
John Carmack on government - hunterjrj
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/misc/government.htm
======
paulsmith
I have a number of problems with this essay, but I want to focus on this idea
that people work and earn money, and that money is _theirs_ , and them the
government tax man comes around and takes their money. This has to be one of
the biggest fallacies of the modern era. I hear it echoed in various forms by
people of all different stripes. The notion that there is an independent,
absolute concept of wealth or money or cash apart from the laws and government
we put in place is so injurious to a healthy understanding of self-governance
that I often can't take people seriously after I see them start to go down
that road of argument. Implicit in that dollar you have in your pocket, in
your paycheck, is a whole set of social and political conditions that allowed
you to work, safely, without discrimination or abuse, or threat to your
health, to get that dollar in the first place.

This idea of "my money" is willfully ignorant of the tax payer-funded or
-secured bounty that allows these same people to have such a high standard of
living and a platform upon which to spout their anti-government, every-man-
for-themselves arguments. The sheer scale of the background conditions that
these people take for granted -- roads, sewers, police & emergency responders,
airwaves, parks, clean water, the military, etc., etc., etc., -- is so
enormous, encompassing, and enabling that, for people like Carmack decry the
very system that made them so wealthy, the disingenuousness and hypocrisy is
staggering.

It's time -- lord, long past time -- for smart hacker types to leave behind
the immature, naïve libertarianism that pervades their industry and engage
with a real, honest politics that, at least implicitly, acknowledges and owns-
up to the great wealth and resources already afforded them. /You didn't get
here on your own, and you never would have otherwise./

~~~
yummyfajitas
And your post is willfully ignorant of the fact that most of your taxes don't
pay for the public goods you've listed. Roads, sewers, police and clean water
are a ridiculously tiny fraction of what you pay in taxes. If you exclude
waste in the military (and the other small ticket items you mention), it is
even smaller.

Most of your taxes are simply taken and given to people less productive than
yourself.

~~~
jbooth
Fine, then. If you want to be all against those programs, then explicitly say
"What I want is for social security and medicare to be abolished". SS and
Medicare run entirely separate from the rest of the federal gov't, raised on
their own taxes, run by their own agencies -- they're entirely separate.
You're not "anti government" and don't have a point about "government", you
have a point about federally mandated social insurance programs that are
incredibly popular with everyone else.

A bunch of whining about "government" just betrays either ignorance or willful
omission by people who talk about "smaller government" in between assuring
seniors that their medicare is safe.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I was only pointing out a logical flaw in paulsmith's argument. I wasn't
taking a position one way or the other.

But I'll be explicit in my position since you want to imply I'm being
deceptive about it: the government should not pay for private goods.

I'm not going to debate the matter here, however, beyond pointing out that in
a population of 2 wolves and 1 sheep, lamb chops are an incredibly popular
dinner choice.

~~~
jbooth
"the government should not pay for private goods" -- this is the kind of
evasive, hand-wavey crap that I'm talking about. Sorry about the tone, I don't
mean to be insulting and think you're an alright guy from our interactions,
but it is hand wavey crap. I constantly see conservatives talking about
"smaller government and lower taxes" and I never hear one idea from them about
what they'd cut, let alone an acknowledgement of the fact that we had a budget
surplus in 2000 and very much not in 2008.

What does that sentence mean? Who defines "private good"? Are interstate
highways a public good? Are positive externalities from a social safety net a
public good?

~~~
lotharbot
> _"this is the kind of evasive, hand-wavey crap that I'm talking about."_

It's evasive and hand-wavey because you don't know what an economics term
means and didn't take 30 seconds to look it up on google or wikipedia? I
expect better from everyone on HN.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_goods>

Something is a private good if:

\- it can be distributed individually (that is, you can allow only those
who've paid for it or registered for it to use it)

\- its use/consumption by one party precludes its use by another party

Roadways can probably be categorized as a "club good" -- they can be used by
multiple people, but it's possible to make them available only to "paying
customers". Toll roads are a club good for those who pay the toll, while other
roads are a club good for all registered/licensed motorists.

To be a truly "public good" it needs to be impossible to exclude non-payers;
things like clean air or military protection are public goods.

Externalities are not goods; they are costs or benefits associated with goods
but incurred by outside parties.

~~~
jbooth
Of course I know what the term means. The point is that the term is mushy
enough to be meaningless in all but the most trivial of applications. Nobody
thinks the government should be competing with Sam's club in the retail
breakfast cereal market. If something's being debated, it's almost by
definition in the gray area.

"I don't think the government should produce private goods" means effectively
nothing.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Dude, just apply the definition. No honest person is debating that SS/medicare
are private goods, they are only debating whether the government should pay
for them anyway. Just to avoid being accused of handwaving, I'll write out the
obvious reasoning explicitly.

Medicare: Rivalrous (the same dollar can't reimburse the doctor for your
benefits and mine) and excludible (if you don't pay, they don't reimburse the
doctor). Private good.

SS: Rivalrous (you and I can't both spend an SS check) and excludible (if you
don't pay in while young, they don't send you a check when you are old).
Private good.

Should I do the same thing for cheese fries or can you figure out for yourself
that cheese fries are also a private good?

~~~
hugh3
I agree with you, but I'm gonna argue the other side right now since I see an
objection to that particular line of argument.

Suppose I now say that welfare _is_ a public good since without it we'd have
poor folks either rioting or dying in the streets. I benefit from that and so
do you.

Another line-blurring example: food in prison is a private good in that only
one prisoner can eat it; however I don't have a problem with the government
paying for that.

~~~
lotharbot
One could argue that welfare benefits the public, but that is not the same as
saying welfare checks are _public goods_. It's a technical term that doesn't
say anything about the external benefits to the public.

Welfare checks are private goods, because if the funds go into one person's
check the same funds can't also go into another person's check (rivalrous) and
the checks can be sent to some people but not others (excludable).

Food and clothing for prisoners or for military personnel are also private
goods, though they're better categorized as components of the public goods of
"functional criminal justice system" and "military protection".

