US Politics Mega-thread - Page 318

On July 09 2013 08:13 KwarK wrote:

In fairness the justification for this is maintaining the skillsets that let the country produce a bunch of tanks if it needs to for national security purposes. At some point the country may need to produce a new generation of tanks or if the world situation changes it may need to supply some tanks to a foreign nation or whatever. The point is making tanks you don't want will work out cheaper than training a bunch of dudes from scratch to make tanks and building them a factory when you need them in the future. And while you don't need them right now you have to give them something to do, right?

On July 09 2013 09:01 KwarK wrote:
This assumes that most government waste is from intentional wasting in favour of ones own constituents rather than just being a law of large scale operations. I've seen no evidence in my experience that private enterprise is able to create a less wasteful operation. Remember private enterprise is what created advertising, a tremendously worthless exercise in convincing people they want something they don't really want through claiming that it's better than it actually is. The free market has its uses but it is not above waste.

On July 09 2013 09:01 KwarK wrote:
This assumes that most government waste is from intentional wasting in favour of ones own constituents rather than just being a law of large scale operations. I've seen no evidence in my experience that private enterprise is able to create a less wasteful operation. Remember private enterprise is what created advertising, a tremendously worthless exercise in convincing people they want something they don't really want through claiming that it's better than it actually is. The free market has its uses but it is not above waste.

On July 09 2013 09:09 sc2superfan101 wrote:

Even if the majority of waste does not come from one's own constituents, the problem remains: there is no incentive for the politician to attack wasteful spending. For every vote you receive for doing so, another vote will be lost. The few politicians who do try to cut wasteful spending will always be outnumbered by those who do not try, for a multitude of reasons.

Advertising is not wasteful or worthless. Bad advertising is wasteful and potentially worse than worthless, but good advertising is great for the product and the businessman who sells the product. Also, it's not like the government doesn't engage in it's own advertising...

The free market is, of course, not above waste. However, given that there are large incentives to cut waste, it automatically is less wasteful than the government where no such incentive exists.

On July 09 2013 09:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Advertising is pretty small and you need to advertise in one form or another to be efficient.

On July 09 2013 09:27 KwarK wrote:

You need to advertise to be competitive, hence why people do it, but competitive is not the same thing as efficient, especially when taking a wider view of society.

WASHINGTON — Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.

Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.

A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of the conversation. Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and its backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.

On July 09 2013 08:25 KwarK wrote:
Except that people are inherently wasteful and will do the same thing. It's as if there is a disconnect in people's head when they think about government waste and where they think government is run by a special other type of incompetent species called governments who make exclusively shitty decisions. It's not, it's run by people who do what they can and if you got rid of government those same people would be being just as wasteful in their private market jobs. I have yet to work anywhere where I didn't think most of the people there don't actually do anything productive but in the western world we are so fucking affluent that we're allowed to be ridiculously wasteful and it doesn't really matter. If government waste disappeared you wouldn't suddenly get a bunch of extra money in your paycheck, your boss would decide to hire a hole digger and a hole filler in because your boss is the same breed of idiot that works for the government.

On July 09 2013 10:11 ziggurat wrote:

It's a pretty good argument for small government. Large govt = lots of waste. Small govt = smaller amt of waste.

On July 09 2013 09:41 Souma wrote:
sc2superfan101, you're simplifying things way too much. Of course there's incentive for many parts of the government to remove waste. Do you know how many politicians run on platforms to cut "waste," win and eventually do cut a lot of that "waste"? If the constituents want to cut "waste" then the representative has strong incentive to cut it. The only problem in the world of politics is one man's "waste" may be another man's fortune, so, for instance, maybe Republicans want to cut administrative costs in education but Democrats don't want to, thus compromises are more likely to come forth as opposed to full-on cuts.

There's a lot of waste that is definitely much harder to get rid of, aka military, education, etc., but it would help if the people gave these politicians more incentive to cut such things (aka cut it or we won't vote for you). However, as long as there are vibrant distractions, such as social issues, such a movement will be hard to come by, and thus there is less incentive to cut. Let alone, it is extremely difficult to get a significant majority of the country to agree on what specifically to cut (remember the sequester?). In the end, the onus is mainly on the voters - that's what it means to live in a democracy. I won't say that voters always get their way, obviously, but it sure helps a lot when the country as a whole is involved. Political apathy is more damaging than politics itself.

On July 09 2013 10:14 HunterX11 wrote:


Not necessarily, however, as you can have small government with lots of waste: for example, the practice of privatizing government functions, then contracting them out at a higher price than the cost for the government to run them. The military hiring private contractors to do what the military itself once did, not only in terms of security, but logistics, is a good example.

On July 09 2013 10:11 ziggurat wrote:

Edit after I read the rest of the posts:

The difference is that private enterprise is wasting someone else's money. I don't care if a GM wastes money by building cars inefficiently because they're not spending my money. Haha just kidding because GM got taxpayers money too! But generally speaking, people who waste money are wasting either their own money or shareholders' money. The government is actually taking money from taxpayers and then wasting it. Surely you agree that this is a significant difference

On July 09 2013 10:27 Roe wrote:


This is really only true for smaller, more local companies. With corporations and parents/child companies it gets much harder to keep your money away from the organization and soon management becomes just another form of government, all the while incredibly inefficient since it isn't designed to represent you in any way. If you think taxes are too high, you're free to move to another state or country, just like you're free to try a different brand of car.

On July 09 2013 10:27 Roe wrote:


This is really only true for smaller, more local companies. With corporations and parents/child companies it gets much harder to keep your money away from the organization and soon management becomes just another form of government, all the while incredibly inefficient since it isn't designed to represent you in any way. If you think taxes are too high, you're free to move to another state or country, just like you're free to try a different brand of car.

On July 09 2013 10:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

You're right that a large company can wind up with a 'bureaucratic'-ish management. But generally speaking, a large business is more efficient than a small one.

On July 09 2013 10:30 ziggurat wrote:

1. I can't think of any company that I can't avoid giving my money too, can you list a few examples of what you're talking about?

2. Do you really think buying a different car is comparable to moving to a different country? Because I can think of one or two differences.

On July 09 2013 10:59 Roe wrote:


I don't see any reason why. The more layers of management you add, the less efficient an organization will be.



1. Just Disney for example owns a massive amount of different companies. Have you by any chance seen Adam Sandler's movie "Jack and Jill"? A great example of corporate sponsorship chains getting into places you wouldn't expect. The examples run on and on when you look into who owns who, and you'll find it is indeed harder than when there are independent companies in the market to make a fully conscious decision of who to pay for a product. (I wouldn't say completely impossible, but the more incorporation there is, the less choice you have).

2: Cars were just an example of course. Any product you buy from a company is based on a choice, not forced like taxes as you said. So to reiterate, the point stands that

On July 09 2013 10:59 Roe wrote:


I don't see any reason why. The more layers of management you add, the less efficient an organization will be.

Big firms can reap economies of scale. A big factory uses far less cash and labour to make each car or steel pipe than a small workshop. Big supermarkets such as the villainous Walmart offer a wider range of high-quality goods at lower prices than any corner store. Size allows specialisation, which fosters innovation. An engineer at Google or Toyota can focus all his energy on a specific problem; he will not be asked to fix the boss's laptop as well. Manufacturers in Europe with 250 or more workers are 30-40% more productive than “micro” firms with fewer than ten employees. It is telling that micro enterprises are common in Greece, but rare in Germany.