On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Doug Pensinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Why would it have to be restricted to a numerical scale? Couldn't you
be polled on a range of issues to determine where the government was
succeeding and where it wasn't?
Did you read the original post? A decision is made
Not even if they asked and you told them?
How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? No, I don't think
I'd trust my answers on that. Compared to what? Myself
in the past? That would be hard to judge. Other people I
know? Even worse (how do I know how happy they are?).
And how to know how much of
From: John Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: Democracy (was Health Care / The same damn topic all f-ing
week!~)
Not even if they asked and you told them?
How happy are you
John Williams
How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? No, I don't think
I'd trust my answers on that. Compared to what? Myself
in the past? That would be hard to judge. Other people I
know? Even worse (how do I know how happy they are?).
And how to know how much of the happiness is due to
John Williams wrote:
1) Why trust the government with measuring something as abstract as
happiness, if it can be measured at all? I don't think I'd trust even my
closest friends and family to measure my happiness.
Not even if they asked and you told them?
Doug
John Williams wrote:
It is obvious that no system is perfect. No matter whether it is a
centrally controlled system, or a completely decentralized system,
there will be decisions made by people, and people do make mistakes.
I'd rather have a fault-tolerant system that tends to evolve toward
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
John Williams wrote:
there will be decisions made by people, and people do make mistakes.
You are assuming everyone is a rational actor.
By no means is everyone a rational actor. People make mistakes, act
emotionally instead of rationally, and generally
John Williams wrote:
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
John Williams wrote:
there will be decisions made by people, and people do make mistakes.
You are assuming everyone is a rational actor.
By no means is everyone a rational actor. People make mistakes, act
emotionally instead of
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What's different between the ability of government actors
to make large mistakes vs. the ability of private actors to make
large mistakes?
Government legally requires actors to behave in certain ways. Private
actors must use more subtle means.
John, you
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scale-wise, it seems to me that there are several
sets of private actors that can generate errors as large or larger than
the government can or has.
What private actor can control $1 trillion dollars in bailouts?
Even on a local level, look at the vast amounts
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scale-wise, it seems to me that there are several
sets of private actors that can generate errors as large or larger than
the government can or has.
Another example is Congress. It looks likely that the Federal government
will spend more than $4 trillion this
John Williams wrote:
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What's different between the ability of government actors
to make large mistakes vs. the ability of private actors to make
large mistakes?
Government legally requires actors to behave in certain ways. Private
actors must use more
On Oct 31, 2008, at 12:20 PM, Lance A. Brown wrote:
I'm done with this conversation since you ducked my question about
what
should replace government regulation. If you want to have a
conversation about what can/should be used instead of government
regulation, let's do it. Otherwise I'm
On Oct 31, 2008, at 12:37 PM, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
On Oct 31, 2008, at 12:20 PM, Lance A. Brown wrote:
I'm done with this conversation since you ducked my question about
what
should replace government regulation. If you want to have a
conversation about what can/should be used instead of
Bruce Bostwick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
tired of the repetition of one answer to every problem, because some
things are just not nails.
Government regulations are definitely not nails. Ticking time bombs
would be a better metaphor.
___
Lance A. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I'm done with this conversation since you ducked my question about what
should replace government regulation.
I'll answer that if you answer my question:
How can I predict what the stock market will do over the next year?
Bruce Bostwick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I dropped out of most of these when one
conversation reached the point of suggesting that government
regulation, and not the 1920's equivalent of particularly clueless day
traders, caused the Great Depression.
I don't blame you. It can be devastating
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 10:13 AM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
Another example is Congress. It looks likely that the Federal government
will spend more than $4 trillion this year. That comes to about
$7,500,000,000.00 per congressperson in one year. And very likely
about the same
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You could just as easily say that the CEO of
General Motors spends $172 billion all by himself.
That is ridiculous. GM's average annual profit over 1998 to 2004 (about
a Senate term) was $3.2 billion (they lost money the past 4 years). There
are 14 people on
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:26 AM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You could just as easily say that the CEO of
General Motors spends $172 billion all by himself.
