Even worse, very large populations mixed with extraordinary technology mixed with libertarianism is just a recipe for disaster.

In the 16th century, in the frontier, and a total world population of less than half a billion people, libertarianism is not so unreasonable.

Sorry, but no. We do distinguish between any random citizen who uses any random procedure, and a precise set of protocols followed by certain people who have been trained in participating in precisely defined and constructed infrastructure. Your philosophy is inadequate to discussing this topic and will not be taken seriously.


I would move. I'd rather pay taxes than constantly involve myself in the governance and management of every damn thing that needs to be governed. Let me say it again: Your philosophy is inadequate to discussing this topic and will not be taken seriously.

Oddly enough, this showed up on TED today: http://www.ted.com/talks/geoff_mulgan_a_short_intro_to_the_studio_school.html

I just mean that a positive tax is greater than zero percent, and negative tax is less than zero percent: luxury taxes and subsidies.


I totally understand what you're saying. It's the most difficult part of implementation, I believe.


No, I really think it's better to go with the negative tax/subsidy. It is in fact paid for by the positive tax, and has the appeal of the government not really taking the money. The positive tax is supposed to exactly balance the negative tax.

The beauty of it, though, is it constantly ups the bar on efficiency through pure competition, as opposed to specific MPG targets mandated by the government.

Just a summary of the first paragraph. Auto manufacturers are an example. I'll copy and paste a post I made from another thread, inspired by the Volkswagen XL1. This is what I wrote in the other thread:

Regarding taxes, acknowledging that they aren't fun, and government spending can be wasteful, consider:

Tax what we want less of. Apply a zero tax, or even a negative tax to what is better. Think creatively. What do we want less of? Pollution, destruction of the environment, excessive consumerism of wasteful products, hunger. What do we want more of? Efficient solutions, not efficient exploitation. That's the problem with capitalism today - it encourages efficient exploitation, not necessarily efficient solutions for the consumer.

Tax pollution. Tax resource exploitation. Tax wasteful products. As for hunger, that's where thinking creatively helps.

I made a long post about automobile design and production. I mentioned the Volkswagen XL1 as an example. The key is to get businesses to compete effectively in a constructive way. Right now, automakers compete by determining the most efficient way to sell expensive automobiles. We want to get them to compete at building the most efficient automobiles. Big difference.

I've been thinking of one way to do it, and I'm not entirely sure of the mathematics behind it, but follow along.

Take the full lineup of new automobiles available today. Split them into ten tiers, numbered one through ten, where the least efficient autos are in tier one, and the most efficient are in tier ten. Tier one gets the highest tax. Tier five gets the lowest positive tax. Tier ten gets the largest negative tax. Now the automakers will compete like crazy to get their auto lineup into the top tier.

If most everyone buys only automobiles in tier ten, then it becomes even more difficult to get your auto placed into tier ten, because the negative tax has to be paid by the positive taxes below it.

Wealthy people can afford whatever auto they want, regardless of tax. People who aren't wealthy will embrace the negative tax on the most efficient autos, and benefit from their efficiency.

Efficiency should increase drastically, much more aggressively than today, as automakers compete to always have autos in the top tiers. New auto startups will obviously strive to only have autos in the top tiers, and by doing so, they'll be able to compete because of the negative tax. This will increase competition for efficiency even further.

Notice that this system does not mandate a specific MPG requirement. For example, the government currently might be mandating 30+ MPG for future automobiles. The problem is, that might be too difficult or too easy for automakers to meet. But what I'm proposing drives the market to competitively up the MPG continuously with no upper limit, and the end result should approach the MPG of the Volkswagen XL1, which happens to be 260 MPG.

Taken from here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25626.msg526491#msg526491

I'm of the opinion that high school education should be less topic oriented, and more project oriented. At the beginning of the semester, students choose a project which hits several topics (mathematics, science, language, history, etc.), and then, through meetings with counselors, work through their project, which requires team work and research along the way.

That's an excellent point. It would be better if once a year, each voting tax payer designated what portion of 50 percent of all tax revenue collected went to which programs.

Competition is good, but it needs guidance. In the absence of guidance, businesses evolve and survive to become very effective at exploiting opportunities where they present themselves, whether it be exploitation of the environment, exploitation of loopholes, exploitation of government officials, and naturally, exploitation of the consumer. The key is to guide businesses in competition to become efficient at offering efficient solutions to the consumer.

There is a big difference in a company which makes money because it is efficient at exploiting, and a business which makes money because it efficiently consumes resources to make a product that is efficient.

That's cool. I totally agree with this. What about suburban sprawl at the edge of town? Would you advocate a simple reduction in plot size plus the park, or simply set aside the wilderness that would normally be encroached upon?

I've often envisioned wilderness corridors through a town or city. Imagine developments comprised of sections that look sort of like Mont St Michel (see picture), where each section connects to its neighboring sections via a bridge. Now imagine a whole town like that, and flowing between those sections is wilderness, with hiking trails. The idea is, the natural native wildlife (coyotes, racoons, whatever), are not displaced, and may pass through the town without really being in the town.

It's sort of a miniature version of what is known as wildlife corridors - which are components of a plan to (in the case of North America) to rewild North America (see the book). It begins with the premise that connected natural preserves maintain and allow greater biodiversity if they are connected, rather than fragmented. The plan is ambitious.

That's a start. Where would you direct those dollars? Make this thread less tax centric and more issue driven.

Don't be a dick. Let's assume I'm not making any claim. File your grievances with the state of California. They're regulating property owners. Ownership of your property in California is not like owning a sofa. What is your take on it?

Not yet. Obviously, reasoning already exists, hence the law. You are free to now explain your opinion of it.

I don't need to come up with an idea to energize the discussion here. Certain ideas are already in implementation. I posted rather recently here about ownership of land in California. If you wish, pretend that's my idea because I agree with it. However, it's real, so you might want to address it in that context.

Computer science: write a simulator and apply GP using functions encoded as s-expressions which will let you evolve solutions to political problems.

Whatever nation you live in, let's acknowledge the existence of issues that ultimately affect all of us, and discuss potential solutions to those issues, while assuming that the total tax revenue collected by the nations of the world (yours included) is not radically changed. Feel free to discuss changes in how taxes are spent, but let's not devolve this thread into an argument about the amount of taxes that should be collected, or whether taxes should be collected.

Even better, address issues themselves external to the subject of taxes. Real problems, real solutions, real governments, real people.

I wholeheartedly encourage certain individuals here to publish their ideas in a respectable peer reviewed political science journal.

And what is your major? After answering that, feel free to address ownership of land.

I'll leave you to discover the imbalance of your solution. I'll give you some hints: competition implies multiple services. How many police can be brought to bear on a particular problem when collecting revenue from customers?

That is to address fraud, missing documents, disputes, etc. within the context of law. Your system has no laws, thus there is no basis to anyone's claim.

You mean like a tyrant? Or a cartel?

You're forgetting that there are no laws in your liberland, and everyone has their own idea what the laws should be, and they all use courts which favor their view, and in general, there's lots of courts.