Oddbean new post about login | logout You could safely omit US in the above statement and apply it to govt worldwide. I believe we need govt but just an efficient one. Singapore has a good model. Pay politicians a million a year and attract business leaders. Works well
I think we pay politicians nothing, disallow any power or ability to distribute funds in any way, and make it an exclusively volunteer system where people who actually care are the only ones who show up. Govt shouldn’t be run like a business, it isn’t about “investment” or “enterprise.” Thats our problem, imo. The govt is literally just a huge, corrupt, horrifically incompetent corporation. It shouldn’t and never was supposed to be any such thing
I assume your talking about the above under a bitcoin standard. Paying politicians nothing would lead to more corruption IMO. Of course its a culture issue too. I disagree about governments being run like businesses. OK the social welfare stuff won't likely ever be profitable, but why would you not build road like a business. Get the materials for as cheap as possible. Bulk procure between states and get discounts. Put harsh penalties for delayed delivery. Speak in business terms with businesses so they don't think govt is a pushover and cash cow.
Paying them nothing comes attached to removing their power. The problem is the power to just pay out trillions of dollars to any arbitrary program. If there is no power to buy, then it won’t be corrupt. And if there’s extremely little power to buy, and it IS corrupt, who cares? End govt subsidies entirely. End govt programs. Require any program that still has to happen to have a 80%+ LOCAL vote in the area to actually get through. Make the politicians irrelevant, not rich.
Agree with the printing and funneling cash from public to private. This is a long term culture problem as I see. I mean theoretically none of the Military companies could take say 100 trillion tomorrow. The ridiculous wars and amounts of corruption has built up over time. But if there is sensible, strong and ethical leadership with a good vision then I say pay them decently and have them accountable. Whatever they do they should think like the private sector and let free markets work (not all areas of course).
Easier said than done when you have opponents using FUD and fiat hand-outs to maintain power and popular support. Nice as it sounds just to cut 80% and then another 80%, in many cases, it just has to be cut by 100%, painfully and messily, and then regrown sparingly. After a few more generations, people forget why big gov't was so bad, and the cycle repeats. Hopefully the necessary infrastructure to support Bitcoin can withstand those turbulent cycles. That should earn broad trust of future generations, whatever wins out.
In a free market good men would have time to volunteer. Those men would have earned an income sufficient to volunteer and feel good about it. In a hard money world, problems would take care of themselves because communities would have resources.