Carmack on government

Dreddnafious Maelstrom · 2010-11-12T21:59:30

With the caveat that being really smart and having uber-engine programming skills doesn't mean your political philosophy is inherently superior I recently read a short blurb by Carmack on his political philosophy, and as it mirrors basically my own beliefs I thought I'd share it.Link to source Quote: John Carmack on 10-28-2010 Almost everything that I write publicly is about technical details in software or aerospace, and the points are usually not very contentious. I’m going to go out on a limb today and talk about a much more banal topic -– government. This is sort of an open letter to my mother and stepfather, who are intelligent people, but we don’t see eye to eye on political issues. A couple brief conversations a year during visits doesn’t really establish much, and I have wanted to make a more carefully considered set of points. I had nearly disqualified myself from discuss politics by not bothering to cast a vote for almost 20 years after I was legally able to. I was busy. I paid millions of dollars of taxes without any dodges, and just focused on my work. Listening to political speeches full of carefully calculated rhetoric is almost physically painful to me, and I diligently avoided it. A couple things slowly brought me around to paying more attention. A computer game company doesn’t need to have much to do with the government, but a company that flies rocket ships is a different matter. Due to Armadillo Aerospace, in the last decade I have observed and interacted with a lot of different agencies, civil servants, and congressmen, and I have collected enough data points to form some opinions. The second thing that has changed for me is becoming a father; with two young sons, I think more about how the world might look in twenty or thirty years when they are adults. I am an optimist on almost all fronts. Throughout history, there have always been those that argue that the world is going to hell, yet here we are, better off than any previous generation. Not only are things pretty damn good, but there is a lot of positive inertia that makes it likely that things will continue to improve for quite some time. We aren’t balanced at a precipice, where the result of any given election can pitch us into darkness. However, trends do matter. Small, nearly painless losses accumulate over the years, and the world can slowly change into something you don’t want while you weren’t paying attention. It doesn’t take a cataclysmic crash, just a slow accretion of over regulation, taxation, and dependency that chokes the vibrant processes that produce wealth and growth. Without growth, you get a zero sum game of fighting over the pie that breeds all sorts of problems in government and society.basic premise. Quote: My core thesis is that the federal government delivers very poor value for the resources it consumes, and that society as a whole would be better off with a government that was less ambitious. This is not to say that it doesn’t provide many valuable and even critical services, but that the cost of having the government provide them is much higher than you would tolerate from a company or individual you chose to do business with. For almost every task, it is a poor tool. So much of the government just grinds up money, like shoveling cash into a wood chipper. It is ghastly to watch. Billions and billions of dollars. Imagine every stupid dot-com company that you ever heard of that suckered in millions of dollars of investor money before leaving a smoking crater in the ground with nothing to show for it. Add up all that waste, all that stupidity. All together, it is a rounding error versus the analogous program results in the government. Private enterprises can’t go on squandering resources like that for long, but it is standard operating procedure for the government. Well, can’t we make the government more efficient, so they can accomplish its tasks for less, or do more good work? Sure, there is room for improvement everywhere, but there are important fundamental limits. It is entertaining to imagine a corporate turnaround expert being told to get the federal house in shape, but it can’t happen. The modern civil service employment arrangement is probably superior to the historic jobs-as-political-spoils approach, but it insulates the workforce from the forces that improve commercial enterprises, and the voting influence of each worker is completely uncorrelated with their value. Without the goal and scorecard of profit, it is hard to even make value judgments between people and programs, so there are few checks against mounting inefficiency and abject failure, let alone evolution towards improvement. Even if you could snap your fingers and get it, do you really want a razor sharp federal apparatus ready to efficiently carry out the mandates of whoever is the supreme central planner at the moment? The US government was explicitly designed to make that difficult, and I think that was wise. So, the federal government is essentially doomed to inefficiency, no matter who is in charge or what policies they want it to implement. I probably haven’t lost too many people at this point – almost nobody thinks that the federal government is a paragon of efficiency, and it doesn’t take too much of an open mind to entertain the possibility that it might be much worse than you thought (it is). Given the inefficiency, why is the federal government called upon to do so many things? A large part is naked self interest, which is never going to go away -- lots of people play the game to their best advantage, and even take pride in their ability to get more than they give. However, a lot is done in the name of misplaced idealism. It isn’t hard to look around the world and find something that you feel needs fixing. The world gets to be a better place by people taking action to improve things, but it is easy for the thought to occur that if the government can be made to address your issue, it could give results far greater than what you would be able to accomplish with direct action. Even if you knew that it wasn’t going to be managed especially well, it would make up for it in volume. This has an obvious appeal. Every idealistic cry for the government to “Do Something” means raising revenue, which means taking money from people to spend in the name of the new cause instead of letting it be used for whatever purpose the earner would have preferred.again, this seems like a reasoned approach to me. Quote: It is unfortunate that income taxes get deducted automatically from most people’s paychecks, before they ever see the money they earned. A large chunk of the population thinks that tax day is when you get a nice little refund check. Good trick, that. If everyone was required to pay taxes like they pay their utilities, attitudes would probably change. When you get an appallingly high utility bill, you start thinking about turning off some lights and changing the thermostat. When your taxes are higher than all your other bills put together, what do you do? You can make a bit of a difference by living in Texas instead of California, but you don’t have many options regarding the bulk of it. Also, it is horribly crass to say it, but taxes are extracted by the threat of force. I know a man (Walt Anderson), who has been in jail for a decade because the IRS disagreed with how his foundations were set up, so it isn’t an academic statement. What things do you care strongly enough about to feel morally justified in pointing a gun at me to get me to pay for them? A few layers of distance by proxy let most people avoid thinking about it, but that is really what it boils down to. Feeding starving children? The justice system? Chemotherapy for the elderly? Viagra for the indigent? Corn subsidies? Helping people directly can be a noble thing. Forcing other people to do it with great inefficiency? Not so much. There isn’t a single thing that I would petition the federal government to add to its task list, and I would ask that it stop doing the majority of the things that it is currently doing. My vote is going to the candidates that at least vector in that direction.Here he's just bringing it home. So the upshot is that Carmack might have a hard time maintaining a decent rating here on GDNet [smile]It's really odd that so many of the quality hackers I meet in real life are largely classical liberal and the general bent here is more socialist. That's part of what I love about this venue.I'm sure most of it is where I live and the country I live in.

