essentially leached off the American people. That’s what rent seeking means.
Are railroads that good an example? Some railroads and subways were built using eminent domain although I don’t know how much. And many of the large railroads built in the US in the second half of the 20th century went through land that did not have any private ownership but was given to the railroads by the government.
Railroads are a good example of a bad idea. The reason I picked them is that they were terrible, if I was going to pick innovative and creative real estate purchases by private industry, I’d be talking about McDonalds or Starbucks.
Railroads weren’t a terrible idea. The canal system was a terrible idea, not railroads. Railroads created lots of industry that wouldn’t have been possible without them. Many 19th century leaders thought of them as the best thing that ever happened to America.
The system of canals built in the early 19th century in the United States allowed the settlement of the old west and the development of industry in the north east (by allowing grain from western farms to reach the east). Why do you consider them a terrible idea? They were one of the centerpieces of the American System, which was largely successful.
Because they would dump the waste off the left side of the boat, and get drinking water from the right. The actual sides would switch depending on wich way they were going. I’ve been on those canal boats before, they are very, very slow. They had orphans walk on the side of the boat and guide the donkey (ass) that pulled it. They also took a long time to build, and didn’t last that long.
Because they would dump the waste off the left side of the boat, and get drinking water from the right.
This was a general problem more connected to cleanliness as a whole in 19th century America. Read a history of old New York, and realize that it took multiple plagues before they even started discussing not having livestock roaming the city.
I’ve been on those canal boats before, they are very, very slow.
Of course they were slow. They were an efficient method of moving a lot of cargo. Each boat moved slowly, but the total cargo moved was a lot more than they could often be moved by other means. Think of it as high latency and high bandwith.
They had orphans walk on the side of the boat and guide the donkey (ass) that pulled it.
In general 19th century attitudes towards child labor weren’t great. But what does this have to do with the canal system itself? Compared to many jobs they could have, this would have been a pretty good one. And this isn’t at all connected to using orphans; it isn’t like the canals were Powered by the souls of forsaken children. They were simply the form of cheap labor used during that time period for many purposes.
They also took a long time to build, and didn’t last that long.
The first point isn’t relevant unless you are trying to make a detailed economic estimate of whether they paid for themselves. The second is simply because they weren’t maintained after a few years once many of them were made obsolete by rail lines. If the rails had not come in, the canals would have lasted much longer.
So they’re a terrible idea because of bad sanitation and child labor? In that case, the entire history of economic ideas is bad up until 1920-ish. They unquestionably achieved their goal of providing better transportation. Am I to infer that you believe that government run highways are wrong because there is trash strewn on the sides of the road?
Maybe but thats not the point. They might have worked, maybe even made a profit, but I still say that they were inefficient which is why we don’t use them today (all thats left is a few large pieces of stone jutting out of rivers that passers by can’t explain.)
I think they might have been been better as wither a fully government venture or a private one. When they merge, a conflict of interest becomes immediately present.
That’s interesting. I wouldn’t expect there to be many examples of working privatized roads and their effects on a nationwide scale, but if there were, I’d love to see more about them, or even a good paper based on a hypothetical.
I think you’re stuck in the mindset of ‘if it wasn’t for our government provided roads where would we drive our cars?’. Such a world would probably have fewer private cars and be arranged in such a way that many ordinary people could get by perfectly well without a car, as is the case in many European and Japanese cities.
This article might help you understand some of the hidden assumptions many Americans operate under. Note: this guy has some rather wacky ideas but his articles on ‘traditional cities’ are pretty interesting.
I strongly agree with you that the US federal government has spent too much on road subsidies over the years and should decrease its current spending.
That said, not everywhere is Juneau, Alaska; not all sites connected to government roads are a “Suburban Hell,” and not all inhabitants of the suburbs would prefer to live in a “Traditional City.” Roads are useful for accommodating a highly mobile, atomistic society that exploits new resources and adopts new local trade routes every 20 years or so. Cars and parking lots are useful for separating people who have recently immigrated from all different places and who really don’t like each other and don’t want to have much to do with each other. Interstate highways were built for evacuation and civil defense as well as for actual transport. Finally, regardless of whether you prefer roads or trains, some level of government subsidy and/or coordination is probably needed to get the most efficient transportation system possible.
