Will be meeting up with that equine charity this weekend, and pumping Bitcoin to all the artists around the con in Pittsburgh. Hope I don't make too much of an ass of myself :/
Either I've lost my mind or this is the first mention of them equines. Refresh my memory, Rassah. |
|
|
|
Unless a country closes its borders and tries to prevent people from leaving, taxes pretty much are voluntary, strictly speaking. Even if some people want to "opt out of the system", most people have their whole lives (and their children's lives) set up in such a way that they can't leave without massive upheaval (quit job, sell house/break lease, sell 50k different things, stop 20 different service contracts, notify bank+school+post office, scout out a new place to live and sign more contracts, find a new job...)
Why can't people simply be allowed to voluntarily stop paying taxes, and then not be given any of the things taxes pay for, like police and fire protection, military protection, access to schools or public highways, etc? If some yokle lives on a compound out in the middle of nowhere, surely it can't be that hard for the government to do. |
|
|
|
A fall from $266 to $87 in less than 3 months is a major loss of purchasing power in an extremely short period of time (as is $32 to $2 over 5 months). If USD swung like that, there would be riots.
You're forgetting that it swung up from $15 to $266 in less than three months before that. This was a horrendous ouch  I'm still recovering  And you're right, USD only swings around at 5% to 10% or so every few months. It's just that no one notices, since everyone buys their stuff in their native currency. By the a, I don't like using things like milk to estimate inflation, because that's heavily influenced by gas prices, too. When prices go up, shipping companies start charging hefty gas surcharges. |
|
|
|
Considering our all-American bully has the most expensive military in the world:
It's a very sticky situation we've found ourselves in. Feels pretty shitty knowing that, by simply existing, you are contributing to a force which could destroy the Earth several times over.
This may in the end turn out to be a good thing. Do you know what brought down the other of the two 20th century biggest superpowers in the world? It wasn't Reagan, as republicans love to proclaim. It was excessive military spending, which drove their debt through the roof, and their money into the ground. All those tanks and ships are useless if there isn't anyone willing to drive them for free. |
|
|
|
|
Will be meeting up with that equine charity this weekend, and pumping Bitcoin to all the artists around the con in Pittsburgh. Hope I don't make too much of an ass of myself :/
|
|
|
|
|
Simple answer: Supply of thuggery VS Demand for the thug's demise. I don't know if there is a market that let's people place such demands (bets?) yet, but the inverse relationship between increase in thuggery and increase in money calling for the thug's head should be able to reach a stable equilibrium, the intersection of which would hopefully be a pretty low level of both thuggery and demise demands.
|
|
|
|
E.g.: the government refunds up to $20k whenever a patient gets the transplant done.
The effect is that from the pool of 100 people, suddenly a lot more can afford transplants, and the increased demand pushes up the price curve. The higher prices encourage more teams of surgeons to invest and offer their services.
The opportunity cost however, is that they have to take the funding from somewhere else, whether by increased taxation or (more likely) reorganising some existing budget.
One major concern is that the subsidies never stop, so we go from reorganizing budgets to more and more taxation to support more and more subsidies. The same doctors you are subsidizing will end up making major donations to politicians to encourage them to keep the subsidies, with donation money coming from those same subsidies. Subsidies are a great idea, but only in a benevolent dictatorship. To me it seems that
a) Entrepreneurs and researchers are more likely to notice a large, inefficient market (>12 teams of surgeons) than a smaller one (only 10 teams), and they're more likely to be enticed by the extra money being thrown at the problem by the government.
My main concern is that more doctors will start pursuing the market with the same subsidized procedures, since that market has plenty of money to go around, instead of trying to figure out how to change the established market with something else. Eg, we heavily subsidize corn, so we end up investing into a lot of corn-based product development, putting corn in most of our foods, instead of figuring out if other plants would be a better alternative, or even looking into whether growing so much corn is having an extremely negative effect on our farms and environment. c) I just don't see how, in the absence of government 'coercion', private enterprises would ever get the same kind of information. E.g.: surgery costs and patient numbers would be private and confidential.
That information can be found out by competition in the market. Short story - the same way we find out whether or not we should mine Bitcoin, or what to buy and sell our bitcoins for, despite not knowing how many other people out there are mining/buying or sitting on the sidelines. Long story - A new team of surgeons wants to enter the market and compete against the other 10 teams. The only surgery costs they need to know are their own. They can find the price of the surgery the other doctors charge. Then, if the price on the market is < this new team's costs, they know they can't compete, and shouldn't enter the market. They also know that those existing surgeons are doing something new to make the procedure cheaper. If the price on the market is > their own costs, they know they can make a profit, and will enter the market. Based on how much higher the price is compared to their own costs, they can also see how much more advanced and cheaper their procedure is to their competitors, and/or that there is a huge demand for such procedures, and not enough surgeons to provide them. |
|
|
|
|
I guess it could be rephrased to
1) Is it moral for you to buy something you want from me?
