From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@rawbw.com)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2008 - 11:53:09 MDT
Stathis writes (and I find it quite on-topic since the points generalize very
quickly and pertinently to OSs and ruling AIs).
> John K Clark wrote:
>
>> Government has a near monopoly on education but capitalism provides
>> the cars, that's why even in the worst slums in the country you can find
>> many more good cars than good schools.
>
> Across the world, capitalists provide the cars while government provides
> the schools and the health care. It's not as if there is less money and less
> opportunity for corruption and a large bureaucracy in cars.
I would argue with that: especially provided that the government is
not regulating the businesses and corporations, the bottom-line
profit and need to compete successfully minimizes corruption under
free-market capitalism.
> Could it be that, um, empirically, it has been found that
> government is better at some things and private enterprise
> is better at others?
Yes, indeed, government is *definitely* vastly superior to private
enterprise in some things, only a little bit superior in others, and
actually quite inferior in many. Here's how I rate government
(as opposed to private).
10 waging war (e.g. USSR vs. Germany, North Korea vs. South, etc.)
7 building roads and some other infrastructure
7 schools (pre-1950)
6 epidemiology nation-wide defenses (though Rafal's opinion would be neat)
2 regulating stock markets (again, it may be 2 now, but is perhaps going down)
-1 regulating telecommunications
-4 schools (post-1950)
-6 providing health care (of course, we know we disagree about that!)
-9 distributing food and probably all merchandise
But this may merely reflect that I am a libertarian---almost a minimalist---
but by no means an anarchist.
Beings who think millions of times faster than we do might want
a Solar System government, but for very, very few things that I
can think of.
I suppose that some solar systems will eventually attack others
(as in The Golden Age), and just like the Soviets and the NKVD
---which made their soldiers more afraid of who was behind them
than who they were fighting---a ruling Solar Government may
have to organize Solar Defense, commandeer resources, and so on.
Maybe something else corresponding to infrastructure or communications?
Anything else whatsoever?
Lee
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