In any case, this thread started out as a discussion of Traditional vs. Bayesian rationality, did it not? Improving government policy was merely the example chosen to illustrate a point. It seems unsportsmanlike to shoot that point down on the grounds that virtually all government does more harm than good. Even if such a claim were true, one might still want to know how to generate government policies that do relatively less harm, given a set of political constraints that temporarily prevent enacting a strong version of (anarcho)libertarianism.
Even if such a claim were true, one might still want to know how to generate government policies that do relatively less harm
The failure of government is not a problem of not knowing which government policies would do relatively less harm. The primary problem of government is that there is little incentive to implement such policies. Trying to improve government by working to figure out better policies is like trying to avoid being eaten by a lion by making a sound logical argument for the ethics of vegetarianism. The lion has no more interest in the finer points of ethics than a politician does in the effects of policy on anything other than his own self-interest.
I mentioned elsewhere that governments of relatively small states with relatively homogeneous populations seem to do better than average. Scaling these relative successes up appears problematic.
If small homogeneous states do best, then campaigning for devolution to the best available approximation of such might be the best move.
Yes, that or seasteading. I’m also a firm believer in the ‘voting with your feet’ approach to campaigning. I have no desire to wait around until a democratic majority are convinced for improvements to happen locally. Migration is one of the few competitive pressures on governments today.
Your link provides very little evidence for your claim. At the national level, to say that a program costs $1 million per year is unimpressive. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the multiplier effect for mohair production is quite low, say, 0.5. I suspect that is it rather higher than that, since multiple people will go and card and weave and spin the damn fibers and then sell them to each other at art fairs, but let’s say it’s 0.5. That means you’re wasting $500,000 a year. In the context of a $5 trillion annual budget, you’re looking at 1 part per 10 million, or an 0.00001% increase in efficiency. Why should one of our 545 elected representatives, or even one of their 20,000 staffers, make this a priority to eliminate? The amazing thing is that the subsidy was eliminated at all, not that it crept back in. All systems have some degree of parasitism, ‘rent’, or waste. This is not exactly low-hanging fruit we’re talking about here.
More generally, I have worked for a few different politicians, and so far as I could tell, most of them mostly cared about figuring out better policies subject to maintaining a high probability of being re-elected. None of them appeared to have the slightest interest in directly profiting from their work as public servants, nor in exploiting their positions for fame, sex, etc. Those are just the cases that make the news. In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
Your link provides very little evidence for your claim.
What did you take my claim to be? The example in the link is intended to illustrate the fact that the problem of politics is not one of figuring out better policy. It is an example of a policy that is universally agreed to be bad and yet has persisted for over 60 years, despite a brief period in which it was temporarily stamped out. The magnitude of the subsidy in this case may be small but there are many thousands of such bad policies, some of much greater individual magnitude, and they add up. The example is intentionally a small and un-controversial example since it is intended to illustrate that if even minor bad policies like this are hard to kill then vastly larger ones are unlikely to be eliminated without structural reform.
None of them appeared to have the slightest interest in directly profiting from their work as public servants, nor in exploiting their positions for fame, sex, etc.
Giving this appearance is fairly important to succeeding as a politician so this is not indicative of much. I find it more relevant to judge by actual actions and results produced rather than by words or carefully cultivated appearances.
In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Indeed you can! Be aware, though, that memes about government corruption and the people who peddle them may have just as much power to fool you as the ‘official’ authorities. Hollywood, for example, has a much larger propaganda budget than the US Congress. When’s the last time a Hollywood movie showcased virtuous politicians?
Also, beware of insulated arguments. If you assume that (a) politicians are amazingly good at disguising their motives, and (b) that politicians do in fact routinely disguise their motives, your assertions are empirically unfalsifiable. If you disagree, consider this: what could a politician do to convince you that he was honestly motivated by something like altruism?
When’s the last time a Hollywood movie showcased virtuous politicians?
An Inconvenient Truth? Seriously though, I don’t think Hollywood is particularly tough on politicians. It’s a major enabler for the cult of the presidency with heroic presidents saving the world from aliens,asteroids and terrorists. Evil corporations and businessmen get a far worse rap. The mainstream media is much too soft on politicians in the US in my opinion as well. Where’s the US Paxman?
If you disagree, consider this: what could a politician do to convince you that he was honestly motivated by something like altruism?
I think some politicians actually believe that they are acting for the ‘greater good’. Sometimes when they lobby for special interests they really convince themselves they are doing a good thing. It is sometimes easier to convince others when you believe your own spiel—this is well known in sales. They surely often think they are saving others from themselves by restricting their liberties and trampling on their rights. Ultimately what they really believe is somewhat irrelevant. I judge them by how they respond to incentives, whose interests they actually promote and what results they achieve.
