Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

One thing worth pointing out from my perspective is that I see entrepreneurs in their pre-revenue stage. Honestly, at that stage they can't afford shady business practices. Government's role in this area ought to be funding AND helping these folks navigate the regulatory framework. That's in the public interest.

As companies grow the role shifts to a more regulatory. The company no longer needs government assistance and the concern shifts to protecting the public.

I'm really only talking about the former.

[Da Geezer]

Talent:

In Sonoma County they have an Ombudsman that performs some of the functions you talk about. Not only in helping navigate the regulatory matrix, but also in softening it a bit by talking to the regulators. Who picks the pre-revenue entrepreneurs that you deal with? You can tell by my view of man, that I prefer private sector funding. Actually, I like crowd-funding the most, but that makes me an anarchist, which may be close to true

Thomas Sowell said "You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything, and outcomes are nothing." I thought it might be a good idea to give my 140 foot deep lot on Highway 1 to CalTrans since they were going to move the highway inland, and owning land along the route might be handy (BTW, no tax benefit to this). They sent me a 42 page form to fill out. A private citizen would have just said, "OK, send me a deed". Process versus outcomes.

[hodgkal]

These are interesting discussions. It reminds me of an important book I read many years ago by Thomas Sowell entitled "A Conflict of Visions". Sowell tries to understand why equally intelligent people gravitate into a liberal or conservative orientation toward the world. These differences hamper honest dialogue, as proponents tend to talk past one another and perceive different realities.

Sowell examines the two poles of human orientation. At one extreme is the “constrained” view of the world as proposed in the writings of Thomas Hobbes. It views all humans as hopelessly corruptible and thus in need of restraint, by the rules of government or religion. This view has a deep suspicion of the “do-gooder” in society, inferring him as one who is actually on a mission of self promotion. Hobbes saw things more in terms of black and white, good vs. evil, etc. At the other extreme is the “unconstrained” view of the world that sees possibility in others and believes that people and societies are perfectible. It is an outlook that is basically optimistic toward human affairs while critics would see it as dangerously corruptible because it lacks checks against leaders who become deluded into a feeling of omniscience. One might label this view as close to the philosophy of John Locke.

Back in the old UM Freep Forum days we used to have some real free-for-alls about government and politics. Liney wisely stepped in and stopped it because there were lots of hurt feelings and we lost some good posters.

It can be a fine line between "Miscellaneous/OT" discussions and arguments that degenerate into hurt feelings.

[Da Geezer]

glad you are over here Doc, and I'm sorry I assumed you didn't have knowledge of CA. Just plain wrong of me. In times of drought, I think the water available should go to human consumption first, then to agriculture and irrigation. To let water to into the sea in order to protect a small fish, while compelling thousands of acres in the Valley to lie fallow, is a crime. Conservation is a great way to stretch the supply, and just good practice even in a normal year. Someday we will talk about the "endangered" Piping Plover in NW MI, a bird that lays its eggs on the beach and leaves. Coyote food.

Hack, I'm still chewing on consensual strong state. On your link to Why Nations Fail, there was a paragraph that said basically that a consensually strong state is tolerated best by those populations that have the ability to change the government easily. Would you consider the US to be in that group? Not a trick question, but it seems to me that folks vote for change and sometimes get it (2008 and sometimes don't (2014).

[hack]

Not anymore, or, at least, not at this particular point in time.

My point isn't that the state SHOULD be strong. I recognize the pitfalls. My point is that there's not going to be a vacuum, so it's not a matter of ``if''. The real question is ``how''. Where there isn't control over some sort of economic activity, somebody or something will step in and take that power. I think history shows that to be true. Anywhere there is potential for value to be created there is also somebody or something trying to control the process. Might as well do the best we can to make sure it's done to ensure the safety and opportunity of citizens. A poor job is better than not trying, and letting that power fall to some unknown.

