Comment by joe_mamba
5 hours ago
>Last year this podcast said that nobody wants to solve this because solving it is going to eliminate (IIRC) hundreds of thousands of jobs.
That's the reason why a lot of inefficiencies are kept in countries around the world: it keeps people employed and moves money through the economy. If broken things were suddenly to be made efficient overnight, the government wouldn't be able deal with masses of angry people/voters suddenly out of a job.
This reminds of a debate in the German parliament 30 years back or so, about the cost for the Eurofighter project (IIRC). Essentially one speaker had argued against the staggering cost, and a second speaker from the government defended the project by saying how many jobs it created. Someone shouted that building a pyramid in honor of Helmut Kohl and it would create a lot of jobs as well, that didn't mean it's a good idea.
The sentiment reminds me of the people who believe that having so much prosperity that people feel comfortable not working all year around... represents some terrible threat that must be vigorously resisted for the greater good! Think of what it would do to the poor metrics.
Literal overnight change might be too radical (although, frankly, I'd want to see some academic work on the matter because it sounds like it might work - typically the problem seems to be that the body politic tries every alternative but good policy first then blames the mess on freedom) but people who are scared of rapid improvement because they don't like change are a massive threat to human prosperity and really shouldn't be left in charge of anything important.
Delaying the industrial revolution was never a good choice at any point in human history. The potential gains from efficiency are unbelievably large.
>not working all year around
Keeping people employed through inefficient bullshit jobs is better for the government than paying them to sit at home, since this way you have control over their livelihoods and their votes.
In civilised places, the government is the people. And civilised people know they are the government.
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And they say there's no socialism in the US
This is a sign of a broken system. It's the old joke about paying someone to smash windows and someone to repair them, how that's great for The GDP.