Glenn Reynolds reviews a new book co-authored by mutual friends — America 3.0.
7 thoughts on “Looking Ahead To A Bright Future”
The only problem is nobody explains how the end of big government is inevitable. It can’t go on? Why? As the economy fails under their mismanagement it just gives them more to demagogue about.
The only way government gets smaller is by force against the natural tendency to get bigger. Where is it?
The only way government gets smaller is by force against the natural tendency to get bigger.
Tell that to the Soviet Union.
To me, both the EU and USA appear to be about where the USSR was in the mid-80s. Bankrupt but still doing their best to pretend they’re sustainable until history proves they’re not.
Personally I like Tainter’s ‘collapse of complex societies’ theory; societies grow more complex until the cost of added complexity is greater than the benefit, at which point all they can do is collapse because any attempt to solve their problems makes them worse. I can’t see many, if any, Western governments which haven’t now reached that point.
You must have missed the force applied by Thatcher, Reagan, the pope and a little place called Poland. How did that turn out? Is Russia now a garden spot that the USSR wasn’t?
Why would anyone think the fall is followed by Eden? That’s not the direction history has shown. America at it’s founding was an aberration from all of history.
We don’t have the founders demographic or wisdom today. That matters.
The Soviet Union collapsed because of bad economics, plain and simple. Hopefully the current governments will collapse even faster as they refuse to resort to the sorts of bloody techniques used by the Soviet Union to hasten their demise.
Why do people assume the aftermath of the fall will be better?
The former S.U. countries still operate in many ways as before. If you want to get things done in the Ukraine, you had better have some good friends in the police to grease the wheels.
Governments are going to have to decrease the amount of people in their service eventually. A lot of these jobs have been made redundant by modern information systems. Any government which does not get into shape will find itself out-competed in the international scene. However by their very nature things like defense will still need a large amount of resources to be devoted to them. One could argue about how distributed the effort will be but in the end some sort of centralized structure will still be necessary to channel all the resources and funds unless we want to collapse into war-lordism and the like.
A lot of these jobs have been made redundant by modern information systems.
You are confusing the private and public sector. Capital investment for improved productivity is what business does. When government buys computers, it’s not to reduce the IRS staff but to enlarge it.
The only problem is nobody explains how the end of big government is inevitable. It can’t go on? Why? As the economy fails under their mismanagement it just gives them more to demagogue about.
The only way government gets smaller is by force against the natural tendency to get bigger. Where is it?
The only way government gets smaller is by force against the natural tendency to get bigger.
Tell that to the Soviet Union.
To me, both the EU and USA appear to be about where the USSR was in the mid-80s. Bankrupt but still doing their best to pretend they’re sustainable until history proves they’re not.
Personally I like Tainter’s ‘collapse of complex societies’ theory; societies grow more complex until the cost of added complexity is greater than the benefit, at which point all they can do is collapse because any attempt to solve their problems makes them worse. I can’t see many, if any, Western governments which haven’t now reached that point.
You must have missed the force applied by Thatcher, Reagan, the pope and a little place called Poland. How did that turn out? Is Russia now a garden spot that the USSR wasn’t?
Why would anyone think the fall is followed by Eden? That’s not the direction history has shown. America at it’s founding was an aberration from all of history.
We don’t have the founders demographic or wisdom today. That matters.
The Soviet Union collapsed because of bad economics, plain and simple. Hopefully the current governments will collapse even faster as they refuse to resort to the sorts of bloody techniques used by the Soviet Union to hasten their demise.
Why do people assume the aftermath of the fall will be better?
The former S.U. countries still operate in many ways as before. If you want to get things done in the Ukraine, you had better have some good friends in the police to grease the wheels.
Governments are going to have to decrease the amount of people in their service eventually. A lot of these jobs have been made redundant by modern information systems. Any government which does not get into shape will find itself out-competed in the international scene. However by their very nature things like defense will still need a large amount of resources to be devoted to them. One could argue about how distributed the effort will be but in the end some sort of centralized structure will still be necessary to channel all the resources and funds unless we want to collapse into war-lordism and the like.
A lot of these jobs have been made redundant by modern information systems.
You are confusing the private and public sector. Capital investment for improved productivity is what business does. When government buys computers, it’s not to reduce the IRS staff but to enlarge it.