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[wierd]

Godwin's law only applies to calling people nazis. It expressly does not apply to discussing the ideological nature of fascism in general, otherwise the ultimate outcome of godwin's law would be that any discussion of fascism ends all further discussion, which is not its thesis.

And yes, public utilities are a dangerous thing, and are rife with corruption. see for instance, the logistics and back story of japan's fukushima reactor meltdown.

These are things you cant just handwave away.

[UXLZ]

Too be fair, wierd, everything is rife with corruption.

[wierd]

Too be fair, wierd, everything is rife with corruption.

Yes, and some things are consistently rife with it.

That's kinda the point of this thread no? to identify and address the causes of the inherent corruption found in government, to produce a better theory of government framework?

Public utilities suffer from the lack of culpability problem, being empowered by government, and ultimately beng policed soley through a regulator that they can capture politically.

That is what caused the fukishima meltdown; the regulators knew, for decades, about the problem(s) with that reactor, but chose not to act, because of corruption.  That mode of curruption must be addressed for public utilities to be a net public benefit, and not a public liability ready to explode. (sometimes literally.)

[Frumple]

... well, it largely seems like it's been addressed, then, since as far as I'm aware public utilities have been a massive net benefit for decades. The fukishima incident doesn't even remotely tip the scales back in the other direction, just like it and other issues with nuclear reactor don't even make them a blip on the radar of economic/environmental harm compared to coal or oil. Even the possibility of more of same is a staggeringly small indictment if you're considering net effect.

Really, I'm confused as what you'd want to see done. Stuff like utilities have gone public because the private option was worse in pretty much every way conceivable, including corruption, so far as I'm aware.

[wierd]

Personally, i consider public utilities to be beholden to a different objective than public traded for profit enterprise: There's a mandate to benefit the public good.

I find it difficult to reconcile "Yeah, the reactor can explode and irradiate the whole area AND pollute the ocean for generations" with "But look at all the cheap power we made for the public! See, the system WORKS!"

That kind of rationality can be stretched into crazy shapes, like saying gambling is a good habbit, because you can make a big win.


--reply to edit

At the very least, you need redundant regulators, and red tape, but that quickly becomes counter intuitive to the public good, and an intractible obstacle to genuine progressive improvements in the system. 

There probably isnt a unicorns and sunshine solution to this problem. I just feel it is important to not call a lop-eared mule a unicorn, and the light from a fluoroscope "sunshine."

Glowing endorsements of public utilities without even a passive examination of thier modes of corruption does precisely that. Public utilities are a mule. They are ugly, but get the job done. they arent unicorns.

[Frumple]

You've apparently missed the part where, even with that (freaking remote) possibility, they still manage to outperform every other (current -- this may change once renewables finish taking off) major power generation method on damaging the environment. Remember well that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and that the existence of problems does not mean a thing is not doing really bloody well. The system works better than most everything else, when it comes to nuclear.

You also seem to be suggesting that a for-profit one would do better (Sincere bloody doubt.)?

[wierd]

.........? what?


No.  My objections thus far:

Fusion of corporate (as in bodies corporate) power with government is the definition of fascism, which has been tried with disasterous effect more than once already.

Public utilities are not magical rays of sunshine that can be used to dispell corruption, and I cited a recent example.

When asked what alternative there is, I conceded that there probably isnt one, but that it is dangerous to call a mule a unicorn.

I have no idea where you are getting this defacto endorsement of private corporations from. I think you are too used to arguing against insane republicans.

[Frumple]

Nah, just didn't see your edit for that last post. Before that, I wasn't reading anything that wasn't a de-facto support of private corps, because all you were doing was speaking against public utilities (for which the only alternative I'm aware of is for-profit). If you've got no alternative and are just noting there's problems with public utilities, then we don't really have a disagreement.

[wierd]

That was my understanding as well.

Sounds like the problem was simple miscommunication.  The glowing endorsements of public utilities without addressing thier failings set off my bullshitometer.

I was not trying to endorse private corporations, which are essentially corruption incarnate, as far as I am concerned.

