How do we fix the economy???

Give me a break. How many politicians can see past the next election?
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If you give politicians money to pay the government's debts, they will spend it and borrow more.

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that states social problems should be solved at the most immediate local levels possible without interference from centralized authority.

One problem is that when centralized authorities interfere, too many, not all, aim for control rather than good results. Another is the loss of efficiency in passing taxes through many hands instead of local application. The bureaucrats always want their cut.


But there should also be an organized method of spreading knowledge of useful techniques that do solve local problems.

The microfinance technique has been useful in many places, however, many who could use it still don't know about it. The internet is helping here, for those who do the research needed.

I've decided not to use aquaponics at present, but two of the technical methods they have invented can usefully be added in my greenhouse. If it proves affordable to upgrade so that I don't get below freezing temperatures in mid winter, a little more work would allow a full AQ structure. However, because information on AQ is spreading rapidly, and production/cost is high, it is being used in warmer climates. I know two missions groups who, on the side, arranged for AQ training for the people they are working with. I also know of groups who could use it, if they knew about it and could arrange for the capital costs, which can be lower than most think.

From the same source:

Having a heart for the poor isn’t hard. Having a mind for the poor…that’s the challenge.

The E wrote:There are a few really wrong statements in that post. Let me explain.

As for the wealthiest being able to make money more easily, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with people making money legally? Why is it a concern for you some people earn more than you (sometimes a lot more?)

Oh hi strawman.

There is nothing wrong with some people making more money than others.
There is something deeply wrong when the incomes of the richest class rises while everybody else's income sinks.

It seems likely that the question of how they become wealthy matters most. Someone who produces better or lower cost is in a totally different class than those who get rich on crony capitalism. When costs drop and quality rises faster than income drops . . .. I wonder what a Roman empire person would have thought of a refrigerator/freezer he could use? I would substitute the word "honestly" for "legally" in the above quote. Then it looks right.

In particular, there is the problem of those who favor being free to innovate while they are rising, but don't like others innovating after they are big and at the top. A few companies have a culture that encourages steady improvement. Others have a solution of looking for and buying small innovators at a mutual profit. At present in the US, it looks like crony capitalism and technical ignorance are too often being encouraged. IIRC, there are more jobs going begging in the technical competence areas than the current unemployment figures. We are not in the same class as the fictional Legislaturist Haven. Yet.

So how can entrepreneurs be aimed at better production and distribution of goods and services, and steered away from building an extractive economy? What has worked best and most often in history ?

How can a culture of studying, from the richest to the poorest, to do better, not just increase income, be encouraged

I would substitute the word honestly for legally in the above quote. Then it might be right.

Yeah.

As long as their definition of "honestly" is also an honest one.

Something i can´t say is the most common thing among a lot of financial "big wigs".
Their standard of "honestly" is sadly often "whatever i can get away with".

So how can entrepreneurs be aimed at better production and distribution of goods and services, and steered away from building an extractive economy? What has worked best in history?

You sure you want to hear the answer to that?

The basic simple answer is big government and high, specifically progressive taxation.
Simply taking away excessive profits and making use of that money elsewhere.

Problem is that it doesn´t work well unless everyone does it or you come up with regulations that actually work with across border companies exploiting different tax levels in different countries, and that it works best in an expansive economy.

Most other ways of influence is just too weak to work well.

Having a heart for the poor isn’t hard. Having a mind for the poor…that’s the challenge

That's actually a truly excellent point! It's a big problem with charities. Many have their hearts in the right place but are less effective than they should be. Listening to those with front line experience helps as does the willingness to change direction but when trying something new it's always going to be a challenge.

Tenshinai wrote:

I would substitute the word honestly for legally in the above quote. Then it might be right.

Yeah.

As long as their definition of "honestly" is also an honest one.

Something i can´t say is the most common thing among a lot of financial "big wigs".
Their standard of "honestly" is sadly often "whatever i can get away with".

This is one of the rare instances in which I agree with you.

So how can entrepreneurs be aimed at better production and distribution of goods and services, and steered away from building an extractive economy? What has worked best in history?

You sure you want to hear the answer to that?

