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Who Are Your True Representatives?

My response was that the quantity of PGOs would determine the tax rate...

If the private sector only ends up supplying A...while the public sector ends up supplying B to Z...then it wouldn't make sense for the tax rate to only be 50%. If the tax rate was 50% then yes...the tax revenue would be thinly spread among many PGOs. But the job of congress would be to set the tax rate so that it accurately reflected the balance of labor between the private and public sectors. That's why I said before...the more things the public sector does...the higher the tax rate should be. We definitely should not put the cart before the horse. What the government does should determine the tax rate...not the other way around.
Ah, now we're back to this. I foresee another math problem, probably one more robust and applicable. But first: Which do you think will have a greater growth rate: PGOs or taxpaying population? PGOs or gross tax revenue?

Let me also hear your thoughts on:
  1. What determines the relative minimum tax obligation of an individual? In other words, what form of tax (income, wealth, property, capital gains, hell, even sales) would be applied to the individual?
  2. Would it be a progressive tax or a flat rate tax? If progressive, in what way?
  3. How are PGOs determined to be no longer needed and scrapped?
  4. Is there any control for PGOs not achieving overhead?
  5. Do you have any thoughts on what the formula for determining the tax rate might look like?
  6. What do you think the maximum viable tax rate should look like? E.g., Is an 80% tax on income actually viable for society?

But liberating taxpayers and reducing waste are the same exact thing.
We established previously that it wasn't. Or at least, we established that it is not necessarily:
One person's trash is another person's treasure. It's really not easy to try and step outside yourself...but it's really necessary if you're going to embrace enough tolerance to allow people to go down the "wrong" path. Because you might actually be the one on the "wrong" path. That's why it's absolutely essential to give people the freedom to spend their own taxes on what they perceive to be substantive. Worst comes to worst...they end up wasting their taxes...but at least they did not waste yours as well.

The fundamental rule of economics is that everybody wants more for less. In our society...we all use our dollars to figuratively vote for the people who give us more for less. Taxpayers are the people who give us more for less. They are the most resourceful / least wasteful people in our society. Because it surely, absolutely and fundamentally wouldn't be logical to give our money to the least resourceful / most wasteful people in our society...which is exactly why we never intentionally do so.

Again, consider how Henry David Thoreau described it..."The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." Why buy the same exact product for more of your life when you could buy it for less of your life? Why needlessly waste your life? If one person produces a product for $100 and another person produces the same exact product for $80...then all things being equal...who do you purchase the product from? Of course you're going to purchase the product from the person who produced the product using less resources...and by doing so...requires less of your life.

Liberating taxpayers would allow our most resourceful / least wasteful citizens to choose which public goods were worth exchanging a portion of their lives for. This would reduce waste far greater than any other option we currently have available to us.
That ignores the desaturation of resources in the public sector; which we're arguing about too, so I'll put this aside for now.

Honestly, a couple times I very very very very unseriously considered sacrificing my own life on Youtube to indicate how strongly I felt about pragmatarianism. Would that cause pragmatarianism to go viral without throwing disposable income at it? Consider the case of Mohamed Bouazizi who set himself on fire to protest how government officials were treating him. Why did I only unseriously contemplate such an extreme measure? Because there's always more than one way to skin a cat. And neither Jesus nor Gandhi nor Socrates nor Buddha got their messages out there by throwing disposable income at it. They certainly threw their lives at their messages though.
There's more than one way to skin a cat, but all the ways combined have to be truncated and allocated into a finite public reception.

In acquiescence, though, if you set yourself on fire in defense of pragmatarianism, I'm quite sure it would be on the evening news.

If I can't persuade you to invest your time promoting my idea...then...what? Would it help if I threw my disposable income at you? Heh...it depends how much...right? But then how would that be any different from paying you to promote pragmatarianism? Why would I pay you to promote pragmatarianism if you were a lousy salesman? Doing so would be wasteful.
All marketing must be truncated and allocated into a finite public reception. That means that there's only so much marketing companies can do with the payment they receive.