~~~
hugh3
So we appear to be in blurry-definitionland. Meals for prisoners are private
goods which are part of the public good "functional criminal justice system".
Welfare checks for unemployed bums are private goods which are part of the
public good "no dead hobos on lawns".

~~~
lotharbot
"no dead hobos on lawns" is not a good, it's a service. Various goods might
contribute to that service, such as "homeless shelters" and "welfare checks".

I suppose "functional criminal justice system" is actually a service, as well,
while "prison" is a good.

------
SandB0x
> "If everyone was required to pay taxes like they pay their utilities,
> attitudes would probably change."

I wonder how people would react to a $500/year Antiterrorism bill.

[Ballpark for 08-10?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#Appropriations))

~~~
dgallagher
The Iraq war was not about anti-terrorism, although that's partially how it
was sold by politicians. The Iraqi government has never launched a single
terrorist attack against the United States (please correct me if I'm wrong as
I've never heard of one instance).

~~~
fondue
Iraq trained them and offered rewards to families whom had a son or father
carry out jihad against the United States.

~~~
locopati
Cite please

~~~
fondue
I recalled it from having lived through the last couple of decades but since
you insist, I googled for "Iraq Trained Terrorists" and found 2.2million
links.

Heres one.
[http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00...](http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp)

Heres another. <http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/03/25/1017004766310.html>

One more.
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/14...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1449442/Terrorist-
behind-September-11-strike-was-trained-by-Saddam.html)

I don't know how partisan these articles or newspapers/publishers are, but you
asked for citing.

Oh, here's another one, PBS this time.
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interv...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.html)

Feel free to upvote my prior post, thanks.

~~~
MaysonL
It's interesting to read the Editor's Note in the right sidebar of that PBS
piece which basically says that the interviewee is a liar.

------
ryandvm
He is definitely on the right track. I'm pleased to see that I share an
opinion on this with one of the sharpest programmers on the planet.

The reality is that I have almost zero influence on how a very large portion
of my paycheck gets spent from Capitol Hill. Ideally the U.S. would return to
the concept of using states as "laboratories of democracy". When you have
states with economies that are larger than most countries, there is no reason
to be bumping so many responsibilities up to the federal level.

~~~
Retric
I am in favor of a huge cut in government spending. Unfortunately I know of no
politician that thinks that way and has a chance in hell of getting elected.

Republicans _like to talk_ about cutting government spending yet they never
actually do so and in my lifetime they have dramatically expanded the federal
government.

Democrats are more than willing to cut expensive programs but they want to
replace them with other expensive programs.

Over the last few years both party's increased government spending on
healthcare, yet somehow the Republican's approach (prescription drug plan)
ended up costing more for a smaller benefit? Who exactly should I vote for
again?

~~~
Yzupnick
I'm pretty sure your reasoning is the entire basis of the Tea Party movement.
It is people fed up with both the Democratic and Republican parties'
outrageous spending, and want a new group of Politicians to be voted in. It is
why many of the Tea Partiers running for office have little or no experience
and it is what propelled people like Governor Chris Christie to a win last
year.

~~~
Retric
Call me cynical but the libertarian party
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_\(United_States\)))
was created by people that believe in small government. And I assume most
reasonably well informed people have heard of it because it is afterall the
third largest party in the USA.

Like many people I view the Tea Party movement as a Republican sock puppet
designed to convince voters that this time they really mean it when they say
they want small government.

PS: I base this on the wiliness of Tea Party members to run in republican
primaries.

~~~
anamax
> I base this on the wiliness of Tea Party members to run in republican
> primaries.

What primaries should they have run in?

It's much easier to take over a political party than to start one AND knock
out one of the big two. Libertarians and greens have proved that.

It would have been absurd to run in democrat primaries.

Sharing some libertarian beliefs doesn't imply an obligation to join the LP,
especially since the LP has repeatedly demonstrated that it's more interested
in making a statement than actually getting elected and changing things.

------
swombat
Having just dealt with the London Congestion Charge
rapists^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsystem, I can definitely relate.

In terms of abject inefficiency combined with application of plain and simple
force, consider the London Congestion Charge system. They built a system
whereby you are charged a fixed fee (supposed to be £8) if you drive into the
congestion charge zone at all during the hours of 7am and 6pm. It's £8 if you
pay it on the same day. It's £10 if you pay it on the next day.

After that period, you are now officially a war criminal of the road, and
penalised with a whopping £120 fine (reduce to £60 if you pay promptly).
Later, it turns into £180, and then more...

No problem, you say, I'll just make sure I pay all my charges on the day. Ah,
ok, but how do you know you've got to pay a congestion charge today? Turns out
there's no way of checking. The Congestion Charge systems won't tell you
whether you should pay or not. The only time when they'll tell you you need to
pay is when they send you a penalty notice. I asked one of their agents about
this, he suggested it was best to pay if you were in any doubt, "because the
penalty is so much more expensive".

This is somewhat akin to going to the supermarket, filling up your trolley,
going to the checkout, and being asked to guess how much you should pay. "If
you guess too little, we'll penalise you by charging you 1200% of the price of
what you bought, so make sure you don't guess too low."

I find such a system morally reprehensible. It is a vile abuse of power and
the people who voted in, designed and built such a system are soulless
scumbags. But because it is a government system, rather than a business, there
is nothing I can do to take my business elsewhere (other than move to another
country of course, but that will have its own sets of tradeoffs).

The greek have a saying that "if you're not stealing from the government,
you're stealing from your family". Like John Carmack, I don't go that far. But
I don't support any expansion of government powers or responsibilities
whatsoever. The less the government does, the better (within reason of
course).

Yet, despite this, I still think it's a good idea for the government to
intervene when it comes to fundamental things like road maintenance, the fire
service, healthcare, or a criminal justice system. The government should do no
more than handle the fundamentals, but a government which fails to handle the
fundamentals is even more of a disaster than one which handles too much.

~~~
rwmj
You used an expensive resource, and the citizens of London freely voted
(twice) that this should cost you £8 to use. Pay it, or don't drive in London.

 _The Congestion Charge systems won't tell you whether you should pay or not_

Of course not, because the cameras don't record every number plate reliably.

