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.

LockePick

707

October 29, 2010 05:42 PM

Quote: MY individual belief is that the choice between government and corporations is in fact a choice between these two:
* An organization that is largely well meaning but hopelessly inefficient and incompetent.
* An organization that is ruthlessly efficient and competentjust as insanely inefficient and incompetent as the government with the added horror of no liability or long-term planning, AND actively hostile to the general populace.

Fixed.

_______________________________________Pixelante Game Studios - Fowl Language

tstrimp

1,798

October 29, 2010 05:54 PM

Quote: Original post by Promit
Oh, I thought the Blackwater thing was a joke. Surely nobody would be seriously suggesting Blackwater is the model of a competent corporate approach?

...

Right?

I'm not they are competent. I'm saying they aren't as expensive as they are made out to be (compared to US military), and that they are probably on the same level as the US military as far as human rights violations go.

Alch

103

October 29, 2010 06:43 PM

Yeah, he dint said anything... and likely on purpose

i would bet on the whole thing is just venting off on the hard time dealing with Government that he has while rocket building

i don't think hes trying to push any view on the subject besides trying to bring more awareness among people to the government machine and to politics who just want it to do even more

M2tM

948

October 29, 2010 06:56 PM

Quote: Original post by Promit
Okay, so we're back to the drumbeat of "private enterprise will do it better". MY individual belief is that the choice between government and corporations is in fact a choice between these two:
* An organization that is largely well meaning but hopelessly inefficient and incompetent.
* An organization that is ruthlessly efficient and competent, but actively hostile to the general populace.
Health insurance, for example, seems to fall into this setup. (I also find this mirrors the active political parties in the US, but that's for another time.)

So I am curious, are there any case studies (preferably US) where a corporation has been more effective in providing services than the government?

Basically what you said.

I don't want private enterprise firefighters who refuse to come and put out my burning building until I pay, and neither do any of my neighbors. The service is of benefit to absolutely everyone and everyone equally fails when it is not provided. I don't want to have to pay a private enterprise offering police services for protection, it's important to have people enforcing generally accepted rules.

Similarly every person dies, every person gets sick, every person needs healtcare... I don't understand how there is such a disconnect in the states where public police and fire are "services" and public health care is "social wellfare"... Seriously wtf.

_______________________"You're using a screwdriver to nail some glue to a ming vase. " -ToohrVyk

Alpha_ProgDes

6,963

October 29, 2010 07:07 PM

Quote: Original post by M2tM
Quote: Original post by Promit
Okay, so we're back to the drumbeat of "private enterprise will do it better". MY individual belief is that the choice between government and corporations is in fact a choice between these two:
* An organization that is largely well meaning but hopelessly inefficient and incompetent.
* An organization that is ruthlessly efficient and competent, but actively hostile to the general populace.
Health insurance, for example, seems to fall into this setup. (I also find this mirrors the active political parties in the US, but that's for another time.)

So I am curious, are there any case studies (preferably US) where a corporation has been more effective in providing services than the government?

Basically what you said.

I don't want private enterprise firefighters who refuse to come and put out my burning building until I pay, and neither do any of my neighbors. The service is of benefit to absolutely everyone and everyone equally fails when it is not provided. I don't want to have to pay a private enterprise offering police services for protection, it's important to have people enforcing generally accepted rules.

Similarly every person dies, every person gets sick, every person needs healtcare... I don't understand how there is such a disconnect in the states where public police and fire are "services" and public health care is "social wellfare"... Seriously wtf.

you realize those firefighters were under the employment of the city government. It wasn't a private company. IOW, the city (local gov't) told them to let the house burn.

With aside, I generally agree with what you're saying.

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Luckless

3,283

October 29, 2010 07:39 PM

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
you realize those firefighters were under the employment of the city government. It wasn't a private company. IOW, the city (local gov't) told them to let the house burn.

With aside, I generally agree with what you're saying.

Small cities and towns are more like private businesses than they are like upper level governments. And if that is the kind of treatment you can get with a so-called public service, how do you think the fine print loopholes would be if they were all private corporations?

"I'm sorry sir, you didn't sign up for the Premium Gold Service level, and as such you are not covered for 'pre-existing' fires,... This fire was going before we got here, therefore we can't help you till you pay this extra fee."

Old Username: Talroth
If your signature on a web forum takes up more space than your average post, then you are doing things wrong.

Antheus

2,410

October 29, 2010 07:46 PM

Quote: Original post by Talroth
"I'm sorry sir, you didn't sign up for the Premium Gold Service level, and as such you are not covered for 'pre-existing' fires,... This fire was going before we got here, therefore we can't help you till you pay this extra fee."

No, fees must be paid in advance.

Otherwise nobody would pay anything until fire broke out.

And police should issue a fine - starting large fires, even on private property, requires approval at least two weeks in advance.

And it should be noted that arson is illegal, so fire department must not set fires to increase revenue.
In other news, we have now acquired local gas company. And in order to improve their finances, they will now be performing regular gas leak detection once every two years instead of every month. Also, their expensive certified engineers will be replaced with unpaid interns. Of course, regular inspections will be available as part of our Premium Gold Service for extra fee.
Fire department is expected to post record revenue this year.

way2lazy2care

793

October 30, 2010 05:56 AM

Quote: Original post by smr
If we lived in a libertarian society and private corporations owned the infrastructure, does that mean I'd have to pay a toll to go to the grocery store? Or would they make it convenient and send me a bill that I could pay along with the money I send as tribute to my feudal lord?

Go to chicago and ask anyone. And you say this like you aren't already paying to drive on the roads.

ChaosEngine

5,385

October 30, 2010 06:06 AM

Ok, it was funny when I first read it, but now this is getting ridiculous. I can't actually believe that anyone takes this libertarian crap seriously.

FFS, you only have to look at the majority of human history to see that the strong (royalty, aristocracy, etc) will fuck over the weak at every given opportunity. Government (as in governments of the people in the last few hundred years), is pretty much the only thing stopping large corporates from basically doing whatever the hell they like and people/the environment be damned.

if you think programming is like sex, you probably haven't done much of either.-------------- - capn_midnight

way2lazy2care

793

October 30, 2010 06:29 AM

Quote: FFS, you only have to look at the majority of human history to see that the strong (royalty, aristocracy, etc) will fuck over the weak at every given opportunity. Government (as in governments of the people in the last few hundred years), is pretty much the only thing stopping large corporates from basically doing whatever the hell they like and people/the environment be damned.

we've only had democracy on a large scale for 200-300 or so years. I don't see how you can say "the majority of human history."

Carmack on government

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Carmack on government

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