Big Government: Can't it be made to work and be efficient?

[NewUser]

Hi all, so I've read a lot of Ron Paul's work and watched many of his lectures on Youtube and I really love his views. Ron Paul, and many others, all say that government is extremely inefficient and every year we see that things run by government, like public education, all become more expensive every year and at the same time, every year the quality goes down and from what I can see, this is true.

My question is: Isn't it possible to make big government work? Couldn't you just make it so that government workers would be heavily penalised and fired if they were inefficient or even penalised using corporal punishment? I was just watching Stargate SG-1 and in it there is a character named Anubis who is an emperor and if his servants aren't successful they're heavily punished. I know, it's silly to bring up this, but it's what occurred to me. It just seems like there are some positives to having a big government and just saying that 'gummit is always bad' is painting the topic with a really broad brush.

The Soviet Union was able to do some things really well and was able to compete with the USA despite having a smaller economy with which to draw resources from. It achieved great things in the fields of the military, sport research and the space race. By the way, what other things did the USSR do well?

Thanks, I'd really appreciate any help!

 

[Occam's Banana]

gummit is always bad, mm'kay?

 

[Keith and stuff]

Spanking government workers? Seems like an interesting sexual fantasy.

 

[fisharmor]

My question is: Isn't it possible to make big government work? Couldn't you just make it so that government workers would be heavily penalised and fired if they were inefficient or even penalised using corporal punishment? I was just watching Stargate SG-1 and in it there is a character named Anubis who is an emperor and if his servants aren't successful they're heavily punished. I know, it's silly to bring up this, but it's what occurred to me. It just seems like there are some positives to having a big government and just saying that 'gummit is always bad' is painting the topic with a really broad brush.

Well, sure, it's possible. Just as in your example, when the state in question is an autocracy, some level of efficiency is possible. In that case the autocrat is acting as the owner of the state, though. So it undermines your idea from the onset.
The primary problem with autocracies is that there is no competition. Even though some level of efficiency is possible, and things might be actually able to get done, it's not going to be nearly as efficient or customer-service-oriented as the free market. The workers are trying to please the autocrat - not the consumer.

The Soviet Union was able to do some things really well and was able to compete with the USA despite having a smaller economy with which to draw resources from. It achieved great things in the fields of the military, sport research and the space race. By the way, what other things did the USSR do well?

Military?
This is a Tupolev Tu-4.

It is a part-for-part copy of the Boeing B-29 Stratofortress.

Nuclear weapons? US did it first.
Assault rifles? Germany did it first.

Every great thing about the USSR's military was ripped off from someone else.

despite having a smaller economy

Do you realize how much oil Russia is sitting on - still? How much wood is there? Natural gas?
We are talking about 15% of the total land mass on the entire planet.
The fact that it had a smaller economy than a country less than half its size - despite sitting on vast natural resources - is the most gigantic and obvious indicator of its total failure.

space race

Did you know that at the end of WWII, all the German scientists who had worked on the V2 project were taken out of Germany? The US got some, and the USSR got some. And that was the birth of both space programs.
Look up the names of the people involved with the moon landings, and you'll soon run into Werner Von Braun - an ex-Nazi.
The US competed half-heartedly for the first part of the space race, but as soon as we got serious, we trounced them. We were even able to make utterly retarded ideas work, like a space airplane that needed $50,000-each windshield panels replaced after every "flight" and had a 20% loss rate.
Of course, this all depends on what your definition of "success" is, but if you define it the way everyone else does - "the ability to throw money in the space-toilet for 40 years and still exist as a country afterward" - then the US wins hands-down.

And all of this has to be balanced with the social issues, too. Most people in the US have no idea what happened in the USSR under Stalin, because the people discussing it are drowned out by the cacophony of voices complaining about who was and was not able to hire a taxi in the US.

 

[Icymudpuppy]

Stalin's method of creating efficiency went something like this... "MAKE THIS HAPPEN... IF YOU FAIL OR ARE TOO SLOW, YOU DIE" Really great method of ruling. Seemed to be the same way that the Egyptian Pharoahs managed the building of the Pyramids and Sphinx. Anubis is Egyptian of course. In any case, do you really want to live in a society like that? Unless you are the dictator, it sucks.

 

[jclay2]

Hi all, so I've read a lot of Ron Paul's work and watched many of his lectures on Youtube and I really love his views. Ron Paul, and many others, all say that government is extremely inefficient and every year we see that things run by government, like public education, all become more expensive every year and at the same time, every year the quality goes down and from what I can see, this is true.

My question is: Isn't it possible to make big government work? Couldn't you just make it so that government workers would be heavily penalised and fired if they were inefficient or even penalised using corporal punishment? I was just watching Stargate SG-1 and in it there is a character named Anubis who is an emperor and if his servants aren't successful they're heavily punished. I know, it's silly to bring up this, but it's what occurred to me. It just seems like there are some positives to having a big government and just saying that 'gummit is always bad' is painting the topic with a really broad brush.