~~~
swombat
I'm happy to pay for the congestion charge. What I'm unhappy with is the
grossly unfair implementation of it.

As I said in my original post, any system that asks you to speculatively pay
for something which you don't know whether you've actually used, in order to
avoid a hefty government-enforced fine, is a morally reprehensible. I cannot
condone any such system existing. It is, quite simply, extortion, and I cannot
support its existence. They might as well have said "pay us, or we might come
and break your legs".

~~~
rwmj
There are enormous signs, on both the surface of the road, and next to the
road, saying you are going into the congestion charge zone.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/London_conges...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/London_congestion_charge)

If you're so disorganized that you are oblivious to these signs and don't know
the day of the week, really you shouldn't be driving a car at all.

~~~
swombat
I often drive around 7am. How do I know that they're using the same clock as
me?

~~~
rwmj
They use an "Atomic Clock", by which I assume the MSF radio time signal, so
set your clock by the same signal, or buy such a clock for your car.

[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/helping-you-with-
your...](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/helping-you-with-your-
congestion-charging-penalty-charge-notice.pdf)

------
dugmartin
I think the main driver in the recent massive expansion in the US government
is that we've abandoned raising taxes and switched to just borrowing from a
seemingly endless supply of money. Without that check in place there is no
limit on the growth of the government, and as John says there is always
_something_ that _someone_ truly believes needs more money (like space
flight?).

I've always thought it would be interesting to put the following process in
place: the congresspeople who vote for an appropriations bill need to meet and
then physically count out money using $10,000 bills, one bill at a time. Then,
maybe an extra 700 million dollars attached to a bill would have some real
meaning.

(You couldn't use real money of course, you can't trust a politician with that
many unmarked bills).

~~~
chadgeidel
Count money? I'd be happy if they just read the bill and showed up for the
vote!

------
TomOfTTB
The problem with his thesis is most rational disagreements in government
revolve around things that are either impossible or can only be done by the
government. So inefficiency isn’t really the issue.

Take health care as a perfect example. Having studied the issue I personally
think it’s impossible to have quality universal health care. Others disagree.
But what we can both agree on is that only Government could do it if it is
possible.

So the question isn’t inefficiency because both sides concede government is
inefficient. But if government is the only power that can do it than
inefficiency isn’t the issue. The conflict lies in what can be accomplished
not in whether government could do it efficiently.

(People like me would argue the question is whether the private sector could
provide better quality health care to more people but as long as the other
side believes universal health care is possible the point is moot to them)

~~~
Dove
_But what we can both agree on is that only Government could do it if it is
possible._

Hell no. A combination of private charity and vigorous markets have provided
quality universal food and entertainment. Government is presently attempting
quality universal housing and education -- and its failing _miserably_ on the
"quality" point, and ain't doing _that_ great on the "universal".

If quality universal health care comes from anywhere, it will be from Silicon
Valley & Red Cross. The most government will ever do is mandate it, try to
implement it, fail, and claim it's doing its best and just needs a little more
money.

~~~
decode
_A combination of private charity and vigorous markets have provided quality
universal food and entertainment._

I can't think of a single country where there is no government food assistance
and no one starving to death. Where are you thinking of?

~~~
Dove
I was thinking of the US. I'm aware that the government helps on the food
front, but I don't think that's why food is abundantly available and cheap.
Folks who have _nothing_ go to soup kitchens before they apply for EBT, and
they eat pretty well.

Some might disagree that EBT is not a major contributor, though. Point
retracted. I guess I just have 'entertainment'.

~~~
foldr
I think you're just misinformed about this issue.

[http://feedingamerica.org/faces-of-hunger/hunger-in-
america-...](http://feedingamerica.org/faces-of-hunger/hunger-in-
america-2010/hunger-report-2010.aspx)

------
rhygar
Carmack must be angry about the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

Too bad he forgot:

1\. The Internet was created by DARPA (government)

2\. Armadillo Aerospace would not be possible without NASA (government)

3\. OpenGL would not have been happened without research grants from the
government

4\. Google is a product of "big government". It began at Stanford as a
research project funded by the National Science Foundation and other federal
agencies.

A huge amount of technical innovation comes out of government funded research
grants/projects. Those innovations are then turned into commercial products by
private industry. As taxpayers, maybe we should be demanding more taxes from
the corporations that benefit from publicly funded research?

I lost a lost of respect for him today - he comes off as a greedy jerk in this
essay.

~~~
amh
It's far from clear that the things you list couldn't have been developed
without government intervention.

Unfortunately, without an alternate fork of reality to try the experiment,
we'll never know. But the idea that because something was developed using
government funds, it could never have been developed without them, is a
logical fallacy.

~~~
splitrocket
Many of the things mentioned above were in fact produced without government
intervention by private enterprise before the widespread adoption of the
government funded projects. They were not, however widely adopted, nor
resulted in the technologies you are using on your computer sitting in front
of you.

There is a reason why people joke about selling bridges yet simultaneously
rely on bridges for their commutes in and out of work: some things, if you try
to make them profitable from the get-go will never achieve the scale necessary
for them to provide utility. One of the many functions of Government is to
provide a mechanism for the economy to move beyond a suboptimal economic
maxima. Spending money on infrastructure, like bridges, does exactly this. No
private firms will build a bridge because they can't make money off of it, but
all private firms benefit from the increased availability and mobility of
labor. The pre-bridge state of affairs is a suboptimal maxima. (Protip: WWII
military spending enabled the US to escape the suboptimal maxima of the Great
Depression. That is, government spending, of which, military spending is among
the least effective at creating jobs and improving the economy.)

------
SkyMarshal
_"My vote is going to the candidates that at least vector in that direction."_

This implies he is going to vote Republican. The problem is that not even the
Republicans live up to that standard anymore, they just pay lip service to it
until they get elected, then deficit spend the nation into oblivion anyway.
This should have been made completely clear during the Bush administration.