GDNet Lounge Community

Started by Dreddnafious Maelstrom October 28, 2010 07:27 PM

218 comments, last by trzy 14 years ago

StarFoxNow

100

October 31, 2010 08:12 AM

Quote: Original post by ChaosEngine
Lol, you probably believe that's actually the case.

Yes I do believe everything I said. Is there something you find untrue? If you find it politically incorrect then fine, but untrue?

I believe civilians are fighting our troops in Iraq. I hate to break it to you but we are not fighting a standing army. Al qaeda is not there in any significant number. So next time you see a "soldier killed civilian" in the news you have to realize they are getting shot at by civilians.

Before you open your democrat mouth to denounce soldiers, volunteer yourself to go over there first. Show everyone how you would deal with a civilian who is shooting you out of his window.

BTW I do not agree with the wars. It was not governments who are attacked us, it was terrorists. I think the response should have been assassination attempts on al qaeda leaders, not trillion dollar wars where the focus is nation building.

StarFoxNow

100

October 31, 2010 08:26 AM

Quote: Original post by EricRRichards
the American working class is the most absolutely conservative segment of the population

I am Russian. USA is one of the best places but I do not like seeing it gradually shift to more socialist.

The housing collapse. The government sued banks if they did not make loans to poor people. (barney frank). Now the government blames banks and lack of regulation for all the bad loans. It is their regulation that forced banks to loan to the poor without 20% down. At the time it seemed like a success because it caused house sales and value to increase and everyone felt good for years. But it sets up for collapse.

It is this way with everything. They want to give stuff out, but WE have to pay for it in our tax. They are giving gifts not with their own money but with ours.

They also have the hidden tax of inflation. Things go bad, just print more money and they effectively "hidden tax" a percentage of your salary which does not adjust for inflation.

owl

376

October 31, 2010 09:13 AM

Quote: Original post by StarFoxNow
[...] in Iraq. [...] Al qaeda is not there in any significant number.

Why do you bring up Al Qaeda along with Iraq when it was already confirmed by the very same US troops there that all the *intel* provided by Colling Powell before the UN as the *reason* to invade Iraq was a lie? Wouldn't you agree that this unjustified war driven by the prior administration is the real cause of many of the economical troubles the US is facing right now?