The Soviet Union was able to do some things really well and was able to compete with the USA despite having a smaller economy with which to draw resources from. It achieved great things in the fields of the military, sport research and the space race. By the way, what other things did the USSR do well?

Thanks, I'd really appreciate any help!

-rep

Economies are about best maximizing every person wants vs the finite world of resources and capital. Pointing out that the Soviet Union did a few things well is absolutely absurd because it misses the point of balancing out different desires. Who gives one crap what the military is like if the average person worker in the country is completely destitute.

 

[Acala]

The Soviet Union was an economic basket case, not to mention a human rights horrorshow. The only thing that kept the people from starving to death due to the inefficiency of the official gunpoint agriculture was the private plots that were allowed to exist under the table. See here for an overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Soviet_Union

Using the Soviet Union as an example of functional big government is like using Miley Cyrus as an example of grace.

 

[brooks009]

We haven't even come close to exploring a fraction possible ways government could work. A lot of people here will say government will never work or small or no government is the only solution but I don't buy it.

How do we go about exploring the possibilities? I don't know.

 

[fisharmor]

We haven't even come close to exploring the a fraction possible ways government could work. A lot of people here will say government will never work or small or no government is the only solution but I don't buy it.

How do we go about exploring the possibility's? I don't know.

1) The first thing you need to do to explore the possibilities is to stop employing the word "government" when you mean "state". They are not synonymous.

2) The second thing you need to do is prioritize. If, like the OP, you prioritize overbearing, totally unnecessary military might, or you prioritize raping a country's resources and shooting them into space or using them to create athletes, then I submit you're on the wrong site. Try "www.practicallyanywhereelseontheweb.com".

3) If you prioritize freedom, peace, mutually beneficial exchange, sound currency, free labor markets, entrepreneurship, and self-determination, then you need to examine the 8000 year track record of the state. You also need to examine the spotty track record of statelessness - spotty because it has only existed in pockets until the state mercilessly stamped it out with war crimes that rival the worst Stalin and Hitler could manage.

 

[NewUser]

Well, sure, it's possible. Just as in your example, when the state in question is an autocracy, some level of efficiency is possible. In that case the autocrat is acting as the owner of the state, though. So it undermines your idea from the onset.
The primary problem with autocracies is that there is no competition. Even though some level of efficiency is possible, and things might be actually able to get done, it's not going to be nearly as efficient or customer-service-oriented as the free market. The workers are trying to please the autocrat - not the consumer.

Okay, thanks for your reply.

Military?
This is a Tupolev Tu-4.

It is a part-for-part copy of the Boeing B-29 Stratofortress.

Nuclear weapons? US did it first.
Assault rifles? Germany did it first.

Every great thing about the USSR's military was ripped off from someone else.


Do you realize how much oil Russia is sitting on - still? How much wood is there? Natural gas?
We are talking about 15% of the total land mass on the entire planet.
The fact that it had a smaller economy than a country less than half its size - despite sitting on vast natural resources - is the most gigantic and obvious indicator of its total failure.





Did you know that at the end of WWII, all the German scientists who had worked on the V2 project were taken out of Germany? The US got some, and the USSR got some. And that was the birth of both space programs.
Look up the names of the people involved with the moon landings, and you'll soon run into Werner Von Braun - an ex-Nazi.
The US competed half-heartedly for the first part of the space race, but as soon as we got serious, we trounced them. We were even able to make utterly retarded ideas work, like a space airplane that needed $50,000-each windshield panels replaced after every "flight" and had a 20% loss rate.
Of course, this all depends on what your definition of "success" is, but if you define it the way everyone else does - "the ability to throw money in the space-toilet for 40 years and still exist as a country afterward" - then the US wins hands-down.




And all of this has to be balanced with the social issues, too. Most people in the US have no idea what happened in the USSR under Stalin, because the people discussing it are drowned out by the cacophony of voices complaining about who was and was not able to hire a taxi in the US.

Well I'm not a military history expert, but the USSR did do some things really well.

I was trying to exclude the social issues from the economic issues.

I was thinking that one of the benefits of a state run enterprise is that particular industries will be able to communicate and learn from other industries and so the sharing of information is highly engaged upon. There is only one state run company whereas in a capitalist system, there are many companies and the sharing of information is obviously never done because they're competing with each other.

Couldn't this one state run company benefit from the co-operation and information sharing from other state run companies?

What about in the field of sport where the USSR/East Germany were able to beat the American and other Western teams? Yes, I know sport isn't as serious an issue as military or the space, but during the Cold War, it was another battlefield to compete in not unlike the space race.

