Difference between revisions of "2009-05-31 Why do people persist in voting Republican/woozle/2009"
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(→full response: update: email from Brady (yes, I still need to answer Midian Part 4)) |
(→Woozle Responds (round 3) - in progress: -- done with round 3, now for replies to Midian's round 4...) |
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# Provide incentives to save money, as the military does. If an idea works better and saves money, 10% of the savings of the first year goes to the person who provided the idea. | # Provide incentives to save money, as the military does. If an idea works better and saves money, 10% of the savings of the first year goes to the person who provided the idea. | ||
# Implement what works elsewhere. If NH does better with a 75/25% classroom/administration spending split, implement the same. | # Implement what works elsewhere. If NH does better with a 75/25% classroom/administration spending split, implement the same. | ||
| − | ===Woozle Responds (round 3) | + | ===Woozle Responds (round 3)=== |
====Left vs. Right==== | ====Left vs. Right==== | ||
I think we agree on this overall; see [[political ideological axis]] for an overview, and [[political ideological axes]] for other ways of mapping political ideologies. | I think we agree on this overall; see [[political ideological axis]] for an overview, and [[political ideological axes]] for other ways of mapping political ideologies. | ||
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So... what types of weapons do you think private citizens should be allowed to own? Should we have citizen militia groups which are allowed to own more powerful weaponry? If so, should those groups be governmentally regulated (to ensure quality of teaching about firearm safety etc.)? | So... what types of weapons do you think private citizens should be allowed to own? Should we have citizen militia groups which are allowed to own more powerful weaponry? If so, should those groups be governmentally regulated (to ensure quality of teaching about firearm safety etc.)? | ||
| + | ====Common Welfare==== | ||
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| + | How do you know? Explain, then, the popularity of political donations, charity donations, volunteerism? (And religious tithing, if you see religion as a good thing.) What kind of "majority" are we talking about, here -- 51%, 75%, 99.9%? | ||
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| + | I haven't even got to whatever point you're using this claim as an argument for, but I couldn't let it stand unchallenged because I do not think it is true in principle. Civilization only emerged because of, and depends upon, people cooperating and working for the common good. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"The problem with all the above, and many other government programs, is whenever money is being handed out from anywhere but your own pocket, people are less likely to be accountable."'' | ||
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| + | So what? I'd rather have 10 people "mooching" off the system (receiving a minimal living salary -- say $10-15k annually), who could work but would rather not, than see one guy out on the street corner begging for food for his family because he somehow doesn't "qualify" for aid. | ||
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| + | If someone would rather not work, given access to employment opportunities, why would I want to hire them? Why would I want ''anyone'' to hire them? They would probably do a lousy job and cost the business money, if that's their attitude. Let's feed, clothe, house, and educate them, and write off the loss. Maybe through education they will acquire a work ethic, but it's not something you can force. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"As a welfare worker, what does it hurt me if I allow the man who can work but chooses not to stay on welfare?"'' | ||
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| + | And how does it hurt us ''as citizens''? | ||
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| + | Let me put it this way. Do you know of anyone gainfully employed who would quit their job if they could get $10-15k a year for doing basically nothing? And let's say that, instead of stupidly cutting off this assistance abruptly if the person goes out and gets a part-time job at McDonald's, the welfare payments are ramped down gradually, so that earning money outside of welfare is encouraged rather than penalized. | ||
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| + | Would this person still quit working? | ||
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| + | If they ''would'' quit working, even under those extremely favorable circumstances, then is this really someone we should be hiring in the first place? | ||
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| + | We are an extremely wealthy society. We pay people large amounts of money to do things which really do not contribute to the common good in any way. I'd much rather give ''everyone'' a basic living -- whether they "earn" it or not -- than force people to invent useless jobs in the cause of maintaining the purity of our largely capitalistic wealth-redistribution system. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"As a principal of a school, what do I care if the 50% of the kids who are graduating high school read at a 6th grade level, so long as I make six figures?"'' | ||
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| + | This is an argument against concentration of power, not human goodness (or social welfare). 99% of the employees in that hypothetical school are probably not happy with this situation. Why is it allowed to continue? Accountability might be the problem -- but aren't principals supposed to be accountable to the school board? Why is the board letting this continue? Why aren't the parents up in arms to replace the school board for not taking action? Are there any actual cases of principals pulling down 6-figure salaries while still graduating sub-literates in significant quantities? | ||