The basic simple answer is big government and high, specifically progressive taxation.
Simply taking away excessive profits and making use of that money elsewhere.

I'll disagree on this one.

1. Big government can't help but increase the amount of bureaucracy in the system. The more time/effort/resources devoted to excessive bureaucracy the worse off we all are.

2. Big government favors crony capitalists. They leverage their connections to get variances and waivers from regulations their less well connected competitors must follow. The bigger the government -> the more regulations they make -> the more valuable the ability to get around them is.

3. Big government favors big business. Big business has the resources, know how and experience in knowing how to maximize the use of loopholes in laws/regulations; start ups are at a significant disadvantage. No regulation is perfect, they all were written by flawed humans and thus all have loopholes. The more regulations there are, the more loopholes there are available to be found, the bigger this competitive advantage gets.

Problem is that it doesn´t work well unless everyone does it or you come up with regulations that actually work with across border companies exploiting different tax levels in different countries, and that it works best in an expansive economy.

This is scary. I actually agree with you twice in one night!

The big multinationals have been unfairly leveraging the tax levels (as well as just about every other law imaginable) and it is a huge problem that is not being dealt with effectively at all. We desperately need multinational treaties to deal with this effectively but I don't trust State to negotiate them. They are such lousy negotiators we'd probably wind up in worse shape!

biochem wrote:1. Big government can't help but increase the amount of bureaucracy in the system.

That is a common prejudice and myth(propagated by exactly the kind of ripoff "businesspeople" you do not want to have power), but if you actually look around the world through history you will find that it has no truth in it.

Poor management will increase the amount of bureaucracy in the system regardless the size of the government compared to the economy or population in total.

biochem wrote: The more time/effort/resources devoted to excessive bureaucracy the worse off we all are.

As a continuation to the above, you need to realise that private business is just as likely to end up with excessive bureaucracy and red tape as governments are, you just don´t notice it the way you do when it´s part of public services.

Poor management is the same regardless who pays the bills. In theory, private business is supposed to be less likely to have that poor management, but in reality, well large businesses are almost impossible to oversee in detail enough unless the big boss has managed to recruit perfect people for at least one level of managment below himself, while for small businesses, they often don´t have all the specialist know-how, which means they end up having to spend lots of extra time and/or money taking care of things that should never have become a problem in the first place.

Also to be remembered, people going into public service quite often do so because they are idealists, and therefore they´re often at least as motivated to not waste money as any private businessperson is.

And so on...

biochem wrote:2. Big government favors crony capitalists. They leverage their connections to get variances and waivers from regulations their less well connected competitors must follow. The bigger the government -> the more regulations they make -> the more valuable the ability to get around them is.

Only when they are ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH IT.

That´s at the core of the whole point, voters CAN influence their governments more directly than they can influence private business.

In theory, you can do the whole "vote with my wallet" thing, but in reality, that actually only very rarely works, most of the time, you just don´t have a chance to change anything like that.

Essentially the basic thing is, that the government is required to listen to you, private companies can ignore you completely without any problems at all.

That doesn´t mean of course that they will do what you want, but they ARE required to listen, and this also means it´s easier to generate popular movement for something, if it´s important or interesting enough for enough people.

And frankly, if you look at the world through history, it actually tends somewhat more in the opposite direction, simply because a large government is not limited to what services it can hire from private business, but what it can do itself.

USA is a "small government" nation, and has vastly more trouble with crony capitalists than Sweden has.

And i might add that as Sweden reduced its government size in the 90s and onwards, crony capitalists have gained FAR MORE influence than they ever had before here.

biochem wrote:3. Big government favors big business. Big business has the resources, know how and experience in knowing how to maximize the use of loopholes in laws/regulations; start ups are at a significant disadvantage. No regulation is perfect, they all were written by flawed humans and thus all have loopholes. The more regulations there are, the more loopholes there are available to be found, the bigger this competitive advantage gets.

Again, that is a misconception. Big business is favoured beyond belief in USA which no matter what you might think, is a relatively "small government"(not small-est, but smaller than average), and big business is favoured in Sweden, and has been both before and after reductions in government size of the economy.

The simple truth is that big business makes sure to favour itself as best it can.