[Da Geezer]

Yes, I agree that the US is not in that group of nations, and Germany's and Canada's governments are more likely to pay a price at the polls if they misuse their power. We have a Supreme Court of nine, all grads of Harvard or Yale, four of whom lived most of their life in NYC. 5 Catholics, 4 Jews. We are ruled by an elite.

It seems to me that you believe there will inevitably be a power center, and you would rather that the power center be a government than, say, a banking oligopoly or Robber Barons. I further believe that the statist finding "the right man" has never been done, but neither has the atomization of power centers in pure capitalism.

So then, why do I believe that "that government governs best that governs least". I'd point you to Tocqueville and the period 1831-1931. I believe that period showed about as much atomization of power as a government can have. I know, there is the Civil War, and the necessity of subrogating individual liberty to the state, but after the war, power dissipated again. I'm a liberal in the classical sense, meaning I value individual liberty highly. Most Northern soldiers called themselves Union, and they wanted to keep things as they were prior to the war. This is 70 years after the Constitution.

Tocqueville talks of townships, school boards, sundry religions (and sundry subsets of those religions), weak federal government, separation of church and state, and localized democracy. This also happens to be a time when the US laid the foundation to become the richest and most free country on earth.

We have lost a lot of freedom in the past 10 years. We have a ruling elite on a NY to DC axis that has proceeded to reduce the power and influence of the things Tocqueville valued. Progressives have won the war against religion. States can no longer pass laws on their own, or have referenda or ballot proposals, without being subject to the Axis.

I happen to believe that a 15% flat tax WITH NO DEDUCTIONS OR CREDITS AT ALL would be a fine start in moving to a more liberty-centered society. It is in the deductions and credits where the Axis rewards their friends. I'd charge food stamp recipients 15% of the value of their benefits, I'd do away with capital gain treatment for rich folks, and I'd collect on the first dollar. Everyone would have a stake because everyone would pay.

History tells us that this would cause explosive growth, and I am all about growing the pie. I want everyone to be richer, and that has historically only happened when capital is privately held and invested. China has found that out. Singapore is the most free state in the world, and it has low taxes, high income, and little bureaucracy. And the government in the US seems to me to be attacking some of the tech firms. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Cisco have made my life better. Ethanol plants have done me no good, and have wasted water, corn and capital. An entrepreneur cannot follow the market and also pay 50% PLUS REGULATION to the consensually strong state. I'd follow the market. And I have a no good answer when it comes to "rich man's cat or poor man's baby"

[froot loops]

Hamilton had it right.

[hack]

I accept the need for government as a reality because I think the alternative is worse, and you may feel differently, but there is plenty of common ground here. Some individual points addressed:

1. I think state power is alive and well. You may feel differently from me on gay marriage and legal weed, but there can be no denying that states can and are choosing.

2. You can't divorce that period from the industrial revolution. You could have been an utter fool of a leader and still preside over great leaps in wealth in a situation like that. IMO it's always a combination of policy and environment, but the right policy never changes -- IMO the basics are the rule of law, zero tolerance for corruption, fire people the minute they fuck up, and firm and predictable regulation to protect consumers.

3. I don't know if 15% is the right rate, but I'm all for a simple tax code. Disrupt the inspectors and the accountants alike. Make those people go find work in the real economy. Arguably not rewarding financial engineering through a lower tax on capital gains could redirect investment to the real economy.

4. I think you're off on Singapore. This is a country, after all, where a kid got lashes for spitting gum on the sidewalk. It's a nanny state. It's also a statist economy. Through it's sovereign wealth fund Temasek it owns major chunks of the doemstic economy, including the dominant telco, the airline, and others. http://www.temasek.com.sg/portfolio/...foliocompanies. Singapore is also a tax haven and a banking-secrecy jurisdiction, and a city-state with a natural harbour smack in the middle of the world's most populous and arguably wealthiest region. It doesn't have much in the way of a domestic local population, etiher. For centuries it is where entrepreneurs relocated themselves because of factors that long predate this government. One thing I do like about it though is the anti-corruption stance. It's not a level playing field, and it's basically a staging ground for international ventures anyways because it's a city-state in the region it's in, but the bureaucracy is about as clean as it gets. I think the rule of law is exceptionally important.

