ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
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User ID: 1098
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
10mo ago
This will be very difficult, for two major reasons:
- Government operates based on rules, while private entities operate based on performance. Your boss can fire you if you're ineffective. The government can only fire you if you don't follow the rules. It's easy to follow the rules and still be ineffective. So government relies on constructing the right rules to achieve its ends, and we don't even agree on the ends, much less the specific rules. The rules end up being byzantine tomes of regulations that no one understands. So there's tons of intractable inefficiency that cannot be addressed. Musk would have to somehow make government employment contingent on performance rather than rules.
- More importantly, efficiency requires making costs and benefits explicit and commensurable so tradeoffs can be made. People hate making money commensurable with lives, happiness, or other sacred values. Even conservatives use terms like "death panels" when this topic comes up. Any cost-cutting that comes at the expense of a few hours at the end of a few peoples' lives, or of the academic success of a few economically disadvantaged children, is going to be raised as a fatal flaw in the whole endeavor, regardless of how many billions of dollars were saved. Musk would need to sidestep this issue somehow.
My best idea for solving #2 is to give people a choice to accept a payment to forgo a government benefit. For example, instead of government-dictated healthcare provided by your employer, you're allowed to opt out in return for $X, where $X is less than the average cost of the healthcare plan. This of course is distasteful to supporters of government healthcare, because they want the costs to be socialized. Adverse selection will cause people who are healthy to opt out etc. The same adverse selection follows for other kinds of government benefits, such as education with school vouchers. In the limit, the people remaining receiving benefits would be precisely those who take out more than they put in, and this would highlight the cost everyone is paying to support those people. The existing system obfuscates who is causing the high costs.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
4mo ago
Yet they ignore the fact that analysts have produced a great deal of research and economic analysis arguing that such policies are good for Americans.
The economic analysis I've seen (please share if you have counter-examples) looks only at impact on GDP or on American wages and prices. It ignores the fact that nationalists have a stake in their nation, and immigrants dilute and weaken that stake. Allowing immigrants is analogous to selling some shares in a corporation. If immigration is 3% per year, Americans are losing 3% of their stake in their country to foreigners every year. If the immigrants are like-minded (for civic nationalists) or co-ethnic (for ethno-nationalists) then it's not such a big deal; it's basically recruiting allies. But if the immigrants are opposed to Americans' culture or are of a different ethnicity then immigration is a hostile takeover.
You can’t be a nationalist and also stick to the facts, since even though most Americans are nationalists, few would think that 1% of the federal budget going abroad is worth worrying about.
What. That's a non-sequitur. To draw a crude analogy, if thieves are stealing your stuff at a rate of only 1% of your income every year, then security is not worth worrying about. Or if you only waste 1% of your time sitting in traffic or standing in line at the post office, then it's not worth making roads or post offices more efficient. Hanania has made a bad argument here.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
10mo ago
The campaign's proposals include a "first-ever" tax credit for builders of homes sold to first-time buyers, as well as up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for "eligible" first time buyers, a move that her campaign estimated could reach four million households over four years.
To anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics, this is just gibs for her constituents. It'll of course raise housing prices in general, hurting all the people who don't qualify for the tax credit.
- A: Behold our new policy: Subsidize Demand!
- B: How will this help lower prices?
- A: Lower prices?
Which... totally makes sense if one believes her constituents are good people and deserve more than they're getting right now. Or that the people hurt by the policy are bad people (a.k.a. status competitors) who deserve less than what they have.
I don't know anyone in real life who is both pro life and anti those other things. I know people who are pro life and also believe in helping the poor and immigrants. I know people who are anti immigrant but fine with abortion. That these people happen to be part of the same coalition is due to the relative strength of their convictions on the different issues. Pro life are VERY pro life and weak on the other issues. Etc.
You could make a similar criticism of the pastor's position along the same lines. "You can advocate for bringing in criminals and low class immigrants and taxing the wealthy because you live far away from the lower classes and don't have to worry about crime, you work in a nepotistic industry that takes decades to assimilate into so you're not threatened by immigrant labor, and you are paid in esteem rather than cash so taxing the rich doesn't affect you. Very convenient that your political positions are both morally correct and don't force you to make any sacrifices in your own life." With a little wordsmithing that would be just as persuasive as what the pastor said.
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