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[Nikov]

I am surprised how many people think by the power of their intellect alone they can organize a greater society for the teeming billions of the world if only they would obey their superior wisdom. I wonder what happened to the idea of self-governance and people being free to make their own choices in life without some moral busybody telling them what's fair to everyone else.

Norseman, hillariously, if a rich man wasted a billion dollars to hire ten thousand miners to dig a hole? You just gave ten thousand people 100,000 dollars. Plus, since the rich man doesn't profit from the hole, he won't suffer one of your nonsensical reasons to be taxed. Whereas building that solar plant, he'd be taxed for greedily stealing people's money by charging 12 cents for sunlight (the sun belongs to everyone, doesn't it?) and probably get an enviromental impact tax for displacing some critter.

... Dear GOD, did you just suggest rich people building a factory to greedily enslave workers for their own profit might be better for society than giving ten thousand people 100,000 dollars? You said earlier you should tax people for investing, polluting and using land. What incentive do they even have to build a factory? The ability to make more money without working only to have it be taken away by the state yet again?

Let the rich people take their money and do whatever they want with it. Its not my money, its not your money, its theirs. They're smart people more than half the time and they'll figure out something to do with it. And even if they leave it in a bank, the bank will invest it for them. That's right. Your mortgage? Some rich guy's money, improving your life by letting you borrow money to buy a home. That greedy bastard, lets punish him.

[Norseman]

I am surprised how many people think by the power of their intellect alone they can organize a greater society for the teeming billions of the world if only they would obey their superior wisdom. I wonder what happened to the idea of self-governance and people being free to make their own choices in life without some moral busybody telling them what's fair to everyone else.

Me: I hope you don't mind if I just hook my industrial waste line into your back yard.
You: That's not fair!
Me: Don't whine about fairness to me. I don't need some moral busybody telling me what's fair.

If you really think being fair to other people doesn't matter, you should come visit China sometime. Want to know why the sky is blue? Because American factories left the US to avoid taxes on pollution and to get cheap labor. Here in China, it's like nuclear winter all year long. A good day is when you can see clouds, or anything other than usual gray. Your water is (relatively) safe to drink because factories are not allowed to dump raw industrial waste directly into rivers and groundwater supplies. Your homes are not covered in graffiti because the police decided that it's not fair to you. People don't regularly die in mining accidents because the Bureau of Labor decided that it wasn't fair to the workers. Your food is safe to eat because the FDA decided it wasn't fair to sell people poisonous food without telling them about it. Your advertisements on TV don't blatantly lie because the FCC decided that wasn't fair.

Fairness is extremely important. If you still want to argue otherwise, I think you need to pay me a visit.

I'm not going to reply to the rest of this.

[Gantolandon]

If a rich man builds a mansion, how many carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers, roofers, carpetlayers, painters and laborers now have a job to do? And how many factory workers making all those materials now have a job to do? And how many local restraunts now have customers to serve lunch to? And how many ways does that 'wasteful spending' give people a productive day's work two, three, four degrees of separation from the 'wasteful' house?

Someone else would have this money (probably the government, if we are still talking about taxes) and spent it instead of him. It's not that the construction worker gets much more money building a mansion instead of four small houses. His boss probably does, but his employees are still getting the same crappy salaty. It's not a difference for them.

Do you just not approve of how they are spending money? If they aren't spending money on your pet ideals they should be punished by the state? And how do you try and pass that off as fair? It strikes me that you think fairness has to do with 'damaging society', even though I've never heard someone call a farmer ( who cuts trees, uses huge amounts of land, pollutes groundwater with runoff and makes money by having his business profit) 'damaging to society'.

Nonsense. Farmer produces food, which is essential to the society, as opposed to plastic trinkets. Almost every major revolution started when the food prices have risen sharply. This is something that no one really wants.

I am surprised how many people think by the power of their intellect alone they can organize a greater society for the teeming billions of the world if only they would obey their superior wisdom. I wonder what happened to the idea of self-governance and people being free to make their own choices in life without some moral busybody telling them what's fair to everyone else.

Dead and buried after the crisis, I hope. It shall not be mourned. People should NOT be free to make choices which fuck up everyone else in the process. Especially if they are not the ones who will suffer the consequences, but someone else.

Norseman, hillariously, if a rich man wasted a billion dollars to hire ten thousand miners to dig a hole? You just gave ten thousand people 100,000 dollars. Plus, since the rich man doesn't profit from the hole, he won't suffer one of your nonsensical reasons to be taxed. Whereas building that solar plant, he'd be taxed for greedily stealing people's money by charging 12 cents for sunlight (the sun belongs to everyone, doesn't it?) and probably get an enviromental impact tax for displacing some critter.

