[SunshineTheCat]

> they pass laws to regulate things they have zero clue about

While you are correct with this statement in this context, I would say it applies to most things in government in general.

The vast majority of lawmakers have zero experience solving any real world problems and are content spending everyone else's money to play pretend at doing so.

The reality is, most government "solutions" cause more problems than they solve, after which, they blame their predecessors for all the problems they caused and the cycle continues.

[wredcoll]

> The reality is, most government "solutions" cause more problems than they solve

The "reality" is that propaganda heavily encourages you to ignore the government successes and only focus on the failures. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine who benefits from that.

[SunshineTheCat]

> "government successes"

Please, name for me one product or service that the US government has created, that people willingly buy, that has made your life tangibly better.

I can list a billion made by businesses.

Please, go for it. Just one.

[mbgerring]

USPS

Medicaid

The National Park System

I know that the next step is you explaining why these don’t count, or saying “wow only 3” or whatever, but

[palmotea]

> I know that the next step is you explaining why these don’t count, or saying “wow only 3” or whatever, but

Oh, there's more: Medicare, Social Security, the highway system.

The whole food/medicine regulatory system is also a big one, and it's the reason a lot of US (and European) products like baby formula are imported into China, because they can be more trusted.

My bet is the GP's going to weasel out using his "that people willingly buy" language. The flawed assumption there is the government should be conceptualized as just another company selling in the market, when the government's actual role is very different.

[SunshineTheCat]

As with anything, they are all things that could be done better by a company.

Airlines are a great example of this. They have changed very little in the last 30 years (again, thanks to all the government regulation and red tape).

Smartphones, TVs, (and literally anything else not in the hands of the government) has also seen rapid improvements.

Anything the government handles is always rife with overspending, inefficiency, and corruption.

A company must maintain profitability to stay alive.

The government on the other hand, is $38 TRILLION dollars in the red.

Yes, the things that "people willingly buy" are the literal engine that makes all of this possible. It is not the reverse.

[fyredge]

> As with anything, they are all things that could be done better by a company. No

> Airlines are a great example of this. They have changed very little in the last 30 years (again, thanks to all the government regulation and red tape).

And thanks to regulations, we have less airline accidents than ever. Private companies are more than willing to "externalise" any accidents from cutting costs otherwise.

> Smartphones, TVs, (and literally anything else not in the hands of the government) has also seen rapid improvements.

So does government funded medical research, which improves the quality of life of people corporations deem "unprofitable".

> Anything the government handles is always rife with overspending, inefficiency, and corruption.

Because large corporations and rich donors lobby them to do so.

> A company must maintain profitability to stay alive.

So does a government, debt only lasts as long as the lender believes in your ability to pay it back.

> The government on the other hand, is $38 TRILLION dollars in the red.

And which of the Mag7 are not in debt? I remind you that if you wish to compare the USA to companies, they are literally an entity of over 300,000 people. No company employs that many people.

> Yes, the things that "people willingly buy" are the literal engine that makes all of this possible. It is not the reverse.

No, government enforced order is what allowed the engine to exist to begin with. No one would innovate if their IP could not be protected, and we would regress back into cartels if the government could not enforce private property.

The prosperity of the modern world is build upon a foundation of solid governance.

[mbgerring]

No, you misunderstood me:

When I ship packages, I could choose to use a service other than USPS, but I don’t, because USPS is generally cheaper and more reliable.

I strongly prefer Medicaid to my employer-provided healthcare plans because of ease of use, and if I were allowed to I would willingly pay more money into it, either via taxes or direct premium payments, when I am making too much income to qualify.

I gladly give money to the NPS every year, even though I have a choice to pay for a private campground, or other public lands agencies.

I answered the question. You can choose to believe I didn’t all you want.

[wredcoll]

Remember how great the privately owned meat packing plants were at making sure the food was safe?

> Anything the government handles is always rife with overspending, inefficiency, and corruption.

Boy will you be surprised when you get a job.