 

[fisharmor]

What about in the field of sport where the USSR/East Germany were able to beat the American and other Western teams? Yes, I know sport isn't as serious an issue as military or the space, but during the Cold War, it was another battlefield to compete in not unlike the space race.

No, I think sport is every bit as serious an issue as an overbloated military or the space race - which is to say, not important at all.

Seriously, you are not on the same wavelength here.

After you graduate school and spend 20 years paying for all these marvelous battles, and you start to see people going to prison for things that you do regularly today, then you might start to wake the fuck up and realize that all your glorious battles have a cost.

 

[NewUser]

No, I think sport is every bit as serious an issue as an overbloated military or the space race - which is to say, not important at all.

Seriously, you are not on the same wavelength here.

After you graduate school and spend 20 years paying for all these marvelous battles, and you start to see people going to prison for things that you do regularly today, then you might start to wake the fuck up and realize that all your glorious battles have a cost.

Woah, easy bro, I'm just trying to find answers to my questions. I didn't mean to offend you.

What glorious battles are you talking about?

I'm just thinking that an entity can succeed and do well without the competition motive. Couldn't there be harsh penalties for the person in charge of a state run company if it isn't managed efficiently?

 

[fisharmor]

Woah, easy bro, I'm just trying to find answers to my questions. I didn't mean to offend you.

I'm not offended, as long as you genuinely aren't trolling. You tripped my trollometer.

What glorious battles are you talking about?

I'm just thinking that an entity can succeed and do well without the competition motive. Couldn't there be harsh penalties for the person in charge of a state run company if it isn't managed efficiently?

You yourself phrased the successes of the state in terms of battle.
Sport was another battlefield.

I don't think of myself as old. I'm really not. But it's obvious I'm older than you.
I remember what it was like to live under the shadow of those "battlefields". As children, we knew that with one false step made by people we didn't even know, the entire world and everyone living in it would be vaporized. We lived in an age where the post-apocalypse wasn't a plot device for films. It was a very real possibility.

So I guess I get a little on edge when brand new people show up here suggesting that the single idea that sparked it all, that marched us right up to that line and made us stare at it, may actually be a good idea.

Yes, that is what caused it. One side implemented the idea, and the other side - US - which was supposed to be against it, also implemented it. Then a third side implemented it in a slightly different way, and then over 100 million people died.

You're not covering new ground here. Like I said, you need to examine the evidence. And the evidence clearly shows that that innocent little idea you're toying with is the crown jewel of the bloodiest century in human history.

 

[Occam's Banana]

I was thinking that one of the benefits of a state run enterprise is that particular industries will be able to communicate and learn from other industries and so the sharing of information is highly engaged upon. There is only one state run company whereas in a capitalist system, there are many companies and the sharing of information is obviously never done because they're competing with each other.

Couldn't this one state run company benefit from the co-operation and information sharing from other state run companies?

No, it couldn't. This "one state-run company" would face the same problem all the "other state-run companies" would face - namely the "socialist calcuation problem" (a.k.a the "economic calculation problem").

FTA (emphasis added): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

The economic calculation problem is a criticism of using economic planning as a substitute for market-based allocation of the factors of production. It was first proposed by Ludwig von Mises in his 1920 article "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" and later expanded upon by Friedrich Hayek. In his first article, Mises describes the nature of the price system under capitalism and describes how individual subjective values are translated into the objective information necessary for rational allocation of resources in society.

In market exchanges, prices reflect the supply and demand of resources, labor and products. In his first article, Mises focused his criticism on the inevitable deficiencies of the socialisation of capital goods, but Mises later went on to elaborate on various different forms of socialism in his book, Socialism. Mises and Hayek argued that economic calculation is only possible by information provided through market prices, and that bureaucratic or technocratic methods of allocation lack methods to rationally allocate resources. The debate raged in the 1920s and 1930s, and that specific period of the debate has come to be known by economic historians as The Socialist Calculation Debate. Mises' initial criticism received multiple reactions and led to the conception of trial-and-error market socialism, most notably the Lange-Lerner theorem.

Mises argued in "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" that the pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if a public entity owned all the means of production, no rational prices could be obtained for capital goods as they were merely internal transfers of goods and not "objects of exchange," unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence the system would be necessarily irrational, as the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. He wrote "...that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth." Mises developed his critique of socialism more completely in his 1922 book Socialism, an Economic and Sociological Analysis, arguing that the market price system is an expression of praxeology and can not be replicated by any form of bureaucracy.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

LOL; Donnie Dorko just created a new user name and more boring threads. He is so lazy that he did not even bother to disguise his writing style.

 

[Cleaner44]

Hi all, so I've read a lot of Ron Paul's work and watched many of his lectures on Youtube and I really love his views. Ron Paul, and many others, all say that government is extremely inefficient and every year we see that things run by government, like public education, all become more expensive every year and at the same time, every year the quality goes down and from what I can see, this is true.

