The issue isn't that they don't have a different rationale, it's the particulars of what that rationale is built on. "State dependence" alleviates suffering when implemented in earnest, "self-empowerment" perpetuates inequality and privileges luck and momentum over innovation and (paradoxically) moment-to-moment hard work.
In America, there has always been one side on the right side of history and one on the wrong, as far as health and happiness go. People and institutions switch sides, but the sides exist all the same. It comes down to how considerate you are of your neighbors, here and abroad. It's baffling that such a rich society continues to engage interpersonally with a scarcity mindset. Bootstraps are a myth; give until you can't and then ask for what you need. If we still then have racial issues, class issues, gender issues, religious issues, then the problem goes deeper than economics, and we'll need to face that with the same level of compassion.
The thing about state dependence that I don’t like is that that means the state has power over you. Follow our rules or you lose benefits. What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits.
We don’t want to have what they had in the old “second world” where the state could bend the will of the people because it held all the cards.
That’s not to deny that we can serve people better. Create access to capital, lessen predatory practices on innumerate consumers, incentivize women to enter more productive areas of the economy, etc.
Re: state power... ”Follow our rules or you lose benefits.
What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your
privilege to those benefits.”
How is this different than private power? Honestly, I've had to put up with far more arbitrary bs from my HMO than state or federal programs. With my state and the feds at least there is a clear statement of benefits, a clear procedure to appeal, and a solid attempt to deliver on promises.
How well does that compare to, say, your cable company? Or how well have big companies done respecting your privacy? In other words, lots of people get directly screwed by private companies, too.
I'm not trying to say that government programs are the ideal answer to everything. In the USA there is a serious need for reasonable debate, responsible budgets, and a commitment to good government.
There is plenty of potential for abuse with government over reach. But there is also plenty of abuse from government under-reach, too. Isn't it in everybody's interests to have a functioning government? One that that operates under good-faith intentions to follow it's mandate?
My guess is that right-leaning people are more comfortable with private corporations having that sort of power because they presume that the people in charge of the corporations must be competent and wise to get to their position. Possibly also that the dynamics of the free market will somehow protect people's rights.
No, IMO it's because generally speaking the govt has much more power over you than any private entity. You don't have to follow the rules of any particular private entity unless you choose to. You can't choose not to pay your taxes (legally) or escape the surveillance state.
There are exceptions to this of course, such as government-sponsored monopolies (healthcare, ISPs, utilities). But a lot of that is regulatory capture IMO - we've ceded a lot of power to MegaCorp Inc. which I'm not comfortable with either.
As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc) and demand everything they have on you like the feds can. No one holds a candle to the potential of govt tyranny, everyone is at the mercy of "the man".
At the end of the day, massive consolidation of power at the top levels of society is never healthy, whatever form it may take.
As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc)
This in an amusing statement considering that many people consider Google and Facebook to be terrible big private companies.
And note, their power doesn't come from government-sponsored monopolies.
Also, calling utilities and ISPs government-sponsored utilities is grossly misleading; both are natural monopolies due to the capital costs that are involved.
Even more people consider Google and FB useful and valuable and gladly (and voluntarily) use their services. Otherwise those "terrible companies" wouldn't be so big anymore.
Capital costs do not create monopolies, just an obstacle solved by raising capital. Government regulations create monopolies - there is no way to fix those.
I recommend you actually read up on natural monopolies. It's a well understood and universally accepted phenomenon (at least academically; obviously there are vested interests who prefer to deny their existence despite clear facts).
Every time people show me a "natural" monopoly I find regulations around it that corrupt the market.
People believing in the so-called natural monopolies lack fate in the entrepreneurial drive, creativity and innovation of the free individuals working hard in their own interest, for their own betterment.
So the proposition is which "check/balance" is better: Market competition or Elections.
Modern economics research shows that the efficient markets hypothesis is not true and definitely requires government regulation to operate in the way that Chicago School econ describes it. So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.
> So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.