Please give your strawmen at least tenous resemblance to an alive person, otherwise I don't think anyone will want to discuss them with you.

[malimbar04]

And I don't understand. Why should a luxury car be taxed higher than a cheap car? That just makes luxury cars more expensive to the consumer and discourages high-quality vehicles on the road. Why do you honestly want to push middle-income drivers away from getting a high-quality, reliable and safe automobile, that they could otherwise afford, because you slapped a 25% 'luxury' tax on the good cars? What good does that possibly do to society aside from punishing rich people, or whatever nonsense you might use. And did you consider the factory worker assembling Lexus cars, working his way up the rest of the company's models until he got the high-paying, high-skill job on the luxury car lines? Do you really want to tax his factory out of a profit and get him laid off?

The problem is, that argument crumbles to sand when you attach real numbers to things.  For example: A car that already costs $600,000 is only going to be bought by the fabulously wealthy, why not gouge them for another hundred grand?  Someone who'd buy it at $600k would still buy it at $700k, and you've just generated more tax revenue than a few dozen minimum wage earners.

While that sounds good in theory, I don't think it's true. Do you have a source to confirm? If you do, we could lay it to rest.

Why does this argument that taxing the wealthy will make them spend less, and therefor make everyone poorer?  Purchases by the wealthy do not generate industry.  A million more $30k cars are sold than $600k cars.  Heck, we don't even need to analyze the theory.  Taxes have been dropping for incomes over $250k, and incomes from investments especially, since 1980 at a much faster rate than taxes on lower, wage-based incomes.  The result has been stagnant wages and a shrinking economy, while the top 2% of income earners accumulate an ever larger percentage of wealth.  You can argue about theory all day long, the cold hard reality is we've already been throwing money at the already-wealthy for thirty years, and this shitty economy is the result.

I originally thought your problem was when you started measuring, as even measuring since 1950 is too short of a time to analyze the effect of taxes. But then I looked at wolfram alpha, and it's just plain wrong. Wages have not been stagnant since 1980. Check it out here:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=average+wages+since+1980

[malimbar04]

I am surprised how many people think by the power of their intellect alone they can organize a greater society for the teeming billions of the world if only they would obey their superior wisdom. I wonder what happened to the idea of self-governance and people being free to make their own choices in life without some moral busybody telling them what's fair to everyone else.

Me: I hope you don't mind if I just hook my industrial waste line into your back yard.
You: That's not fair!
Me: Don't whine about fairness to me. I don't need some moral busybody telling me what's fair.

If you really think being fair to other people doesn't matter, you should come visit China sometime. Want to know why the sky is blue? Because American factories left the US to avoid taxes on pollution and to get cheap labor. Here in China, it's like nuclear winter all year long. A good day is when you can see clouds, or anything other than usual gray. Your water is (relatively) safe to drink because factories are not allowed to dump raw industrial waste directly into rivers and groundwater supplies. Your homes are not covered in graffiti because the police decided that it's not fair to you. People don't regularly die in mining accidents because the Bureau of Labor decided that it wasn't fair to the workers. Your food is safe to eat because the FDA decided it wasn't fair to sell people poisonous food without telling them about it. Your advertisements on TV don't blatantly lie because the FCC decided that wasn't fair.

Fairness is extremely important. If you still want to argue otherwise, I think you need to pay me a visit.

I'm not going to reply to the rest of this.

Now that was not a very honest characterization of what he said. To stop him from putting an industrial waste line into your backyard, make a law that forbids him from doing so. That has absolutely nothing to do with taxes. Hey, even better, figure out a system that makes it more worthwhile to use an alternative. Perhaps we force companies to pay for cleanup, or perhaps we invent a newer technology that makes the old one obsolete. Think in terms of inventing compact florescent lights, rather than taxing or fining those that use incandescent light bulbs.

I am surprised how many people think by the power of their intellect alone they can organize a greater society for the teeming billions of the world if only they would obey their superior wisdom. I wonder what happened to the idea of self-governance and people being free to make their own choices in life without some moral busybody telling them what's fair to everyone else.

I wonder how much this has to do with video games. In dwarf fortress we can be far smarter than the thousands or millions of dwarves and humans and elves. It's easy to forget what its' like when dealing with people who are smarter than us. Of course, most people are dumber than us as well, depending on the topic at hand.

Anyways, just because we can't make a very good totalitarian society doesn't mean we can't make a far better one than we have today. By exchanging ideas, persuading others, and thinking heavily, I think it would be possible to design a government that is more tolerant, flexible, and controlled by the citizens than the governments currently in use.

