Oddbean

The US needs this so bad it isn’t even funny. You could literally delete 80% of govt and no one but their employees would even feel it. But then we still need to cut 80% of what’s left so people *can* feel it and THEN we actually have a shot at stopping the govt from destroying our gd country. nostr:note1pqx43exq206ls0k3lagfvj5vfl7tuxm0lqkl3ssywvvl0f9n2u8sghhvc6

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.

The way the American mainstream media handled Milei was one of the key topics that completely tore the mask off them for me (the others big ones being Bitcoin and the pandemic). I lived in Argentina for 8 years and my wife spent all of her life there until our son was born and we moved to the US. I first came across him in my Apple News feed, early in his campaign, where he was described as "trump-like, fascist, far-right extremist, crazy, unstable, talking to his dead dogs, wanting to legalize the sale of human organs and babies, etc." I asked my wife if she knew anything about him. She didn't, and we started watching Argentinean coverage of him, and a lot of his appearances on various podcasts, etc. We both came to like him quickly--he was passionate, articulate, smart, very consistent, very grounded in Austrian economics, and he never spoke down to his audience. We followed his entire campaign and were thrilled when he won. The craziest thing is, after the election, my wife's friends expressed their condolences to her about Milei's victory. From their CNN-informed world-view, their base assumption was that my wife would be upset.

The point I was trying to make is maybe best understood in the last sentence. There is a managed reality presented in the MSM that, if you subscribe, becomes a default setting you assume everyone is running.

If done quickly, the immediate local economic implications would be massive. So many towns are built around the funneling of government dollars into communities that otherwise (1) would be much smaller or (2) wouldn’t exist. Middle America would be unrecognizable from what it looks like today. Texas would be relatively among the strongest because of their energy abundance. Florida would suffer from Social Security reform. Lots of the Midwest and Deep South would get absolutely wrecked. Immediately, home valuations would plummet, supply chains would be disrupted, and society would likely decay rapidly. Longer-term it’d all work itself out but the detox period would be pretty bad and last a few years.

To the contrary society would not decay, it would finally stop funding the things that are the actual *source* of its decay. It would feel bad for a short period of time, but the change itself would literally be the defunding of that which is literally *destroying* society today. And the middle class, after a temporary shock, would immediately go into a huge recovery and growth period. Following the initial capital reallocation, we would experience the most profound period of aggressive growth that we’ve likely ever seen. We would have the technological landscape and acceleration while *actually* aligning it to investments that benefit society. It would legit be a renaissance.

I disagree. The chaos of unemployment and mass migration would absolutely wreck huge parts of the country. Societal unrest like modern Western economies haven’t seen. I agree with you in theory … and I agree with the long-term forecast that growth would be sustainable and healthy. But I think millions of people probably wouldn’t make it through the transition period. Not trying to be hyperbolic. And I mean that as a condemnation of the current system and the inefficiencies / bad infrastructure they’ve built. Not blaming the sound money standard we’d return to…at all. But still, the implosion of the central bank credit system would be an incredibly disruptive shock to civilization. And because it literally might happen in a year or two vs. historical financial collapses that took decades to fully transition, the pain would be exacerbated. And from another angle, we’ve built bad, poor quality, non-productive capacity for 50+ years … the overhang of non-productivity of those assets would also hinder growth (i.e. tearing down infrastructure that is no longer useful to replace it with something more useful). Further, sound money reduces consumption by raising the hurdle rate. That would lead to an extensive period of hodlers hodling until we clear the overhang of bad assets. During that period, I’m not sure you’d see a lot of physical real infrastructure being built…at least in developed nations. Also, bitcoin will only be able to be earned, not bought … and we won’t “need” as many things as we do today … so that’s another overhang. I’m a libertarian, bitcoin maxi so don’t get me wrong…I think the transition is SUPER painful. And it’s going to be widespread.