Biff to Dr. D: I just got back from food and re-read what I wrote to you on the fly. I wanted to get something out to you by early afternoon so you would have time to review and comment on it. It seems however to have devolved into a bit of a rant at times and may even sound hostile. I apologize for that, as that certainly was not my conscious intent. I'm all for friendly discussion...
I've posted an edited copy on my blog which follows here... (It's pretty much the same though; I have some other stuff I need to churn out this evening...)
I've posted an edited copy on my blog which follows here... (It's pretty much the same though; I have some other stuff I need to churn out this evening...)
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Dr D: >>i hear what you're saying about private sector vs. public, though the private sector person is not likely to give you the full range of options available to you if it's not in their interest to do so.<<
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This is true, but the same sentence can be applied equally to a public sector person. The difference being that the private sector person is much more likely to find it in their best interest to provide full range of options. If a public sector person provides good service its out of something like generosity or duty. But a private sector person has additional motives beyond generosity and duty, such as greed, sales targets, esprit de corps, professional pride, and so forth. In other words, you're more likely to get what you want at the hands of a private sector person.
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The downside people associate with the private sector is getting ripped off. However, my experience with the public sector is that though one seldom gets ripped off directly; one is constantly getting ripped off indirectly if one looks at the larger picture. This is because with the public sector one either does not get what one wants because it is not available, or else one gets a woefully overpriced low-quality edition of what one wants; and let's not forget the long hassle required to get it and the piss-poor after sales service. Furthermore, if the public sector offers a product but it's not up to standard, there is usually no private sector alternative (public sector goods usually eliminate private sector goods because the public sector has no budget limitations; i.e. our tax dollars get blown out the kazoo on public sector projects) which means it is impossible to get what you want. I would much rather take the chance of getting ripped off but be able to get what I want from somebody else, than have to deal with a public sector where I'm almost sure not to get what I want and not to have an alternative when I don’t get it. And it also helps keep in mind that the public sector often uses the law to try to keep the private sector out of its business.
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For example, the United States Postal Service tried to stop Federal Express from ever getting off the ground by filing court injunctions complaining that it was infringing upon its turf. I.e. the government monopoly postal service was opposed to competition. What a surprise! Fortunately, the court ruled in Fed Express's favor, otherwise we would be stuck with the abysmal performance of the US mail.
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Or how about the high price and low selection of alcohol in Taiwan. Microbreweries are banned in pubs in Taiwan. Why? Because the government has decreed them high polluting. And yet, the dregs from brewing beer and so forth are typically sold as fertilizer. In other words, government by fiat yet again means solutions arrived at by bureaucratic ignoramuses with less interest in facilitating the public weal and more interest in covering their asses by adhering to regulations.
In a productive economy, government for the most part tends to attract the worst of the workforce. It pays less than the private sector and provides little opportunity for the intelligent person to achieve professional satisfaction.
If a government bureau issues a fiat, there is little recourse other than through the courts which is expensive and incredibly time-consuming. Look at the huge number of Freedom of Information Act applications filed in the United States every year by everyone from the ACLU to New York Times reporters just to get information which should be freely accessible to the public. And documents that are released (George Washington University's website has plenty of CIA files display), are often heavily redacted (i.e. 'critical' information has been blacked out). This often requires one to file Freedom of Information Act applications for exactly the same files all over again. Each filing application requires from several months to several years to be processed. And declassified information gets reclassified all the time (the Bush Administration has been particularly fond of this).
Or look at how federal lands are managed in United States. Park lands are routinely logged, new roads are driven through them, and they're given over to farmers to graze cattle. But this is only to be expected because, as a politician, it costs you nothing to grant special interests special favors (which are repaid in campaign contributions) when the property is not your own and thus you personally do not suffer any sort of financial loss. Left-wingers complain that George Bush has appointed the heads of various corporations and corporate interest political action committees as heads of various government departments regulating the environment, placed them in charge of Superfund (devoted to cleaning up abandoned toxic industrial waste sites), and so forth. And the largest owner of buildings in the US with asbestos insulation is none other than the United States federal government. And the feds have employed various maneuvers to ensure that they will never have to remove asbestos insulation from their buildings. Private sector buildings, of course, have to remove asbestos. A lovely double standard. But, again, why is this a surprise given the history and motive of governments? And what is the cure? More government?
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Or how about the high price and low selection of alcohol in Taiwan. Microbreweries are banned in pubs in Taiwan. Why? Because the government has decreed them high polluting. And yet, the dregs from brewing beer and so forth are typically sold as fertilizer. In other words, government by fiat yet again means solutions arrived at by bureaucratic ignoramuses with less interest in facilitating the public weal and more interest in covering their asses by adhering to regulations.