This is a non-sequitor. The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency. I personally don’t believe in the efficient market (it’s why I’m an active trader). But elections, where ill-informed people vote on topics they barely have any knowledge about, risking nothing in the process, seem significantly worse at guaranteeing acceptable outcomes.
> The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency.
Can you go into more detail on how that could be for me? If the EMH is untrue, then there must be some other mechanism besides competition that checks the private sector, no? What would that be?
I'm implicitly lumping "regulation" as part of the Elections mechanism, btw, so I'm assuming you didn't mean regulation as the mechanism.
Yeah, we've seen the remarkable result of elections with Putin, Venezuela, China and now Trump.
Meanwhile unregulated fields like software, computers and communication have enjoyed the fastest and most remarkable progress in modern history. Progress which benefits us all every day.
First of all, You seem to be confused because you are mistaking what happens in Russia, Venezuela and China for actual elections. Whatever happens in those places is certainly not what I meant by the term "elections."
Second, You point to "three" (or are those 3 things really the same thing?) successes in competition, each of which were aided by investment authorized by elected legislators. Then you point to one failure of elections and proceed to conclude that competition is the better of the two. It doesn't follow, I'm afraid.
As for Trump, yes, that was the elections mechanism failing. I never said it was perfect. But the Market competition mechanism fails more often, in my estimation. Neither is perfect, but competition seems to create much higher probability for imperfection, abuse, flaws, and suffering.
Russia, Venezuela and USA all had actual democratic elections at some point. But they elected dictators which took power and never let go. The results were horrifying: imprisoned people, children in concentration camps and death, countless deaths. Destroying a country's economy leads to famine and, yes, death.
The effects of free market "failures" are comparatively laughable and always corrected by the free market itself sooner or later.
There is no contest which one is graver. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality and evidence all around us.
I'd say it's because corporate power is much more fragily held than goverment power. A startup can ruin a corporation - it takes a revolution to ruin a government.
Governments are checked by the wavering legitimacy of any given representative within the government. In our system, we have a direct check on that legitimacy through elections.
Meanwhile, corporations frequently do not have to compete, having either become a monopoly or having agreed upon "standards" without which they insist solvency in their given area would be impossible (as they rake in untold riches in profit). The only check on that power is indirectly through refusing to transact with them en masse. However, as long as their credit is good, they can continue to exist and operate with impunity.
In the end, the question is of the accumulation of which currency determines who is "good" enough to run your life: political clout or money.
Franklu, people who have to be nice to me tend to do better by me than people who just happen to have a lot of money.
Governments are checked by the democratic process. And competition is not working as well as it should. There are plenty of corporate monopolies, Varsity being one of the most obvious at the present time.
Neither is perfect but we can easily see that private competition works better by far by comparing the results: all the modern life products and services vs the mess that governments and governmental services are in various parts of the world.
Governments have incomparably more power and thus their abuses are incomparably worse: famines, pogroms, wars, asset confiscation, incarceration, murder.
Companies are controlled by the market, it's governments we need to worry about and find ways to control and regulate.
The only unbeatable way companies control the market is through government-granted monopoly. Any other way is eventually defeated by the market itself.
Every government intervention in the market will benefit established players and will hinder startups and thus the markets's self-regulating mechanisms.
This is an extreme counterexample, but doesn't the fact that the government will prosecute large companies that order hit squads to assassinate startup employees count as an "intervention"?
There are many other cases where I'd be very uncomfortable trusting these so-called "self-regulatinf mechanisms", e.g. the abolition of slavery, child labour, and racial/sexual employment discrimination.
Moreover, none of those things were always illegal. There was a time where it was not obvious that they should be illegal. Yet, despite the relatively laisez faire economics of the 19th century (in the UK at least), these behaviours were not simply self-regulated away. That required government intervention in the form of passing laws and ensuring that the law was followed.
This is a recurring theme that I despise. People need to start to talk about the government in a democracy as "we". You are the government, the state is a collective you are part off and have power over. You are in fact dependent on others, that is the point of a society.
