Tag: government

Abolish the Department of Transportation

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Countries that have turned over air traffic control operations to separate nonprofit corporations are able to buy and deploy new technology as it becomes available. The FAA’s technological procurements must go through the slow-grinding federal budget process. While air traffic controllers in the U.K., Canada, and Germany are using satellite guidance, digital communications, and remote centers to guide planes, U.S. controllers are stuck using ground radar and radio communications. That’s despite the FAA spending billions on modernization.”

https://reason.com/2024/11/14/abolish-the-department-of-transportation/

Abolish FOIA

Posted on by Lone Candle

“What would be better than FOIA?
An employee of a federal agency, who was sick of constantly having her email searched for records requests, once floated the idea to me of proactive disclosure: Just redact and release everyone’s emails on a rolling basis.”

https://reason.com/2024/11/14/abolish-foia/

France’s government just collapsed. What does that actually mean?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“France’s government collapsed Wednesday following a vote of no confidence in the country’s prime minister, pushing the country’s political future into chaos and exacerbating its budgetary and looming economic crises.
The successful vote means center-right Prime Minister Michel Barnier will be out of a job, and that French President Emmanuel Macron will need to find someone to replace him. That’s not expected to be an easy task: While the president nominates prime ministers in France, his picks can be ousted at any time by no confidence votes, like Barnier was. And the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament, is almost evenly divided between the far right, a loosely united and contentious left wing, and centrists including Macron’s allies. Few candidates will please all three factions.

Disagreement about who should be prime minister following surprise elections this past summer led to Barnier’s rise. He was seen as a capable, if not popular, choice for the job, and won enough approval to win the prime minister’s post. But he faced a significant challenge of trying to govern without a majority. His recent attempt to push through a 2025 national budget without a vote in the lower house of parliament infuriated lawmakers on both the right and left. As a result, France’s far-right party and its left-wing alliance each put forward no-confidence motions.

Now, France is stuck. Without a prime minister, the government’s ability to pass laws is hampered. In the long term, Barnier’s removal could deepen France’s ongoing budget crisis and is a reflection of an unprecedented polarization in French politics, for which a solution seems far out of reach.”

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/389827/france-government-collapse-budget-economic-crisis-bernier-macron-le-pen

Crisis in Venezuela – Maduro’s ongoing power struggle | DW Documentary

Posted on by Lone Candle

Venezuela was almost removed from power, but he survived and then was able to sell more oil thanks to the Americans wanting more oil on the market to counter the scarcity caused by the Ukraine war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6jdF6e0hLc

DOGE Can Succeed by Scaling Back Its Ambitions

Posted on by Lone Candle

“is DOGE doomed to fail? Not if its architects take a more realistic approach to cutting government. Fundamental reform of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will require delicate, bipartisan negotiations that are already taking place within parts of Congress. Senate Democrats will not back down from filibustering a partisan GOP Social Security plan just because Musk and Ramaswamy recommended it in a report. Nor will Congress suddenly drop its longstanding opposition to eliminating entire federal departments.

Republicans need to stop overpromising and underdelivering on federal budget policy. Congressional Republicans unrealistically promise to balance the budget within a decade while not even attempting to pass any actual legislation slowing the growth of spending. Musk promises to zero out one-third of federal spending, and Ramaswamy pledges to fire three-quarters of federal employees. It’s all bluster to compensate for ultimately doing nothing.”

https://reason.com/2024/11/21/doge-can-succeed-by-scaling-back-its-ambitions/

No Prosperity Without Economic and Political Liberty

Posted on by Lone Candle

“”Every set of extractive institutions is extractive in its own way, while all sets of inclusive institutions are inclusive in pretty much the same way. For example, ancient Rome ran on slavery; Russia on serfdom, Imperial China strictly limited domestic and foreign commerce; India depended upon hereditary castes; the Ottoman Empire relied on tax farming; Spanish colonies on indigenous labor levies; sub-Saharan Africa on slavery; the American South on slavery and later a form of racial apartheid not all that unlike South Africa’s; and the Soviet Union on collectivized labor and capital. The details of extraction differ but the institutions are organized to chiefly benefit elites.

So why don’t extractive elites encourage economic growth? After all, growth would mean more wealth for them to loot. Acemoglu and Robinson show that the institutions that produce economic growth are inevitable threats to the power of reigning elites. The “key idea” of their theory: “The fear of creative destruction is the main reason why there was no sustained increase in living standards between the Neolithic and Industrial revolutions. Technological innovation makes human societies prosperous, but also involves the replacement of the old with the new, and the destruction of the economic privileges and political power of certain people.” Thus throughout history reactionary elites naturally resisted innovation because of their accurate fear that it would produce rivals for their power.””

https://reason.com/2024/10/17/no-prosperity-without-economic-and-political-liberty/