So back to one of my original questions, how do we limit government? Government often becomes beyond the control of a single vote among millions. How could we set it up so that minority opinions are protected, while still being capable enough to get laws passed?

[Phmcw]

Well, that's a good question. But I disagree with Nikov (obviously), a government should manage the basics function of societies (like does our government ): social care, health-care, education, infrastructure, security, army ; The reason being that those strategic function should stay under the authority of the peoples. Afterward, I don't really mind the way you tax, as long as it doesn't cripple the economy.

[malimbar04]

Well, that's a good question. But I disagree with Nikov (obviously), a government should manage the basics function of societies (like does our government ): social care, health-care, education, infrastructure, security, army ; The reason being that those strategic function should stay under the authority of the peoples. Afterward, I don't really mind the way you tax, as long as it doesn't cripple the economy.

Sweet progress! I love the smell.

I think those things being under the control of "the people" is a good thing. The follow up question though, is what government accurately displays the will of the people?

[ECrownofFire]

Well, that's a good question. But I disagree with Nikov (obviously), a government should manage the basics function of societies (like does our government ): social care, health-care, education, infrastructure, security, army ; The reason being that those strategic function should stay under the authority of the peoples. Afterward, I don't really mind the way you tax, as long as it doesn't cripple the economy.

Sweet progress! I love the smell.

I think those things being under the control of "the people" is a good thing. The follow up question though, is what government accurately displays the will of the people?

Democracy, the will of the majority. A republic, the will of a few elected leaders. An oligarchy, the will of a few non-elected leaders. A monarchy, the will of a single person, or bloodline. So the only true answer to that is anarchy. And good luck getting THAT to work

[Norseman]

I originally thought your problem was when you started measuring, as even measuring since 1950 is too short of a time to analyze the effect of taxes. But then I looked at wolfram alpha, and it's just plain wrong. Wages have not been stagnant since 1980. Check it out here:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=average+wages+since+1980

Wolfram Alpha is not adjusting for inflation in that graph. (Bureau of Labor inflation calculator) When you adjust for inflation, the average wage of $34,000 in 2001 would have the same purchasing power as $41,100 in 2009. That graph looks like it reached $43,500 in 2009. The average wage, measured by the purchasing power of 2009 dollars, only increased $1,400/year in 8 years.

Now that was not a very honest characterization of what he said. To stop him from putting an industrial waste line into your backyard, make a law that forbids him from doing so. That has absolutely nothing to do with taxes. Hey, even better, figure out a system that makes it more worthwhile to use an alternative. Perhaps we force companies to pay for cleanup, or perhaps we invent a newer technology that makes the old one obsolete. Think in terms of inventing compact florescent lights, rather than taxing or fining those that use incandescent light bulbs.

You've made my point for me. My entire point is that when someone causes damage, they should be obliged to fix it. If I pump sewage into your backyard, I have to pay for it. If I turn the sky black with smoke, and make you sick, I have to pay for it. As a responsible person, I should clean up after myself, and if I don't do it, I should pay for someone else to clean up after me. If I refuse to do that, I shouldn't be allowed to make messes in the first place.

For example, we could have taxed incandescent light bulbs, and used the money to develop fluorescent lights. We can tax coal and oil, and use the money to develop renewable and clean energy sources.

I think the example I used is perfectly fair because I recently had a neighbor build a new home on top of the apartment building I'm living in. This is totally okay in China. It's probably illegal, but the police don't care, so it doesn't matter. I think it's fair because the water I drink is so full of pollutants that I need to replace my water filter every month because it gets clogged. If I had a backyard, I'm absolutely certain that people would be throwing their trash, including leftover cement, paint, and used oil into it. It happens everywhere here. People just do not care, and they treat the ground like a giant trash can. It's just one step further to adding a pipe and pumping it in from a factory. Based on what he's said, he would love to live in China.

You can smoke in buildings. Children can buy alcohol and cigarettes, and they can smoke and drink, though they usually don't. You can pee on the street and nobody cares. There are places where you need to walk on the road because the sidewalk is too smelly. You can refuse to slow down when someone wants to cross the street. You can drive on the wrong side of the road. I was nearly run over by a bus driving on the wrong side of the road while I walked across a crosswalk. You can drive drunk (or you could, but I heard they started cracking down on that). It's a right-libertarian's paradise, there's no moral busybodies to tell you what to do.

So back to one of my original questions, how do we limit government? Government often becomes beyond the control of a single vote among millions. How could we set it up so that minority opinions are protected, while still being capable enough to get laws passed?