I don’t think being motivated by altruism is desirable and I don’t think pure altruism exists to any significant degree.
I agree with you that Hollywood is soft on Presidents, and that the mainstream media is soft on just about everyone, with the possible exception of people who might be robbing a convenience store and/or selling marijuana in your neighborhood, details at eleven.
That still leaves legislators, bureaucrats, administrators, police chiefs, mayors, governors, and military officers as Rent-A-Villains (tm) for Hollywood action flicks and dramas.
Sometimes when they lobby for special interests they really convince themselves they are doing a good thing.
From my end, it still looks like you’re starting with the belief that government is wrong, and deducing that politicians must be doing harm. Your arguments are sophisticated enough that I’m assuming you’ve read most of the sequences already, but you might want to review The Bottom Line.
I’m not sure to what extent either of us has an open mind about our fundamental political assumptions. I’m also unsure as to whether the LW community has any interest in reading a sustained duel about abstract versions of anarcholibertarianism and representative democracy. Worse, I at least sympathize with some of your arguments; my main complaint is that you phrase them too strongly, too generally, and with too much certainty. For all those reasons, I’m not going to post on this particular thread in public for a few weeks. I will read and ponder one more public post on this thread by you, if any—I try to let opponents get in the last word whenever I move the previous question.
All that said, if you’d like to talk politics for a while, you’re more than welcome to private message me. You seem like a thoughtful person.
I’m not sure to what extent either of us has an open mind about our fundamental political assumptions.
I described myself as a socialist 10 years ago when I was at university. My parents are lifelong Labour) voters. I have changed my political views over time which gives me some confidence that I am open minded in my fundamental political assumptions. Caveats are that my big 5 personality factors are correlated with libertarian politics (suggesting I may be biologically hardwired to think that way) and from some perspectives I could be seen as following the cliched route of moving to the right in my political views as I get older.
my main complaint is that you phrase them too strongly, too generally, and with too much certainty.
This is partly a stylistic thing—I feel that padding comments with disclaimers tends to detract from readability and distracts from the main point. I try to avoid saying things like in my opinion (should be obvious given I’m writing it) or variations on the theme of the balance of evidence leads me to conclude (where else would conclusions derive from) or making comments merely to remind readers that 0 and 1 are not probabilities (here of all places I hope that this goes without saying). I used to make heavy use of such caveats but I think they tend to increase verbiage without adding much information. If it helps, imagine that I’ve added all these disclaimers to anything I say as a footnote.
All that said, if you’d like to talk politics for a while, you’re more than welcome to private message me. You seem like a thoughtful person.
I tend to subscribe to the idea that the best hope for improving politics is to change incentives, not minds but periodically I get drawn into political debates despite myself. I’ll try to leave the topic for a while.
tend to subscribe to the idea that the best hope for improving politics is to change incentives, not minds but periodically I get drawn into political debates despite myself. I’ll try to leave the topic for a while.
Incentives (or incentive structures, like markets [1]) are the result of human decisions.
Perhaps you mean changing the minds of the people who set the incentives.
[1] A market’s incentives aren’t set in detail, but permitting the market to operate in public or not is the result of a relatively small number of decisions.
Perhaps you mean changing the minds of the people who set the incentives.
Part of the thinking behind competitive government is that we are the people who set the incentives.
Seasteading is explicitly designed to create alternative social systems that operate somewhat outside the boundaries of existing states. An analogy is trying to introduce revolutionary technologies by convincing a democratic majority to vote for your idea vs. founding a startup and taking the ‘if you build it they will come’ route. The latter approach generally appears to have a better track record.
Charter cities were born out of a slightly different agenda but embody similar principles.
A simple step that individuals can take is to move to a jurisdiction in line with their values rather than trying to change their current jurisdiction through the political process. Competition works to improve products in ordinary markets because customers take their business to the companies that best satisfy their preferences. Migration is one of the few forces that applies some level of competitive pressure to governments.
Other potential approaches are to support secession or devolution movements, things like the free state project, supporting the sovereignty of tax havens, ‘starving the beast’ by structuring your affairs to minimize the amount of tax you pay, personal offshoring and other direct individual action that creates competitive pressure on jurisdictions.
I think he’s talking from a government perspective or a perspective of power.
