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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The benefits of co-operation mean the real trade-off is 1 million split five ways versus 100 to me. This was almost untrue in the age of conquest. It became barely true with industrialisation. It's massively true in the information age. The problem here is that it's true of specific things, not specific epochs. If all the government did was collect 5% in taxes from everyone and use the money to prosecute murders and maintain bridges then the result would be a huge net positive. Meanwhile in reality the government takes billions of dollars from ordinary people and gives it to the likes of Lockheed, Oracle and Microsoft. For the amount of money the US government pays Microsoft for Office subscriptions and the like, it could pay to have an office suite developed and released into the public domain many times over. Instead it uses the incumbent, in turn requiring others to do so in order to have formats compatible with the what the government uses. Who benefits from this other than Microsoft? |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | > it's true of specific things, not specific epochs It's true of all epochs. If it isn't in the indivdual interest of most people in a society to continue participating it, at a certain point, they don't. > If all the government did was collect 5% in taxes from everyone and use the money to prosecute murders and maintain bridges then the result would be a huge net positive Most people obviously disagree. And for obvious reason. If you're my neighbouring sovereign doing this shtick, I can invade and extract a premium. |
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| ▲ | asdf88990 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Exploitation always provides better ROI than co-operation. Not only is this demonstrated throughout human history but holds true to this day. Go ahead and show me a more profitable industry than diamonds or anything that runs on exploitation even to this day. |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Exploitation always provides better ROI than co-operation This is constructed nonsense. Literally upheld by the competitiveness of maritime republics over their neighbourhing land powers. | | |
| ▲ | asdf88990 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | “Maritime Republics” that issued letters of marque for privateers to attack and pillage enemy trade ships? Talk about nonsense. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | > “Maritime Republics” that issued letters of marque for privateers to attack and pillage enemy trade ships? Straw man. You said "exploitation always provides better ROI than co-operation." [EDIT: Deleted. Unsure if this is a troll account.] |
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| ▲ | asdf88990 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| How do you come up with this math? > The benefits of co-operation mean the real trade-off is 1 million split five ways versus 100 to me. |
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