The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Govt Dependency will end in Chaos

Well you are correct in saying that corruption will never go away totally, and I never meant to imply as much in such absolute terms.

I think a major difference between us here, is the use of prior restraint. Perhaps in some instances with particularly volatile/harmful materials, such as toxic sludge - prior restraint may be applicible and the sludge should be controlled and accounted for throughout its lifecycle. But in general, I think overuse of prior restraint is harmful - people should only be prosecuted if they commit a real harm.

In other words, if you need to have enough capital to hire three teams of lawyers, compliance consultants and accountants to cover your ass just to set up and perform a simple business function without going to jail... you are reinforcing the paradigm of the ruling investor class / 1%. This is why your general philosophy doesnt seem to make much sense to me much of the time. You say we need to free up the power of the rest of the populace, from the top elite classes. Ok - I am with you there. But at least the way you word your solutions seems to want to implement processes that actually reinforce and institutionalize the power of said classes.

Or in other words, I think you advocate a level of control that the general public is incapable of following and managing properly. Rather, I think laws and regulations should focus on particular pain points and be very clear, limited, and focused.

Dump toxic waste? Ok goto jail. Commit Fraud? Ok, same. And there are plenty of other things of course that should be prohibited and enforced. But we should also be careful not to go overboard.

Finally, I do not think that operating "for the greater good" should be something required or expected of people of corporations. It just so happens, that when people or corporations act to create economic value without violating the natural rights of others in the process- that the "greater good" just happens to benefit. But expecting people to live for others is something I think is wrong. Live for yourself, govt should be there as a collective means to protect rights - not force one person or groups opinions on morality on the rest. That is how conflict get started in the first place. Over any significant timescale, no govt manages that level of involvement in society with equanimity. Once you start down that path, societal inequality and upheaval become inevitable.



I am with you for your first sentence. Decoupling business success from govt is absolutely needed. Though I think your solution is mostly too complicated to work in real terms.

I agree that political contributions should absolutely not be anonymous. While I do not think that free speech should be prohibited, including the ability of wealthy people to buy as many advertisements spreading their opinion as they wish - free speech and anonymous political donations are not the same thing.

I also agree that corporate contributions are not kosher. The money should first pass into the hands of individuals, and the donations of said individuals disclosed when they are in excess of a certain amount.

One thing though that I cannot agree with, is your concept of direct representation. I disagree that we have the technology to safely pull it off, and I also do not think that popular sovereignty is good governance. Pure democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Republicanism (as in the concept, not the modern political party) is the only way to go - with representation + strict Constitutional rules limiting govt and protecting basic rights. Where we have gone wrong, is not due to any lack of direct representation but rather the erosion of our Constitutional protection over time via sophistry, wordplay, and a general attitude that popular or mob will is of greater importance than the protections the Founders tried to bestow upon us.



Well, I wouldnt overstate what type of utopia you think I see. For the record utopia is impossible, I was simply pointing out that people do not stop working or finding ways to create value simply because the old ways of doing things change. So I think your doom and gloom scenario of hordes of useless people due to factory jobs continuing to go away is overstated. Historically,

Now as far as the RIAA... you are certainly onto something. The difference, is I see your "progressive" agenda as having created that reality and continuing to encourage those practices.

This is exactly the type of laws and regulation that I fear and am opposed to. Govt control over the flow of information is certainly something we need to avoid at almost any cost.

We both agree that clear-cut cases of causing harm (e.g. toxic sludge dumping) have to be regulated. I suggest we call this ‘basic level of regulation’ and I want to try to better define it.

Unambiguous: We could start by identifying areas (e.g. direct environmental damage, outright financial fraud) that we would both agree require regulation and regulation is fairly clear-case and unambiguous. If we were to compile extensive list of all such cases and compared to the list of all existing regulation it would be easy to see that our list (unambiguous regulation that we agree on) is tiny minority of all regulation, it also not a complete list of all regulation we agree on. This is where I’d draw ‘basic level of regulation’ line if we are interested in generalizing our discussion past our present company.

Not-so-clear: We then can identify other areas (e.g. food labeling, minors & smoking) that while we agree on, are far from being clear-case or non-controversial. Out of this list some of this regulation requires expert opinion and/or scientific consensus, and we chose to defer to such opinions.

Controversial: By far largest segment of regulation would be at least somewhat controversial. We might disagree, form informed or ideological opinion and/or later change our minds about it. One examples of such controversial regulation would be net neutrality.

Harmful legislature: Last but not least, we can find some regulation that we both oppose. I specifically list this point to inform you that I have revised my earlier stance on “more regulation is always good”. I now acknowledge that harm of bad regulation can be greater than even uncontrolled corporate irresponsibility.



Now that I categorized all types of legislature, identified sections that most would agree with, let us try to determine the level of regulation that is needed to effectively govern.