Obviously, you can educate people yjat malaria is bad and beg people to solve the problem of malaria. It is, however, possible to know a lot about and not do anything about it.
Or you could pay people a lot of money if they would show work that might help the problem of malaria. I tend to think this method would be more effective, although there are other effective incentives than money.
I don’t think being motivated by altruism is desirable and I don’t think pure altruism exists to any significant degree.
The common form “I don’t believe in X, but X would be bad if it did exist” seems to me like a bad sign; of what, I’m not sure, perhaps motivated cognition.
It can be a bad pattern but there are cases where it is legitimate, for example “I don’t believe in the Christian god but if he did exist he would appear to be a major asshole.”
In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
It would either be polite or impolite to make explicit who the “some of the people” are that you refer to in this sentence, and what relevance this has to Mass_Driver’s remark. I am curious to hear which.
Mass_Driver appears to be one of the people who can be fooled all of the time since he judges politicians by what they say and how they present themselves rather than by what their actions say about their incentives and motivations. I did not intend to be ambiguous.
Thank you—I had suspected that might be your meaning, but I prefer not to pronounce negative judgments on people without clear cause, and I have read plenty of comments which appeared equally damning but were of an innocent nature upon elaboration. Carry on.
I appreciate your unusually deft grasp of the English language. Upvoted.
(I also appreciate the paucity of my education in the sociology of representative government, and must therefore bow out of the discussion. Please discount my opinion appropriately.)
Wow. That’s really very eye-opening. And as someone who has spent time in old cities outside the US and doesn’t even drive, I’m a bit shocked about how much of an assumption I seem to be operating with about what a city should look like.
Japanese cities still have massive infrastructure and public transportation subsidies. It’s not OMG how can we not have cars?; it’s OMG how can we actually have transportation in a non governmental way that actually operates in a healthy market?
City scale transportation infrastructure doesn’t require large amounts of governmental involvement. Traditional European cities evolved for much of their history with minimal government involvement. City level infrastructure would be well within the capabilities of private enterprise in a world with more private ownership of public space. Large privately constructed resorts (think Disneyland) illustrate the feasibility of the concept although they are not necessarily great adverts for its desirability.
That site you linked to has an article comparing Toledo, Ohio to Toledo, Spain. Its kind of unfair because Toledo Ohio is a relativley small city and is dying economically. I was kind of offended because I live really close to there, but he does make a point.
Huh. Well Toledo just seems like a craphole. Well once they get around to demolishing all of those old buildings it will look better. And I can’t explain how people live without cars. It boggles me. Sure we have big roads, but seriously, who wants to walk for 20 miles every day?
And I can’t explain how people live without cars. It boggles me. Sure we have big roads, but seriously, who wants to walk for 20 miles every day?
The point made in the discussion of traditional cities I linked is that living without a car can be a nightmare in places that were designed around cars but that many cities that were not designed around cars are very livable without them. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 7 years without a car quite happily and it’s not even particularly pedestrian friendly compared to many European cities (though it is by North American standards). I only walk about 3-4 miles a day.
I live in the middle of nowhere North west Ohio actually. I don’t exactly consider it “the country”, but it is compared to other places I’ve been. The roads make 1 mile grids and each has a dozen houses on it and a few fields and woods. Walking to town would take the better part of a day. Also, why are many modern cities built in the 18th century designed around cars if they only were invented in the later half of the century and became popular nearly half a century after that?
One of the hidden assumptions I was thinking of is the assumption that government built roads have been a net benefit for America. The highway system has been a large implicit subsidy for all kinds of business models and lifestyle choices that are not obviously optimal. America’s dependence on oil and outsize energy demands are in large part a function of the incentives created by huge government expenditure on highways. Suburban sprawl, McMansions, retail parks and long commutes are all unintended consequences of the implicit subsidies inherent in large scale government road construction.
American culture and society would probably look quite different without a history of government road construction. It’s not obvious to me that it would not look better by many measures.
Yes but you’d be stuck with complex and inefficent series of toll roads. It might work, but I doubt. Not efficiently anyways.
Not necessarily. If you’ve ever been to Disney World, it’s not like that. And hell, government roads in the states and Japan often dissolve into a complex and inefficient series of toll roads, at least in some areas.
I’m much more worried about uncompetitive practices, like powerful local monopolies and rent seeking behavior.