Meaning again, that they do so as long as they are allowed to get away with it. And again, this does not rely on the size of the public sector in any way nor is it any way connected.

biochem wrote:This is scary. I actually agree with you twice in one night!

Hunker down, cause clearly ragnarök is coming!

biochem wrote:The big multinationals have been unfairly leveraging the tax levels (as well as just about every other law imaginable) and it is a huge problem that is not being dealt with effectively at all. We desperately need multinational treaties to deal with this effectively but I don't trust State to negotiate them. They are such lousy negotiators we'd probably wind up in worse shape!

Sadly, the big biz people have far too much influence overall. Current horrible stuff, there´s the TTIP with EU and some similar USA is negotiating with Pacific nations, and everything is kept as secret as possible, and every time anything is leaked, it is quite literally insane.

The Pacific treaty for example would make it a copyright infringement to cosplay. And most halloween costumes would become illegal overnight. That´s the kind of garbage treaty a bunch of idiots are trying to push through.

It´s at least a bit better here because of how much less influence big biz people have over parties and politicians, as it is much harder to buy elections, not to mention more parties that MAY end up more or less in power, but it´s still a constant struggle to make sure politicians are not "unduly influenced".

That´s one of the reasons i keep telling yanqs you need to update your political system, as it is faaaar too friendly towards creating a two-party system as well as having poor safeguards against "excessive" lobbying.


Still, your country would probably be much better off WITHOUT most of the trade and finance treaties USA is part of, because too much of them are based on the idea that free trade by default is always better, and seriously, if you actually look at what it means, hell NO it is NOT.

And big biz got you into them because it allows them to always move manufacturing to the cheapest place, sure that gives you cheap imports, but it also kills your own industry and business.

Similar with the EU here, i really wish we had stayed outside of it. Just lucky i guess we didn´t also join the euro, sure Sweden is one of the nations that may have benefitted from it, but it comes at several costs, like the Greek tragedy(as that is part of what is keeping the euro down enough to make especially German exports so extremely competitive)...

biochem wrote:1. Big government can't help but increase the amount of bureaucracy in the system.



That is a common prejudice and myth(propagated by exactly the kind of ripoff "businesspeople" you do not want to have power), but if you actually look around the world through history you will find that it has no truth in it.

Poor management will increase the amount of bureaucracy in the system regardless the size of the government compared to the economy or population in total.

OK. We have a large government with poor management and the larger it gets the more the poor management has an opportunity to negatively impact us.

Businesses with poor management either go out of business or get taken over (most take over targets don't have poor management, but the ones that do are sitting ducks).

Also to be remembered, people going into public service quite often do so because they are idealists, and therefore they´re often at least as motivated to not waste money as any private businessperson is.

Not here. Here the idealists joint the peace corp or a non-profit charity. The vast majority of government employees aren't idealists, they work there because they feel it is a good job for them. Generally government positions pay less than the equivalent private sector ones but they make up for it with job security. One you have a government job, you almost always have it for life. With the layoffs and the lousy economy, the appeal of lifetime employment is high.

biochem wrote:2. Big government favors crony capitalists. They leverage their connections to get variances and waivers from regulations their less well connected competitors must follow. The bigger the government -> the more regulations they make -> the more valuable the ability to get around them is.



Only when they are ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH IT.

Unfortunately they are getting away with it and it is getting worse! And because they are getting away with it they love putting up barriers to entry to keep out the competition. Not to mention tinkering with the tax laws to minimize their tax liability at the expense of their less well connected competition. Or taking advantage of the immigration visa laws...

Still, your country would probably be much better off WITHOUT most of the trade and finance treaties USA is part of, because too much of them are based on the idea that free trade by default is always better, and seriously, if you actually look at what it means, hell NO it is NOT.

And big biz got you into them because it allows them to always move manufacturing to the cheapest place, sure that gives you cheap imports, but it also kills your own industry and business.

Similar with the EU here, i really wish we had stayed outside of it. Just lucky i guess we didn´t also join the euro, sure Sweden is one of the nations that may have benefitted from it, but it comes at several costs, like the Greek tragedy(as that is part of what is keeping the euro down enough to make especially German exports so extremely competitive)...