My question is: Isn't it possible to make big government work? Couldn't you just make it so that government workers would be heavily penalised and fired if they were inefficient or even penalised using corporal punishment? I was just watching Stargate SG-1 and in it there is a character named Anubis who is an emperor and if his servants aren't successful they're heavily punished. I know, it's silly to bring up this, but it's what occurred to me. It just seems like there are some positives to having a big government and just saying that 'gummit is always bad' is painting the topic with a really broad brush.

The Soviet Union was able to do some things really well and was able to compete with the USA despite having a smaller economy with which to draw resources from. It achieved great things in the fields of the military, sport research and the space race. By the way, what other things did the USSR do well?

Thanks, I'd really appreciate any help!

It is surprising that you have read much from Dr. Paul and yet still see the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a viable system. Is it not obvious that BIG GOVT can't work? Just look around you. Did the USSR thrive and survive? Is the USA getting more prosperous or less as our government grows?

Can you share which books from Ron Paul you have read and can you share specific examples of the USSR that you think they did really well?

 

[Acala]

Hi all, so I've read a lot of Ron Paul's work and watched many of his lectures on Youtube and I really love his views. Ron Paul, and many others, all say that government is extremely inefficient and every year we see that things run by government, like public education, all become more expensive every year and at the same time, every year the quality goes down and from what I can see, this is true.

My question is: Isn't it possible to make big government work? Couldn't you just make it so that government workers would be heavily penalised and fired if they were inefficient or even penalised using corporal punishment? I was just watching Stargate SG-1 and in it there is a character named Anubis who is an emperor and if his servants aren't successful they're heavily punished. I know, it's silly to bring up this, but it's what occurred to me. It just seems like there are some positives to having a big government and just saying that 'gummit is always bad' is painting the topic with a really broad brush.

The Soviet Union was able to do some things really well and was able to compete with the USA despite having a smaller economy with which to draw resources from. It achieved great things in the fields of the military, sport research and the space race. By the way, what other things did the USSR do well?

Thanks, I'd really appreciate any help!

The list of things wrong with big government not only can but HAS filled many books. You might want to read a few of them. It is certainly not possible to do the subject justice in a forum thread.

But let's get really basic. Government does two things: 1. makes people do things they don't want to do; and 2. prevents people from doing things they want to do. It does both of these things by force. Except in the case of self-defense, using violence or the threat of violence against people is evil. Therefore, your Big Government is built on a foundation of evil. An entity built on a foundation of evil will ALWAYS be corrupt. No clever system of management will change the fundamental taint.

 

[mczerone]

Okay, thanks for your reply.


Well I'm not a military history expert, but the USSR did do some things really well.

I was trying to exclude the social issues from the economic issues.

I was thinking that one of the benefits of a state run enterprise is that particular industries will be able to communicate and learn from other industries and so the sharing of information is highly engaged upon. There is only one state run company whereas in a capitalist system, there are many companies and the sharing of information is obviously never done because they're competing with each other.

Couldn't this one state run company benefit from the co-operation and information sharing from other state run companies?

What about in the field of sport where the USSR/East Germany were able to beat the American and other Western teams? Yes, I know sport isn't as serious an issue as military or the space, but during the Cold War, it was another battlefield to compete in not unlike the space race.

In a free market, there would be lots of communication, sharing, and "co-op-etition." Currently, this is ILLEGAL under the Sherman Act.

Also, when there is only one company in any industry, THERE IS NO INFORMATION TO SHARE.

First, reference Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth. There's no way to price things that's rational and conveys efficiency.

Second, reference The Use of Knowledge in Society. There's no way to centralize the information of even the simplest, most predictable society.

You have real concerns. But a state run economy doesn't solve them.

 

[VIDEODROME]

USSR seems like an extreme example.

It might be better to look at Canada and Europe in terms of government and social services. Are their efficient? Germany seems to basically be okay.


As for America, I think we're caught in a love/hate thing with Capitalism and Free Markets. Strangely, I think Capitalism leads to the most amazing innovations and inventions, but also tends to breed monopolies or concentrated corporate power that does wreckless gambling on Wall Street.

 

[angelatc]

The Soviet Union was able to do some things really well and was able to compete with the USA despite having a smaller economy with which to draw resources from. It achieved great things in the fields of the military, sport research and the space race. By the way, what other things did the USSR do well?

Thanks, I'd really appreciate any help!

I was employed in the electronics field before the Soviet Union fell, and I can assure you that the reports of their military advancements were over-hyped, partially to keep the support for the US military industrial complex strong.

The company I worked for hired a Russian engineer - he had defected and was a political refugee. He said that when he was in Russia's military, he was convinced they had the most advanced weapons in the world. When he arrived here, he found that almost everything that was still classified as Top Secret there was available in Radio Shack here.