What do you do for work, by the way?

[Da Geezer]

We do have substantial areas of agreement, more than substantial. When you say "IMO the basics are the rule of law, zero tolerance for corruption, fire people the minute they fuck up, and firm and predictable regulation to protect consumers. " we have absolute agreement. You have touched what I believe to be the most dangerous problem in the US today, and that is public sector unionism, and the inability to fire fuck-ups. I spent last winter in Scottsdale, and the ineptitude of the VA there is shocking. Honestly, dogs are treated better than veterans, but I digress.

Since I graduated from Hope, their alumni department sends me solicitations, and for over 45 years I have filled out the OCCUPATION: line with "unemployed". I hate lawyers, so coming out of law school, I had been selling real estate for my father, just a job. I made it my goal to become familiar with every large parcel of Lake Michigan Frontage from say South Haven to Manistee, and with the owners. Over the years, I purchased and developed several miles of this frontage. I also took the opportunity to purchase timber companies, farm the timber and sell the land. I have a small oil leasing company. Recently I bought land in CA and am developing there. My passion is litigating regulatory takings, and I continue to do that (started in 1992), because I feel it is a public service. I have a financial interest in 84 charter schools in 6 states, almost all of which are in the inner city. (the origin of my view of Detroit, where the MEA stopped charters from entering until just the last couple of years)

I'm an entrepreneur. Everywhere I look I see opportunity. Still. But I had the fourth open-heart surjury in the US in 1958, and am in poor health. In that operation, they had no heart-lung machine, so they stopped my heart and had to restart it again after cutting on it. 60% chance of permanent brain damage. What's your excuse?

[hack]

I picked journalism. Just as the internet was being born.

I guess I see forming a collective bargaining unit as a fundamental economic right in a free market. Having grown up in Windsor, I certainly see the costs of it in the private sector, but in a free market people ought to be able to maximize their leverage within what's legal. IMO if unions are outlawed it's just as reasonable to pass a law capping executive pay.

I don't have a good answer for the public sector. Working for government shouldn't mean surrendering your rights, but you're working with public money, and certainly people are far too comfortable and heads need to roll more often because your shareholders are all citizens, and they can't opt in or out of that ownership. Term limits for public servants wouldn't work either, but at least the concept appeals, so they can't grow roots in those chairs they sit it. One solution you won't like is a big jump in taxes to give government the resources it needs. They work in such dysfunctional environments in part because they are starved for cash. The longer they do it, the more they settle in, the dysfunction becomes normal, and they just become very strange people to those of us in the private sector.

[Da Geezer]

I have no problems with private sector unions, never have. In fact collective bargaining seems to me to result in reasonably fair outcomes.

Public sector unions are a whole different breed of cat, because work stoppages affect the general population, the public. Teachers in Michigan are the second highest paid in the nation, and about 10% higher than anyone when cost of living is considered. ( a year's pay will buy 1.2 median houses). In charter schools we get no property tax, so we operate on 63% of what the government schools get. We get better results, and the difference is expanding. Of course the problem is that over 60% of the delegates to the last Democrat convention were educators, and they contribute more to the Dems than the top 10 contributors to the GOP combined.

I believe that term limits on employment in government would work. Let's say you can't get a paycheck from the government for more than 20 years. 1. means everyone has to work in the private sector sometime 2. pension problems solved because no one is vested 3. allows more folks to work for government and actually see how difficult it is 4. eliminates the entrenched bureaucracy we have now.

If the government is starved for cash, why do folks working in the public sector receive almost double (including benefits) the compensation that folks in the private sector make doing the same job? Hack, the idea that government is starved for money just doesn't obtain in the real world. It very well may in your experience in Africa, or in those places where you consult. But in Michigan, why do I have plenty of money left over at 63% of government school cost? Average per pupil spending in MI just crossed the $ 14,000 level. I say, give the inner city poor a voucher for $ 14,000 and let them spend it where they choose.