So when someone says, hey, when I joined this society, I was told its people upheld the right for all its members to equal opportunity? But my parents did not have the money that yours did? And that affected my opportunity? So what gives?
When you have the attitude of the government as a seperate entity, it becomes reality. The more you see the government as such, the more it is allowed to become a ruler over others, since that's how you depict it. When it should be the CEO that you, a member of the board, elected, and can booth out when you don't like what they're doing no more, and you also can join the government if you want to contribute more, etc.
Sorry to hijike your discussion about handling the homelessness crisis , but that's a sore point for me. I find it really weak of people to look for someone else to govern them, and I wish people took responsability for their government (in democracies), because they are its owner and fundamentally have power over it. But too many prefer to delegate and pretend they're powerless against the faceless man.
> This is a recurring theme that I despise. People need to start to talk about the government in a democracy as "we". You are the government, the state is a collective you are part off and have power over. You are in fact dependent on others, that is the point of a society.
I take your point, but for an individual this is only true in a very abstract sense. The People may govern Themselves, but I do not govern myself in any meaningful way.
Sorry but no, the state is fundamentally different and opposed to the individual. Individuals make up society but individuals are not society.
The entire purpose of society, and of a state, is to stifle the motivations of the individual for some group. In most cases it's pretty mundane stuff you give up as an individual, basically 0 cost stuff for a much bigger benefit of working with other individuals in society. Or via listening to the state in regards to the rules and policies they put in place.
But it is foolish to say that they are one and the same.
> But it is foolish to say that they are one and the same
I don't see where in what I said you got the impression I was saying that they are one and the same?
I'm saying that, in a working democracy, you are a part of the government, which is very different from seeing the government as a seperate entity you are subservient too.
> The entire purpose of society, and of a state, is to stifle the motivations of the individual for some group
The point of a democratic society is to create a friendly association with others. For it to be friendly, it kind of requires all participants to benefit and feel fairly treated. In turn, this often means that a democratic society will put a stronger emphasis on the individual than non-democratic alternatives. That is to say, the goal of a democratic society is to maximize everyone's rights at the individual level.
Now yes, that does mean that a democratic society is a group of people that assemble together in order to overpower individuals or other groups that would try to dominate over them through force. Maybe that's what you meant here, but it seems a bit of a sideway conversation. Since they do so in order to protect their own individual rights from being taken by force by others.
You are being small minded to what I'm saying. You say harness the potential of the group. How do you do that? It necessarily requires stifling the motivations of individuals so that they can work together. I'm making 0 moral judgements on whether the motivations of an individual are or are not valid.
Notice I specifically said
> for a much bigger benefit of working with other individuals in society.
So, you might want to re-evaluate your bias towards what I said.
>It necessarily requires stifling the motivations of individuals so that they can work together.
This assumes that people are naturally and totally individualistic, which is untrue even at a biological level. People work together instinctually, and they also decide, rationally, to work together. Individual and collective motivations are often the same; and while collective motivations sometimes stifle individual motivations, the former often (if not more often) replaces a LACK of motivation. In fact, the appeal to engaging in collective action in order to fill in a hole of individual meaning (motivation) underpins some of humanity's strongest and most common institutions: military service, volunteer service, protest, religion, work. That is society: individuals working in concert, by each's determination.
>I'm making 0 moral judgements on whether the motivations of an individual are or are not valid.
You're making a moral judgment privileging individual motivation, separating it from collective motivation.
Your argument is simply wrong on its face. It tries to generalize a solipsistic perspective to the rest of humanity, to which it very clearly does not apply. Perhaps only in this thought are you truly as much an individual as you seem to think people must necessarily be.
No, I simply addressed your statements re: individual vs collective motivation. This reply of yours is simply a way for you to avoid interrogating your viewpoint in light of my response, which I think is a shame.
But people ARE naturally and totally individualistic. Even when they cooperate, they do it for their own individual interest. It's due to the nature of our evolution.