From $5T in debt to $10T between 2000-2006, then to $12T by the time Bush left
office, it's clear the GOP is just as unable to control their tendancy to
spend as they accuse the Democrats of. The main difference is that the
Democrats at least tend to raise taxes to fund that spending, so the citizenry
is more likely to feel the cost immediately (instead of punting it down the
road with deficit spending and additional interest payments).

Ironically that's one thing Carmack is arguing for - the benefit of taxing
people in such a way that they feel it, rather than having it hidden in the
income tax system.

When even staunch conservatives like Chris Buckley, son of the founder of
modern conservatism William F. Buckly, abandon the GOP over this hypocrisy,
people like Carmack should take notice and realize that voting for the GOP is
in no way a vote in support lower taxes, more efficient government, or any of
the other related outcomes they want:

 _"Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national
debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster
boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians
of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene
attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case. So, to paraphrase a
real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left
me."_ \- Chris Buckley, 2008

I do not think the modern GOP is who Carmack thinks it is.

------
dstein
Maybe it's time for the country's smartest engineers and scientists to bind
together and form a Technocracy party.

~~~
adamtj
Smart engineers and scientists have a tendency to think they can fix things.
This is exactly what he was talking about.

~~~
dstein
No he said _politicians_ have a tendency to think they can fix things. So he
advocates voting for politicians who do the least.

------
demallien
None of us is an island. Taxes are the money that we pay to make our society
civilised, and to provide the services necessary to allow those of talent to
rise up above the crowd, instead of those that inherited wealth accreting ever
more power. There are exactly zero examples of meritocracies without taxes in
history, but plenty of examples of countries with taxes where someone with
talent can rise to the top. I know which I prefer.

I wonder if John realises that a reduction in taxes could very well destroy
the future of the next Carmack coming up through grade school in a modest
neighbourhood right now.

~~~
drcode
> Taxes are the money that we pay to make our society civilised.

I would say that trade and enforcement of contracts are what make our society
civilized. I think it makes sense to have the government help in the
enforcement of contracts to some degree, through modest fees and/or taxes.

> provide the services necessary to allow those of talent to rise up above the
> crowd

I'm sure John C wouldn't advocate throwing orphans and disadvantaged children
into a "dog eat dog" world. In a longer essay he would agree with you that
children need to be cared for by society and that this requires tax money to
some degree. His argument is focused towards how competent adults should be
treated. Once a person reaches a certain level of adulthood, giving him/her
additional resources through government programs (in the millions of different
ways the government distributes money, directly or indirectly) is a very
inefficient proposition.

> There are exactly zero examples of meritocracies without taxes in history

At one point there was no state in history in which women could vote. At one
point there was no state in history in which slavery was abolished. Sometime
you need to buck history to progress.

That said, I don't think it's clear who to cast a vote for to accomplish John
C's goals- It's hard to know who the candidates are who "vector in that
direction." Even though I agree with the thesis that "less government is
usually better" I still end up voting mostly for Democrats, since the
Republicans in recent history seem anti-rationalist to me. Rationality is a
necessary ingredient.

Just because the Tea Party folks say "let's decrease government programs"
doesn't mean casting a vote for them is actually a step towards accomplishing
that goal. I'm sure if they got power they would think _their_ government
programs would be a fine way to spend money.

~~~
forinti
>I would say that trade and enforcement of contracts are what make our society
civilized.

That's a businessman's perspective; there are a lot of other players and
concerns in society. What about caring for the environment, enforcing better
safety regulations, enforcing better work conditions, etc?

~~~
dpatru
The environment is taken care of when it's privately owned. People take care
of their own properties. Safety regulations and working conditions are
improved via the free market and productivity increases and, to a much lesser
extent, by the tort system which punishes unreasonable behavior.

