Comment by stego-tech
8 days ago
History paints a pretty clear picture of the tradeoff:
* Profits now and violence later
OR
* Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier
Unfortunately we’ve developed such a myopic, “FYGM” society that it’s explicitly the former option for the time being.
Do you have a historical example of "Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier"? I can't think of any.
If you replace "taxes" with more general "investment", it's everywhere. A good example is Amazon that has reworked itself from an online bookstore into a global supplier of everything by ruthlessly reinvesting the profits.
Taxes don't usually work as efficiently because the state is usually a much more sloppy investor. But it's far from hopeless, see DARPA.
If you're looking for periods of high taxes and growing prosperity, 1950s in the US is a popular example. It's not a great example though, because the US was the principal winner of WWII, the only large industrial country relatively unscathed by it.
With the odd story that we paid the price for it in the long term.
This book
https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi...
tells the compelling story that the Mellon family teamed up with the steelworker's union to use protectionism to protect the American steel industry's investments in obsolete open hearth steel furnaces that couldn't compete on a fair market with the basic oxygen furnace process adopted by countries that had their obsolete furnaces blown up. The rest of US industry, such as our car industry, were dragged down by this because they were using expensive and inferior materials. I think this book had a huge impact in terms of convincing policymakers everywhere that tariffs are bad.
Funny the Mellon family went on to further political mischief
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife#Oppositi...
10 replies →
> the state is usually a much more sloppy investor
I don’t find this to be true
The state invests in important things that have 2nd and 3rd order positive benefit but aren’t immediately profitable. Money in a food bank is a “lost” investment.
Alternatively the state plays power games and gets a little too attached to its military toys.
7 replies →
> Taxes don't usually work as efficiently because the state is usually a much more sloppy investor. But it's far from hopeless, see DARPA.
Be careful. The data does not confirm that narrative. You mentioned the 1950s, which is a poignant example of reality conflicting with sponsored narrative. Pre WOII, the wealthy class orbiting the monopolists, and by extension their installed politicians, had no other ideas than to keep lowering taxes for the rich on and on, even if it only deepened the endless economic crisis. Many of them had fallen in the trap of believing their own narratives, something we know as the Cult of Wealth.
Meanwhile, average Americans lived on food stamps. Politically deadlocked in quasi-religious ideas of "bad governments versus wise business men", America kept falling deeper. Meanwhile, with just 175,000 serving on active duty, the U.S. Army was the 18th biggest in the world[1], poorly equipped, poorly trained. Right wing isolationism had brought the country in a precarious position. Then two things happened. Roosevelt and WOII.
In a unique moment, the state took matters in their own hands. The sheer excellence in planning, efficiency, speed and execution of the state baffled the republicans, putting the oligarchic model of the economy to shame. The economy grew tremendously as well, something the oligarchy could not pull of. It is not well-known that WOII depended largely on state-operated industries, because the former class quickly understood how much the state's performance threatened their narratives. So they invested in disinformation campaigns, claiming the efforts and achievements of the government as their own.
1. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/06/how-world...
3 replies →
> It's not a great example though, because the US was the principal winner of WWII, the only large industrial country relatively unscathed by it.
The US is also shaping up to be the principal winner in Artificial Intelligence.
If, like everyone is postulating, this has the same transformative impact to Robotics as it does to software, we're probably looking at prosperity that will make the 1950s look like table stakes.
4 replies →
Post World War II USA.
If that is not an example of how taxing rich people and investing in infrastructure can accelerate progress, then I don't what could be (with of course the caveat that those investments were focused in a specific group of people and not society as a whole).
Miracle of Wörgl [0]
[0] https://unterguggenberger.org/the-free-economy-experiment-of...
Violence was a moderating factor when people on each side were equally armed, and number was a deciding factor.
Nowadays you could squash an uprising with a few operators piloting drones remotely.
Flying a drone around is easy. Identifying who is on the in group and out group and then moving them is the hard part.
I’m not sure you have really thought out what the drone part is meant to do. Militaries gave outgunned populaces for decades at this point. You don’t need drones to kill civilians.
It's actually quite easy. Whoever isn't in the bunker is the outgroup. You only needed to tell people apart when you needed some meatware to man the factories and work the fields.
Militaries can side with the crowd, or more likely decide to keep the power for themselves.
1 reply →
Every possible example of “progress” have either an individual or a state power purpose behind it
there is only one possible “egalitarian” forward looking investments that paid off for everybody
I think the only exception to this is vaccines…and you saw how all that worked during Covid
Everything else from the semiconductor to the vacuum cleaner the automobile airplanes steam engines I don’t care what it is you pick something it was developed in order to give a small group and advantage over all the other groups it is always been this case it will always be this case because fundamentally at the root nature of humanity they do not care about the externalities- good or bad
COVID has cured me (hah!) of the notion that humanity will be able to pull together when faced with a common enemy. That means global warming or the next pandemic are going to happen and we will not be able to stop it from happening because a solid percentage can't wait to jump off the ledge, and they'll push you off too.
Yeah buddy we agree
[flagged]
11 replies →
If you edit your comment to add punctuation, please let me know: I would like to read that final pile of words.
I did try, I promise.
Ok here: Everything from the semiconductor through the vacuum cleaner, automobile, airplanes and steam engines was developed to give a small group an advantage over all the other groups. It has always been the case, it will always be the case.
Fundamentally, at the root nature of humanity, humans do not care about the externalities, either good or bad.
4 replies →
We have taxes now though, how much is enough?
Hint: The answer for the government is, it's never enough. "little bit of taxes" is never what we had.
Seriously though, I wouldn't mind "little bit of taxes" if there were guaranteed ways to stop funding something when it's a failed experiment, which is difficult in government. Because "a little bit more" is always wanted.
Every time I hear an argument like this one, it's always phrased in terms of "the government is greedy and/or incompetent, therefore taxes are bad" and never in terms of "the government is greedy and/or incompetent, therefore our systems of controlling our government are not good enough".
I didn't actually say they are greedy or incompetent.
Government starts a new program and funds it with taxes. First, it is difficult to prove if the program is doing what it set out to do effectively. Second, there is 0 incentive to ever shut it down. The people working there don't want to, the group who started it also don't want to. The people funding it have 0 insight or say if it should continue.