[cyberax]

Oh yeah. I feel sooooo good dealing with Comcast. At this point in life, I spent more time on the phone with Comcast support than I ever spent time in various DMV offices.

> A company must maintain profitability to stay alive.

Yeah. And once it becomes a monopoly (like Comcast), it can just keep raising prices.

[Dylan16807]

This discussion about the purpose of government is valid as a way to disagree with the "willingly buy" language, but it's still true that most of those examples don't answer the question and to refuse them is not "weaseling out".

[palmotea]

> but it's still true that most of those examples don't answer the question

That's because the question is bad. It was meant to challenge the benefit of government, and a non-answer was meant to be interpreted as "government < business." But at its core is was fundamental misunderstanding of government, so if the question was answered mindlessly, it was unfairly biased towards the asker's biased conclusion.

> and to refuse them is not "weaseling out".

It'd be weaseling out of the faults of the question.

[WalterBright]

> My bet is the GP's going to weasel out using his "that people willingly buy" language

Well, they aren't willingly buying it. They are funded with taxes.

[wredcoll]

People can choose not to use a lot of those things.

[WalterBright]

USPS - is self-funded, though it is operating at a loss. It also is a legal monopoly, meaning competitors for first class mail are illegal.

Medicaid - funded by the government, meaning people are not willingly paying for it

The National Park System - funded by the government, meaning people are not willingly paying for it

[NetMageSCW]

The USPS is failing because people aren’t that interested in it.

Medicaid is hardly a competitive market, but medication pricing alone says it is a failure. On Medicaid, my FIL can’t get his prescription for G7s filled by anyone.

[SunshineTheCat]

Every single thing you just mentioned is insolvent.

[wredcoll]

Like, even if that was true, which super blatantly they are not, they are not intended to make a profit, they are intended to accomplish a goal.

[hash872]

The proto-Internet. GPS. Nuclear energy. MRIs. Fracking. The Human Genome Project. Fiber optics. Optical data storage. Jet engines. Heck, the entire space industry. Lithium ion batteries. Radar. Night vision technology. Modern lower limb prosthetics. Just off the top of my head

[WalterBright]

Jet engines - Frank Whipple (England) and Franz Ohain (Germany) invented them. In both cases the governments were not interested in them until flying jet aircraft were demonstrated. Lockheed was ordered by the government to abandon their jet engine project and focus on piston engines instead (which resulted in the US having to get started on jet aircraft by buying British machines).

Human genome - J. Venter was the first to sequence the human genome, privately funded.

the entire space industry - Liquid fuel rockets were pioneered by Goddard, through private funding.

Radar - originated from late 19th-century experiments on radio wave reflection, pioneered by Heinrich Hertz in 1886. While Christian Hülsmeyer patented a "telemobiloscope" for ship detection in 1904

The proto-Internet - Pioneered by Samuel Morse, see "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage. Privately funded.

Optical data storage - Invented by D Gregg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paul_Gregg, at a private company.

Nuclear energy - a very long list of contributors. See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".

And so on.

[dboreham]

Whittle (Whipple is a painter) "invented" the jet engine while serving in the RAF, so technically not privately funded at the point of invention. There was private funding used later to create prototype engines.

Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!

[WalterBright]

Oh right, Whittle (my mistake).

The original Whittle engine was developed with private funds.

From "The Development Of Jet And Turbine Aero Engines" by Gunston:

pg 123: of which £200 came from an old lady who ran a corner shop near Whittle's parents in Coventry

pg 123: But a direct request to Air Ministry for a research contract in October 1936 brought flat rejection,

pg 124: Whittle could see that the only possible way to proceed was to take the gigantic gamble of running a complete engine.

pg 125: Indeed, there was little money for anything. While the RAF backed Whittle in every way they could - for example, by not requiring him to take the usual examination for promotion to Squadron Leader - the Air Ministry contributed nothing to Power Jets until May 1938, and Whittle had to watch every penny. He nearly cracked under the strain, which in fact was to get worse for seven years, not because of the Problems in developing the engine, but from the suspicion and enmity with which he was regarded by officials and manufacturers, and by the outrageous behaviour of the Company picked by the Air Ministry to produce his engine.