In a productive economy, government for the most part tends to attract the worst of the workforce. It pays less than the private sector and provides little opportunity for the intelligent person to achieve professional satisfaction.
If a government bureau issues a fiat, there is little recourse other than through the courts which is expensive and incredibly time-consuming. Look at the huge number of Freedom of Information Act applications filed in the United States every year by everyone from the ACLU to New York Times reporters just to get information which should be freely accessible to the public. And documents that are released (George Washington University's website has plenty of CIA files display), are often heavily redacted (i.e. 'critical' information has been blacked out). This often requires one to file Freedom of Information Act applications for exactly the same files all over again. Each filing application requires from several months to several years to be processed. And declassified information gets reclassified all the time (the Bush Administration has been particularly fond of this).
Or look at how federal lands are managed in United States. Park lands are routinely logged, new roads are driven through them, and they're given over to farmers to graze cattle. But this is only to be expected because, as a politician, it costs you nothing to grant special interests special favors (which are repaid in campaign contributions) when the property is not your own and thus you personally do not suffer any sort of financial loss. Left-wingers complain that George Bush has appointed the heads of various corporations and corporate interest political action committees as heads of various government departments regulating the environment, placed them in charge of Superfund (devoted to cleaning up abandoned toxic industrial waste sites), and so forth. And the largest owner of buildings in the US with asbestos insulation is none other than the United States federal government. And the feds have employed various maneuvers to ensure that they will never have to remove asbestos insulation from their buildings. Private sector buildings, of course, have to remove asbestos. A lovely double standard. But, again, why is this a surprise given the history and motive of governments? And what is the cure? More government?
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And how about the infamous Ruby Ridge incident. In the early 1990's, a religious nut in the western United States was supposed to be arrested by federal law-enforcement officers for selling guns but instead, the man's dog was shot to death, his youngest son was shot to death, and his wife was shot to death; needless to say, this being federal case, none of the law enforcement officers were found guilty of any sort of criminal infraction though the religious nut won a million-dollar damages suit in a civil case against the federal government. The very next year, the officer in charge at Ruby Ridge was given charge of another case whereby more religious nuts were supposed to be arrested. This was the infamous Waco massacre. As you may recall, 80 nuts died including 27 children and, again, no federal officer was found guilty of any crime despite the use of tanks, machine guns, and helicopter mounted guns against civilians; not to mention the crazy-quilt of affadavits charging the nuts with everything from gun sales to illegal drug manufacture to child rape. I've read interviews with survivors and watched video of the bewildered local sherrif saying the nuts were peaceful people who had been there for 30 years and never hurt anyone or caused anybody any trouble. The dean of Harvard University's law school knew one of the nuts, a graduate of his department, and vouched for the non-violent nature of these nuts. The site of the massacre was bulldozed by the Feds within 24 hours. If I had killed 80 people, whether by accident or not, can you imagine that I, as a private citizen, could (finances permitting) have a crime scene bulldozed within 24 hours?
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Or how about Kennebeck Man, where the federal Indian Affairs representative confiscated the remains of a 10,000-year-old skeleton found on public land, not Indian land, and gave it to a tribe of local Indians who said it was their ancestor, a patently preposterous notion given the wandering, warring, enslaving, etc. that all Indian tribes engaged in. The Indian Affairs rep ordered the site where the skeleton was found to be bulldozed and then planted with trees. Can you imagine? This took place in the early 1990's and the resulting law suits are still ongoing. Half of the skeleton is already missing not to mention that it's been reburied, redug up, and has thus been tainted with various new soils and so forth. And this is not an isolated case of malfeasance with regard to 'Indian' skeletons in the 1990's in the US. All sorts of skeletons were found and not dug up by anthropologists in the US over the past 10 years because of this and other cases being handled in a similarly partisan, politically correct, and ultimately cavalier fashion.
Or how about Kennebeck Man, where the federal Indian Affairs representative confiscated the remains of a 10,000-year-old skeleton found on public land, not Indian land, and gave it to a tribe of local Indians who said it was their ancestor, a patently preposterous notion given the wandering, warring, enslaving, etc. that all Indian tribes engaged in. The Indian Affairs rep ordered the site where the skeleton was found to be bulldozed and then planted with trees. Can you imagine? This took place in the early 1990's and the resulting law suits are still ongoing. Half of the skeleton is already missing not to mention that it's been reburied, redug up, and has thus been tainted with various new soils and so forth. And this is not an isolated case of malfeasance with regard to 'Indian' skeletons in the 1990's in the US. All sorts of skeletons were found and not dug up by anthropologists in the US over the past 10 years because of this and other cases being handled in a similarly partisan, politically correct, and ultimately cavalier fashion.