Disney world owns the land, they can do whatever they want. But here in order to make efficient roads, we have to use eminent domain. A private company wouldn’t be able to do that. In order to have a governmentless society, you have to a) create a nearly impossible to maintain system of total anarchy like exists in parts of Afghanistan today or b) create a very corrupt and broken society ruled by private corporations, which is essentially a government anyways.
The Kelo case allows government to use its eminent domain powers on the behalf of private companies. Why couldn’t a private road builder borrow this government power?
You actually support the Kelo case? To me that’s like a Glenn Beck conspiracy theory come to life.
Yup. Mind killed. I’m out, guys. Was fun while it lasted.
Why do you assume I support the Court’s decision? All I did was state that under current United States law, Houshalter’s objection was possible to overcome.
The government does use private contracters in many cases for different projects. It might work on roads, I’m not sure if they already use it, but its still alot differnet from asking a private corporation to decide when and where to build roads.
They do. And private corporations or councils already decide where to build the roads for some things, it’s just that all of those things only work if they’re already connected to other infrastructure, which, in the US, means public federal, state and locally built roads.
Well, I think you aren’t really imaginative enough in your view of anarchy, but… I’m not an anarchist and I’m not going to defend anarchy.
I disagree with the idea that efficient roads require imminent domain. It’s not even hard to prove. All I have to do is give one example of a business that was made without imminent domain. The railroad system, which I brought up before.
I still mostly think a nation of private roads is a bad idea, since it’s hard to imagine a way or scenario in which they wouldn’t be a local monopoly.
Actually, in the U.S. at least, railroads did get lots of land grants, right-of-way rights, and similar subsidies from the government. So yeah.
Which is part of the reason I think it’s a bad idea. The railroads constantly petitioned for those rights, that money and essentially leached off the American people. That’s what rent seeking means.
Are railroads that good an example? Some railroads and subways were built using eminent domain although I don’t know how much. And many of the large railroads built in the US in the second half of the 20th century went through land that did not have any private ownership but was given to the railroads by the government.
Railroads are a good example of a bad idea. The reason I picked them is that they were terrible, if I was going to pick innovative and creative real estate purchases by private industry, I’d be talking about McDonalds or Starbucks.
Railroads weren’t a terrible idea. The canal system was a terrible idea, not railroads. Railroads created lots of industry that wouldn’t have been possible without them. Many 19th century leaders thought of them as the best thing that ever happened to America.
The system of canals built in the early 19th century in the United States allowed the settlement of the old west and the development of industry in the north east (by allowing grain from western farms to reach the east). Why do you consider them a terrible idea? They were one of the centerpieces of the American System, which was largely successful.
Because they would dump the waste off the left side of the boat, and get drinking water from the right. The actual sides would switch depending on wich way they were going. I’ve been on those canal boats before, they are very, very slow. They had orphans walk on the side of the boat and guide the donkey (ass) that pulled it. They also took a long time to build, and didn’t last that long.
This was a general problem more connected to cleanliness as a whole in 19th century America. Read a history of old New York, and realize that it took multiple plagues before they even started discussing not having livestock roaming the city.
Of course they were slow. They were an efficient method of moving a lot of cargo. Each boat moved slowly, but the total cargo moved was a lot more than they could often be moved by other means. Think of it as high latency and high bandwith.
In general 19th century attitudes towards child labor weren’t great. But what does this have to do with the canal system itself? Compared to many jobs they could have, this would have been a pretty good one. And this isn’t at all connected to using orphans; it isn’t like the canals were Powered by the souls of forsaken children. They were simply the form of cheap labor used during that time period for many purposes.
The first point isn’t relevant unless you are trying to make a detailed economic estimate of whether they paid for themselves. The second is simply because they weren’t maintained after a few years once many of them were made obsolete by rail lines. If the rails had not come in, the canals would have lasted much longer.
So they’re a terrible idea because of bad sanitation and child labor? In that case, the entire history of economic ideas is bad up until 1920-ish. They unquestionably achieved their goal of providing better transportation. Am I to infer that you believe that government run highways are wrong because there is trash strewn on the sides of the road?
Maybe but thats not the point. They might have worked, maybe even made a profit, but I still say that they were inefficient which is why we don’t use them today (all thats left is a few large pieces of stone jutting out of rivers that passers by can’t explain.)
Were telegraphs a bad idea? Horse-drawn plows? Why does the fact a technology was superseded mean that it’s a terrible idea?
I think they might have been been better as wither a fully government venture or a private one. When they merge, a conflict of interest becomes immediately present.