The answer to the question, of course, is that society is no longer economically free, but a plutocracy in which representation is dependent on disposable income.
 
Ah, now we're back to this. I foresee another math problem, probably one more robust and applicable. But first: Which do you think will have a greater growth rate: PGOs or taxpaying population? PGOs or gross tax revenue?

Studies have demonstrated that allowing people to choose how they spend their taxes will increase their willingness to pay more taxes. This should be self-evident though. For example...what would happen if we forced donors to PETA and donors to the NRA to pool their donations and elect representatives to divvy the pool between both organizations? Clearly donors would choose to donate a lot less money. Or perhaps they wouldn't even donate any money.

So right off the bat...the gross tax revenue would probably greatly increase...even if the tax rate did not increase. People would have no problem shelling out a few more bucks for public goods that they truly believe benefit society.

But what if it turns out that there are many taxpayers who aren't satisfied with the variety of public goods that they could spend their taxes on? I definitely know that some taxpayers fall into this category...but I have no idea exactly how many taxpayers fall into this category. What would their options be? They could lobby to decrease the tax rate or they could lobby for more PGOs to be created.

1. What determines the relative minimum tax obligation of an individual? In other words, what form of tax (income, wealth, property, capital gains, hell, even sales) would be applied to the individual?

What/who is taxed is not an issue for me. Unfortunately...it's an issue for the mainstream media when it really shouldn't be. Whatever is taxed...the more important issue is who decides how the taxes are spent in the public sector.

2. Would it be a progressive tax or a flat rate tax? If progressive, in what way?

Same thing...whether the tax is flat or progressive is not nearly as important as deciding who gets to spend the taxes. Once we debate who gets to spend the taxes...then perhaps people might change their arguments regarding whether a tax should be progressive or flat.

3. How are PGOs determined to be no longer needed and scrapped?

Literal voting. Literal voting determines whether or not a good should be public and taxpayers would determine how much funding a public good should receive.

4. Is there any control for PGOs not achieving overhead?

Millions and millions of taxpayers wanting more for less.

5. Do you have any thoughts on what the formula for determining the tax rate might look like?

The closest thing to a formula is when I said that the division of labor between the public and private sectors should determine the tax rate. A taxpayer will say..."hmmm...I wish I had more money to spend in the private sector and less taxes to spend in the public sector"...or they'll say the opposite. It will be up to congress to listen to 150 million taxpayers in order to determine what the best tax rate would be. If they do a good job listening then taxpayers will give them more taxes.

6. What do you think the maximum viable tax rate should look like? E.g., Is an 80% tax on income actually viable for society?

Honestly...it's a lot easier for me to imagine a 0% tax rate than it is to imagine a 100% tax rate. A 100% tax rate would mean that everything would be "free" but you'd have to give 100% of your income to PGOs. You'd go to the grocery store and everything would be "free". If the grocery store did a good job then you'd give them your taxes. Why would the employees at the grocery store want to do a good job? Because they wouldn't receive any income if they didn't. If everything was free then why would they care if they didn't receive any income? Because without any income they wouldn't be able to support the public goods that they wanted more of. If I didn't have any income then I wouldn't be able to support my favorite artists, musicians, authors, actors, botanical gardens, museums, parks...errr...yeah, it's really hard for me to imagine.

It's kind of fun to try and imagine...but there's really no need to set minimum or maximum tax rates. Taxpayers will let congress know if the rate is too high or too low.


We established previously that it wasn't. Or at least, we established that it is not necessarily:

That ignores the desaturation of resources in the public sector; which we're arguing about too, so I'll put this aside for now.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, but all the ways combined have to be truncated and allocated into a finite public reception.

In acquiescence, though, if you set yourself on fire in defense of pragmatarianism, I'm quite sure it would be on the evening news.

