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Inside Trading and Lobbying within Government: The hypocrisy of bureaucracy
MadCaddy
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I've had a few conversations around here about my left leaning political beliefs, but identifying as a libertarian, and saw another story this morning that made me think to come here and make a thread with a few of the largest issues I've found with federal governance, and why I identify with the Hoover School of Stanford mostly when it comes to government.
There's a series of stories that have been on CBS (I believe NBC has aired a few as well, but don't watch it's news as often and they're never on google news, so...) They've been from 60 Minutes primarily: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50157385n and a few they've aired in the past and some upcoming from Peter Schweizer. Both stories were originally inspired by these books (I've only read throw them all out, but haven't Do As I Say) http://www.amazon.com/Do-As-Say-Not-Hypocrisy/dp/0739322680/ref=tmm_abk_title_0
http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Peter-Schweizer/dp/B00AK2Z2KQ/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1
Synopsis for each from amazon home page below:
Further 60 minutes news videos I thought would flesh out more of my side, I plan to clean this up when I get a little more time, but just wanted to start a discussion:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7388203n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50157523n (complete, Leadership PAC, Washington's Open Secret, approximately 11min)
Basically, the gist of my argument is the inherent hypocrisy in bureaucracy, and I agree with just about anything published from the Hoover institute, and most Chicago fiscal, with some doubts about their supply side monetary policy views; I prefer a more demand oriented economy, with guaranteed rights of welfare.
edit: Still a work in progress
There's a series of stories that have been on CBS (I believe NBC has aired a few as well, but don't watch it's news as often and they're never on google news, so...) They've been from 60 Minutes primarily: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50157385n and a few they've aired in the past and some upcoming from Peter Schweizer. Both stories were originally inspired by these books (I've only read throw them all out, but haven't Do As I Say) http://www.amazon.com/Do-As-Say-Not-Hypocrisy/dp/0739322680/ref=tmm_abk_title_0
http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Peter-Schweizer/dp/B00AK2Z2KQ/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1
Synopsis for each from amazon home page below:
Throw them All Out
Do as I Say
One of the biggest scandals in American politics is waiting to explode: the full story of the inside game in Washington shows how the permanent political class enriches itself at the expense of the rest of us. Insider trading is illegal on Wall Street, yet it is routine among members of Congress. Normal individuals cannot get in on IPOs at the asking price, but politicians do so routinely. The Obama administration has been able to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to its supporters, ensuring yet more campaign donations. An entire class of investors now makes all of its profits based on influence and access in Washington. Peter Schweizer has doggedly researched through mountains of financial records, tracking complicated deals and stock trades back to the timing of briefings, votes on bills, and every other point of leverage for politicians in Washington. The result is a manifesto for revolution: the Permanent Political Class must go.
Do as I Say
Prominent liberals support a whole litany of policies and principles: progressive taxes, affirmative action, greater regulation of corporations, raising the inheritance tax, strict environmental regulations, children’s rights, consumer rights, and more. But do they actually live by these beliefs? Peter Schweizer decided to investigate the private lives of politicians like the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, the Kennedys, and Ralph Nader; commentators Michael Moore, Al Franken, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West; entertainers or philanthropists Barbra Streisand and George Soros. Using publicly-available real estate records, IRS returns, court depositions, and their own published statements, he sought to examine whether they lived by the principles they so forcefully advocate.
What he found was a long list of contradictions. Many of these proponents of organized labor had developed various methods to sidestep paying union wages or avoid employing unions altogether. They were also adept at avoiding taxes; invested heavily in corporations they had denounced; took advantage of foreign tax credits to use non-American labor overseas; espoused environmental causes while opposing those that might affect their own property rights; hid their investments in trusts to avoid paying estate tax; denounced oil companies but quietly owned them.
Schweizer’s conclusion is simple: liberalism in the end forces its adherents to become hypocrites. They adopt one pose in public, but when it comes to what matters most in their own lives–their property, their privacy, and their children--they jettison their liberal principles and adopt conservative ones. If these ideas don’t work for the very individuals who promote them, Schweizer asks, how can they work for the country?
