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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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  1. Government solves problem
  2. Rent seekers are inconvenienced, lobbyists are deployed
  3. Problem comes back with a vengeance

Many such cases.

That's...this is bait, right?

  • The government is usually the biggest rent-seeking entity on the block, growing its body of sinecures with every year and funding it through value extracted from the productive classes at gunpoint.
  • The government usually solves problems by implementing solutions that either don't work, or are hilariously cost-inefficient to the point where they could have done better by just distributing the money spent directly to the nominal beneficiaries. Which of course the government doesn't do, because the actually intended beneficiary is (some other part of) the government.
  • Government is corrupt and wasteful; the private sector gets the blame.

I mean, epistemic gap, the rightist and the leftist see two different movies on one screen, yadda yadda. I'm perfectly willing to admit that private sector actors are also self-interested and will bend and exploit the rules as far as they can, but come on. The government is so much bigger, more powerful and further-reaching, it has every opportunity to prove how well it can solve problems. Pointing fingers at filthy corporats and kulaks, as if they were responsible for every government failure ever, regardless of which country and/or system we're talking about...

I rarely come back to look back at comments, but the comment I replied to originally is also bait, when viewed from a different lens.

We're simply arguing about which problem is bigger, not whether either problem exists. Leaving my comment in response to phailyoor cuts back on the circlejerk that regulation is inherently bad. I mostly make comments like this when the circlejerk becomes unbearable.

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