That’s interesting. I wouldn’t expect there to be many examples of working privatized roads and their effects on a nationwide scale, but if there were, I’d love to see more about them, or even a good paper based on a hypothetical.
I think you’re stuck in the mindset of ‘if it wasn’t for our government provided roads where would we drive our cars?’. Such a world would probably have fewer private cars and be arranged in such a way that many ordinary people could get by perfectly well without a car, as is the case in many European and Japanese cities.
This article might help you understand some of the hidden assumptions many Americans operate under. Note: this guy has some rather wacky ideas but his articles on ‘traditional cities’ are pretty interesting.
I strongly agree with you that the US federal government has spent too much on road subsidies over the years and should decrease its current spending.
That said, not everywhere is Juneau, Alaska; not all sites connected to government roads are a “Suburban Hell,” and not all inhabitants of the suburbs would prefer to live in a “Traditional City.” Roads are useful for accommodating a highly mobile, atomistic society that exploits new resources and adopts new local trade routes every 20 years or so. Cars and parking lots are useful for separating people who have recently immigrated from all different places and who really don’t like each other and don’t want to have much to do with each other. Interstate highways were built for evacuation and civil defense as well as for actual transport. Finally, regardless of whether you prefer roads or trains, some level of government subsidy and/or coordination is probably needed to get the most efficient transportation system possible.
In any case, this thread started out as a discussion of Traditional vs. Bayesian rationality, did it not? Improving government policy was merely the example chosen to illustrate a point. It seems unsportsmanlike to shoot that point down on the grounds that virtually all government does more harm than good. Even if such a claim were true, one might still want to know how to generate government policies that do relatively less harm, given a set of political constraints that temporarily prevent enacting a strong version of (anarcho)libertarianism.
The failure of government is not a problem of not knowing which government policies would do relatively less harm. The primary problem of government is that there is little incentive to implement such policies. Trying to improve government by working to figure out better policies is like trying to avoid being eaten by a lion by making a sound logical argument for the ethics of vegetarianism. The lion has no more interest in the finer points of ethics than a politician does in the effects of policy on anything other than his own self-interest.
Some governments cause much less damage than others, so I think there’s something to study.
I mentioned elsewhere that governments of relatively small states with relatively homogeneous populations seem to do better than average. Scaling these relative successes up appears problematic.
Even among large heterogeneous states, some do better than others.
If small homogeneous states do best, then campaigning for devolution to the best available approximation of such might be the best move.
Yes, that or seasteading. I’m also a firm believer in the ‘voting with your feet’ approach to campaigning. I have no desire to wait around until a democratic majority are convinced for improvements to happen locally. Migration is one of the few competitive pressures on governments today.
That’s one of the principal aims of the states’ rights movement.
And possibly one of the reasons it’s disreputable—afaik the states involved aren’t all that homogeneous.
Your link provides very little evidence for your claim. At the national level, to say that a program costs $1 million per year is unimpressive. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the multiplier effect for mohair production is quite low, say, 0.5. I suspect that is it rather higher than that, since multiple people will go and card and weave and spin the damn fibers and then sell them to each other at art fairs, but let’s say it’s 0.5. That means you’re wasting $500,000 a year. In the context of a $5 trillion annual budget, you’re looking at 1 part per 10 million, or an 0.00001% increase in efficiency. Why should one of our 545 elected representatives, or even one of their 20,000 staffers, make this a priority to eliminate? The amazing thing is that the subsidy was eliminated at all, not that it crept back in. All systems have some degree of parasitism, ‘rent’, or waste. This is not exactly low-hanging fruit we’re talking about here.
More generally, I have worked for a few different politicians, and so far as I could tell, most of them mostly cared about figuring out better policies subject to maintaining a high probability of being re-elected. None of them appeared to have the slightest interest in directly profiting from their work as public servants, nor in exploiting their positions for fame, sex, etc. Those are just the cases that make the news. In my opinion, based on a moderate level of personal experience, the assumption that politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest at the margin in equilibrium is simply false.
What did you take my claim to be? The example in the link is intended to illustrate the fact that the problem of politics is not one of figuring out better policy. It is an example of a policy that is universally agreed to be bad and yet has persisted for over 60 years, despite a brief period in which it was temporarily stamped out. The magnitude of the subsidy in this case may be small but there are many thousands of such bad policies, some of much greater individual magnitude, and they add up. The example is intentionally a small and un-controversial example since it is intended to illustrate that if even minor bad policies like this are hard to kill then vastly larger ones are unlikely to be eliminated without structural reform.
