[feral]

Opinion:

The tough truth is that improving the world at that scale is mostly about politics. Politics is how the nations allocate resources to problems.

You maybe want them to talk about the technical fundamentals of the problem but the important bit is usually the politics.

[A sibling comment says to look at TED talks. This is an excellent idea. Then, after a couple of years, ask why none of the solutions have been implemented, and you are ready to get interested in the politics.]

[saalweachter]

In the 1950s, building a moonbase would have been an engineering and technological challenge.

Today, it's basically a political and economics challenge, to convince enough people it would be worth while to spend the time and effort to do it. Which is not to say there wouldn't be engineers involved, solving new problems, but we already know enough of the solutions that it's not really the sticking point now.

(Which is to agree with you, a lot of things are organizational problems at this point.)

[chiefalchemist]

> "Today, it's basically a political and economics challenge, to convince enough people it would be worth while to spend the time and effort to do it."

There's a quote by (I believe) Winston Churchill - which I can't seem to find atm - that goes something along the lines of:

Winning a war/battle is relatively easy. It's convincing them to let you fight that's far more difficult.

[LunaSea]

The 50s were during the Cold War so building a moon base was absolutely a political challenge. It just so happens that it was an internal political challenge rather than an internal one.

[nickik]

Politics is the wrong word. Not everything is about the state. Its about property rights distribution and the ability to trade.

Politics of course often leads to bad propert rights distribution and limitations to trade.

But I prefer this definition because in many places de-facto property tights are privatly enforced and defended and its produce is not effected by state level politics.

You overall point is certainly true, bad governance leads to a lack of food.

[TimTheTinker]

> Politics is how the nations allocate resources to problems.

That's a hard pill to swallow, but I fear you're right.

Shouldn't government's priorities be establishing rule of law, courts & justice, national defense, and regulating commerce? How did massive taxes, a huge budget, and political fights over resource allocation ever get thrown into the mix?

A historian once said that democracy fails when people begin voting themselves into the nation's purse [i.e. voting for politicians who promise them money].

[behringer]

Because rich people don't get rich by spending money. With unfettered capitalism taxation is the best system available to keep the wealth from pooling at the top, so the government is needed to decide what to spend the money on.

[kortilla]

>Because rich people don't get rich by spending money

That’s an oft-repeated but incorrect trope. You can’t save your way to being rich. Rich people are either born rich or they spend lots of money on investing into businesses (their own and others).

You also made no supporting argument for why the government is needed to decide what to spend some peoples’ money on. If we eliminated the top 1% and gave everyone else in the US the resulting few thousand dollars each, do you think that would eliminate the need for taxation going forward?

[JDiculous]

Why should maximizing the well-being of the people not be a government priority?

Any system, including someone's anarcho-capitalist fantasy, determines allocation of resources. Some are just more humanitarian than others.

[kortilla]

Because it’s a fantasy to think there is even agreement on what “maximizing the well-being” means. The people running the re-education camps in China probably even think they are doing that.

[TimTheTinker]

A fundamentally American idea is that maximizing freedom results in maximum well-being of the people.

Though that idea was footnoted: not so with people lacking in moral virtue.