That's a misunderstanding of the thesis. Because humans tend to have trouble surviving completely alone, our nature is to privilege others and the group in many circumstances, over our individual wellbeing. Sacrifice - of comfort, health, even life - in order to secure the survival of our children and tribe is common because it is often so much more effective at allowing for the perpetuation of a given line than purely individualistic behavior. That's what's so profound about the concept presented in "The Selfish Gene": the meta-impulse to preserve one's genes often overrides the meta-impulse to preserve one's own life.
Unless we're talking election fraud though, it is the people that have chosen to reelect or to delegate the choice to others to do so for them.
And anyone motivated enough can engage even further in the process, become a candidate, influence others, etc.
I find so many people are just complainers, but they barely take anytime to even understand how the system works, I wouldn't be surprised if half the people don't even know what a congressman can do, can't do, and does. And even less surprised if most people didn't even bother reading about each candidate for more than 10 minutes.
I'm not American, but now live in America, and I've literally had to explain how laws are made in the US to many Americans. That's depressing. And it's not like I'm an expert on it, I just took a few hours reading through the wikipedia page and the usa.gov website. (p.s.: It's not better in my country Canada, people are similarly lacking in ownership and awareness, so I'm not trying to point fingers at Americans exclusively)
Yes, we can discuss the system and issues with representation, like being first past the post, and all, but even before that, I think there's just a lack of ownership by a lot of people who don't consider themselves a part of the government, when they are. The word itself means: "the people rule" and is defined as: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state". As a citizen of a democratic state, YOU ARE the government.
Do you apply this same reasoning to people whose housing, food, and healthcare are all put at risk if their employer decides they don't like them?
Seems like you're concerned about what's mostly a hypothetical when done by the state today- but probably hundreds of millions of people in the US alone are being coerced to do things they don't want to under threat of losing the exact things you're worried about. And in a lot of cases, what's one big thing mitigating that coercion? The very social safety nets you're worried about!
But there are no substantial distinctions between employers in terms of how the utilize the coercive leverage that they have. So this is an illusory "safety-net".
There are more employers than govs. Imagine if the govt could cancel your benefits because it didn’t like your tweet. A few companies, ok, it sucks, but you have a chance to move on.
Consider how hard it would be to get a law like that past the judiciary system. If you or I can see how ridiculous the notion is then it must be obvious to a jury of our peers. Even with majority fiat the judiciary branch can still quell all kinds of popular but unjust laws. The travel ban is a great example of something the judiciary crushed. Same thing with the requirement in the ACA that employer-provided insurance include coverage for birth control, which is arguably far more popular.
There isn't just one Government in the US. What we have is a system of branches, each of which must agree that a law is acceptable. If just one branch disagrees then it can effect change.
Similarly we are not just one state. We're a federation and individual states can fight against federal laws that their constituents find unjust. Washington and Colorado did just that when they legalized marijuana. It's still illegal at the federal level, but the ATF has no jurisdiction within state lines so they can't do anything about manufacture and sale within state borders.
Consolidating that all under the same umbrella erases a lot of the very complexity that serves to protect you. And you can't accord that complexity to a corporation because shareholders and the board have a level of tyranny not found in our government.
If the government could do that it would mean that legislators were elected that passed such a law. It's not a credible hypothetical, IMO. And even if it were, there would be recourse in the form of electing different legislators at the next opportunity.
Any illegalities perpetrated by the private sector should be (and are) prosecuted to the full extend of the law. In addition, market misbehaving is punished by the market through the consumer.
The private sector is not above the law. The problem is that the government is. This is why, while both can misbehave, I see governments as a much, much larger danger to the average citizen than corporations. And the history agrees with me.
Just noting that in your scenario here, you are admitting that the private sector is not able to correct it's own abuses, but rather needs the elected government to do so.
>market misbehaving is punished by the market through the consumer.
