The Exponent Problem, by Robert Gore

Posted by straightlinelogic 6 years, 1 month ago to Government
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Why do governments fail? Government is someone imposing rules on someone else, and backing them up with repression, fraud, and violence when necessary. The governed always outnumber those governing, which means the latter face the exponent problem. In the US, there are around 22 million employed by the government, and let’s add in another million who actively influence the government. The US population is around 323 million, so there is 23 million rulers to 300 million ruled, or about 13 ruled per ruler. How fitting, like the 13 original colonies!

This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
SOURCE URL: https://straightlinelogic.com/2018/02/24/the-exponent-problem-by-robert-gore/


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  • Posted by Lucky 6 years, 1 month ago
    The exponent problem is presented as a hypothesis with no evidence or
    justification.
    A more plausible hypothesis is that administrative complexity follows a
    logarithmic law with declining complexity per unit of size.
    Consider the example of the industrial revolution. Compared with previous
    economic activity there was big investment up front, very big use of labor and
    materials, and very large production.
    The result was a vast reduction of per unit costs.
    There is no exponent problem.
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    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 1 month ago
      Yes, the statist problem we face today in a mixed society of part freedom and part controls is due to the degree of ideas of altruism, collectivism and irrationalism driving government policy and popularly accepted in society. That is why government is failing us.

      Ayn Rand did not think or write in terms of superficial numerical laws arbitrarily pronounced along with arbitrary numbers, all of which is no better than numerology and which does not address the nature of the decline of this country. Our rights are based on the requirement that the individual use his reason to choose and act for his values in freedom in order to live, which may be squelched whether one or ten bureaucrats are doing it. There is no such thing as an "exponent problem" explaining this. You are free to think and live for yourself or not; it's not about bureaucratic complexity. The level of totalitarianism, when it gets to that, is only a matter of degree. "It's complicated" is not the essence.

      Living in freedom and thinking for yourself is the moral-practical way; it is conservatives who argue that we should have economic freedom because economic decisions are too complicated for government -- as if that would be ok if government could find a way to make effective economic decisions, doing our thinking for us. And with their acceptance of altruism in ethics, they have no concept of the morality of individual choices and thinking for oneself, only morality as one relates to others.

      Government does mean "ruling" us: protecting our rights, to the extent that we still have that in the mixture with statism, is not a form of "rule" over people. Neither is the time-varying statist impact uniform across the population. How the statism affects each of us as individuals depends on what we are doing in our lives as individuals and the nature and extent of the policies affecting that, not arbitrary averages counting "rulers" and "ruled" pretending to measure the complexity.

      Political freedom depends on government formed to protect our right to think and act for ourselves as a moral principle, not anarchy or a-philosophical libertarian anti-government slogans blaming our problems on arbitrary numbers and a pseudo-scientific alleged "exponent problem" arbitrarily claimed to measure an undefined mathematical complexity -- while ignoring the requirement to think and act for yourself and the intellectual causes of the course of a nation.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 1 month ago
      The exponent problem plagues governments because they are trying to run people's lives, using coercive force. The way around the exponent problem, as I said in my article, is to allow people to run their own lives, i.e. freedom and its concomittant--capitalism. As you note, private, voluntary, market-driven systems can be amazingly complex and self-sustaining. I won't go into all the ways that voluntary interaction is superior, more adaptive, and a far better means of dealing with reality than command and control; it would take books. However, you've got a handle on it and you are right, in such systems there is no exponent problem.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 6 years, 1 month ago
    Ah Ha!...but rulers rarely, govern their own lives, that's why they are corrupt and perverse and why I call them parasites; and your observation, an adept and brilliant one at that, is why our forefathers didn't give government much to do.
    Governments, as I am sure you know, are only good at one thing...initiatory force so the only valid purpose for government is protection only.