I'm all in on countries supporting their troops. But cutting taxes on the rich and denying basic human rights to the poor seems just like the wrong way of doing it. I stand that if the rich pay "millons of dollars" in taxes to a country is just because they are making *a lot* more millons out from that country for their personal selves alone.

[size="2"]I like the Walrus best.

StarFoxNow

100

October 31, 2010 10:04 AM

Quote: Original post by owl
Wouldn't you agree that this unjustified war driven by the prior administration is the real cause of many of the economical troubles the US is facing right now?

Yes i agree about the war. Trillion dollar war contributes to our debt and hurts economy.

I disagree with Americans at home sitting in safety trying to crucify their soldiers for killing civilians when it's civilians who are attacking them.

owl

376

October 31, 2010 10:16 AM

Quote: Original post by StarFoxNow
Quote: Original post by owl
Wouldn't you agree that this unjustified war driven by the prior administration is the real cause of many of the economical troubles the US is facing right now?

Yes i agree about the war. Trillion dollar war contributes to our debt and hurts economy.

I disagree with Americans at home sitting in safety trying to crucify their soldiers for killing civilians when it's civilians who are attacking them.

Glad we are cool.

Yeah, I used to be anti-military when younger. Until I realized that if I have a country of my own now is just because at some point people organized themselves militarily to defend the land and the culture. It takes some thought to come down to this conclusion tough. We will need the military (well equipped and well trained) also when/if the aliens come to invade us! :)

EDIT: Hopefully we will owe the development of the starships to our dear and beloved Mr. Carmack. heh

[size="2"]I like the Walrus best.

Alpha_ProgDes

6,963

October 31, 2010 10:51 AM

Quote: Original post by owl
Quote: Original post by StarFoxNow
[...] in Iraq. [...] Al qaeda is not there in any significant number.

Why do you bring up Al Qaeda along with Iraq when it was already confirmed by the very same US troops there that all the *intel* provided by Colling Powell before the UN as the *reason* to invade Iraq was a lie? Wouldn't you agree that this unjustified war driven by the prior administration is the real cause of many of the economical troubles the US is facing right now?

Well the truth is that Al-Qaeda didn't show up until after we invaded Iraq. And we've been fighting them ever since. So StarFoxNow is correct in his statement, if you take what I just said into account.

Beginner in Game Development? Read here. And read here.

owl

376

October 31, 2010 10:56 AM

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Quote: Original post by owl
Quote: Original post by StarFoxNow
[...] in Iraq. [...] Al qaeda is not there in any significant number.

Why do you bring up Al Qaeda along with Iraq when it was already confirmed by the very same US troops there that all the *intel* provided by Colling Powell before the UN as the *reason* to invade Iraq was a lie? Wouldn't you agree that this unjustified war driven by the prior administration is the real cause of many of the economical troubles the US is facing right now?

Well the truth is that Al-Qaeda didn't show up until after we invaded Iraq. And we've been fighting them ever since. So StarFoxNow is correct in his statement, if you take what I just said into account.

I never said he was wrong. I just asked why he brought that up. Why do I always get misread here? :(

[size="2"]I like the Walrus best.

Alpha_ProgDes

6,963

October 31, 2010 11:59 AM

@owl: My bad, I didn't read the rest of your post. So in actuality you didn't get misread [smile]

Federal and State Legislators pass "model bills" that are written by corporations. And it's not lobbying.

This story alone is enough for me to not trust corporations with anything other than selling products. And even that is suspect, IMO.

And I can guarantee you, this bills do not reflect the population...

Beginner in Game Development? Read here. And read here.

owl

376

October 31, 2010 12:40 PM

Yap :) I think the conclusion is that as long as governments and corporations are driven by humans, this things will always happen.

I just wish we can get the hell out of this planet before the dummasses ruin it all. I'm hopping that the next Newton/Einstein will come up with the solution to interestelar travel. A pretty much infinite universe should be enough to fill up our ambitions, at least for a while! lol

[size="2"]I like the Walrus best.

way2lazy2care

793

October 31, 2010 12:46 PM

Quote: Original post by owl
Wouldn't you agree that this unjustified war driven by the prior administration is the real cause of many of the economical troubles the US is facing right now?

why do you think this? We are spending money in Iraq that we don't need to spend, but government spending is not a reason for an economy failing. If anything it should be helping our economy.

No I am not giving any opinion on whether or not we should have invaded anything. It's just economics.

Carmack on government

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Carmack on government

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