I think the best way to limit the government is to make it opt-in. Something like a combination of the police system of the Icelandic commonwealth, the economic system of the CNT-FAI of Spain, and the court system of the Athenian democracy. You choose the police force you want. If you like, you can start your own police force. Everyone has equal rights, police are the same as everyone else except for how they make a living.

Economically, the country would be founded on federations of unions. You can choose what union you want to join, or if you want to join one at all, or if you want to start your own. The federations would deal with currency, banking, investment, taxes, and so forth.

Where there is a disagreement between two parties, you could always fall back on the Athenian-style court system I described earlier.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The way to deal with the problem you've stated is actually fairly simple. You only need to have one legal principle - harm to society should be taxed, and should be taxed promptly. Allow companies and people to settle out of court, and encourage it. Let anyone take a company or person to court for causing harm to them or society at large, and have the government hire investigators to watch out for those situations where the harm is difficult to spot and potentially huge. Have a big jury, maybe 300-500 people to make sure you have a fairly representative sample of the population. Allow the jury to vote on whether someone or some company is causing harm to society and not adequately compensating for it in taxes, philanthropy, community service or whatever. If so, allow the prosecutor to propose one fine (or other form of compensation), and allow the defendant to make a counter-offer. Let the jury vote on which offer they prefer.

In this way, the prosecutor and the defendant will have to come to a compromise. If the prosecutor is unreasonable, the jury won't agree so easily, unless the defendant is even more unreasonable. They will both have to come as close as they can to an acceptable form of compensation for the defendant to repay society.

The defendant should have to pay the court fees according to the percentage of the jury that voted against him. If 90% of the jury say he's guilty, then he pays 90% of the court fees (not including any fees for lawyers). Likewise, the prosecutor pays court fees according to how much of the court thinks the defendant is innocent, so, in the above example, the prosecutor would pay 10% of the court fees. This encourages both parties to keep the trial short, and to settle out of court, or go to a third-party court if they can.

You could also add on a limit where defendants or prosecutors don't need to pay. For example, if 25% or less of the jury say the defendant is guilty, the prosecutor pays for everything. If 75% or more say the defendant is guilty, then the defendant pays for everything.

It would essentially mean that, provided no one else is bothered by you, you could do whatever you want. If other people are bothered, you'd still be able to fall back on a trial by jury, and any compensation you would have to provide would be arrived at through compromise.

[malimbar04]

I think the example I used is perfectly fair because I recently had a neighbor build a new home on top of the apartment building I'm living in. This is totally okay in China. It's probably illegal, but the police don't care, so it doesn't matter. I think it's fair because the water I drink is so full of pollutants that I need to replace my water filter every month because it gets clogged. If I had a backyard, I'm absolutely certain that people would be throwing their trash, including leftover cement, paint, and used oil into it. It happens everywhere here. People just do not care, and they treat the ground like a giant trash can. It's just one step further to adding a pipe and pumping it in from a factory. Based on what he's said, he would love to live in China.

You can smoke in buildings. Children can buy alcohol and cigarettes, and they can smoke and drink, though they usually don't. You can pee on the street and nobody cares. There are places where you need to walk on the road because the sidewalk is too smelly. You can refuse to slow down when someone wants to cross the street. You can drive on the wrong side of the road. I was nearly run over by a bus driving on the wrong side of the road while I walked across a crosswalk. You can drive drunk (or you could, but I heard they started cracking down on that). It's a right-libertarian's paradise, there's no moral busybodies to tell you what to do.

Before I address the rest of this... you do know that china is communistic? You know that they tax the heaviest (people are given equal wages regardless of the value of their work), have the strictest social engineering programs, and so forth? They are second I think only to North Korea for how much the government controls the people.

[Tellemurius]

I think the example I used is perfectly fair because I recently had a neighbor build a new home on top of the apartment building I'm living in. This is totally okay in China. It's probably illegal, but the police don't care, so it doesn't matter. I think it's fair because the water I drink is so full of pollutants that I need to replace my water filter every month because it gets clogged. If I had a backyard, I'm absolutely certain that people would be throwing their trash, including leftover cement, paint, and used oil into it. It happens everywhere here. People just do not care, and they treat the ground like a giant trash can. It's just one step further to adding a pipe and pumping it in from a factory. Based on what he's said, he would love to live in China.