Would it be worth it for me to do though? How many people would Google "pragmatarianism" as a direct result? Would they be persuaded by the arguments that they would find? Economics is all about actions speaking louder than words...but without effective words...all people would know was that I really truly believed in what I was sacrificing my life for. But maybe among all the people who Google'd "pragmatarianism" there would be one person who would grasp my argument and put it in his own words which would help many other people understand the value of what I sacrificed my life for. Rather than people saying..."I have no idea why he would sacrifice his life for such a stupid idea"...they would say..."his sacrifice made sense to him just like my sacrifice in the public sector should make sense to me."

All marketing must be truncated and allocated into a finite public reception. That means that there's only so much marketing companies can do with the payment they receive.

The answer to the question, of course, is that society is no longer economically free, but a plutocracy in which representation is dependent on disposable income.

But the amount of disposable income you have entirely depends on how effectively you represent the interests of other people! People wouldn't voluntarily give you a portion of their disposable income if you consistently fail to represent one or more of their interests. If you debate this fundamental fact...then feel free to paypal me a portion of your disposable income. The larger the portion the better. Why aren't you going to do it? Because I don't effectively represent a portion of your interests. You know how I know that I don't effectively represent a portion of your interests? Because you don't paypal me a portion of your disposable income.

Of course, but perhaps you do know that I do represent a portion of your interests...but you choose not to paypal me a portion of your disposal income because you're confident that I'll still continue to promote pragmatarianism whether or not you paypal me a portion of your disposal income. This is known as the free-rider problem. But how can I know whether you're truly free-riding off my efforts? You're the only one who could know that. The only way the rest of us could find out would be to force you to pay taxes but then give you the choice what you spent your taxes on. If...then...you DO choose to give me a portion of your taxes (for the intents and purposes of this example we're pretending that what I'm doing was a public good)...then we can discern that you didn't contribute a portion of your disposable income because of the free-rider problem.

So which is it? Are you really not benefiting from my sacrifice...or are you free-riding off my efforts? Again and again...your words don't matter...only your actions do. That you don't paypal money to me to support my efforts is a strong clue that you don't believe that you benefit from my efforts...but it might also mean that you're free-riding. In order to discern whether you're free-riding we could force you to pay taxes and then see if you gave any of your taxes to me. Here's the overall problem in a nutshell...minus the obvious solution...

Nevertheless, the classic solution to the problem of underprovision of public goods has been government funding - through compulsory taxation - and government production of the good or service in question. Although this may substantially alleviate the problem of numerous free-riders that refuse to pay for the benefits they receive, it should be noted that the policy process does not provide any very plausible method for determining what the optimal or best level of provision of a public good actually is. When it is impossible to observe what individuals are willing to give up in order to get the public good, how can policymakers access how urgently they really want more or less of it, given the other possible uses of their money? There is a whole economic literature dealing with the willingness-to-pay methods and contingent valuation techniques to try and divine such preference in the absence of a market price doing so, but even the most optimistic proponents of such devices tend to concede that public goods will still most likely be underprovided or overprovided under government stewardship. - Patricia Kennett, Governance, globalization and public policy​

In order to ensure that public goods are optimally provided...we should simply allow taxpayers to choose which public goods they spend their taxes on.
 
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You seem to be missing my point on finite public reception entirely. But I'm not sure how I can explain it better than I have.


You missed the point of #3. When a PGO stops being effective, how is it removed from the framework? Is it ever, or will it forever remain a tax option?


I started an attempt at figuring out a mathematical model of the viability of tax distribution, but didn't get very far.

My ex-gf, however, just made me realize me another interesting implication.