    Unfortunately, government has taken that to a whole new level and your "Exponent" has exponentially expanded beyond imagined mathematical limits...
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 1 month ago
      Yeah, our forefathers didn't give government much to do because they set up We The People to be our own rulers.
      But, gee, what an antiquated horse and buggy days concept that has become! Just ask King Barry, Crying Chucky or $hillary The Evil Hag.
      Or any ole' corrupt for a craven career RINO in The Swamp for that matter.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 6 years, 1 month ago
    Human behavior being what it is, should a revolution occur due to government oppression, the picture would be complex, not a simple game of numbers. Using the original American revolution as an example, the game stacks up as follows: less than one third of the populace would be revolutionaries (including many military personnel, who would bring some of the high tech systems with them); about one third would side with the government, though many would be useless in a fight; the remaining third would try to stay out of the fight, and just try to survive. Not exponents, but fractions.
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  • Posted by chad 6 years, 1 month ago
    Dissection of the exponent problem demonstrates that it is impossible for a centrally planned economy or state to work it won't stop them from trying. The bureaucrats really believe they can change the world by deciding what is the best for others and justify their job by trying to prove it true, they will even believe the lies when they can observe the failures of their efforts.
    The leaders at the top are employing them to make slaves of all the rest, the leaders have no illusion that it won't work for the individual their goal is to make it work to enslave and enrich themselves at the expense of others. What makes this conspiracy work is that only a few at the very top will be involved in the conspiracy while employing the millions who when ordered will kill their fellow countrymen to ensure that 'the law' is obeyed and that we all have 'free health care, schools, hospitals & etc., believing that society is better off because of the work of the minions enforcing the law and even creating more regulations to ensure its application.
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    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 1 month ago
      They power seekers at the top believe their own collectivist and altruist propaganda and pursue it openly, believing they deserve their positions because of it. For all the insider conniving politics and government agencies, "conspiracy" for power does not explain the source of the national trend towards statism and its general acceptance.

      It would be interesting to put an Obama, Clinton, Trump, McConnell, Ryan, et all on the couch under the influence of a big dose of truth serum to find out what is driving each of them individually. Atlas Shrugged describes the general mentality.
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      • Posted by chad 6 years, 1 month ago
        While I think many at the top believe in their collectivist ideas for the common man very few want to participate in those ideals and leave themselves out of it. Reminds me of when John Denver was questioned about his desire to control how people lived and traveled while he had his own private jet, his response was that; "He had an important message to give to those who would live by his standards and it was important for him to travel in luxury so that he could deliver the message." Some animals are more equal than others :). While they believe it is good for 'the common man' it is also important that they don't have to live by those rules.
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        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 1 month ago
          Most of them don't want to live under the restrictions but view their own privileges and power as well within the rules and the ideals. There are no objective rules under collectivist ideals. There ideals are so detached from reality that it's hard to accuse most of them of direct hypocrisy. Every act of altruism has a recipient and every dictatorship has a ruler.
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  • Posted by CaptainKirk 6 years, 1 month ago
    Government is supposed to be the codification and protection of the accepted norms and social mores agreed upon by a group of people.

    It's a 2 fold acceptance. We accept that what we have is worth keeping, and that others may want to challenge that. We must define it and defend it.

    The LEFT, for their part have attacked it's foundation. They have changed the definitions of everything from Immigrant, to marriage to gender, to rights, to "Justice" to Violence and to Speech.

    Then, they have attacked the ability to DEFEND what it means to be American as:
    - Racist
    - Xenophobic
    - Wrong-headed
    - Intolerant

    and also weakend our ability to defend our country. New standards for Rangers so Women can make the team. Now taking Transgender people in the military, or those who want the surgery in the future, with government benefits. (I don't have a problem with Women as long as we don't lower the standard we had set forever, and the issue with Transgender people is that I don't believe they are there for the right reasons, and I believe it does NOT make our military stronger, which is the real litmus test)

    It's all theatre now...

    BTW, I used to believe that there were 535 people with the ultimate power, and that you could just wipe them out in some kind of massacre. But the realization is that the DEEP State exists as an infrastructure for our government. Who we elect would not longer have an effect until the swamp is drained!
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 1 month ago
    These are fun to read for me because they describe the world I know, but with everything turned on its head. I see the nation-state, as we know, in its death throes. When wealth was in land, the king of a city-state could say we need him, to manage things. Religion confirmed his define right and said humans need to stick together, put the tribe ahead of the individual, and share the fixed pie of wealth. Eventually it became nation states with the same protection racket. Geographical barriers and separated people.

    Today this hardly makes sense. Educated people speak English and usually at least one other language. We can read the same papers, easily and cheaply. We frequently travel right over geographic barriers, sometimes collaborating with colleagues as the plane goes near the north pole on the flight from Chicago to Beijing. Value is in firmware and CAD files that can be sent for free instantly anywhere. Passport control and customs are a vestige from another time that we hold onto. So is the notion of US, China, Russia, and other countries all completing to control the world. It's really 7 billion individuals creating more value than could be dreamed possible by previous generations, and the gov'ts of the world hanging on to the protection racket. That cuts both ways. People send a third of their money to the gov't, which comes out to enough money to fund a global empire, and they still have enough for an amazingly affluent life.