Further 60 minutes news videos I thought would flesh out more of my side, I plan to clean this up when I get a little more time, but just wanted to start a discussion:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7388203n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50157523n (complete, Leadership PAC, Washington's Open Secret, approximately 11min)
Basically, the gist of my argument is the inherent hypocrisy in bureaucracy, and I agree with just about anything published from the Hoover institute, and most Chicago fiscal, with some doubts about their supply side monetary policy views; I prefer a more demand oriented economy, with guaranteed rights of welfare.
edit: Still a work in progress
MadCaddy on
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Since your a libertarian and that seems to be the justification for whatever argument your trying to make, I'm going to explain to you why governments are necessary. Certain things, benefit society net of the costs of having these things. But the benefits are split up between many different groups of people, with the benefit to any particular individual being so small that it is not worth it for any of those individuals to pay for the whole thing. If we pool our resources to create an organization that is dedicated to providing this particular service or infrastructure, whatever the case may be, society benefits more than if we did not.
A typical feature of these systems is that you cannot easily prevent people from enjoying them without paying for them. So if you create an opt out mechanism, you risk losing sufficient funding to maintain the public good, and if that happens society as a whole loses.
The fact that people have governments is not arbitrary. All of civilization is a race to find something that is more competitive than what other people have, and believe it or not people that are governed by a set of rules and forced to pay for somethings that they need but may not want are more competitive than people that are not governed by such systems.
You are misinformed, and I highly encourage you study efficiency of scale, and macro theory a little more. If you wanna cite where you get this argument, I'd be glad to get the appropriate counter.
I don't know how many times I have to say this, but being a libertarian doesn't mean that I'm an anarchist.
Secondly, for your first argument, there was a recent EconTalk held at Butler University that I strongly encourage you listen to that covers a lot of your other arguments. It's EconTalk podcast Capitalism, Government and the good Society and it was held at Butler University April 10 of 2013.
It's located here:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/capitalism_gove.html
Like most arguments I use against libertarians I point to the real world.
Show me a massive organization with no administrative system that provides guaranteed welfare and safety for millions of people.
Links to a bunch of videos, with no summaries?
Links to books with no summaries?
No statement of the actual ideas the writer holds?
Generic "you should read this", "Go study this", "Read this theory" statements?
Ohh look it's another god damn libertarian thread.
I'll flesh it out, but watching 5 minute videos from 60 minutes that do the summarizing and are free to access doesn't seem like a high price. Sorry that I'm not writing this to professional standards, I'm in the middle of a few things that're more and important and was just looking to have an open conversation.
And again, I'm more of a Hayeking with a preference for a demand style economic model, a form of Monetary policy neither party endorses. I think the future is in crypto-currency and global finance, and the government should use it, and it could use it, if it'd do away with unneeded entitlements and forced morality, learning nothing from Prohibition, or the war on drugs, and what has happened to the legalized tobacco industry. The US also is the most inefficient regulator of new pharmaceuticals and spends the most per capita for healthcare for a middling ranking internationally, all of which could be fixed with a few simple changes to the forms entitlements take and changes in the overall welfare system.
None of those show bureaucracy to be any more inherently bad than a computer network.
Not true. A computer network is much less flawed then a system composed of humans.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
http://www.unicef.org
http://www.amnesty.org
http://www.redcross.org
These are all organizations that uphold with libertarian ideals if you knew anything about libertarian monetary policy. Hayek himself, Keynes nemesis, even said that a State should guarantee an amount of welfare for it's citizens, but to take up the spots where only private charity could not! and no law covered how to finance the cost. "The Road to Serfdom" is another good read, and again, I'm a libertarian on fiscal policy, not monetary. I'm more of a Keynesian for that, I just believe in accountable, transparent empowering government.
Read my theory for incentivizing voter and informed voting, as away to give proportional voting to informed citizens a cost saving gain and a general education program that is win win. I also have other macro theories, but they'd best be orchestrated in a competitive State environment (which the Global economy is, if we've learned nothing from the fall of the Iron Curtain and drop in labour in all first world nations.).
If you had studied scale efficiencies you would know that bureaucracies are the most efficient structure for very large deliberative and administrative systems.
If you had studied macro theory you would not have even brought up macro theory with regards to scale efficiencies since that is almost entirely the purview of micro level work.
Re your second to last post
I don't get it? Anchoring exists. We know that it does. What does that have to do with libertarianism or bureaucracy?
Edit: re your last post.
If you had read "The Road to Serfdom" you would have known that Hayek was wrong and that his predictions did not come true.
Edit2: don't tell us to read something. Make the argument yourself. This does two things for us
1) it saves us a lot of time in figuring out what I am supposed to be arguing about. I could read Hayek again and like try to refute the whole book but that is a lot of work you're asking me to do to refute your 100 word post. This focuses the debate onto the important points which let us get to the actual debate faster.