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And how about the infinitude of RICO cases whereby private citizens are prosecuted and their property confiscated because law officers want to pick it up on the cheap when it comes up at the annual government auction? RICO has created practically an entire industry devoted to property rip-offs; a modern relative to the Catholic Inquisition which operated with precisely the same motive: propery confiscation with 50% of the proceeds going to the rat.
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A friend of mine was ripped off by his wife in the mid-1990's for more than 30 million US dollars. His clever Taiwanese wife stole everything he had and then pretended to be broke and applied to get on the welfare scheme in California. She then told the state she suspected her husband of sexually abusing her children and had them put in state-funded counseling. She apparently pressured her daughter to trump up the charge that her husband touched her once on the vulva while she was asleep and while the mother was asleep in bed with them. That was the sum and total of the complaint (I was going to write a book on this and was given free access to his court statements and so forth). His wife, by declaring that she was insolvent and on welfare was in a position to invite the state to prosecute her husband on her behalf. She succeeded in getting the state to throw its full weight against her husband and it did not cost her a penny. Her husband, broke and thrown off his own property, now had to face the practically unlimited resources of the State of California's Justice Department.
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Why? Principally because his wife maneuvered her husband on to the politically incorrect side of the wedge. That was the 1990's Janet Reno 'save the children' era where Guns and Roses singer Axel Rose went into counseling and emerged claiming his dad raped him as a child, and where two hustlers made national news exposing a kindergarten in Colorado where gang rapes where allegedly taking place. The whole thing was a bogus fad whereby hustlers and trained professionals implanted memories in children. Thousands of people were railroaded by politically ambitous prosecutors (like Janet Reno who built her reputation 'saving children' in Miami) on the basis of these bogus accusations.
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The list of this sort of nonsense goes on and on and on with the government being called in as an impartial judge to make decisions for us and save us from ourselves. Government malfeasance is something we've all seen while going through high-handed customs and immigration, when dealing with sleazy tax officials, when dealing with strutting cops, etc. etc. I'm supposed trust a government official to do something right when I know all the temptations available to him to do something wrong? I don't think so.
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By the way, the organization owning and managing the largest acreage of nature-preserve status waterfront property in the US, often purchasing it first as commercial property and then returning it to a pristine state, is a private corporation (the name eludes me as I speak).
And if it was not for the NAACP, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and a variety of other nonprofit private sector political action committees suing United States city, state, and federal governments practically every day of the year, the United States would long ago have devolved into a sort of Soviet Union style dictatorial regime. The tendency of all government is towards despotism, because the tendency of all people is towards despotism. Government is always a confederacy of dunces: there aren't enough smarties to go around.
And if it was not for the NAACP, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and a variety of other nonprofit private sector political action committees suing United States city, state, and federal governments practically every day of the year, the United States would long ago have devolved into a sort of Soviet Union style dictatorial regime. The tendency of all government is towards despotism, because the tendency of all people is towards despotism. Government is always a confederacy of dunces: there aren't enough smarties to go around.
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So, to me anyway, the notion that government is generally devoted to helping the citizenry is laughable.
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>>if you do agree with my multi-motive theory of mr. chen's behavior, then i wonder if you'll agree that such a theory is a challenge to an economic theory of human behavior.<<
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It's interesting debating this topic with you, because you ask questions that I would never have thought to ask. It never occurred to me that anybody would take seriously the notion that a theory based in economics could be used as the sole explanation for human behavior. Are there such people? I suppose it's possible. Given the record concerning all the lunatics that took Marx seriously, I suppose there must be hordes who believe that there is such a thing as an economic theory that explains the entirety of human behavior. In my reading of libertarian economics I don't think I've come across anybody who fits this mold however...
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>>do we want aggressive salesmen types? behind the scenes financial movers and shakers? profit driven entrepreneurs?perhaps we do want more of this kind of person, but the idea of salesmen legislators and "profit driven" judges makes me rather uneasy. not that my feelings matter, but that's not the kind of person i'd want to have in my government.<<
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I gather you presume there is something inherently morally subversive about money. For me, since money is just a portable representative of value (whether aesthetic, nutritional, anthropological, cultural, musical, etc.) then money is not really the issue. I think what you're asking is do we want aggressive Philistines in charge of government positions? When the question is phrased this way, then the answer is of course no... haha...