Imagine a business where the owner of the school can sell a product for free to consumers who are required by law to buy the product. We just opened a school in Canton (schools are designed to hold 660 students k-eight). We had 2,200 applicants. So we opened another just a little ways away (and still had over 2,000 applicants). Milton Friedman worked the last 20 years of his life on school choice, because he and his wife realized that education is the civil rights movement for this generation. The GOP is too stupid to see this and the DEMs are too evil. If ever there is bipartisan agreement in government, you can be sure that the resulting law will be both stupid and evil.

[hack]

I think Windsor absolutely suffers from a stifling lack of economic creativity, save for in the automotive supply chain, and private-sector unions are a big part of the explanation. It's clinging to that old model that doesn't work anymore because of the mentality that's arisen. I don't think encouraging economic creativity means you strip people of their economic rights, so this is just a flaw in the model, but every model has flaws.

I agree with you that people in government are not starving. Most are making a decent living, and in fact some agencies are attracting some pretty impressive young talent from elite universities. Maybe that's a function of Wall Street having less room for them. But I think it's hard to argue that, at least at the federal level, agencies have the money they need to fulfill their roles. I know much less about what's going on at the state level, but the GOP in Congress has been trying for 35 years now to starve the beast, and they've had some serious successes.

My term limits idea is statisfying on several levels but ultimately I just don't see how it would work. Most people aren't going to go 10-20 years in a job they know they can't keep. Nobody wants to hit the job market much past mid-career, and there are gads of talented people in their 50s who can't get a sniff because there's someone younger and cheaper to hire. Term limits would make it far too difficult for government to attract the type of talent it needs so that at least sometimes it can overcome its own dysfunction. Especially given that point about pensions. Maybe that saves taxpayers money but it sounds like there's major downside to me. A healthy economy isn't one with millions of impoverished retirees.

[iam416]

Term limits have always puzzled me. If I had to choose, I'd rather keep good people than force out bad people. My wife deals with the General Assembly for her job. She hates term limits because the new reps have zero clue how as to the basics of legislating and, even worse, zero institutional knowledge. There are, no doubt, awful reps that get re-elected and would continue to get re-elected. But they don't run things. Party leadership generally sorts out competence (in this case, Rs). I can't imagine applying that to actual government employees -- specifically, apolitical employees. Well, I mean, unless you didn't want government to exist.

On public unions, I'm generally against because the party across from the table has no real skin in the game. It's not their money.

On education, in Ohio what we're really talking about are city schools and, to a lesser extent, poor Appalachian schools. The vast majority of public schools in Ohio are good to very good and have been operating under continued cuts. Their per pupil spending is closer to $8000. City schools are the problem. And those schools are merely, IMO, a symptom of considerably larger problems. You're not going to fix a symptom throwing money at it.

Also in Ohio, it's very easy to set up charter schools and the result (apparently) has been a number of schools run by people with zero clue. Some good, lots bad.

FULL DISCLOSURE -- my mother just retired from teaching. She was, IMO, considerably above average. Her work weeks during schools were typically 70 hours or more. I always needled her that her union kept her from true merit-based pay -- i.e., making a lot more. Instead, she made as much as the gym teacher with the same number of years. Anecdotally, she also said that kids coming from "home school" situations into HS were, without exception, a total disaster in terms of how far behind they were. Most home-schooled kids aren't genius Southeast Asians winning spelling bees. I'd reckon my mother's sample size was around 30.

[WM Wolverine]

The issue against term limits is the incumbent wins far too often merely by name recognition.

[Ghengis Jon]

I believe that politicians should be limited to two terms - one in office and one in prison.

I am so sick of professional politicians. I think politicians should be selected like jury duty, by random selection. It can't be worse than what we have now. Democracy seems to bring out the worst people, not the best, especially when combined with money.