~~~
CamperBob
Someone modded you down and ran off, but I wish they'd stuck around to talk
about whether the worst safety/environmental hazards have been traditionally
associated with governments or corporations.

~~~
dualogy
Those who'd argue "corporations", usually mean big businesses operating in
corrupt countries. They are right with their examples, say Shell in Nigeria or
where was it -- but Government is usually involved too in these cases.

From a pure capitalist point of view, there will always be isolated instances
of short-term enterprises destroying the source of their wealth --- their
river, land, fishing or hunting grounds --- but the ones that will logically
prevail are those that protect and future-proof their resources for long-term
wealth gains, especially when the investment is very high (talk about oil,
mining etc.) so that the return on investment will need to be earned over
decades. It is not in the interest of the farmer to devalue his land. It is
not in the interest of the fisher to exterminate all fish.

It may well be in the interest of global corporations to drain the natural
resources of poor countries where the land is granted by the government rather
than privately owned and only the short-term monetary gain matters to both
parties. But libertarians also make a credible case that Big Corporations
would have a much tougher time, and would be a lot smaller, in government-free
or minimal-government environments.

------
kiba
Pretty much all empires that I ever read about fall prey to wars, wars debt,
or inflation.

There's something about war debt that cause revolution and collapse of
empires.

------
raheemm
From a gov services standpoint, the ROI in general has been low. Focusing just
on the investments; defense, social security and medicare are the biggest
resource hogs and hence where the spotlight should focus. Unfortunately, these
three areas are political hot potatoes with massive entrenched interests.
Republicans are always fighting defense cuts and dems are always fighting soc
sec cuts.

So I dont buy into the "small gov" argument unless someone starts addressing
the big resource hogs.

------
stretchwithme
Government would be far more efficient if you had a choice about whether you
participated in its schemes.

Mutual self-defense is the purpose of government and is very cheap compared to
the total cost of the US government. I doubt anyone would opt out of that
arrangement, especially if they then had to pay an additional tax whenever
they wish to trade with the US.

And all of the rest, the insurance schemes, forced charity, regulation can
surely been done and are done better by voluntary arrangement. Even local
government would be better if you could leave any municipality that failed to
deliver.

So the problem is lack of choice, lack of competition. In other words, they
can compel you, so they don't have to pay attention to all of the concerns
that entities always must pay attention to when you have a choice.

If state and city governments knew that territory and the taxes it pays could
"walk away", they would be much more responsive. Or they would start
shrinking, as people left for better arrangements.

In more primitive tribal arrangements, that's exactly what people did when
someone became a tyrant. We have lost that and we need to get it back.

------
DanielBMarkham
I liked the fact that Carmack tried to go meta with the discussion. I'd much
rather talk general principles instead of personalities and policies (which
change year to year)

I'll try to go even more meta: any form of government, over time, will break.
This is because people actively seek to control government for personal
reasons (good or bad). If this is done blatantly, people would rebel. So our
politicians have learned that creating more complex systems allows them the
control they need, without the obvious example of people pulling the strings.

As the system becomes more and more complex -- I doubt anybody alive on the
planet knows exactly how to file income taxes with all the edge cases -- it
actually makes governments more tyrannical. If there a billion rules, it's
much easier to have your way than if there were just one or two rules.

The sad part of this is that there is no "evil" required: people can make
great decisions that are the best available choice -- and still the system is
doomed to burdensome complexity and tyranny over time.

In the U.S., the founders tried to fix this by separating powers among the
local, state, and federal governments. They created three branches of
government for each of those levels. What's happened is that the federal
government is becoming the de facto universal government: responsible for
bailing states out, determining certain kinds of licensing standards -- even
controlling what people can do with their land.

As the number of people responsible for government decreases -- we probably
have about a thousand people of all parties who control the national
government and the national government is taking control of everything -- and
the laws become more and more complex, the system becomes unable to accomplish
anything.

As far as I know, these are architectural issues, and not related to any one
party or election.

------
sh1mmer
I probably have a different perspective on this than a lot of the Americans
having lived my whole life in the UK until a couple of years ago when I moved
out to San Francisco.

I think my issue with this essay, and a lot of the politics I hear in America,
is that two separate issues are conflated. Those issues are whether government
should regulate an industry/practice/area of life (regulation) vs. if
government should provide services in that industry/practice/area of life
(services).

There are many places where the government in the US provides both these
roles, for example the financial space. For example, the Fed provides a
government run service in the finance space which to provides services which
are both used by private enterprise but also competes with them. In the same
space the government also provide regulations and guidelines which
(supposedly) protect the public interest to temper the raw self-interest of
the market.

When people talk about government inefficiency they generally mean that
government is doing a poor job of running their services. However there also
many examples of extremely popular government services, such as Medicare.

The question in my mind is less about discouraging government from being in a
space, but what the balance of government regulation vs. services is. A good
example of this is health care. As the US moves towards providing universal
healthcare there are a couple of different models can be looked at from
various countries. From the UK we have a huge government run service, the NHS,
which provides our healthcare. In Germany they have a strong regulatory
solution in which the government mandates the criteria in which private
healthy insurance companies must operate, as well as mandating insurance.

I don't think many people would argue against the need for some centralised
government (either at the state or federal level) that protects the commons,
and the rights of man. What I would like to see more of is arguments about how
we implements those rights.

A good example of a debate we should have is this part of the healthcare one.
The highly distributed healthcare in the US (for those with insurance) means
that electronic mostly medical records don't exist or aren't shared amongst
providers. In a centralised government run bureaucracy (or a private
bureaucracy like Kaiser) electronic records are much more possible. Kaiser in-
fact, demonstrated massive efficiency gains through their electronic records
system. It doesn't mean that electronic medical records couldn't be provided
through a regulatory mandate, but in order to have that discussion we have to
get past the "big government" vs. "little government" and decide what we want
our government to do for us and if it should do that by services or by
regulation.

------
vitolds
> "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."

I think this is very important part of his argument. A person who has just
graduated from high school has very little first hand knowledge about how
things work and can only parrot stuff learned mostly from media sometimes from
books. You can dismiss Carmack's arguments only if you think that Carmack:

a) has a political agenda and is lying about his experience with government

b) has a low IQ and is incapable of seeing how things "really work"

c) has significantly less experience than you and your experience with
government has been very much different.

If you just graduated high school a year ago and everything you needed to know
about politics you learned from the Daily Show, at least give Carmack the
benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's on to something.

------
igravious
I guess the problem is this: from an engineer's point of view if one were to
design an efficient (but as John says, not ruthlessly efficient) system that
tends to the needs of society from scratch and design into that system a means
for funding it would we end up with a system that looks like todays modern
democracies, ignoring which side of the Atlantic we're talking about for the
moment.

I think this simple maxim says a lot; all things being equal a smaller
government is better than a larger one. This is a perplexing thing for me
because as far as I can tell the parties that talk like this are on the right
of the spectrum and I've viewed myself as left-leaning but I'm beginning to
think that each new label is just another excuse to see somebody as an Other
and causes conflict.

John wonders who to vote for. Even with my limited acquaintance with US
politics it seems like Ron Paul is thumping the tubs that John is, maybe he
should look towards the radical libertarian corner? I dunno, I don't either of
the guys personally. :)

The vast entirety of geopolitical arc of history has given us the systems we
live under today. John talks about inertia, it's like trying to even find the
right lever in the dark in a storm to try and turn the biggest supertanker a
fraction of a radian.

I know that a lot people on HackerNews think that governments take our money
from us buy force if necessary but I ask you, how on earth do you get people
to put aside their innate greed and and honestly and proportionately bear
their burden? You could say that royalty and aristocracy created the mess that
we're grappling with now but none of the issues John raises have any simple
fixes.

If I were to go out on a limb and be a hippy idealist for a moment: I'd say
strangling the war on drugs or at least radically altering it and
demilitarizing the planet would be the first obvious branches of government to
target for judicious pruning.

Not exactly HackerNews fodder but one feels a certain tension in the air these
days that needs to be vented.