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| + | In this (hypothetical) case, there is a clear incentive to cheat because the benefit goes to a small number of people and is thereby multiplied (lots of small budget cuts add up to a hefty annual bonus). With social welfare, the situation is reversed -- many people receive a relatively small amount of money, doled out in small amounts; they don't have much incentive to cheat, because the most they can receive in cash is a barely-living wage. | ||
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| + | Also, social welfare ''is'' supposed to be accountable -- ''all'' government is. If it's not, then the problem is the implementation, not the idea. | ||
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| + | : [M] ''"All these government programs have no accountability, and no way to fix them."'' | ||
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| + | What do you mean "no way"? The laws were made by people, and they can be changed by people. (Much of the rest of your paragraph presumes this claim, so you need to defend that point.) | ||
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| + | Your points about comparisons with working models in other states are well-taken, however, and further investigation seems like a good idea. I'm not sure where to start. But there certainly is -- or should be -- accountability. "The Government" wasn't handed down to us from the mountain, fully-formed and immutable; it belongs to us, and if we can't change it to be more sensible, then that is a problem we need to look at very closely. | ||
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| + | '''Your solutions''': | ||
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| + | I can '''partly agree with #1''' (congressional salaries should be set by popular vote). I'm not sure making it a part-time job would be a good idea, because then congresscritters would have even ''less'' time to study the complex issues before them, and they are already much too happy to vote on things they don't understand. | ||
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| + | Also, reducing the salary might have some positive effects, but I suspect they would be outweighed by the negative. | ||
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| + | Consider: A working-level wage would mean that nobody would take the job for the money. However, I doubt very much that anyone's main motivation in running for Congress is because of the great salary. People who are motivated that way would still be motivated by the power. | ||
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| + | Further, it would mean that the job would only be appealing to those who already had enough money that they didn't ''need'' a real job. These are not the people we want to be selecting for. | ||
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| + | What might work better is to require lawmakers to put all their assets (other than basic needs -- one house, one car, $2k in cash, etc. -- the kind of assets they allow when you are applying for things like Medicaid) into a blind trust for the duration of office. This would make politics considerably ''less'' attractive to the well-off, and would be no hardship at all for those with few assets to begin with. | ||
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| + | (I would even suggest that they should have to live in public housing, but I'm not sure how this would fit in with the practicalities of attending Congress when it is in session. If you ask me, Congress meeting in person is a huge anachronism; the whole thing could be done much better if conducted via computer. Society has yet to work out reliable and trustworthy methodologies for this, so it's still a bit pie-in-the-sky at the moment, but this is something they could at least be working on intensively -- and as far as I can tell there has been zero interest in it, besides casual adoption of lightweight tools like Twitter and Facebook.) | ||
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| + | On your '''#2 suggestion''': You show me where this is clearly being violated ''now'', and we'll talk. It seems to me that the power to regulate interstate commerce, for example, provides quite a large umbrella for many things conservatives would rather see preserved as "states' rights". | ||
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| + | '''Suggestion #3''': Yes, I have heard that this is a problem in government, especially at the state level. I'd like to know what the arguments were for making the system the way it is now before I support any particular remedy -- what problems was it intended to fix, and how can we avoid causing those problems again by changing it? (Please note that the position I am taking here is technically ''conservative'', not liberal: if something complex is working at all, be cautious about how you propose to "fix" it.) | ||
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| + | '''Suggestion #4''': Again, I think you have to be careful of unintended consequences. You are setting up an incentive for an individual to benefit by doing away with something which may have been cost-effectively benefiting many people. There needs to be some third-party check on each "accomplishment" to make sure it really was in the best interests of those the organization is intended to serve; otherwise you get things like a corporate executive at a straw-manufacturer shaving half an inch off the length of the straws they make, thus saving the company $5,000,000/year in materials expenses -- but producing an inferior product. (And if the organization in question is a government, people can't just take their business elsewhere.) | ||
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| + | '''Suggestion #5''': Yes, though I'd like to hear what the objections are to doing this. (If there are no objections, then why aren't we?) | ||
===Midian (round 4)=== | ===Midian (round 4)=== | ||