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here are the pros and cons of decentralization vs centralization of power
Pros
centralization = efficiency
cons
centralization = corruption
Pros
decentalization = less corruption
cons
decentalization = less efficiency.
thus you pretty much need a balance of centralization and decentralization in the middle.
dictatorships are an extreme example of centralization.
they can be efficient but wasted it on corruption because the higher ups steal all the efficiency gained.
and refuse to pass on the gains of centralization to the populace/workers/consumers and just keep the efficiency to themselves.
Centralization is not efficient beyond a small scale. Just because a strong central government can affect an entire nation with a single edict doesn't mean it's efficient.
It does not have a full knowledge of what local conditions are, what all the needs are, or what all the resources and productive capacity is. The more centralized a government is, the larger bureaucracy is needs and bureaucracies breed inefficiency.
Big central government is how you get things like the disaster of the Obamacare rollout, with a small group of people trying to manage the healthcare of hundreds of millions and failing miserably. It wasn't efficient, it was a colossal waste of time and resources.
Another example is the repeated shortages of consumer goods in the Soviet Union, where a central group of people failed over and over again throughout the years to properly anticipate what the population's needs would be and misallocated resources.
The person who can most efficiently utilize your dollars is you and the person who can most efficiently utilize my dollars is me. When we both send our dollars to Washington and let them manage it, efficiency is not increased. It is decreased. Because you have different needs than I do, and the people in Washington have incomplete knowledge of both of us.
Actually the pyramids were not built by slaves, thats a popular, but incorrect belief.
Actually, it was more like modern Dubai. A monarch throws all of the money of the kingdom at a public works project, with the power to make sure that none of the skilled artisans are working anywhere else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
Why is it that medicaid provide insurance to people, at a lower cost then?
Because people NOT on Medicaid pay $450 billion in premiums for other peoples' healthcare? This is an example of forcing one person to labor for the benefit of another. You focus on the poor person who gets medical insurance, and totally ignore the person in the 60% of the taxpayers who had a gun put in their face to pay that premium.
Slightly more than half of the taxpayers pay the Medicaid premium, and that is about 100 million people. So every person paying taxes averages a $4,500 annual medicaid contribution, and the annual medicaid recipient pays $0 to receive it. So why is it that Medicaid can provide insurance cheaply? Same way I can hit you in the head with a brick, rob you, and then spend whatever I found in your wallet. Anything the contents of your wallet pays for is cheap for me, but I wonder, was it cheap for you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
Why is it that countries with the best medical outcomes to cost ratio are completely government owned?
Because the statistics are cherry picked (like infant mortality, which is measured differently in every country) for one, and because the "medical outcomes" are also selectively chosen. Check "cancer survival rates" as your only medical outcome, then tell me how America comes out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
The point is, you're wrong. Yes the majority of the time a private company will do better. When will it not? When you get natural monopolies. When the cost of entry is too high to allow competition. When the risk vs reward benefits are skewed in ways that help everyone, but not necessarily help the company creating the product. I could go on.
Monopolies result because of government, not in spite of them. Every real or near monopoly in the US is a government protected entity, and look no further than proprietary DoD contracting. In a consumer driven free market, if someone chose to attempt monopolistic practices, consumers would seek out the lower price competitor. In a government protected monopoly, the government restricts the competition and forces the behavior of the consumer. Can't have monopolies without big government.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
Because groups think MUCH better then individuals.
Not for the individual making choices in their own rational self-interests. No group can better tell me how to spend my time, effort and money than I can. No group can more properly decide the best course of my life than I can.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
Why do we have the environmental laws? Not because companies generally wanted them. They'd prefer we looked like China-its cheaper for them as they don't have the costs associated with the millions per year that would die from pollution.
Sherwin stopped putting lead in paint 23 years before the government made it illegal and 15 years before the EPA existed. Plenty of companies understand the extended stakeholder model and the effect of goodwill on a balance sheet, and those that do beat the ones who don't. Welcome to competition and the profit motive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
Again, see the power of groups and the difference in decision dynamics. Im constantly amazed that people think that the best decisions are made by the individual, when they are in fact not. I dont mind at all when those poor decisions hurt the individual, but when they hurt us all, or me I have an issue with it. Libertarians ignore this often. They want everything to be decided by individuals.
If you believe the above quote, then you believe some number of random strangers and I know better than you how to run your life. You by yourself have no clue how to run your life, relationships, associations, business, etc, but myself and group of detached strangers do and are much better suited to the task.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywar
Not a believer in benevolent government either. LOL. Nice assumption. Government is just a better choice then some alternative. But never ever think its benevolent.
You're clearly a believer in big government. You defend it like it is pure truth. And you think detached groups of racketeers imbued with the powers of gods are better suited to run your life than you are. You wrote a rather lengthy insult to me in defense of this very premise. You believe groups of people you've never met know how to run your life better than you do. Just about everything I just replied to was some form of that belief. Why back away from it after so much text supporting it?
Ergo, it's a fantasy that cannot work in the real world.
Precisely. It isn't (just) a matter of the inadequacies of libertarianism (nothing is perfect) but rather (mostly) about the inadequacies of libertarians, their avarice and callous disregard for those most vulnerable in society.
I suppose I meant "more libertarian". As in, the United States was far more libertarian in the past than it is today.