~~~
logicalmind
Yes, but here is the rub. Once upon a time only the aristocrats could afford
to be educated. Then it was deemed by democratic government that education
should be afforded to all. The people voted for that, knowing full well that
it would cost everyone some of their hard-earned money (taxes).

Generations have gone by and many people take the things that are "common
goods" for granted. Unless John Carmack's family is from an aristocratic
lineage and his family is wealthy enough to have given him privately funded
everything, then he is also "standing on the shoulders of giants" who have
paved his way. For him to now become essentially an aristocrat and now say
that each people should fend for themselves is difficult to comprehend. At
least Newton was humble enough to realize how he got to where he got.

~~~
igravious
I am in complete agreement with you. The lucky majority have hot water on tap,
we have access to thousands of songs instantaneously (people forget how
miraculous this is), we have many creature comforts that would put us out of
reach of most royalty going back not even two hundred years. One of the most
uplifting Ted Talks* I ever watched was this economist who argued that in one
hundred years time poor Africa would still be poor but that their standard of
living would surpass anybody alive today. (I find it hard to imagine it now
but he had lots of statistics and graphs I tell ya!)

* [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_how_and_when.html)

------
mike_esspe
If you agree with John Carmack (at least somewhat), then you should read "For
a new liberty" by Murray Rothbard:
<http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp>

Where he explains how society can live without taxes extracted by the threat
of force.

------
ChristianMarks
This is neither original nor insightful. The political economic function of
government is to ensure that markets function under controlled conditions. An
elaborate government apparatus exists to manage vast social programs for
business. The US Patent Office is one small example, but there are many others
that would be apparent, were it not for pervasive anti-government rhetoric.
Another example is limited liability. Without the enforcement of limited
liability, elementary transactions we take for granted--mutual funds, for
example--would be inconceivable.

Misunderstanding about the relation between business and government is
encouraged and systematically exploited. For example, Wall Street likes to
create the misleading impression that it wants government out of its business.
According to regulators in Washington, Wall Street wants government to give it
business. And Wall Street is getting it, off the backs of the working and
middle classes. While I agree that the system is dysfunctional, I disagree
about the political economic function of government.

Anti-government rhetoric is the diametric opposite of the truth, which is that
the political economic function of the government is to ensure that markets
function under controlled conditions. Instead, you hear that the government is
not (or should not be) the insurer of last resort and that negative
externalities and risk pools do not exist. Not a single one of the anti-
government rhetoricians have provided a useful measure of efficiency,
incidentally. They conveniently tend to forget that big corporations are
bureaucracies as well.

------
CoryOndrejka
By the way, here is the Wikipedia article for the man in jail for failure to
pay taxes:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Anderson_%28tax_evader%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Anderson_%28tax_evader%29)

[Edited: had said "friend" which was incorrect]

tl;dr

He admitted to reporting only $67,939 in a year he made $126 million. He
further admitted to hiding a total of $365 million.

[Edited: hadn't included the $126 million detail for the year he under-
reported]

~~~
jpwagner
so now you're joining in the slander?

-he didn't use the word "friend"

-you didn't read the article

-According to Wikipedia, he reported just over $67,000 for just one year (not for his 370MM lifetime.)

Sorry to be nit-picky, maybe he is a bad guy, but what's the point of
presenting facts when you're going to attempt to exaggerate and not put in due
diligence?

~~~
CoryOndrejka
Original comment corrected.

------
logicalmind
Considering he is posting this under his aerospace company, does anyone else
wonder where aerospace would be today without government funding? Sure, you
could argue that it has been inefficient in terms of pure dollars. But there
is more to advancement than simply the money spent.

~~~
edelweiss
Yes, just look at Boeing vs Airbus and the WTO.

[http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2010-...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2010-07-01-boeingruling01_VA_N.htm)

------
parasubvert
Every organization, private or public, has enormous waste. It seems that at a
US-level scale that leads to a crippled government. Canada and Scandinavian
governments seem to more or less work & get things done, even in the face of
waste.

That said, the main issue is who does the work that is inherently not
measurable by profit. Peter Drucker did a lot of writing about this - when you
don't have profit to measure your performance, you have the mission. Non-
profit hospitals are measured by patients cured, the DHS is measured by
threads eliminated, etc. Government isn't a good doer, they are a policy
setter. They need to spin out functions to non-profits and measure their
performance based on mission-based factors.

------
Symmetry
I think this is probably a good time to plug the book "The Myth of the
Rational Voter" on why our government tends to end up the way it does. I'd
seen the book plugged by people I trusted but still sort of expected to it be
an overview of rational ignorance plus some amusing anecdotes. Instead, it
convinced me that rational ignorance can't explain bad outcomes in the first 5
pages, and went on to totally overturn my ideas about democratic government -
though looking back I'd already seen many of the general principles the book
outlined in certain special cases.

------
jshen
I found the argument underwhelming. I'll give just one example in response,
private prisons. The profit motive, when applied to certain activities, gives
the opposite of a good result. There are two recent and famous examples of
this in the private prison industry. One was a judge who got kick backs for
sending kids to a private prison. The other is the arizona immigration bill
which was written by the private prison lobby.

I'd much rather path taxes for a public prison system that doesn't have a
large financial interest in locking up as many people as possible.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't think he was arguing for a government that's profit-driven.

~~~
jshen
i didn't mean to imply that if I did. He was arguing for the private sector to
do most things the government does. I don't want a private prison industrial
complex. I think it's outcomes are worse than mere inefficiency.

------
cjbprime
I'm surprised Carmack doesn't address the obvious response to his position,
which is "You're a millionaire, of course you think people should pay less
taxes". Libertarianism contains the wealthiest demographic -- it is an
entirely unsurprising position for Carmack to be taking.

I expect that simple self-interest tends to determine most of our political
positions; which suggests that if we want to rationally determine what our
society's obligation to poor people is, asking rich people for their opinion
is the last thing we should do.

------
Tycho
Interesting phrase he used, 'positive inertia.'I'd like more information on
that (what causes/supports it etc).

 _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._

~~~
CamperBob
I'd think the proper term would have simply been "momentum," but I'm no rocket
surgeon.