[5:03:08 AM] Gavin: yeah, actually, that's a valid argument from a psychological perspective
[5:03:36 AM] Gavin: because from the taxpayers' perspective, giving $100 to one cause and giving $100 to another seems like an equal distribution of resources
[5:04:00 AM] Gavin: when in fact, if one [PGO] requires a million per year, and the other a billion, it's not equal at all.
[5:04:44 AM] Gavin: in that case, the former service received 1000 times more funding from that taxpayer than the latter, effectively
[5:06:39 AM] Gavin: and there's not necessarily going to be a majority recognition that one amount given to on service is not proportionally helpful as the same amount given to another
[5:07:06 AM] Gavin: oh my lord, just thinking of what taxpayer education would have to be like for this system to work...
That realization stemmed from her challenge of my use of normal distribution. I now know normal distributions are going to be horse**** here, which just turned this math problem into seven times the headache. Maybe I shouldn't attempt it. Maybe a broad generalization would be easier. But tomorrow.
 
You seem to be missing my point on finite public reception entirely. But I'm not sure how I can explain it better than I have.

Yeah...I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to communicate. When I look over the web traffic statistics for my blog I really don't believe that I'm reaching 1% of the population or even .00001% of the population. It's a drop in the ocean. But I don't necessarily worry about it because I'm constantly striving to better explain the concept.

You missed the point of #3. When a PGO stops being effective, how is it removed from the framework? Is it ever, or will it forever remain a tax option?

If a PGO exists...but nobody funds it...does its existence matter? Let's say that enough people voted for the creation of a PGO that supplies bicycles. But if enough people bothered to lobby and vote for it...then why wouldn't they each chip in at least $1.00 to help fund it? What would the leaders of that PGO be able to do with $1,000,000? That depends entirely on how resourceful they are. Would they spend all the money on their salaries? If so, then perhaps taxpayers would not choose to continue to fund it. Well...if no taxpayers are funding a PGO...then does this call for removing the PGO from the framework or for replacing the leadership?

But if people truly wanted to remove a PGO from the framework for any reason then they could just literally vote it off the island.

I started an attempt at figuring out a mathematical model of the viability of tax distribution, but didn't get very far.

My ex-gf, however, just made me realize me another interesting implication.

That realization stemmed from her challenge of my use of normal distribution. I now know normal distributions are going to be horse**** here, which just turned this math problem into seven times the headache. Maybe I shouldn't attempt it. Maybe a broad generalization would be easier. But tomorrow.

Heh...you still stay in contact with your ex. I do too with a few of mine. I always thought it would be funny if there was a social obligation to provide three references when you went on a first date.

Regarding giving $100 to one PGO and $100 to another...the goal here is not to fund PGOs. That would be putting the cart before the horse. The goal here is to respond to shortages of the things we value. If you never observed/experienced any shortages then you would never act. If you act then we can reason that you did so because you observed/experienced some shortage. Therefore...you wouldn't give the police $100 for no good reason...you'd give them $100 because you were mugged (directly experienced a shortage of safety)...or you'd give them $70 because you observed somebody being mugged...or you'd give them $50 because a friend was mugged...or you'd give them $25 because a friend of a friend was mugged. This is of course assuming that you believe that more police equals less crime.

What would taxpayer education have to be like for this system to work? Did you ever watch Ghostbusters? In the movie they ran some commercials that were relatively straightforward..."If you have a ghost...who do you call? Ghostbusters!" Why would they bother paying for those commercials though? In other words...why would they bother trying to educate consumers? Because their livelihoods depended on consumers being aware of their service. Awareness is only part of the battle...then consumers have to figure out whether a service is A. effective and B. worth the cost. Their decisions determine how much revenue a private organization receives...and that's exactly how it should work in the public sector as well.

We can think of it like a push/pull system. On one hand, government organizations would have a big incentive (keeping their jobs) to push the information out to taxpayers. On the other hand, taxpayers will have a big incentive (overcoming shortages of the things they value) to pull the information from others. This system is far from perfect...but 150 million taxpayers can effectively process and evaluate far more information than 538 congresspeople can. That's 150 million pairs of eyes that cover even the most specialized fields in America...versus 538 pairs of eyes in Washington.
 
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