Can you explain how the consumer punishes private sector entities engaged in human trafficking, for example? It seems there's plenty of evidence that deception and cutting corners is the most market competitive behavior that corporations can employ which allows them to offer the most appealing prices. Therefore market misbehavior is rewarded, not punished by consumers because the price signal is too reductionist to capture all of that.
I wrote this in another comment but it bears repeating: Illegal behavior is punished. Markets require the rule of law. The role of governments to implement and uphold the law. Nobody is disputing that.
>We don’t want to have what they had in the old “second world” where the state could bend the will of the people because it held all the cards.
Isn't it apparent, though, that this type of leverage is inevitable in any societal structure? Some party will have a level of power where it can coerce many others to basically do their bidding at threat of witholding some essential sustenance. In the private sector, witholding employment means poverty and the resulting wretched consequences to health and status.
The proposition that government should be the only one with that leverage is the lesser of many evils, because at least there is electoral recourse against a government that abuses it.
This is opposed to leaving that leverage with the private sector, where there is no recourse, other that not participating, which is exactly their leverage in the first place, as you will be left with no income and in poverty.
> The thing about state dependence that I don’t like is that that means the state has power over you.
This is genuinely sad-funny considering the state of the US federal government overreach (independent of sitting president), policing, justice and implementation of secret courts and police forces.
In any case, welfare states handle this quite well with a justice system largely independent from the social executive flanked by mandatory legal aid. Which, if anything, has resulted in a power imbalance towards those receiving state benefits.
>The thing about state dependence that I don’t like is that that means the state has power over you. Follow our rules or you lose benefits. What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits.
I don't understand how this would be a valid reason to not give a benefit. Even if that benefit comes with strings or can be taken away, isn't receiving that benefit for a period of time more helpful than never receiving it at all?
It doesn't have to be a valid reason. From the POV of a state that wants to micromanage the beliefs of its population, social benefits become a tool of coercion. This has happened before, the history of USSR has plenty of examples.
That's not an argument against state help & social services per se. It's an argument for being vigilant and ensuring the government serves the people more than it serves itself.
In USSR these opportunities didn't exist outside of the state. In the US, opportunities exist, some people are just too far down below the ladder that they can't even begin to climb. If you fear this type of situation in which people in the US are dependent on the state, isn't it an acknowledgment that the self reliance and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" ideas that are used to argue against state help are myths? Otherwise why would people allow themselves to be coerced by the state if there were other viable alternatives?
> If you fear this type of situation in which people in the US are dependent on the state, isn't it an acknowledgment that the self reliance and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" ideas that are used to argue against state help are myths?
Perhaps. I personally don't buy the "self-made man" arguments. They feel too much like survivorship bias.
I don't think it's that simple. The presence of a benefit can create a moat around other opportunities, e.g. social housing easing the burden of finding housing but also reinforcing geographic segregation by social class.
I'd like to see what real-world examples you're thinking of when you write this, because the line of reasoning you're pursuing in this part of the thread looks to me more like a terminally cynical description of having a society and legal system.
Or they will be returned to the exact same state they would be in otherwise? How is that a threat? Would a hungry person turn down a free meal because they will just be hungry later and they don’t want to be reliant on whoever gave them the meal?
The state always has power over you, it wouldn't be much of a state otherwise. If it doesn't respect your rights, you're screwed anyway. Capital doesn't help you when the state refuses to enforce your property rights, skills don't help you when you've been disappeared out of a helicopter.
Exactly. See Russia for an example of all these awful consequences of state power, without the social safety net.
Sure, a tyrannical government could take away your benefits for having the wrong views. They could also just take away your property in the absence of benefits.
This is in part a reply to you and in part a comment on all the sibling comments.
There are many cultural assumptions that are built into the comments here. Worth examining.
* "What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits." Some countries use government to ensure every mom and baby-to-be has prenatal care and food. There is not a belief test there, just a pregnancy test. Could you give an example of the types of belief tests you are against?