Giving this appearance is fairly important to succeeding as a politician so this is not indicative of much. I find it more relevant to judge by actual actions and results produced rather than by words or carefully cultivated appearances.
As a well known politician once noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Indeed you can! Be aware, though, that memes about government corruption and the people who peddle them may have just as much power to fool you as the ‘official’ authorities. Hollywood, for example, has a much larger propaganda budget than the US Congress. When’s the last time a Hollywood movie showcased virtuous politicians?
Also, beware of insulated arguments. If you assume that (a) politicians are amazingly good at disguising their motives, and (b) that politicians do in fact routinely disguise their motives, your assertions are empirically unfalsifiable. If you disagree, consider this: what could a politician do to convince you that he was honestly motivated by something like altruism?
An Inconvenient Truth? Seriously though, I don’t think Hollywood is particularly tough on politicians. It’s a major enabler for the cult of the presidency with heroic presidents saving the world from aliens, asteroids and terrorists. Evil corporations and businessmen get a far worse rap. The mainstream media is much too soft on politicians in the US in my opinion as well. Where’s the US Paxman?
I think some politicians actually believe that they are acting for the ‘greater good’. Sometimes when they lobby for special interests they really convince themselves they are doing a good thing. It is sometimes easier to convince others when you believe your own spiel—this is well known in sales. They surely often think they are saving others from themselves by restricting their liberties and trampling on their rights. Ultimately what they really believe is somewhat irrelevant. I judge them by how they respond to incentives, whose interests they actually promote and what results they achieve.
I don’t think being motivated by altruism is desirable and I don’t think pure altruism exists to any significant degree.
Good examples!
I agree with you that Hollywood is soft on Presidents, and that the mainstream media is soft on just about everyone, with the possible exception of people who might be robbing a convenience store and/or selling marijuana in your neighborhood, details at eleven.
That still leaves legislators, bureaucrats, administrators, police chiefs, mayors, governors, and military officers as Rent-A-Villains (tm) for Hollywood action flicks and dramas.
From my end, it still looks like you’re starting with the belief that government is wrong, and deducing that politicians must be doing harm. Your arguments are sophisticated enough that I’m assuming you’ve read most of the sequences already, but you might want to review The Bottom Line.
I’m not sure to what extent either of us has an open mind about our fundamental political assumptions. I’m also unsure as to whether the LW community has any interest in reading a sustained duel about abstract versions of anarcholibertarianism and representative democracy. Worse, I at least sympathize with some of your arguments; my main complaint is that you phrase them too strongly, too generally, and with too much certainty. For all those reasons, I’m not going to post on this particular thread in public for a few weeks. I will read and ponder one more public post on this thread by you, if any—I try to let opponents get in the last word whenever I move the previous question.
All that said, if you’d like to talk politics for a while, you’re more than welcome to private message me. You seem like a thoughtful person.
I described myself as a socialist 10 years ago when I was at university. My parents are lifelong Labour) voters. I have changed my political views over time which gives me some confidence that I am open minded in my fundamental political assumptions. Caveats are that my big 5 personality factors are correlated with libertarian politics (suggesting I may be biologically hardwired to think that way) and from some perspectives I could be seen as following the cliched route of moving to the right in my political views as I get older.
This is partly a stylistic thing—I feel that padding comments with disclaimers tends to detract from readability and distracts from the main point. I try to avoid saying things like in my opinion (should be obvious given I’m writing it) or variations on the theme of the balance of evidence leads me to conclude (where else would conclusions derive from) or making comments merely to remind readers that 0 and 1 are not probabilities (here of all places I hope that this goes without saying). I used to make heavy use of such caveats but I think they tend to increase verbiage without adding much information. If it helps, imagine that I’ve added all these disclaimers to anything I say as a footnote.
I tend to subscribe to the idea that the best hope for improving politics is to change incentives, not minds but periodically I get drawn into political debates despite myself. I’ll try to leave the topic for a while.
Incentives (or incentive structures, like markets [1]) are the result of human decisions.
Perhaps you mean changing the minds of the people who set the incentives.
[1] A market’s incentives aren’t set in detail, but permitting the market to operate in public or not is the result of a relatively small number of decisions.
Part of the thinking behind competitive government is that we are the people who set the incentives.