That is ridiculous. GM's average annual profit over 1998 to 2004 (about
a Senate term)
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You want to compare one organization's profits to
another organization's revenue!!!
The Federal budget is not equivalent to corporate revenue. The corporation
is only free to spend the profits, unless they want to go bankrupt quickly.
And the corporations are
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:53 AM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
The Federal budget is not equivalent to corporate revenue. The corporation
is only free to spend the profits, unless they want to go bankrupt quickly.
Companies aren't allowed to spend their revenue??? What do they have
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Companies aren't allowed to spend their revenue??? What do they have to do
with it, put it under the mattress?
They must use most of it to fund continuing operations which are necessary for
next year's profit.
The only continuing operations of the government
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:53 AM, John Williamswrote:
Now you only need to name 521 more people with that
kind of spending power to match Congress. If you can do that, then
we can talk about hundreds of state legislators and county supervisors.
At this
- Original Message -
From: John Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 4:06 AM
Subject: Re: Health Care (the same damn topic all f-ing week!~)
Bruce Bostwick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I dropped out
On Oct 31, 2008, at 3:50 PM, Wayne Eddy wrote:
Has anyone got any suggestions for a better political system?
Replace our election system with a lottery, and just draft our leaders?
Not sure that wouldn't be better, given the notably dodgy integrity of
our current (pre- and post-HAVA)
Wayne Eddy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Has anyone got any suggestions for a better political system?
Smaller and cheaper.
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
- Original Message -
From: John Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 7:07 AM
Subject: Re: Democracy (was Health Care / The same damn topic all f-ing
week!~)
Wayne Eddy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Has
Wayne Eddy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How does the smaller cheaper political system work?
Badly, but less so.
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
- Original Message -
From: John Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 8:03 AM
Subject: Re: Democracy (was Health Care / The same damn topic all f-ing
week!~)
Wayne Eddy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How does
Wayne Eddy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What about a system made up of a number of member states with various
constitutions, with a higher federal level above consisting of a
representative from each of the 13 member states.
Nice start, but why only 13 member states? :-)
The federal level would
Which is why Obama's plan doesn't try to
replace that knowledge,
Of course the plan doesn't STATE that it will do so.
But every time the
government bureaucracy gets involved in a system, a
complicated set of
rules and regulations begins accreting in a vain and
ultimately doomed
Jon Louis Mann [EMAIL PROTECTED]
any idea why that is?
Human nature, I guess. Many people think that they know more
than they do, and therefore believe that they can design (or fix)
an extremely complicated system when there is really no chance
to do so. People don't trust an emergent system,
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 5:06 PM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
People don't trust an emergent system, it is too abstract
to accept that millions of people individually interacting can actually
result
in a more efficient solution to a problem than having a strong
leader and authority
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The trouble with trusting a self-organizing system is that we don't have
very good mathematics to analyze and predict what they'll do. We certainly
know that complex systems of the kind you describe tend to be chaotic, with
unpredictable attractor states.
It
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 5:40 PM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
But I'd rather have a few
thousand small, uncorrelated bad decisions than a small number of gigantic
bad decisions.
Since you mentioned emergence, I was thinking that perhaps you are familiar
with the mathematics of
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Even simple Boolean
networks produce behaviors that I wouldn't want to trust with my health
care!
Even well-intentioned father figures can make decisions that I wouldn't
want to trust with my health care. I trust myself, and a small number
of people who have
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 6:02 PM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
Thousands of small decisions don't just average out. They can
produce wild behavior that is inherently unpredictable.
If they are coordinated, sure. That's what central control does. If
the decisions are uncorrelated,
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
No. Not when they influence each other. You referred to emergence, but
there are no emergent properties when decisions average out. But in
reality, such networks of decisions always have emergent properties.
Why do you think the coordination will be greater
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 7:11 PM, John Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
Why do you think the coordination will be greater with an decentralized
system than with government control?
I dunno. I didn't even know that I thought that.
Nick
___
Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I dunno. I didn't even know that I thought that.
If you are concerned about chaotic effects in a complicated system
with coordination between the elements, then why do you think
government control will result in less instability if you don't think
it will have
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