    So I see the hypotheses at the end of the article. People create more, and that's more for the nation state to take and control. You hypothesize it might collapse or it might reform. You say it has to collapse first, but I see no reason one has to happen before the other. I obviously want to see it reform. My parents generation wanted to reform the world's institutions. My generation is cynical about the reforms and is more inclined to wiki- and Uber everything. The next generation is carrying that on, but without the cynicism and angst of my generation. I could conceive of the nation state starting to disappear in millennials' lifetime.

    I think seeing everything as a conspiracy is just wrong. I suspect US law enforcement is effective, as human institutions go, and the politicians you mention, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and President Trump, probably didn't do anything illegal--- or at least law enforcement doesn't have evidence to prosecute them for it. People in the gov'ts of the world are playing those complicated chess games you mention, but they know the citizens of the world are creating all the value and politicians can get only so much mileage out of manipulating people's tribal fears of one another.

    The article is an upside down take, fun to read because it's very plausible, logical, and has no stupidity at all; yet it's backwards from what I think is actually happening. Thanks for posting it.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 1 month ago
      I agree with you, "seeing everything as a conspiracy is just wrong." I didn't use the word "conspiracy" in this article. However, I think seeing nothing as a conspiracy, which is, after all, only an agreement among two or more people to commit a crime, is an evasion of reality. I think there are, and have been, a fair number of conspiracies within the federal government.
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      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 1 month ago
        If conspiracy is collaboration between two or more individuals to violate someone's rights, then a lot of these politicians, bureaucrats and NGOs certainly qualify. But there is much more driving it ideologically that is used to rationalize their behavior, much of which is out in the open and overtly political, not just conniving in back rooms. The deliberate conspiracies are not what is driving history.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years ago
        "seeing nothing as a conspiracy [...] is an evasion of reality."
        Yes. The question is the burden of proof for conspiracies. I'm saying the political figures you mention (Obama, Clinton, Trump) are not being prosecuted for crimes probably because they didn't commit them or the authorities can't get the needed evidence, not because of a large conspiracy.

        Theories involving people conspiring against or with President Trump ring false to me because Trump isn't pursuing a consistently radical agenda. Qui bono? It's incredibly self-serving of President Trump to argue he would be doing amazing reforms if it weren't for everyone conspiring against him. The simplest explanation is he craves attention, isn't that into policy details, and he sucks at navigating a huge bureaucracy.

        It would be like if someone said I had done good things for several electronics startups, so now Kimberly Clark (KMB) wants me as a top executive of their paper company. I don't know much about paper, and have only the vague understanding of organizations with tall functional silos rather than matrix-structured, move-fast-break-things tech orgs. So I cannot institute even basic changes at KMB. I get the VPs nodding along, but it doesn't filter down to action at the director, manager, and staff levels. They should send my butt back to the world of smaller tech companies, but instead I say many of the directors and VPs must secretly be working against me because they were had crooked deal with previous managing director for everyone to embezzle from the company. I'm so fricken-awesome and honest that I want to stamp out all that embezzlement cold. Everyone sees my amazing honesty and intolerance of graft is real, so all the crooks work together against me. What a transparently bogus self-serving just-so story to explain the obvious result of me having no experience leading a large silo-structured org in an unfamiliar industry!

        So when I get to the part of the article where Clinton, Obama, and Trump are all committing crimes and using their connections in government to cover them up, it seems plausible but unsubstantiated. Anyone could be in a conspiracy, and certainly some people are, and some of them will be convicted of the crimes. Maybe President Trump knows there's some very damning evidence proving he made a quid pro quo deal with the Russian government to do what they want in exchange for working together with him to spy on his opponents and manipulate Americans, and after that he started doing everything to cover his tracks. Maybe. But I don't see any evidence for it, except him "looking guilty" by opposing the investigation. I think that's actually attention-seeking.

        That's why I call your articles an upside-down take on things. It's exactly opposite of what I suspect is true, but I cannot prove the negative. There could be all kinds of complex machinations going on. Occam's razor means the view with fewer assumptions is probably true, but it doesn't rule out anything.
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    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 1 month ago
      It can't be plausible, logical and without stupidity at the same time it is the opposite of what is happening. Seeing everything as a conspiracy is wrong. 'Conspiracy theorists' are masters of sounding 'plausible' in their rationalizations. The battle between the intellectuals driving us toward collectivism and the American sense of life continuing to produce has progressed for decades. When someone does not understand the nature of the ideas behind it he will look for conspiracies (the 'evil man' theory of history) and/or not see the meaning of basic premises that are so widespread and their consequences.