Seasteading is explicitly designed to create alternative social systems that operate somewhat outside the boundaries of existing states. An analogy is trying to introduce revolutionary technologies by convincing a democratic majority to vote for your idea vs. founding a startup and taking the ‘if you build it they will come’ route. The latter approach generally appears to have a better track record.
Charter cities were born out of a slightly different agenda but embody similar principles.
A simple step that individuals can take is to move to a jurisdiction in line with their values rather than trying to change their current jurisdiction through the political process. Competition works to improve products in ordinary markets because customers take their business to the companies that best satisfy their preferences. Migration is one of the few forces that applies some level of competitive pressure to governments.
Other potential approaches are to support secession or devolution movements, things like the free state project, supporting the sovereignty of tax havens, ‘starving the beast’ by structuring your affairs to minimize the amount of tax you pay, personal offshoring and other direct individual action that creates competitive pressure on jurisdictions.
I think he’s talking from a government perspective or a perspective of power.
Obviously, you can educate people yjat malaria is bad and beg people to solve the problem of malaria. It is, however, possible to know a lot about and not do anything about it.
Or you could pay people a lot of money if they would show work that might help the problem of malaria. I tend to think this method would be more effective, although there are other effective incentives than money.
Voted up. I think you should consider writing a top-level post summarizing some of the themes from Thousand Nations.
The common form “I don’t believe in X, but X would be bad if it did exist” seems to me like a bad sign; of what, I’m not sure, perhaps motivated cognition.
It can be a bad pattern but there are cases where it is legitimate, for example “I don’t believe in the Christian god but if he did exist he would appear to be a major asshole.”
It would either be polite or impolite to make explicit who the “some of the people” are that you refer to in this sentence, and what relevance this has to Mass_Driver’s remark. I am curious to hear which.
Mass_Driver appears to be one of the people who can be fooled all of the time since he judges politicians by what they say and how they present themselves rather than by what their actions say about their incentives and motivations. I did not intend to be ambiguous.
Thank you—I had suspected that might be your meaning, but I prefer not to pronounce negative judgments on people without clear cause, and I have read plenty of comments which appeared equally damning but were of an innocent nature upon elaboration. Carry on.
I appreciate the irony of your veiled criticism. Upvoted.
I appreciate your unusually deft grasp of the English language. Upvoted.
(I also appreciate the paucity of my education in the sociology of representative government, and must therefore bow out of the discussion. Please discount my opinion appropriately.)
Wow. That’s really very eye-opening. And as someone who has spent time in old cities outside the US and doesn’t even drive, I’m a bit shocked about how much of an assumption I seem to be operating with about what a city should look like.
Japanese cities still have massive infrastructure and public transportation subsidies. It’s not OMG how can we not have cars?; it’s OMG how can we actually have transportation in a non governmental way that actually operates in a healthy market?
City scale transportation infrastructure doesn’t require large amounts of governmental involvement. Traditional European cities evolved for much of their history with minimal government involvement. City level infrastructure would be well within the capabilities of private enterprise in a world with more private ownership of public space. Large privately constructed resorts (think Disneyland) illustrate the feasibility of the concept although they are not necessarily great adverts for its desirability.
That site you linked to has an article comparing Toledo, Ohio to Toledo, Spain. Its kind of unfair because Toledo Ohio is a relativley small city and is dying economically. I was kind of offended because I live really close to there, but he does make a point.
Toledo, Spain: Pop 80,810, Unemployment 10% (estimated from Wikipedia figures). Toledo, Ohio: Pop 316,851 (city), Unemployment 13%.
Huh. Well Toledo just seems like a craphole. Well once they get around to demolishing all of those old buildings it will look better. And I can’t explain how people live without cars. It boggles me. Sure we have big roads, but seriously, who wants to walk for 20 miles every day?
The point made in the discussion of traditional cities I linked is that living without a car can be a nightmare in places that were designed around cars but that many cities that were not designed around cars are very livable without them. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 7 years without a car quite happily and it’s not even particularly pedestrian friendly compared to many European cities (though it is by North American standards). I only walk about 3-4 miles a day.
I live in the middle of nowhere North west Ohio actually. I don’t exactly consider it “the country”, but it is compared to other places I’ve been. The roads make 1 mile grids and each has a dozen houses on it and a few fields and woods. Walking to town would take the better part of a day. Also, why are many modern cities built in the 18th century designed around cars if they only were invented in the later half of the century and became popular nearly half a century after that?
Because suburbs were built afterward, around the cities, like a tumor, and usually after World War II.