Why did America become "less libertarian"? Because of jealousy, greed, and fear.
In my mind, what libertarianism looks like in practice. Would be something similar to the "Amish" communities in America. Which is basically what America more looked like in the past, under a more limited government.
Are the Amish an example of a failed state? I mean, which will collapse first, the Amish communities of this country, or the US government?
With that said. I don't particularly like to use the Amish as an example of what libertarian society would look like in particular. Because they have an aversion to technology. But rather, libertarianism tends to favor "tight-knit" voluntary communities, of "like-minded" people. Libertarianism doesn't necessarily have an aversion to technology. But libertarianism probably isn't very capable of supporting "large cities".
A libertarian nation, would generally favor small towns, independent farmers/producers, and religion(regardless of what Penn Jillette thinks). It would look a lot more like what Thomas Jefferson wanted for America. Than New York City.
Really??? When was that? In its first 90 or so years when slavery was legal and black people had the same rights as cattle or horses? Maybe in the next 100 years when blacks were systematically terrorized and denied their civil and human rights?
Thomas Jefferson was a rich, white male slave-owner who kept a slave mistress, used his political power to persecute his critics, didn't bother to pay his bills, and lived like a British aristocrat. Why I'm not surprised that libertarians idolize him?
I would mostly agree with that statement. Cities have never really been libertarian. And there are a variety of problems when it comes to cities.
First, cities historically have largely been built as a result of government spending or control in some way. I mean, if you look at modern America. A very large number of the largest cities are state capitols(and that wasn't always the case), even more of them are located directly next to military bases, or they rely heavily on state-subsidized colleges, or are the location of a Federal Reserve bank(and thus become centers of finance). I mean, Washington D.C. is growing in leaps and bounds. Why? Well, for one reason only. It is the nations capital.
If you look at the United States. The tax money raised by the "tariff of abominations" in the early 1800's. Where do you think that money was spent? Easy, it was almost always spent to "encourage American industry". Basically, tax money was raised in the south, then sent to places like New York City to subsidize its industry. To do things like build factories, develop their ports, to build railroads, etc. And then of course, the national banks of the United States had always been located in New York City, making it the de facto center of national finance(you can thank Alexander Hamilton for that).
Without government spending, American industry wouldn't have grown nearly as rapidly. Or at least it would have been far more "diffuse". Which means, far fewer people would have moved to places like New York City. Because there wouldn't have been nearly as many jobs there. And far more people would have instead went into rural areas, especially in the south. As that "tax revenue" would have stayed in the south instead of being transferred to the north.
I mean, just ask yourself. In a libertarian world. Could New York City even exist? I mean, in my opinion, the elimination of the Federal Reserve banking system alone, would empty out half of New York City. A libertarian government would cause Washington D.C. to shrink to probably 1/10th its current size. A reduction in the size of government, tied in with he elimination of national sponsorship of education, would empty out cities like Boston, and Austin(which rely heavily on government and their colleges).
I mean, name a city that would actually grow in a libertarian state?
This is a steaming pile of bull manure.
The only city in the US that was created by government was Washington, DC, and that was done so that no state would "own" the capital. Every other city in the US started out as some convenient place for people to settle for some reason. Some started as trading posts. Others started as portage sites on rivers or as fishing/trading ports because they had harbors. Still others were platted by enterprising settlers at strategic sites along the frontier, like near a military fort on the Great Plains or more than a day's wagon trip from the last little burg.
Centralized control .... i.e. bureaucrats in Washington DC deciding what's best for a local community in Idaho in a "one size fits all" decree is offensive and inefficient, while rendering that local community powerless over their own affairs and governance.
The good people on Elm Street know best what policies apply and serve the community's best interests, rather than stuffed suit bribe takers on Pennsyvania Ave making those decisions for them.
Individuals at the local level have more political control over their local representatives, than they could ever have over politicians in DC .... that's why!
It's really just common sense ... who knows best what serves the community's best interests ... people that work and live in that community, or some group of bureaucrats who have never been there, have no vested interests in that community, and who won't be personally affected by the policies they might choose to impose on that community? This is not a trick question .. and the proper answer is both simple and easy.
So, if a local community in Idaho decided to lynch any Latino who wandered into town on the premise that all Latinos are illegal aliens and illegal aliens are "offensive" to that community, it should be allowed to do that?
You don't have to be a libertarian to know how "they would govern". The problem is, libertarians don't "govern". They are opposed to imposing controls on you and what you do and what your neighbor does. Libertarians don't believe in 'governing' like kings and governors, as the word implies. They would hold the office and conduct the business of the state as unobtrusively and hands-off as is possible.
Your presumption that self governance is choosing which dictator to live under is merely symptomatic of your own lack of comprehension that governance is evil, in and of itself, as power corrupts. There are no "good" governing powers. There are only those held in strict limitation so as to limit the damage they can do to the people themselves.
So, libertarians would take a "hands-off" approach to domestic violence, to child abuse, to dumping sewage and chemical wastes into rivers, to ponzi schemes, to fraud, to essentially anything that wasn't a blantant crime like "murder, rape, and theft"?
Monopolies do not exist without government assistance, and market failure because people refuse to do business with unethical businesses fixes that .
No government making your decisions for you needed.
Your ignorance is amazing.
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