      The evidence of unconstitutional actions by the Obama administration and blatant illegalities by Clinton is well established, but it isn't the essence behind their statist-collectivist destruction, only a consequence and one of the means of their destruction.

      Trump does not appear to have done anything illegal despite his general lack of understanding, yet the Democrats are so wrapped up in their ideological quest for power that they convinced themselves that they were justified in exploiting government intelligence agencies as a secret police against a political opponent as they continue to try to destroy the Trump presidency by any means possible. None of them are debating fundamental ideas in their intellectual vacuum.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years ago
        I agree with all this EXCEPT for two things:
        1. "intellectuals driving us toward collectivism"
        I see collectivism / statism as the previous human default position, and we're slowly coming out of it. The fact that the gov't has ballooned in size in the past 100 years is concerning, but I hope it's an anomaly. There's reason to be optimistic because in some areas of life I see the average person as more understanding of an individual's right to live her own life and the things she creates. I see collectivism as the primitive way of dealing with things, like physical fighting to resolve disputes. It's natural for humans, not right, and decreasing.

        2. "[Democrats think] they were justified in exploiting government intelligence agencies as a secret police"
        Eventually excessive gov't powers without strong safeguards will be exploited in this way. It's not something peculiar to Democrats. I haven't followed if any particular Democrat or Republican has exploited any particular gov't power, but I know it happens and it's not a partisan thing.
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        • Posted by ewv 6 years ago
          No social system pops out of nothing as a "default". Any social system adopted depends on what people think. Human survival requires the use of reason. People act in accordance with what they think. The "default position" without that effort is death.

          It took thousands of years for mankind to figure out how to organize on any scale at all beyond the local tribe as a means discovered for primitive survival. The discovery of the principles of reason, individualism and the rights of the individual was an intellectual achievement, discovering and implementing with great effort over a long period of time ideas that had not been grasped before. What is "natural" for man is the principles by which he lives up to his potential in accordance with his requirements to live, not what happens when he stops.

          The ancient Greeks made the most early progress towards reason and egoism. It was lost for a thousand years in the west from the rise of acceptance of the ideas of other-worldliness, supernaturalism and mysticism of Christianity, until man once again progressed in the Renaissance and Enlightenment as better ideas were discovered and spread.

          The trend towards collectivism for the past more than 100 years is not an inexplicable anomaly; it is a direct result of the collectivist, altruist, anti-reason of the counter-Enlightenment as those ideas spread and became accepted in how people think. In this country that means Pragmatism and Progressivism, fueled by the more overt philosophical ideas further imported from Europe and now increasingly entrenched here.

          The ideas of welfare statism now accepted by most people (not just "her"), and the increasing resurgence of socialism, are not an improved understanding of the rights of the individual; they are the opposite. Illiberal "liberalism" is not progress. Progressively increasing collectivist government restrictions demanding that we live for others and do as we're told are "physical fighting to resolve disputes" and serve to rationalize it. It is not decreasing. What we accomplish is in spite of it as long as we are still motivated to and allowed to, and fewer people want to. The sense of life that used to be typical of America is being smothered by the spread of more explicit ideas countering it.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years ago
            [Paragraph #2]
            I'm saying the exact same thing, except I'm using "default", maybe a poor choice of words. It's my way of saying that because the discovery of rights of the individual was an intellectual achievement that had not be grasped before. It's my way of saying we can't ask why primitive humans rejected reason and capitalism is an invalid question. They hadn't been discovered yet. Or in my poor choice of words, lack of reason, capitalism, and freedom are the "default position" for humankind.

            "The trend towards collectivism for the past more than 100 years "
            I'm not convinced the trend is happening. I know government has increased, but in other areas that average person understands better that her life is hers than people in the past.

            "statism now accepted by most people (not just "her"), and the increasing resurgence of socialism, are not an improved understanding of the rights of the individual; they are the opposite."
            Isn't this obvious? I mean, if someone's saying statism improves individual rights, I don't understand what we're even talking about.