2) it shows us that you have mastery over the subject (or informs us how you have made a mistake) which will not only engender us to trust you more but also force us to do our homework if we are to successfully argue for or against your position
I counter with:
The entire medical field
Massive engineering projects not resulting in hundreds of deaths
Safe handling of radioactive material
---
Billions of lives improved right there.
Literally all of these organizations use bureaucracy.
All of these things are explained and I agree in federal intervention for environmental concern, and would favor it be another international policy that got more coverage from the UN. Again, I'm not saying get away with government, I'm saying make government more efficient.
"More efficient" does not mean "Little to no bureaucracy."
That is not an efficient way to manage things.
That is an efficient way to lose all your copper tubing via a single order supply.
What does "more efficient" mean. How do you propose to do that?
I mean besides having everyone read Hayek's philosophy that he wrote after being utterly rejected by the economics profession because his ideas could not pass muster?
Quote from his Wiki and spoilers for huge.
If you want to show the evils or bureaucracy you probably shouldn't mention massive organizations that handle a bunch of money for the benefit of mankind.
Again, if you'd simply watch the video I linked from 60 minutes that speaks about how incoming members on congress beat the market on average better than any index and most hedge funds. Despite being only average investors to begin with. Again, they get away with doing trades that would get other people arrested, and they have influence that gets them unfair financial benefits due to their first actor advantages by being n government.
Look at Nancy Pelosi and her Visa iPO.
If they're handling money for the benefit of mankind, that is in line with libertarian ideals.
Watching a five minute video doesn't help me at all because I know about and accept the fact that powerful people can exert their leverage. I even think that their ability to do so is also wrong. What I don't have and what I also assert you don't have is some sort of system which does things better!
Are you under the impression that 'government' and 'bureaucracy' are equivalent terms?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Remember, there isn't really a party in this country that's in favor of government waste. It is true that sometimes government organizations can become bloated self-sustaining things that don't really solve a problem, but the austerity of the last 10 years has forced just about every organization to slim itself down, often to the point where they can't do their jobs any longer. There's only so much blood you can squeeze out of the stone, and pretty soon you're not cutting "waste", but actual services that people actually use.
Here is the 2014 projected government budget, if it helps. What parts of that do you cut?
Are you sure that is true? Also why does it matter that they were funded with private capital?
Money is fungible yo.
Only if libertarian ideals include massive bureaucracy.
also wiki on the entire US military structure: Cause that how you make a point apparently.
Which economists? Because he is still highly cited in Dusseldorf, The Netherlands, the Chicago School (but they align more with their home grown up and comers, or their great Friedman whom I have my issues with his supply side and monetary policy views) and the Hoover Institute.
And this part's just fanciful nonsense.
None of them provide security, enforce regulations, or provide a safety net for ~310 million people. Not even close. Not even combined. Much less the other six billion people in the world.
When the US government taxes the rich and spends that money teaching Pakistani children to read, that is "handling money for the benefit of mankind." Is it in line with libertarian ideals?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, and?
This is a 60 minutes episode about a person who murdered people with an ax.
Yet I doubt you would agree axes are inherently bad and a bane unto civilization.
The problem is always that the people who would have to vote on it are the same people benefiting from it. Getting elected representatives to vote away their own perks is consistently one of the hardest things to do in any system that uses elected representatives, and I don't its a problem with an easy answer. Once the perks get ridiculous enough things will sometimes correct themselves, as the political pressure to deal with them gets stronger and stronger. Unfortunately, that process takes a while, and its easy to misdirect attention when you have a compliant news media.
That was a joke, right?
If you really think the Gates Foundation is more transparent than government, then you really haven't been watching. And esteem means absolutely gooseshit - Bernie Madoff was a well respected philanthropist while he was running a Ponzi scheme.
First you tell me your ideas about how you propose to make things efficient and then I will tell you something other than "go read a book"
Edit: I realized I did not give you a specific book so I would start with AER and then move on to Econometrica.
It depends on the methodology. Having former president's appeal for financial aid to Tsunami victims is, though, as is having the US Government do it as long as it isn't a forced taxation with too many hands taking a piece out.
Show me a viable first world country without "forced taxation".
I don't understand this statement. I'm speaking facts and can cite the good work done from The giving Pledge and how much more money and the results the private philanthropic organizations have done compared to government welfare.
Another good example of a private organization doing governments job better is TFA, and a lot of charter schools. I think chapter schools are the future of education and just hope the US can get a more German aligned vocational education view.
And none of these private organizations are providing anywhere close to everything the government does.
Most of them rely on the government.