I find the US emphasis on church charity rather than government services repugnant in particular because it often is used exactly for ideological coercion. Not all churches, but many, see the provision of services as a way to enforce/reward/punish certain beliefs and behaviors. I've always found that un-christ-like myself but hey I'm just a heretic. A government service that says, "hey, you're 16 and homeless so we will feed you dinner" seems much better and less coercive than a church that says, "you're 16 and homeless so we'll feed you dinner if you pray beforehand and we get to choose your pronouns".
* Many sibling commenters mention employers a lot. That's another cultural assumption that I find interesting. In the culture I was raised in, it was assumed that government help is rightfully directed primarily at the very young, the very old, and the very sick -- in general, people without employers and with fewer opportunities to 'just help themselves' or pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That is, after all, why we formed a bunch of these government agencies -- we as a people, as a community, felt bad seeing 87-year-old men starve to death in their apartments because they had limited mobility and no income, or watching 4-month-old babies refuse to get that corporate job they obviously should've that would've allowed mama who had a debilitating injury from birthing to afford formula for the kid. Ah, self-empowerment: works so well when it results in 4-year-olds becoming trash pickers to help their families, and 92-year-olds to sit by the road (if they even live that long) begging because it brings in a little cash! No. Some of these government programs were formed because there are times in a person's life where all the psychological empowerment and even job skills training classes you want aren't gonna help, but food and a place to live will.
To go back to discussions above this, I still engage a lot on Facebook for political argument purposes. It's boring just talking with people who agree with me (the people I live with, generally) so I do seek out other points of view on Facebook. It is interesting how some folks always slide an argument back to the point they want -- tried talking about Amy Coney Barrett's opinion in a Title IX case with a friend doing a PhD, and strangely enough she kept bringing it back to how universities shouldn't be policing "stuff that happens in bars". I just mention this example because campus adjudication of sexual assault cases and the relationship with Title IX and due process rights is, ugh, a totally different, complicated, legally interesting conversation than 'what happens in bars'. But we can't even have the conversation -- a conversation I feel I can contribute to in an interesting way because I've been faculty at a university and have dealt informally with harassment between students -- because it continually slides back to these fake talking points that dismiss all the important stuff! Is that social cooling or not?
> Many sibling commenters mention employers a lot.
Probably because the vast majority of Americans can only afford healthcare for those debilitating injuries by finding an employer who will sign them up for the employee health plan.
> A government service that says, "hey, you're 16 and homeless so we will feed you dinner" seems much better and less coercive than a church that says, "you're 16 and homeless so we'll feed you dinner if you pray beforehand and we get to choose your pronouns".
If the results of the latter were proven to result in generally a much happier and more cohesive society, would you be so confident and assured in your opposition and disdain for the approach?
I'm a religious person for utilitarian reasons and read my Bible weekly and go to church accordingly.
But a whole lot of teen suicide and abortion is due to haters hating (I mean Christians being dogmatic) -- it's pretty well proven that coercive religious dogma is bad for mental health, as well as in the US divorce and abortion rates. The pressure to keep up appearances and lie about who you are and your actual life is not the bit that leads to a happy and cohesive society.
You’re leaping from “coercive religion dogma is bad for mental health” (I’ll accept that for the sake of argument) to “faith based charity is bad”. I don’t see how that follows. Seeing as you go to Church for utilitarian reasons, I don’t understand why you would condemn a faith based charity for trying to offer some sort of spiritual sustenance to the people they serve.
What about all the instances where state dependence increased suffering though? What baffles me is that we continue to fall into the trap that there are only 2 ways to approach every problem.
In America, there has always been one side on the right side of history and one on the wrong, as far as health and happiness go. People and institutions switch sides, but the sides exist all the same. It comes down to how considerate you are of your neighbors, here and abroad. It's baffling that such a rich society continues to engage interpersonally with a scarcity mindset. Bootstraps are a myth; give until you can't and then ask for what you need. If we still then have racial issues, class issues, gender issues, religious issues, then the problem goes deeper than economics, and we'll need to face that with the same level of compassion.