            "sense of life that used to be typical of America is being smothered"
            I just don't see any of that in the last paragraph. I think people want to live free. I think it can happen in my kids' lifetime. The problems you talk about are totally real, but it seems like you're saying increased statism is grounded in philosophy that's widely supported, and people are condemned to lose touch with reason and individualism. That could happen. That's why I call it the "default position". But things could go the other way, too. I see it my kids. They want to be free. They want to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge and throw off their benevolent caretakers. And good for them. Let them do that, make money, and show their friend's that science, reason, and freedom deliver the goods, get things done. So I agree with what you're saying as a warning-- don't go here. But I'm optimistic we will not because reason delivers the goods.
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years ago
              If you "know that government has increased" then you can't conclude that recognition of the rights of the individual has increased. They are opposites. The widespread "totally real problems" you acknowledge and which several members of this forum have been subjected to are incompatible with a feeling that it's all getting better.

              People who support the rights of the individual do not support and admire Obama, Clinton, Sanders, AlGore, Elizabeth Warren and the statist aspects of Trump on behalf of his "nationalism". Those who who advocate government control and dispensing of medical care, welfare "rights", wage controls, protectionism, more progressive taxes and redistribution, endless borrowing, government takeovers of and more controls over private land, and the all the rest of the progressively increasing statism are not supporting the rights of the individual. Government entitlements sought so that people can feel "free" of the requirements to live in reality and can use government power to pursue their own wishes restricting others are not rights and not individualism. They are FDR's collectivist-statist "Four Freedoms". All of that is on the rise and is increasingly regarded as uncontroversial.

              Those who still have an American sense of life wanting to be politically free and wanting to pursue their own goals with their own minds had better learn how to defend it and stop contradicting themselves in what they support because the educational establishment and the media are spreading the opposite and the politicians that are consequently elected into office are the opposite. "Things" cannot "go the other way" when the population is acting in accordance with false premises. "Showing that science, reason, and freedom deliver the goods" has not stopped the persistent pursuit of collectivism and statism regarded as a moral ideal world wide.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years ago
                "If you "know that government has increased" then you can't conclude that recognition of the rights of the individual has increased. They are opposites."
                They're contrary but not exact opposites. At one time the gov'ts helped people treat one another as property. Changing that is a huge leap forward for individual rights. That doesn't excuse increase of gov't size and intrusiveness. It's just to say there's more to it than gov't size.
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                • Posted by ewv 6 years ago
                  Slavery was eliminated by the Civil War in accordance with the principles on which the country was founded, not by progressively increasing statism contrary to the rights of the individual since the late 19th century.
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        • Posted by ewv 6 years ago
          The contemporary scandal of Democrats exploiting government intelligence agencies as a secret police, particularly with the FBI and the secret FISA court, against Trump as a political opponent is "peculiar to Democrats" and is partisan. For all the "excessive government powers" in US history, the scope, intensity and attempted cover-up of this scandalous Soviet-style secret police, even as they continue to pursue it, sets a new record. It is far more serious than Nixon's bungling burglary operation.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years ago
            "it is "peculiar to Democrats""
            This sounds completely bogus to me, BUT all I care about it rolling back government powers. I don't get a grant, a good word with DoD or NASA contractors, or ANYTHING based on who gets the blame of the scandal de jour. That's someone else's game to play. If shoehorning it into a partisan issue results in action, that's fine with me. I don't think it does though. I think it results a) in jobs for people who depend on political connections and b) people with no stake in the political world getting fired up for reasons completely beyond my understanding (maybe they don't get enough politics at work), but no ACTION, no REFORM.
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years ago
              Using the FBI to spy on and smear a political opponent is "peculiar to Democrats" because they are the ones who did it. It is "partisan" because they did it for partisan motives and were caught, not because of artificial "shoehorning". An incumbent political party employing the tactics of a secret police against its challenger in order to retain power is a new low that is very serious, not just another scandal. A government secret police to maintain power, and the kind of power pursued by Obama and Clinton, cannot be dismissed as "jobs for people with political connections".
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years ago
                Does this lead to a solution to limit the powers?
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                • Posted by ewv 6 years ago
                  No, a political secret police obviously does not lead to a solution to limit government powers. Eliminating it and punishing under the law those who did it would be a step in slowing it down but would not stop the progression towards statism and collectivism. Secrete police should not be dismissed as mere partisan bickering, as urged by apologists for the Democrats who think their crimes are irrelevant because they are entitled to rule as morally and intellectually superior.
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