You can smoke in buildings. Children can buy alcohol and cigarettes, and they can smoke and drink, though they usually don't. You can pee on the street and nobody cares. There are places where you need to walk on the road because the sidewalk is too smelly. You can refuse to slow down when someone wants to cross the street. You can drive on the wrong side of the road. I was nearly run over by a bus driving on the wrong side of the road while I walked across a crosswalk. You can drive drunk (or you could, but I heard they started cracking down on that). It's a right-libertarian's paradise, there's no moral busybodies to tell you what to do.

Before I address the rest of this... you do know that china is communistic? You know that they tax the heaviest (people are given equal wages regardless of the value of their work), have the strictest social engineering programs, and so forth? They are second I think only to North Korea for how much the government controls the people.

Thats Totalitarian....
China is A Consumerist Communism country because they do have large needs and deal with the capitalist needs with communistic approaches ie. state factories and others.

[Phmcw]

Well, that's a good question. But I disagree with Nikov (obviously), a government should manage the basics function of societies (like does our government ): social care, health-care, education, infrastructure, security, army ; The reason being that those strategic function should stay under the authority of the peoples. Afterward, I don't really mind the way you tax, as long as it doesn't cripple the economy.

Sweet progress! I love the smell.

I think those things being under the control of "the people" is a good thing. The follow up question though, is what government accurately displays the will of the people?

I dunno. I know, however, that if someone tell me not to bother, that market will regulate all and that you don't need a pesky government , he's either a fool or trying to fool me. That count for anarchist, for libertarian and for republicans.

[ECrownofFire]

Well, that's a good question. But I disagree with Nikov (obviously), a government should manage the basics function of societies (like does our government ): social care, health-care, education, infrastructure, security, army ; The reason being that those strategic function should stay under the authority of the peoples. Afterward, I don't really mind the way you tax, as long as it doesn't cripple the economy.

Sweet progress! I love the smell.

I think those things being under the control of "the people" is a good thing. The follow up question though, is what government accurately displays the will of the people?

I dunno. I know, however, that if someone tell me not to bother, that market will regulate all and that you don't need a pesky government , he's either a fool or trying to fool me. That count for anarchist, for libertarian and for republicans.

Market will regulate itself? Hehe, yeah, right. Have fun with your monopolies, laissez-faire.

[Norseman]

Before I address the rest of this... you do know that china is communistic?

Not since the 1970s.

You know that they tax the heaviest (people are given equal wages regardless of the value of their work), have the strictest social engineering programs, and so forth?

This is outrageously false. See here for tax rates. China's corporate tax rate is lower than the US's corporate tax rate, although China's minimum and maximum individual tax rates are higher than the US. There is an enormous amount of tax evasion though. The United States collects 28% of its GDP in taxes, while China collects only 17% of its GDP in taxes. See List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP.

People are not given equal wages. Not even slightly. Even people working in the government get different wages. Your conception of Chinese wages is outdated by about 60 years, and even then that's not entirely correct.

The strictness of social engineering programs is debatable. News is strictly censored, and protests are only allowed with the government's permission. The internet is censored, you can't see facebook, wikileaks, or youtube, etc. However, I think countries like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates are much stricter socially than China. For example, you're probably thinking of the one child policy. Mostly, you can pay a fine and you can have two children. There's also a new policy to allow parents who are both single-children to have two children. Many of the ethnic minorities are also exempted from the one-child policy. It's not nearly as strict as I expected before I came here.

They are second I think only to North Korea for how much the government controls the people.

Yeah, that's a pretty common opinion in the US, and when it comes to anything anti-government or rebellious, that's a pretty accurate assessment. For generally anti-social behavior though, it's not so strict. China is not like Nazi Germany. In my opinion, China is more like what the US would be like if we had anti-gun pro-choice Republicans and pro-censorship Democrats running the country.

[Nikov]

Well, that's a good question. But I disagree with Nikov (obviously), a government should manage the basics function of societies (like does our government ): social care _{work and employment programs}, health-care _{for veterans, the disabled, and pregnancy/birth assistance}, education _{vouchers with choices between public or private schooling}, _public^infrastructure, security, army _{and navy and air force with a standing draft};

Shake?

Norse, if you're dumping toxic waste in the river, everyone downstream would just sue you. Unless you were obeying the government regulations. Then you've got a cover to duck behind.

Now that was not a very honest characterization of what he said.

A dollar for every time this happens to me and I'll be one of those rich fat money-in-a-grain-silo bastards you all hate so very, very much.

I think the best way to limit the government is to make it opt-in. Something like a combination of the police system of the Icelandic commonwealth, the economic system of the CNT-FAI of Spain, and the court system of the Athenian democracy.

Its hillarious and probably not relevant, but isn't every one of these countries living off cash infusions from Germany, or under serious consideration for a bailing out?