2) Is it moral for me to force you to buy something you want from me?
3) is it moral for me to force you to buy something you don't want from me, even at the point of a gun?
3a) Is it moral for me to decide what you need or want for you, even if what I decide is not something you do want or need?
4) If 1 through 3 is still OK with you, at what point do the decisions someone forces on you become not OK? E.g. forcing you to pay for public school, even if you don't have kids is OK, forcing you to pay to kill people for having different religious beliefs may not be OK. At what point does it become not OK?
|
|
|
|
By the way, just want to inject this into this whole conversation: It's the 'right price,' at the 'right time,' for the 'right people,' in the 'right place.' That's what constitutes the 'right price.' A centrally dictated price will ALWAYS miss the time and/or the people and/or the location, simply because different people value things differently depending on those variables, and the only way to pick the 'right price' is to let the people involved give it to you. Let's say there's 10 teams of surgeons supplying a total of 50 transplants per year. ~100 wannabe patients provide the demand at any given time, and the remaining 50 people either wait again next year (with an inflow of another 50), or they eventually die. There's competition as well as luck in the auctions. Not all patients are compatible with all the donor lungs. However, if you bid more, you're more likely to outbid someone else if you're both good for the same pair. Let's say there's a price curve something like this, (just making up some numbers here) : $100k: 1 to 3 months $50k: 3 to 6 months $25k: 6 months to 4 years <$15k: lower limit, and donor lungs get thrown out unless compatible patients cough up more dough  Just like Bitcoin fees, there's no fixed 'price' just increasing delays if you offer less. But unlike Bitcoin, the example takes on a moral dimension because people's lives are left up to market 'chance' and surgeon profitability. Being a free market, it turns out that "10 teams" is the sweet spot. When there were only 8 teams, prices and profits were higher, but this enticed 4 teams of dentists to retool to do lung transplants instead. But when there were 12 teams, prices got a bit low and 4 teams had to restructure, returning to a total of 10. But how many surgeries were done? Who cares! 10 teams is the sweet spot, and they'll do whatever is profitable, even if it means throwing out most of the lungs to maintain scarcity in the market. It doesn't even have to be deliberate -- maybe $15k is the charitable limit? So we've got a rough model of a 'free' market. What if a government intervenes? Why is that so wrong? If we've got a model for what happens 'naturally' (as above), and we find that by intervening we can reduce the annual death rate from say 25 down to 10, then why not? One problem I have with having faith in a free market is the faith part. Why should a Libertarian leap-of-faith trump actual information gained from oversight? Perhaps there's some "information theory" insights we could gain here? I think the answer is thus: The only reason 12 teams is too high and 10 teams is the sweet spot is because 12 teams makes the lung transplant unprofitable, and 8 teams leaves room for more teams to take some of the profit. A government intervention could be to either reduce the prices, increase the number of teams, or force everyone, who doesn't need the procedure, to pay for it to. In the first option, government forces the prices lower, meaning more patients can afford transplants, but now it's not profitable, so the number of surgeons will drop from 10 to, say, 8. Now even though more patients can afford the procedure, only 40 of them are done each year. In the second option, the government could force more teams to do the procedure. But, as you said, if there were 12 teams, the prices got too low, so now even though 12 teams are forced to do the procedure, none of the 12 can really afford it. They will either have to force the prices to go up, reducing the number of patients that can afford it, or just quit entirely. In the third option, you'll have 20 teams working, doing 100 procedures a year. All patients will be happy, and all doctors will be happy. Hopefully, the economy will continue to have enough profits for government to siphon them off to keep this setup going. But the two problems are, first, there's a real risk that the economy could get to a point where there isn't enough spare profit to support this, and second, everyone will be happy, and nothing will change. You'll have the same lung procedure done by the same people for decades, since there will be no incentive to either make the procedure cheaper, or to replace it with something different. The only "faith" that a free market requires is that, if things are uncomfortable, someone will try to figure out how to make them more comfortable in hopes of reaping rewards for it. That's pretty much the gist of free market progress. |
|
|
|
The only economic philosophy that respects the right of people to transact bitcoins without interference is capitalism.
Capitalism is an invenion of the state. Without bureaucracy and state sanctioning, capitalism is not possble. The very idea of a free capitalism is oxymoronic, because it relies on protection of claims on private property. That statement is really not that much of a stretch from saying: Currency is an invention of the state. Without bureaucracy and state sanctioning, currency is not possible. The very idea of a free currency is oxymoronic, because it relies on assigning of value on currency notes. |
|
|
|
just because i think that murder is morally acceptable, does not mean that i have to go around and kill people. because its not the optimal strategy, but why disallow it, and artificially limit ones ability to act?
