[aklug] Re: OFFTOPIC: Re: Re: ACS Google Gateway

Sorry, I just can't resist. This post *calls* to me, demanding
response. The blood of slaughtered memes cries to me from the parched
earth...

On 10/21/13 11:38 PM, Greg Schmitz wrote:

> First of, I want to apologize to Arthur, in particular, and the readers
> of this list for the manner in which I composed my comment. I have only
> been on this list for a short time, joining after I started using Linux
> again after a long hiatus. I wrote my comment after a night out with
> friends, eating and drinking and should have waited until the next day
> (Saturday) to hit the send button

I might have suggested waiting even longer.

> Efficiency? Do you think a private entity, with profit as a motive, can
> be more efficient than a host of other models for accomplishing work and
> goals - including models that historically have been used by our
> governments? I think not, and I think history is on my side.

That would be an erroneous thought, and I use the term generously.
(<Larry the Cable Guy> That was wrong of me. Lord, I apologize for
that... </LtCG>) Coercive agency (i.e. "government") operates *counter*
to market forces (i.e. "the expressed real preferences of everybody else
in the world"). If what they did was such a great idea, they wouldn't
have to force everybody else to do it; it would already be happening,
QED. Government therefore *starts* from a position where THE ABSOLUTE
BEST it can accomplish is adding some nonzero complexity and cost to a
process that would already be occurring. That is the best-case
scenario. It all goes downhill from there.

Government is efficient at exactly one thing: "doing what *some people*
(i.e. the ones in charge) want". It is *not* efficient at satisfying
general human wants. If you would like an example of how this works in
the real world, then pan south to Venezuela, where the Glorious Vanguard
of the Bolivarian Proletariat has won the people a great victory over
the easy availability of toilet paper. (Presumably we can agree that "a
clean anus" is, more-or-less, a universal human desire? I imagine that
we can also, then, agree that it appears to be a need best served by
market forces, the alternative appearing to be less effective at
actually providing bogwipe to the masses? Consider this particular case
an exemplar of the general principle.)

> As examples of failure in the world of
> profit, from private endeavours, one need only look at the cost and the
> many failed attempts by private enterprise (with regard to computing
> systems) at DOD, the FBI, the IRS, DOJ, FAA or perhaps the Municipality
> of Anchorage
> <http://www.adn.com/2013/04/12/2862627/software-to-automate-anchorage.html>.

The chief problem with these is that they are paid for via non-market
funding mechanisms. One can produce all kinds of nonsense when there is
no profitability test involved to weed stupid ideas or poor execution
out of existence. It is said that in government, nothing succeeds like
failure; now, delete everything you just wrote in response to that
statement and go ask someone who works for it. (I have, at varying
removes, and it's true.)

> Are you referring to the collusion of Public officials with private
> entrepreneurs?

This is called 'regulatory capture', and it is a known and predictable
pathology of coercive agencies, i.e. the State (or "the government", or
whatever you want to call it). There are a lot of these. (It's
pretty-well scriptable for anybody with basic powers of observation:
regulation-capture-cartel-corruption, price
caps-shortages-rationing-black market-corruption, you name the starting
point and I'll give you the next step. It'll happen, too. That's
because there's some things that just don't change, and some truths
about the type of creatures we are and the way the Universe works that
one ignores at one's peril.) Five thousand years ago, Pharaoh got to do
whatever the hell he wanted, and so did anybody who convinced Pharaoh
that his idea was really awesome. Today, the government and its agents
at a certain level (loosely defined) gets to do whatever the hell *it
wants/they want*, and so does anybody who convinces enough of the right
people in the power structure currently squatting in the heart of
Moscow-on-the-Potomac. This differs in fundamental ways - in
sustainability, productivity, efficiency, tolerability, etc. - from a
system where doing whatever you want requires convincing enough people
of your idea's intrinsic excellence that they will voluntarily fork over
cash for it.

> I grew up in Wisconsin, which has, as far as I know,
> only 2 stands of virgin timber remaining - everything else was clear cut
> (twice) by "lumber barons" and paper makers with help from government.
> Lots of jobs way back when - very few now.

Wasn't it great that there was a government in charge of that instead
of, I dunno, a bunch of individual property owners?

Besides - what's more valuable, virgin forest or paper? Who makes that
decision? (That's the crux of the problem: *WHO DECIDES*. Every
answer to that question has consequences, and the consequences for some
of those choices are nasty indeed.)

> I'll go with the government any day over commerce, or the even worse
> combination of commerce that controls government (call it what you will).
>
> Live Free or Die! --greg

This pair of statements is so flamboyantly self-contradicting that the
combination possesses the power to dissolve human flesh. You, sir, win
one Internet.

But I'm glad that you're happy about it. Apparently "the government"
has decided that you are both an enemy to be subjected to the Eye of
Sauron, and a slave to be mulcted more or less at will to whatever
extent is deemed appropriate by the Politburo. I imagine that your
happiness with that arrangement makes it *so* much more tolerable.

> "Totalitarian society, especially in its more extreme versions, tends
> to abolish the boundary between the public and the private; power, as
> it grows ever more opaque, requires the lives of citizens to be
> entirely transparent."
>
> Milan Kundera

I think you misunderstand the meaning of this quote.

But, I digress. This isn't really a good topic for AKLUG. So I'll do
you a favor; I'll provide you some places where you CAN discuss this and
it'll fit right in.

So my favorite pool to micturate in is dc-stuff@dc-stuff.org[1]. This
is a Mailman list, in operation for the last 20 years,
quasi-affiliated-but-not-really-any-more with the Def Con convention.
(Yes, THAT Def Con.) There's lots of fun with politics on that list.
(Go figure. That, and recipes. It's been a long and strange
evolution.) I heartily recommend it for anybody who wants to lose their
political religion. Bring your A-game, some butthurt salve and a
bandolier of really sharp rhetorical knives, because you'll need 'em.

If you would like to get together with a group of like-minded folks and
lame about how much capitalism sucks and how much more awesome a
People's Republic with a STRONG AND GLORIOUS FUHRER^WFIRST
SECRETARY^W^WDEAR LEADER would be, then lbo-talk[2] and marxism[3] are
really swell places. The reciprocal grooming-rituals there are very
calming to the list inhabitants.

If you would like to test your assumptions - on the theory that the
unexamined life is lacking, perhaps? - then I recommend browsing at
mises.org. (There may be fora here on which they can be discussed, too;
I've never checked. It would surprise me if there weren't.) You will
discover that there are effectively irrefutable arguments against every
economic position whose stigmata are visible in your post. If you
choose that route, you might discover new perspectives that you had not
considered before, always a worthwhile exercise.

-- 
"a challenger appears, and disappears"
-SD
[1]  http://dc-stuff.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dc-stuff
[2]  http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/lbo-talk.html
[3]  http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
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