(Whittle's engine first ran in 1937).

[WalterBright]

> Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!

It isn't possible to untangle its development and claim one or the other.

[elfly]

No company ever got a man to the Moon.

Sure, some companies participated in the process. But it was a government that did it.

It's been more than 50 years and private companies haven't been able to match it.

The greatest technical achievement of mankind was done by a government. Private industry could, at best, help.

Sorry all the other things you name are great. But the winner is government.

[NetMageSCW]

Until recently, no private company wanted to go to the Moon.

And it is particularly ironic to select that since the government’s attempt to return is the most expensive, slowest, least tested launch system possible, and still needs help to get to the Moon.

[WalterBright]

And nobody went back to the moon.

[wredcoll]

You had me until fracking.

[hash872]

The Department of Energy funded much of the early research into fracking in the 70s

https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/articles/does-early-investment-s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking_in_the_United_States https://clearpath.org/tech-101/hydraulic-fracturing-a-public...

[hellojesus]

Didn't gov funded science invent MRIs?

[ericb]

I see Massachusetts as sort of the non-insane liberal counterpoint to California.

Things work here and nobody seems to be passing the "oops my unintended side effects and clueless regulations messed things up horribly." Or, if they do, it is at something like 1/10th the level.

We didn't start warning label spam everywhere. We don't have weird propositions that are causing run-away housing prices. There aren't bar codes on our 3d printers, or cookie banner requirements on every website. Well, ok we do, but that nonsense all came in from other places.

We did pass laws to lower PFAS/PFOAS. That seems reasonable. Government can work.

[cucumber3732842]

MA legislature is too busy enriching themselves with back room dealing to f the state up too much.

I wish I was joking. They get audited yet? Pretty sure that was a ballot measure that passed by a huge margin years back and last I checked they were stalling...

[wredcoll]

> We don't have weird propositions that causing run-away housing prices.

Most of those are a reaction rather than the cause. People want to move to california, it creates a different set of problems for california vs Massachusetts

[dlev_pika]

I like MA, but you realize the challenges are vastly different, right?

The sheer size, economic volume and cultural diversity of CA presents a pretty unique set of issues.

[ericb]

I mean, sure, but all those things I named don't seem to be scale induced? They seem to all stem from clueless regulation, which is as simple as not not signing silly laws? I'm missing where scale plays into the items I mentioned.

[alistairSH]

most government "solutions" cause more problems than they solve

Zero basis in fact. We’re in the wealthiest nation on the planet. Most of us live better than any previous generation. To claim all that success is completely in spite of government is ridiculous.

[SunshineTheCat]

Are you under the impression that the government created all that wealth?

[Yossarrian22]

Without nukes to keep away the Soviets I wouldn’t be wealthy

[nozzlegear]

This but unironically

[Yossarrian22]

To be clear I meant this literally, I'm not sure how I could have made that more clear.

[nozzlegear]

Ah, my bad. It read like the kind of comment that's usually steeped in sarcasm.

[alistairSH]

Not at all. But it enabled it. Or at worst didn’t prevent it.

[elfly]

Have you ever looked at a dollar bill in your life.

Who do you think printed it. Who signed the bill?

The US can just print money and receive goods in exchange of literal paper. Or just put an extra zero in a bank account and receive goods in exchange.

And if a certain yahoo decides they want in the money printing scheme...who do you think is going to send the goons with guns to prevent the government monopoly in creating literal wealth.

[heavyset_go]

The government literally enforces capitalism with guns and bombs lol

[rurban]

Wealthiest nation? More like unwealthiest of all nations.

U. S. by far the largest current-account deficit (over $1.2 trillion).

U.S. has the largest goods trade deficit (over $1 trillion).

[Hammershaft]

It's true, and yet there are real market failures that even a very ineffective government can improve on dramatically, like innovation & research output via basic science.