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However, I think it is crucial that businesspeople play an important role in democracy, a role disproportionate to their numbers. If people do not have an economic investment in their country, then it is likely that they will not take the economics of their country seriously. This is especially obvious in socialist countries, where the electorate is engaged in a process that Benjamin Franklin predicted would have dire consequences for American democracy: that it would explode within two generations when the have-nots voted themselves the wealth of the haves and that this would lead to civil war. In the end, America's Civil War was for precisely the opposite reasons, in my opinion: the haves, i.e. the wealthy industrialized North was able to expropriate the property of the South, i.e. the, relatively speaking, have-nots. In the Civil War, it was the economic capacity of United States which won the war for the North. It was the same in WWI and WWII when the US entered these wars. As I understand it, in all three wars, the industrialized United States won simply because it manufactured more equipment and supplied more cannon-fodder at the battlefield than its opponents. And thank goodness it did.
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But I digress. Either way, a country's military strength has an almost direct relationship to its economic strength. And if your military is not strong, then some other country is going to take over your country. In this context, the main reason that the United States invaded Iraq was because it could.
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So, I think it is crucial that there is a preponderance of people in government who have an understanding of economics and a desire to strengthen the nation's economy. The reason for America's economic strength is not the size of the country, nor the claimed abundance of resources, but principally because, for a range of idiotic reasons (primarily religion and lower levels of education) the United States stayed away from socialism by mistaking it for atheistic communism. (In passing, I think that the reason for the high crime rate in United States is the extremely lax immigration policy. Now that Western Europe is filling up with immigrants from the Third World, it also suffers from high rates of crime. Socialism does not seem to have had much of an ameliorating impact. The only way in which crime rates differ significantly is with regard to the use of guns. Otherwise, when it comes to muggings, burglaries, arson, assaults, rapes and so forth, France and England have rates comparable to the United States).
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These days support for lower taxes across the board in the United States has presumably to do with the vast numbers of people who leapt into the stock market in the 1990s and began to take an active interest in the way that corporations achieve earnings. This knowledge, plus the direct vested interest of the now American majority which invests in stocks has helped ensure that America continues to stay relatively free of the tacky emotional socialism of Canada and Western Europe.
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>>if you're talking to someone whose pay doesn't change as a result of performance, someone who doesn't to some extent identify with the interests of the company, then it's no better than talking to some idiot in the government.<<
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This is precisely my point. In the private sector, pay generally however does change as a result of performance. The girls of Howard on the first floor are paid in part via commission. The girls next door to us on the third floor are paid in part via commission. My wife works on a commission basis. When you yourself generate a strong reputation in the translation industry, you'll be able to charge more for your services.
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>>do you ever wonder whether your position in society determines your political outlook, and if so to what extent?<<
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Absolutely. If I was weak and lacked confidence, I would probably be in favor of socialism because I would have little faith in my ability to compete with strong, aggressive types in society. I would also be more prone to an envy complex and want to see bigwigs toppled. Of course, my family background has a lot to do with it as well. And the strength of the global economy, and Taiwan's economy at this juncture in the 21st century. That plus having lived in several countries, being the eldest child, having been a gang-leader of vandals, having had an abusive step mother, and so on and so forth. That, plus my brain chemistry, plus the books I've read, the order in which I read them, the amount of information I've been able to retain and use, the people I've known, and so on and so forth etc. etc.
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But also of impact has been realizing the futility of trying to take my opinions from newspapers and magazines. This led me to read up on economics whereupon I found great shells of suspicious gobbledygook, wishful thinking and piety, and patent confusion obscuring the ideas and syllogisms presented by authors favoring government intervention. This is in contrast to the simplicity, clarity and intuitiveness of the libertarian economic perspective, which had a great impact on me. Reading Friedman on the ancillary effects of unions and the minimum wage, he's very easy to understand. It's just common sense. But it's clearly also the product of experience, as opposed to blowsy theory and high-sounding hope-filled fustian and positive-think.
This is one of the reasons why I have an increasing affection for economic conservatives: they don't base their opinions upon theory and what if and what should have happened, but instead upon experience. In other words, what did happen or what does happen. It's thus no surprise that people become more economically conservative with age. Hope no longer has that pull when one realizes the many strict limitations that the real world places upon potential and possibility.
This is one of the reasons why I have an increasing affection for economic conservatives: they don't base their opinions upon theory and what if and what should have happened, but instead upon experience. In other words, what did happen or what does happen. It's thus no surprise that people become more economically conservative with age. Hope no longer has that pull when one realizes the many strict limitations that the real world places upon potential and possibility.
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Biff Cappuccino
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