These treaties are an example of crony capitalism in action. Enough short term gains to trumpet in soundbites on the evening news, while the long term impact is ignored.

biochem wrote:OK. We have a large government with poor management and the larger it gets the more the poor management has an opportunity to negatively impact us.

USA does not have a large government. When Sweden had over 2/3 of the economy being part of the government, THAT is LARGE.
Swedish public sector is still, IIRC something like around 40% of GDP.

USA sticks around 20-25%.

Yes, larger government means poor management THERE can potentially have a greater impact.
However, as long as the poor management is there, you can also actually DO something about it.

Intel or Microsoft can and HAVE had pisspoor management again and again, but they are still making money at insane rates, because they are 1. cheating, and 2. sort of the "only game in town" to oversimplify.

Those are just two examples, there´s hordes of them, companies keep surviving despite bad management, and keep messing up, and you can´t do anything about it.

The government, you can at least vote for, AND, you can go to your local politicos and demand they do something about whatever your personal peevee is.

If you do that to a government with enough people in support, changes will happen, not automatically good or the changes you want etc...

But with corporations, you also need to be damned lucky to actually get them to change their ways(or products, services or whatever).

biochem wrote:Businesses with poor management either go out of business or get taken over (most take over targets don't have poor management, but the ones that do are sitting ducks).

If that was true, MS and Intel would have gone down in flames about half a dozen times each in the last 20 years.

W10 is basically a demand to be allowed to freely spy on people while dictating to them what software they are allowed to use.
And good lord, do you have any idea just how insanely bad the original release of W95 was?

And do you remember how all operating systems had to be "fixed" because of how Intel introduced the FDIV floating point bug in the Pentium?
Or their attempt to force people to use shitty RDRAM? When even motherboards with intentionally degraded performance worked better than the ones running with RDRAM, while still being cheaper? ( not to mention not halfway burning up as some RDRAM modules did ) And just the fact that Intel intentionally CRIPPLED their own SDRAM chipsets, and were not taken to the cleaners for such a nasty, shady attempt...

Remember the "Northwood Sudden Death Syndrome"?
Tens of thousands of CPUs dying within 2 years of purchase, and while most died because of overvolting, there was a small percentage that died despite never having been run out of spec.

So Intel and MS are 2 VERY blatant examples that poor management most certainly do not mean crash and burn.

biochem wrote:Not here. Here the idealists joint the peace corp or a non-profit charity.

Incorrect, the problem is you have let your system get set up so that the idealists mostly doesn´t get anywhere, because it´s only the "hungry wolves" that are worth having.
The people vicious enough to step over corpses to push their careers up and ahead.
The people who spend half their days gossiping with and plotting against their colleagues.

Your idealists mostly end up doing the boring daily routine duties.

biochem wrote:The vast majority of government employees aren't idealists

No, but you only need a handful in the right places to drastically improve efficiency.

biochem wrote:Unfortunately they are getting away with it and it is getting worse! And because they are getting away with it they love putting up barriers to entry to keep out the competition. Not to mention tinkering with the tax laws to minimize their tax liability at the expense of their less well connected competition. Or taking advantage of the immigration visa laws...

Pretty much yeah. In retrospect, i have found this to surprisingly(or maybe not) start seriously after the USSR shattered. Suddenly everyone "knew"(or were supposed to know) how the almighty free and uncontrolled capitalism was THE best ever thing to happen to the world and woe to anyone contradicting it.

It was troublesome enough before, but it was as if all restraints were thrown off after that point. And the "big biz" has worked hard to enforce influence as everywhere as it can ever since.

biochem wrote:These treaties are an example of crony capitalism in action. Enough short term gains to trumpet in soundbites on the evening news, while the long term impact is ignored.

Yup. Quarter capitalism joins government, and "suddenly" the world is in deep shit.

The paper had an excellent example of the excessive bureaucracy today. From the time a decision is made to build a road, it takes an average of 6 years for all of the permissions & lawsuits (usually by environmentalists, many of the more extreme ones believe all development is bad and file lawsuits against all projects) to be resolved and final approval to be given.