Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

I'm a leftist with some sympathy for libertarianism. I don't know how typical my views are of left-leaning people on LW, but I'd guess they aren't absurdly far from typical.

I'm all in favour of redistribution. If by "expropriation" you mean tweaking the tax rates then I'm in favour of that too, with the proviso that I'd want to take a really hard look at the relevant history and economic theory before tweaking them too hard. If you mean something more coercive -- large-scale confiscation of property, say -- then quite aside from the question of whether it could be just, it would be destabilizing and divisive. Not to mention that in order to do enough good to be worth even considering, it would need to be a really big expropriation.

Part of why I favour a somewhat-paternalistic regulatory state is because in many cases regulation benefits everyone overall by solving coordination problems, and governments are best placed (in status, coercive power, perceived legitimacy, resources, etc.) to solve them in this way. (This is mostly a separate issue from helping the poor.)

The other part is that in many cases where regulation doesn't benefit everyone, it does provide a clear overall benefit, but the people it benefits have relatively little economic power and therefore markets will settle on equilibria that are worse overall. Roughly, markets solve the problem "maximize net utility weighted by wealth" and I would prefer to solve something nearer to "maximize net utility with equal weight for everyone". An alternative way to deal with this problem would be to redistribute enough that the differences in economic power go away, but it seems like this would need a really big redistribution, much too big to look either practical or just to me. (This one is about helping the poor, and the reason why giving them money instead won't do is that they'd need to be given an infeasibly large amount of money.)

I would love to see something like a basic income guarantee. I think it could replace a lot of existing state benefits. Not all; sometimes people suffer terrible things that are very expensive to deal with, and I think governments are well placed to act as insurers in some such cases.

[EDITED to remove parentheses, which I overuse when writing hastily. No substantive changes made.]

Roughly, markets solve the problem "maximize net utility weighted by wealth" and I would prefer to solve something nearer to "maximize net utility with equal weight for everyone".

Wow, that's a fantastic way of phrasing it.

0Bruno_Coelho14y

Heath insurance programs take extremely expensive costs in the grounds of welfare state policies. To people, is inconceivable to live with private investiments in heath. The compulsive taxes make everyone pay, and only a few are aware of the monetary costs. Maybe in other sectors welfare state policies end well, but I doubt this happen frequently.