Good! Then you agree we don't need government for this either  |
|
|
|
|
Regarding smart, intelligent politicos that run our government economy, I just want to point out that they say shit like, "fetuses masturbate in the womb." And that kind of talk is to be expected from that brain trust.
|
|
|
|
The problem with "stable" is that it is a subjective valuation. All economies oscillate, it's called the business cycle. Unfortuantely, there are many people who will make well intended, but ill advised, attempts to suppress that oscillation. The result of which is that 'forces' become pent up, and create greater havoc when they are finally released 'out of phase'.
(Let's use examples of -2% growth during bust, 4% growth during boom, and 2% long-term goal, figures out of my ass) I actually still believe that this aspect of the Keynesian economic theory is sound. Specifically, when the cycle goes into bust (e.g. -2% growth), you spend to support it, when it goes into the boom (say 4% growth) you take in more to suppress it, and thus, on the grand scale, even it out to a somewhat of a 'steady' growth of, say, 2% over the long term.Over all, value gets sucked into a "rainy day" fund, and expanded when the rainy day comes. In my opinion, the main huge problem with the theory is that the suppression stage just can't be implemented. When the economy goes into a bust, governments spend to hold it up, when the economy recovers, everyone got used to the extra services they are getting, and prefer governments keep adding the extra growth (e.g. 2%) on top of the 4% growth they are experiencing, for a super-boom sustained by borrowing. The reason suppressing the economy can't work is because these stages are implemented by politicians who have to answer to constituents who will vote them out for taking away their stuff, or for even uttering a suggestion of suppressing the economy. And so, we end up with minor busts, huge booms, more minor busts, more huge booms, and eventually colossal busts, when we realize most of the booms have been supported by borrowed money. |
|
|
|
We're actually considered one of the least if not the least corrupted countries. We're in the EU so that kind of helps to keep everything under control.  Well, that only narrows it down to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. I am discounting Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania since they have had between somewhat ok to great economic development since Soviet Union fell, and you claim that your country is really suffering from shitty economy. Then again, maybe it's just a part of the country you live in... (I'm also eyeing Romania a bit as maybe one of the candidates, because those vampires can really wreck the economy, too) |
|
|
|
I guess us "statists" all look the same as well?  Well... yeah? You all want a group of people to be given the power to control other people, whether those other people want to be controlled or not, so at the root you are all the same. Also, sorry if my mistaking or comparing you to crumbs was insulting to you. |
|
|
|
I live in a post-socialist country where the people aren't wealthy.Getting a job hefe isn't easy and people already are fed up with paying anyone. So good luck with your non tax revolution because it isn't going to come any time soon. Ffs, we only have 23 years since we regained our independence again
Ah, Eastern Block countries. Aren't you guys suffering from extremely corrupt governments that border on fascism? Regardless, it will take a long while for the culture, that was poisoned by the communist mentality and forced to live in fear for 70 years, to get over it  I would guess you are not from Poland or Finland though, as those two weren't as suppressed when it comes to capitalism, and bounced back quickly once they opened their borders to privatization and trade. |
|
|
|
I answered no to the first question.
Everything that is beneficial to me is morally okay. including stealing, raping, and unprovoked murder.
In most cases its just not beneficial to me as for some odd reason gets pissed at people doing stuff they consider immoral, and thereby forcing their moral views upon others.
How are you still not in jail?  is it good for me doing stuff that could get me in jail? It's not good for you to be doing stuff that will get you harassed, beat up, and shot, either, so it won't really matter what form of government, or lack thereof, you live under. With you specifically, other people will keep you in line, regardless of whether they are police, or just pissed off strangers. |
|
|
|
I answered no to the first question.
Everything that is beneficial to me is morally okay. including stealing, raping, and unprovoked murder.
In most cases its just not beneficial to me as for some odd reason gets pissed at people doing stuff they consider immoral, and thereby forcing their moral views upon others.
How are you still not in jail? |
|
|
|
People won't pay. Not at least here where I live. They will probably steal electricity, water, internet. Hell, some of them are doing it now. Maybe US has some kind of utopian society but I know the society I live in too well to think that would work.
Not paying to support bums is a benefit in itself, too. People seeing homeless bums who were irresponsible with their money will likely be scared into doing things like buying only what they need, saving for emergencies, and working with neighbors to avoid or overcome any issues. Things people in countries with little government support do (compare the family and savings culture of Chinese to the family and savings culture of Europeans and Americans who get Social Security and pensions). People don't learn responsibilities if they aren't shown consequences of ignoring them. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