------
vishaldpatel
I wonder how much of a role the fact that Americans mistrust their government
(and one part of the government mistrusts the other) plays in increasing the
size of government - at the end of the day, every last piece of legislation -
good or bad, needs checks and balances, right? Could it be that the cost (in
both time and money) of checks and balances eventually outweighs the benefits
of having them? Perhaps that should be a way to measure if a government has
grown too large.

------
projectileboy
I agree with everything he said, as long as he also applies the notion to
defense spending, providing financial security for the elderly (either as
Social Security or as pensions), and subsidizing liquidity in the financial
markets (via debt). If these are ignored (as they almost always are by self-
anointed 'fiscal conservatives'), then it's a bogus argument. If they're not
ignored, then I'm on board for the discussion.

------
natrius
I agree with this almost completely (though I think having a health care
mandate so we can do away with the concept of pre-existing conditions is a
good thing). However, I value the rights of my fellow citizens far more that I
value an efficient society, and the politicians who claim to want a more
efficient society also want to strip rights away from segments of society they
disapprove of. No thanks.

------
dennisgorelik
It's a great summary of libertarian perspective on government. I wish more
people could understand it and made the government to cut spending.

------
monological
> "that at least vector in that direction."

He would say that...

------
skybrian
It's pretty clear he has a few misconceptions about economics.

First of all, maximum efficiency happens when people are out of work. So,
however inefficient a government job might be, so long as something gets
accomplished, it's less inefficient than one alternative. In times of low
unemployment, we might say that government inefficiency is the problem since
it crowds out private investment, but currently there is a worse problem.
Unless you're competing with the government to hire people (and how many
companies do that?), you don't lose anything when the government puts people
to work.

Yeah, but they're spending tax dollars, right? Well, the only reason the
government has to collect taxes is to prevent inflation. It's not because they
need the money (the Fed can always create more money). It's to offset the
inflation caused by government spending. (This is quite similar to a MMORPG
where you need to control the sources and sinks.) We can talk about better
ways to drain the system that would provide for better incentives and more
interesting economic activity, but there have to be sinks _somewhere_ , or
money loses its value.

~~~
barmstrong
"So, however inefficient a government job might be, so long as something gets
accomplished, it's less inefficient than one alternative."

Not true at all. If a government employee is paid $100k and only delivers $50k
worth of value, it would have been better if he remained unemployed. The
citizens would have keep their $100k and presumably invested it in something
with a higher return.

~~~
skybrian
A few things wrong with that:

\- Since inflation is so low, the government doesn't actually have to raise
taxes. (This is the part people don't seem to get - taxes are to prevent
inflation, so when there's no inflation, there's no reason for a tax
increase.)

\- Currently, money is not the limiting factor for investment. Savings are up,
investment is down, and money can be borrowed at very low interest rates. If
investors wanted to invest more, they could, but they aren't.

Your example is the same (economically) as paying one person $50k and giving
away $50k to someone else. Capacity is standing idle due to lack of demand.
It's the sort of thing that makes economists joke about burying cash in mines
for people to dig up (Keynes) or dropping money from helicopters (Bernanke).

Of course, it all changes if the economy picks up again.

------
splitrocket
Whenever I encounter someone arguing about federal government spending, I do a
quick search for the word "military" and "defense", as it is the second
largest line item in the budget at $663 Billion, below social security, and is
the largest line item in the discretionary budget, larger than anything else
by over $500 Billion.

source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget)

I didn't find it in Carmack's article. It's a useful heuristic as it
distinguishes people who know what the US spends its money on vs. those that
do not.

All spending and consumption has something called a multiplier effect:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics)> and specifically, with
regard to government spending, there is the fiscal multiplier effect:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_multiplier>

essentially, all government spending produces some amount of multiplicative
increase in gdp.

Of all government spending, guess what type has the lowest multiplier effect?
Defense

Defense spending produces the least net gain to national wealth, standards of
living, and productivity.

Additionally, defense spending disproportionately goes to private contractors:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States)

Almost every year, the defense budget represents the single largest wealth
transfer from the public to private hands in the history of the world.

So, the question I put to Carmack, and thus those that tend to agree with him
is this: Exactly how inefficient is the federal government? If 60% of all
discretionary spending is used in the least possible productive way, what
portion of that overall federal inefficiency is directly related to
discretionary defense spending? And finally, what political parties are more
historically responsible for discretionary defense spending, thus with
radically increasing the overall efficiency of our government? (See the gulf
war, and the inception of the Iraq war and the Afghan war.)

Arguing for a smaller government is like arguing that you should decrease your
startup's opex. The answer is almost always yes, but randomly cutting services
without actually looking at what the big expenditures are, without looking at
the productivity upsides of certain expenditures, etc. is foolhardy at best.
Moreover, cutting the things that directly enable the productivity of your
employees, rather than those things that do not directly enable the
productivity of your employees is nothing short of insane.

It's like spending the money you would have spent on health insurance for your
employees on a ridiculously expensive security system for your office. People
get sick all the time, but you're about as likely to experience terrorism as
you are to win the lottery. Would that make sense in your startup? Does it
make sense for America?

------
arohner
Extremely informative chart on US federal spending:

<http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/>

Though the chart only contains * discretionary* spending, so it doesn't
include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a few other things.

------
njharman
This and every other small gov / gov inefficiency screed I've read glosses
over the point that most of all those billions the government "wasted" is paid
to private (as in non-government) companies. Big portion of the rest is
salaries. [The gov definitely employs too many people, but what ya gonna do?
With our capitalist economy demanding abundance of consumers to support
corporate bloat even if there's not enough work for them]

The problem isn't government. The problem is corporatism & greed
scamming/lobbying/abusing/leeching off of government.

