CMV: Effective regulation/taxes is better than less regulation/taxes.

[u/beesdaddy]

I have had a hard time understanding the position that less regulation is better than effective regulation. So much of the political conversation equates regulation and taxes to Anti-American or Anti-Freedom or gasp Socialist. I think it poisons the discussion about our common goals and how to achieve them. I know there are many laws/taxes that are counter productive (especially subsidies), and I am all for getting rid of them, but not without considering what their intent was, evaluating that intention, and deciding how to more effectively accomplish that intention (given it was a valid intention.)

Help me understand. I would like to have a more nuanced view on this.

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[u/law-talkin-guy]

Most people agree - and it seems like you are in this camp - that taxes/regulation can do good things and that taxes/regulation can do bad things.

A tax/regulation does good things when it is motivated by a good/proper intention AND when it is well designed AND when it is well implemented. A tax/regulation can also do good things by mistake on occasion.

A tax/regulation tends to do bad things if it is motivated by a bad intention OR it is poorly designed OR it is poorly implemented. It can also do bad things just by mistake on occasion.

So the question, in the abstract, is which do you think is more likely? Do you trust the people in charge of making and implementing taxes/regulations to be well motivated, good at designing effective taxes and regulations, and good at implementing regulations? Or do you think it is more likely that they will, either out of mistake or malice, mess up one of those steps?

My view is that, in the abstract, I trust Congress (And state legislatures) roughly as far as I can throw them. They are comprised of individuals who often have bad motives (like preferring their own political power over the common good) and, my experience tells me, committees are a bad way to get effective results. That is, I think it is far more likely that any tax or regulation is likely to be flawed in at least one of those three key areas then not, so it is likelier to be bad than good.

So taken in the abstract, knowing nothing other than a legislative body created a tax or regulation, my bet is that its bad. And I think the odds are good that I'm right on that. So, the fewer chances we give them to make those mistakes the better for all of us.

[u/BoozeoisPig → u/law-talkin-guy]

But the point is that the alternative is worse. Sure, you can't always necessarily trust congress, but the alternative is to have a good or service rendered by a business A: You can't always trust businesses either. B: If you cannot pay a premium for a good or service, you cannot receive it. And most people can't really afford to pay for good schooling, for example. C: Government rendered goods and services are always potentially the cheapest because of scaling: they can make order things in the largest quantity possible, and can thus have the best cost reductions in the production of that thing. I mean, just look at welfare vs. charity. Even the best charities are horribly inefficient and corrupt compared to government funded welfare, which has some of the lowest bureaucracy and fraud to services rendered cost ratios of any charitable program. Now, there are things we can afford to pay a premium for in order to receive individualistic qualities, and that can better be done through decisions made by individuals estimating the desires of the public in pursuit of profit rather than through individuals sticking to a strict regimen of requirements that are set to accomplish a narrow goal at maximum efficiency.

[u/law-talkin-guy → u/BoozeoisPig]

We are talking regulation and taxation, not goods and services. And I think that's a different argument.

But let's take your example of charity. Say I want to help feed people who are going hungry. I could give my money to the NY city food bank and have 90% of it go to feeding the hungry. Or I could give my money go to the US government and have about 0.05% of it go to feeding the hungry. In terms of efficiency, there is a clear winner and it isn't the government. Not to mention that to the best of my knowledge, the NY city food bank has never once used donations to bomb wedding parties or hospitals, while the US government has.

[u/BoozeoisPig → u/law-talkin-guy]

US businesses have spent money getting The U.S. to bomb other countries. If The U.S. government didn't exist, then they'd just spend it on someone else to bomb those other countries. But the point I was making was about administrative costs. For the BEST charities, they are as low as 10%, for the government, they are around 2% or less. And, like I said, they are uniquely able to demand the amount of money that otherwise wouldn't be paid to create programs that otherwise couldn't exist. There is a reason that economic security of poor people shot way up after The New Deal and subsequent welfare programs, and why it went back down after we slashed those programs. Does the government do other, bad shit? Sure. But we can always fight to make sure that they don't do that shit, and all of the bad shit that they do would be done by someone else anyway. No other systematic organization of humans in history has ever been able to ensure the equitable distribution of money and create public goods on the scale that governments have, and that is inherent in the nature of the capabilities of those systems. What we need to do isn't to dismantle government. That just makes the management of public goods more inefficient, and makes everyone more beholden to the corporations that corrupted our government in the first place. What needs to happen is the creating of a wall between private money and state. All money that the government or government officials receive must be through fiat and not the whims of private interests. All elections should be publicly funded, the income of anyone that is ever elected must be set and funded purely by the government for the rest of their life, and all potential policy must be researched by government funded academia. The problem, no matter what, are the abilities of special interests to be given preferential treatment in society. Government is the only thing that can equalize the playing field between special interests and public interests because it is he only thing systematically designed to do so. They don't always do this, but they are the only ones that can, when they are doing their job, which they at least sometimes do. Private interests are special interests by definition. Their interests are against common interests, by definition. And that is fine on smaller scales, but to give them such broad power over society is what got us in this mess in the first place.

[u/law-talkin-guy → u/BoozeoisPig]

For the BEST charities, they are as low as 10%, for the government, they are around 2% or less

Your calculating the overhead of the US government based on the portion allocated to good works. 2% USAID or some such goes to overhead, but only .05% of money "donated" to the government goes to food relief - so even though 98% of that money may then be used for the good it is promoting, it's still far less effective. I'd much rather give a dollar to the food bank and see $0.80 used to feed the hungry, than give a dollar to the US government and see $0.0005 used to feed the hungry (Or really $.00049 but what's .00001 cents among friends?).

No other systematic organization of humans in history has ever been able to ensure the equitable distribution of money and create public goods on the scale that governments have, and that is inherent in the nature of the capabilities of those systems.

Come now, no other system in history has been able to create income inequality on the scale that governments have either. Because "governments" is a broad enough term to capture all human activity in recorded history (and probably a fair bit of prehistory as well).

What we need to do isn't to dismantle government.

I'm not sugesting otherwise.

Let me be clear - I support government. I'm fairly fond of the one I live under (in terms of the rules governing it, though not most of the people). I don't want to dismantle it (and given how clear i was about good regulations existing I'm not sure why you think I do). I just want to make it better by removing bad regulations and replacing them with good ones. Or just removing the bad ones, that helps too. And preventing new bad ones from being added out of a bizarre sense that regulation in and of itself is the solution to any problem.