Immediate conclusions are:

a. ‘Basic level of regulation’ is not sufficient, this can be demonstrated by finding examples of not-so-clear regulation that we agree on.

b. ‘Harmful legislature’ exists

c. ‘Not-so-clear’ and ‘Controversial’ segments do not have clear functional distinction.

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Free market dictating corporate behavior via supply/demand implies rational and informed consumer. In post-industrial economy, access to information is/coupled with wealth. I think idea that anything less that "pain points" will get resolved via market forces is flawed, because it is based on assumption of perfectly informed actors. More accurate functional description is that low-information consumer actions are driven by information-gatekeepers (see FOX News). Good example of disinformation wars in consumer behavior is smoking/anti-smoking regulation, tobacco companies actively employed disinformation to prevent consumers of making educated decisions about tobacco use. My argument is that without heavy regulation a lot of consumer-driven economy will turn into FUD wars.

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"Greater good" (this can include operating in self interest, as long as you do not harm) should be used as a standard because this is the only way to ensure society overall moves ahead. If results of your activity are net-loss for society (e.g. sub prime mortgage securitization) then not only you are harming overall progress, you are offloading risks for your activity on others. Especially in a 'less regulation' environment you describe you cannot assume that all injured parties will be able to seek full redress. If not everyone is made whole, then harmful activity can become profitable.

On the first part -

I think you are on to something. Something I think is probably important, is to make functional distinctions between different types of regulation.

Some rules of thumb I go by when trying to determine if a regulation is good or not are:

1) Can the proposed regulation be applied, at least in principle, universally. Enforcement needs to be uniform and equal, if a regulation is written as such that any enforcement by definition will be arbitrary then its no good. Or in other words, is it generally enforceable?

A hypothetical example would be a law or regulation that prohibited adultery and made it a criminal offense punishable by jail time. (technically in some places I think it is, in theory)

Going by general statistics I have seen, it is something more or less half of married people have committed. So if the anti-adultery provisions were enforced, that would be a massive chunk of the populace that would end up imprisoned. In reality, enforcing it universally would be impossible... in this instance its too common... so enforcement would then therefore be by definition arbitrary. In reality, the people jailed would tend to be poor minorities without legal resources or political ties.

So this is a hypothetical example of a bad law/regulation.

2) Is the wording of law/regulation specific enough that it can be applied only to the intended targets. Bureaucrats in charge of enforcement get good performance reviews for exercising their function. Whether they can exercise their function depends entirely on the written legal wording, the intent matters not at all. So care needs to be taken that the wording is such that the target is explicitly identified to prevent unaccountable govt asshats from abusing it to justify promotions and larger budgets.

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There are plenty of other things that need to be considered of course, but those two I think are very important.


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Your second part raises an interesting point. I am not convinced that wealth = access to information at this point, I think the key differentiation is a simple desire to know. That being said, it is actually fairly immaterial to the discussion.

I think the core concept here is really this: how far should a greater authority (such as govt) intervene to "protect people from themselves", if at all - and if so, who get to be the "decider".

Now, I am sure there are plenty of instances we could agree on in regards to the fact that a corporate entity was spreading disinformation - such as the tobacco industry for example. But even with that, what about all the instances that we , or others, do not agree on? In the end, it all boils down to someones opinion carrying more weight than someone elses opinion... and someone having their life micromanaged by someone of greater authority.

So in the end... who should be responsible for someones life and well-being? The individual, or a greater authority? Obviously you know my stance on this. The definition of being free, is being free to make your own decisions regarding your life - even if someone else thinks its a wrong or incorrect decision.

Not to mention I hardly trust any greater authority to ever truly have my best interests in mind. History has shown that greater authorities typically dont, and even if they do - lack the understanding to successfully look out for said interests.

I think we are better off by simply having laws against knowingly making false claims about a product (fraud) and letting the most egregious cases play out in the legal system, as opposed to trying to create a use case for intrusive govt for preventing every conceivable instance where a person may remain willfully ignorant and do something dumb.

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In regards to your third section....

I think we really need to quantify what "greater good" actually means.

See, when someone says "greater good" I tend to think of the two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. I think or Aztecs sacrificing someone to appease an angry god so the rest can have prosperity. (keeping in mind the intent not the objective reality of course, in which I severely doubt sacrificing people had any effect on anything other than the general level of fear among the populace and head count) Something like slavery also comes to mind, where the minority is forced into labor for "the greater good".

Now, I doubt this is what you are intentionally proposing. But I dont really know what you *are proposing.

You also mention progress... progress towards what, specifically? I find things like a general sense of "betterness" are not particularly good metrics to anchor policy making to.

As for privatized gains and socialized losses.... well obviously I find that completely abhorrent. But I think thats really a side-issue here, that is the type of thing that happens in a broken system. The question at hand, is *how to create a system that is not broken.

But if "greater good" is something to be used as a standard, then it needs to be clear and quantified in absolute terms.