I see a public utility as a mule, both figuratively and literally.

a mule is a hybrid of a horse and a donkey.
a public utility is a hybrid of a charity and a corporation.

a charity exists soley to advance a specific public shortcomming, such as combating hunger from poverty. (such as a soup kitchen) Its primary obligation is the public good, and financing is a necessary evil for them.  They are like a horse, in that they are attractive, but easily overworked, and in some cases, eager to be overworked. They just are not up to the task.

A corporation, by contrast, exists soley to make money for its stake holders. It is like a donkey, in that it can do a lot more work than the horse can, but is unruly, obstinate, and has some serious bad habits.

The public utility is a fusion of the good parts of the charity, with the good parts of the corporation, but that does not make it ideal. (unicorn)

The previous rhetoric was casting mules as unicorns, which I took objection to.  That's all.

[SalmonGod]

Property is the top offender. 

Property is integral part of our life. Nothing satisfies primal urges more than saying "This is mine" and holding said thing in hand.

Something you hold in your hand is not property.  It's a possession. 

owning something that one does not have a direct and personal relationship with (i.e. a house that you don't live in)

I see the ability and incentive to accumulate beyond what one is personally capable of using as the root of all corruption.  If our culture did not recognize the concept of property as valid, there would be little incentive to engage in the kind of behavior we call corruption today.  People would still do bad things, but it's hard to imagine how or why they would be done on the same scale.  And there would be no means by which one person could hold leverage over another (outside of personal relationships) without direct violence, which isn't so sustainable as the indirect violence that is denying others resources for no purpose other than unnecessary personal gain.

Pretty much everything stems from the fact that all of the world's resources are controlled by people who don't personally need or understand them as anything more than, at most, numbers on a spreadsheet, and who leverage those resources against other's needs to gain further control of more resources in a big imaginary number game.  No more big imaginary number game - no more incentive or means by which to engage in this bullshit.

[Morrigi]

On the discussion of fascism and National Socialism, Germany's pre-war economic policy really wasn't that bad. It was an odd mix of capitalist and socialist policies, but it certainly worked, and was much more functional than the economic basket case of the Soviet Union.

[Arcvasti]

Pretty much everything stems from the fact that all of the world's resources are controlled by people who don't personally need or understand them as anything more than, at most, numbers on a spreadsheet, and who leverage those resources against other's needs to gain further control of more resources in a big imaginary number game.  No more big imaginary number game - no more incentive or means by which to engage in this bullshit.

The obvious solution is to get them hooked on Cookie Clicker instead to satisfy their urge for increasing imaginary numbers.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[i2amroy]

Pretty much everything stems from the fact that all of the world's resources are controlled by people who don't personally need or understand them as anything more than, at most, numbers on a spreadsheet, and who leverage those resources against other's needs to gain further control of more resources in a big imaginary number game.  No more big imaginary number game - no more incentive or means by which to engage in this bullshit.

Of course, no more ability to transport goods or services from one location to another, or provide disaster relief, or manage soup kitchens. What you are describing here is literally the entire processes of accounting, banking, applied statistics, and pretty much every aspect of mercantilism. Somebody has to do things like count different demands and manage transportation and service networks, and the fact of the matter is that those numbers are so large in most cases that it's impossible to have a single person actually grasp their scale as anything other than numbers.

Without that "big imaginary number game" you are literally describing libertarian socialism; which humanity has shown that, despite working pretty well on a tiny scale, does not scale up nicely. At all. People are:
1) Too selfish
and
2) Unable to easily grasp numbers that large
to be able to make such a system to work well.

[Angle]

I think you're misunderstanding. All he's doing there is complaining about the people, not the system. He's attacked the system plenty elsewhere, of course, but not here, except possibly in so much as the system is responsible for the people who run it. There's no proposal, for example, to abolish private property in that post. You could easily address his concerns simply by firing those in charge and bringing in new people who did "personally need or understand [those resources] as anything more than, at most, numbers on a spreadsheet" and did not "leverage those resources against other's needs to gain further control of more resources in a big imaginary number game".

It occurs to me that we might be better off tacking this from the other direction - First, what do we want our economic system to do for us?

I'd like it to ensure that every single human being is well cared for, and has a chance to reach their optimal potential. This includes not just food, shelter, and other basic needs, but also education, opportunity to improve who they are, and a chance to meaningfully contribute to the world and feel welcome and valued by their fellow human beings.

I know this is a lot to expect, but hey - I like a challenge.