Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Good point. That might be the way to go. Thanks for the suggestion.
I hadn't thought of it, as older USB drives (ie. my experience, 2013 MBP) are much slower for large data than the internal storage, some of my work is storage I/O performance constrained, and I don't want to carry around yet another dongle. But the price differential vs Apple built-in and flexibility/upgradability, at current USB4 speeds makes a compelling case.
(I read anout significant differences between M1 and M2 for some flavours of USB storage link speed, which might persuade me to opt for the M2 after all.)
What matters is the real effects of being wealthier. If it means you and everybody else can afford a place to live, then "feeling" it's unfair just doesn't matter.
Here's an idea: a UBI that's pegged to GDP and population.
Make it comically small to start, like say 0.25% of GDP split evenly between all citizens. Based on 2021 US stats, that's $176 per person per year. That seems relatively unobjectionable regardless of your politics, even assuming that the % is likely to drift higher over time.
With increasingly advanced AI and cheap energy, GDP would rise over the long run independently of population, ultimately increasing the UBI to a livable salary.
Here is even simpler idea to make that feasible: Start actually taxing the corporations in a way that can't be trivially avoided. And don't tax them less than your own citizens. Maybe tax a bit of income on top of revenue. Maybe tax a bit more if income per employee is on high side.
If you're talking about a five-figure UBI, I don't think that would be simpler to pass through Congress.
In terms of legislative complexity, I can't see how closing all major corporate tax loopholes would be simpler than implementing whatever minor tax revenue increase is necessary to offset a $176 UBI.
Doing that is actually more complicated. There are a variety of questions regarding taxing them, and there are many more ways they could get around it. In contrast, an income tax actually collects revenue because people can't really get around having to pay it.
Well, then we have been living in a system that's as close to fair as possible since global individual wealth has been growing for a long time. The few times we had it shrink significantly over some period of time is when local populations attempted forced wealth distribution.
Our present system, by this definition, is amazing!
No it's not. If the property of fairness is that everyone grows wealthier then a system that makes everyone wealthier is a fair system. That's as close to a tautology as possible.
The resulting absurdity is why OP was right to ask what fairness was: everyone has their own belief in it, oriented towards equality or proportionality or some notion of deserving.
In order to claim that the system is “as close to fair as possible”, you would have to demonstrate that the system has optimized everyone’s wealth growth as much as possible. Something going up for a long time isn’t proof of optimization.
Well, no you don't have to optimize each person's wealth growth. It could be incredibly uneven so long as you optimize the number of people whose wealth grows.
And clearly, since it is better than every other method, it is the best by definition. If other things were not done it is because they were not possible: since possibility requires an agent to execute and since no agent succeeded in executing a better plan it is, by definition, impossible.
>And clearly, since it is better than every other method, it is the best by definition.
That isn't how "by definition" works. For that to be the case you would have to define everything to be inferior which is a purely subjective choice.
What you should have said is something along the lines of "based on our best efforts this has had the most success" which has completely different implications, such as failure to discover or adopt better systems.
It is especially strange since what you are talking about violates neoclassical models. There is no wealth inequality built into those models so why would it be obvious that this will be the best solution forever?
>. If other things were not done it is because they were not possible: since possibility requires an agent to execute and since no agent succeeded in executing a better plan it is, by definition, impossible.
Except The Wörgl Experiment succeeded in every respect. Stop rewriting history. Your theory is also unable to explain the success of the Chiemgauer [0], which is severely limited by legal problems and the ability to find loopholes.
After all, if your theory was correct and no improvement is possible, then why does improvement occur anyway? Feels like you are just taking the stance of an authoritarian thug.
[0] The Chiemgauer makes money off of ending capitalism, which is a paradox if we assume it is impossible for anything to be better than capitalism.
I was using “everyone” in the same way that I assume you were using it—everyone in aggregate. You seem to be basing this on a rather dubious position—that we’ve thought of, tried, and optimized every conceivable system for growing wealth and that the result of this exhaustive history is our current system.
You don't need to do an exhaustive search because optimality here did not account for different amounts for each. A thing is optimally fair in this world if everyone's wealth goes up. That doesn't need exhaustiveness.
A thing that gives me 1 million and you 1 is as fair as one that gives us both 500k.
And yes, we did actually search everything possible because if something did not get done it was, by definition, impossible. After all, the agent that could have made something possible could not have acted as such because we know they did not. If they could have they would have. If they could not conceive of a better thing then the thing was impossible because it was not conceivable by anyone.
Except even Fisher Black recognizes a potential currency trap at the zero lower bound and Fisher Black is someone who strongly believes in economic equilibrium.
At that point I can't help but think that most people who think capitalism works are delusional since this is such a fundamental problem with capitalism that can at best be handwaved with eternal inflation.
The US had both higher growth and higher wealth redistribution after world war 2 (extremely progressive income taxation and steep wealth taxes). The 70s ended wealth redistribution and the US has lower growth. At least get your basic history right.
Not that person, but I don’t believe that sentence approaches a definition of “fairly”. “Make everyone richer” is all fine, until you realize that you’re only a penny richer. But maybe it’s justified. That justification is what the “fairly” definition would require, and is extremely important.
The video "Wealth Inequality in America" <https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?t=35> at timestamp 0:35 shows a definition most respondents to the question agree on.
Why would anyone contribute more than is required to get what they need, if they’ll never see any benefit beyond that?
I prefer a system where people that work harder get more so they can have what they want, rather than just the bare minimum to survive (which is presumably what is meant by “what they need”).
Defined by man that have never worked honest day in his life and lived off family, repeated by people that don't know human nature well enough to know it doesn't work
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.