Inefficiency is a matter of scale. The private sector is not magically immune.
Have you ever seen the money that big enterprise wastes? One or two guys in
their garage can launch an iPhone app on a shoestring. It takes large
corporation tens of thousands of dollars, months, and a dozen people. [spoken
from direct experience].

~~~
drcode
> Inefficiency is a matter of scale. The private sector is not magically
> immune.

The companies in the private sector goes bankrupt if they don't keep
inefficiency in check. The reasons larger companies exist is because economies
of scale balance out the inefficiencies in some cases.

> The problem is corporatism & greed scamming/lobbying/abusing/leeching off of
> government.

You can't leach off the government if it doesn't have money to spend.

~~~
jshen
I don't know how true this is. Many of the biggest companies are ... I don't
know how to describe it so I'll call it quasi private.

Telecommunications companies: use public air waves, depend on cable run all
over the country that a startup can't duplicate, etc

Large media companies: public air waves again.

Natural resource exploiters: oil companies, logging companies, etc depend on
extracting resources from a lot of public lands.

Anything related to defense.

And the final point, no matter how hard we wish there were a level playing
field in the markets, big companies will always lobby for laws that favor them
over smaller companies. Even if we have a minimal government we will still
have things like contract law, patents, trademarks, etc. Large corporations
will influence these laws.

------
jbooth
New rule: If you're making a point that involves use of the word "Government"
as a proper noun, your point is probably dumb.

Just to break it out a tiny bit -- within the federal government, you have SS,
Medicare, domestic discretionary spending and military spending. These 4 are
radically different from each other, they get their revenue from different
sources and have entirely different raisons d'etre. So, I repeat, if you're
making a point about "Government", and you can't be bothered to delve into the
least bit of detail besides some handwaving about "regulation" and "taxation",
your point is stupid.

I only read the first paragraph. Does he make a coherent policy recommendation
anywhere? I can get "government this, government that" at my local tea party
meeting.

------
galactus
Noam chomsky, on taxes:

"In a democracy, April 15th, when you pay your taxes, would be a day of
celebration. Here we've gotten together as a community, we've decided on
certain policies and now we're moving to implement them by our own
participation. That's not the way it's viewed in the United States. That's a
day of mourning. There's this alien entity, sort of like a-as if it's from
Mars somewhere, which is stealing our hard-earned money from us. We have to
give it up, because we have no choice.

Well, that reflects the undermining of even a conception of democracy."

~~~
reedlaw
Or that it's obvious that we don't live in a democracy, or if we do, don't
really wish to live in one.

------
chubs
Almost reads like a tea party position statement. I love it. John carmack is
now my hero.

------
Ixiaus
Great article - while I agree on many fronts with Anarchism and the hackers
that generally make up the Anarchist minority, it is refreshing to hear a
point of view from a renowned hacker that _isn't_ so idealistic.

[FTFY]

~~~
drcode
Whoah! Too many negations in that last sentence for my meager brain.

------
lukifer
I can refute pure libertarianism in one word: externalities.

The fact that our particular government is systemically broken does not mean
the _concept_ of government is inherently flawed.

~~~
jpwagner
Is that really how you read it?

------
ilijavanil
<http://budget-democracy.org/> Tax should be managed by those who vote.

~~~
jpwagner
this seems like a terrific idea, until you think of the practical
implications...

------
korch
Let me get this straight.

A wealthy, white, educated, privileged male who is incredibly talented and who
won both the birth and tech lottery back in the 90's is now whining about the
government taking too much in taxes?

Cry me a fucking river.

There are tens of millions of poor Americans & immigrants working as a
permanent class of indentured laborers, while a smaller pool of the middle
class are slowly being bled to death, both physically and economically(who's
kids are more likely to die in foreign wars, the rich or poor?), by our
American culture's inhumane, cruel war mongering fetish.

Yet the rich fucks who have to pay the majority of the taxes, and who already
get to keep the majority of the profits for their own lavish life styles feel
_entitled_ enough to complain that their slice of the pie isn't big enough?
Seeing this appalling attitude of entitlement everywhere makes me so angry,
and I wish I could just open these ignorant people's eyes, hearts & minds.

There's a good reason I have little interest in the rambling, detached kooky
political and economic opinions of luminaries from the tech world. Stick to
hacking code and making entertainment software, and stay out of running the
real world.

------
zackattack
flagged

------
davidw
Ugh. Please, please, please could we leave the politics to another site?

~~~
drcode
If John's C's first public expression of political opinion isn't Hacker News,
I don't know what is.

~~~
davidw
If we start down that path, then someone will take it on themselves to start
posting stuff from here:

<http://stallman.org/>

And then someone else will post reason.org articles, and then Krugman columns
and on and on and on. Just have a bit of self-restraint and keep the politics
elsewhere.

I mean, are _any_ of the comments above really something that has not been
hashed out 1000 times on the internet?

Just for fun, we do some usenet digging and find results for "libertarian
taxes force" from between 25 and 20 years ago:

[http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=libertarian+taxe...](http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=libertarian+taxes+force&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&scoring=&lr=&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1985&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1990&as_ugroup=&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&safe=off)

There are people on this site who had not even been conceived when these same
arguments were already going back and forth.

------
erikpukinskis
An educated white man thinks government services are unimportant. Stop the
presses.

~~~
lliiffee
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem>

~~~
pavel_lishin
Not to mention, I don't think he even read the article. He didn't say they
were unimportant, he said they were inefficient and over-reaching.

------
bwooceli
I can't take this man seriously. He's the frog in the boiling pot of water who
is just now saying "Hey, wait a minute! This water's boiling!"

Sorry, sir, but if you've been paying "millions" into a system and have to
this point not been engaged in what the fruits of your labors are spent on
then I have real trouble synthesizing your argument.

~~~
bwooceli
Yipes, two downvotes for suggesting a consistent engagement in your government
might be a requisite step in establishing credibility for a position. _sigh_.

~~~
lee
Perhaps it's because you're making an ad hominem argument... which is rarely
interesting or valid. Debating the points and issues of the article would
probably not get downvotes.

