I don't disagree, but I can see why they want high growth. But if you choose that path you need to actively manage the pathological cases, especially the ones you create.
* If the US Congress were capable of identifying pathological cases, would the government go through the ceremony of shutting down every couple of years just to remind everyone they can't balance budget?
* If the Chinese government could identify pathological cases, would we have error bars of +- 15 million deaths around their 60s-era economic policies when they tried to rush improvements through central planning?
Those are my top two favourites, but there are others. The approach the government has to climate change also springs to mind. You're calling for something that we have fairly solid evidence that they can't reliably and safely do. They can kill off things that are novel, sure. They aren't reliable at making sweeping judgements about what technological changes are good or bad. Government's are very marginally competent at identifying value for money.
It is far safer to let something like Bitcoin run than risk, eg, a government nipping the next internet in the bud because people are using it to look at dirty photos. The only thing to complain about here is that they've disabled the extremely reliable capitalist incentive structure that would stop people doing things they know to be a waste of time and money.
roenxi|4 years ago
* If the US Congress were capable of identifying pathological cases, would the government go through the ceremony of shutting down every couple of years just to remind everyone they can't balance budget?
* If the Chinese government could identify pathological cases, would we have error bars of +- 15 million deaths around their 60s-era economic policies when they tried to rush improvements through central planning?
Those are my top two favourites, but there are others. The approach the government has to climate change also springs to mind. You're calling for something that we have fairly solid evidence that they can't reliably and safely do. They can kill off things that are novel, sure. They aren't reliable at making sweeping judgements about what technological changes are good or bad. Government's are very marginally competent at identifying value for money.
It is far safer to let something like Bitcoin run than risk, eg, a government nipping the next internet in the bud because people are using it to look at dirty photos. The only thing to complain about here is that they've disabled the extremely reliable capitalist incentive structure that would stop people doing things they know to be a waste of time and money.
native_samples|4 years ago