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I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy abou

I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? Between someone who believes regulations do more harm than good from someone who is pissed off at a couple of minor regulations? Between someone who believes in experimenting with new forms of governance and someone who wants to dominate the poor? Surely some of those ideas attract selfish people, but is it that unreasonable to think that a lot of them actually believe in the stated mission?

skywhopper 7y ago
Probably not really. If you really hate paying taxes you can convince yourself that taxes are bad. If you ignore all evidence to the contrary and just really hate filing paperwork and following rules, you can convince yourself that regulation is harmful. If you actually want to experiment with new forms of governance, you will need to convince lots of other people to go along instead of just declaring yourself sovereign and then complaining that other countries don't recognize your right to do that just because you're rich.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  And if you hate the rich, you can convince yourself that no tax rate is too high. If you just really hate big business, there's no such thing as a bad regulation, because anything that makes life harder for business is a good thing. Is it possible to distinguish someone who thinks taxes are good from society from someone who hates everyone better off from themselves?
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    Absolutely you can distinguish. The person who hates everyone better off than themselves would have to make a special exemption for themselves so that all their money wouldn't be taxed away too and leave them at best on an even playing field with those they (previously?) hated. The person who believes taxes are good for society would of course happily (or at least voluntarily) pay their share of whatever the mandated tax was. Inverting the original question semantically doesn't mean that you've provided a valid counter-example.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      > The person who hates everyone better off than themselves would have to make a special exemption for themselves so that all their money wouldn't be taxed away too and leave them at best on an even playing field with those they (previously?) hated. The person who believes taxes are good for society would of course happily (or at least voluntarily) pay their share of whatever the mandated tax was. So what does this mean for people who support progressive tax brackets? Since they think they should pay a smaller share of their income than others - and specifically that those better off should pay more than they do.
      - Voloskaya 7y ago
        > Since they think they should pay a smaller share of their income than others What's your point? They also think they should pay a higher share of their income than others.
        dorchadas 7y ago
        Yep. And if they make more, they think they should pay an even higher share. Which, notes, will still leave them with more money. Hell, my roommate pays as much in taxes than I make, yet he still comes home with more money than I do.
        DuskStar 7y ago
        I think the point is that by the GGP's (defterGoose's) standards, that's not differentiable from someone who just hates the rich. (And, frankly, if I started saying that the optimal tax brackets would be 99% for all income over $200k and 1% for all income $50k-$200k, the fact that I would pay more than some other people would not be particularly relevant)
      - defterGoose 7y ago
        This simply speaks to the impetus behind progressive taxes: that each additional dollar has decreasing marginal utility. Therefore, to extract the maximum amount of value for society in aggregate, it makes the most sense to put the highest taxes on money that has the least utility. You could also make the argument along other lines, such as that the wealthiest individuals have benefitted most from the cohesion/quality of the society, and should therefore be most responsible for its upkeep in kind.
- potta_coffee 7y ago
  TLDR: "Anyone I disagree with is justifying incorrect opinions." Your argument cuts both ways and can be applied to any issue, and is therefore illogical.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sandworm101 7y ago
>> Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? Yes. All the flat tax supporters. A great many people, wealthy people, feel that taxation should not be progressive. They agree that taxes are necessary but disagree with them paying more than poor people do. Also, use-based taxation proponents. They agree that infrastructure needs to be built and that taxes are required to do so, but do not believe that they should pay for such things if they are not using them. So yes, there are a great many east lines to be drawn between people who think taxation is evil and those simply unhappy with how much they as individuals have to pay.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Aren't seasteders of this sort just extreme use-based taxation proponents, when you get down to it?
joe_the_user 7y ago
I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? If that is a problem, it is a problem for those advocating these policies. If you selflessly advocate policies benefiting the wealthy, low and behold, many of those seeking to benefit will appear. If these types generate corruption or exploitation, how do you filter them out? In general, a lot of low-regulation, low-tax advocates claim that selfishness isn't a problem, that these approaches can benefit everyone even when everyone looks out for themselves. The problem with such approach is they don't consider that those attracted to these approaches for selfish reasons aren't going to be satisfied with simply an efficient, meritocratic system that turns selfishness to a universal benefit and that instead the truly selfish cheat, take any resource they can get access to and essentially spoil many idealized "general benefit through individual benefit" systems, turning them into just "the strong prey on the weak" approaches. And those on the sidelines looking at the situation can say, "Oh, looks a few people actually believed this stuff, too bad for them that the overall process was swamped by those just aiming for a buck." But this situation doesn't raise our overall admiration for any of them.
- chr1 7y ago
  With high taxes, governments must have huge amount of power to be able to collect and spend all the money. So then, this same people you talk about, go into the government. And usually they manage to do much more harm this way than in low tax case where power is distributed to more people.
  - boh 7y ago
    Feel free to give us a historical example where the "low tax case" distributed power to "more" people.
    - chr1 7y ago
      This year Russia introduced new taxes and that worsened the already bad economic situation. Europe doesn't produce nearly the same amount of innovation and startups as US, most likely because of higher taxes on business. Because taxes in US are not higher, people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk can spend their money on things they find important instead of all that money being handled by the few people in the government. I am not saying that the tax should be 0% as governments provide some useful services, but 50% is way too much to buy a bundle of services you can't pick from. The only way to find a better balance is to be able to experiment with different ways of organizing government, and seasteading could help with this.
yongjik 7y ago
> Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? In the end, does it matter? We don't really know what each other is thinking. If we're debating social framework (like tax), we can only judge people based on their behavior. If their behavior is indistinguishable, how they arrived there is irrelevant, in a sense.
boh 7y ago
Not really. People make moral arguments to justify economic gains. Whether they really believe in the argument makes no difference if the same argument is being made.

I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? Between someone who believes regulations do more harm than good from someone who is pissed off at a couple of minor regulations? Between someone who believes in experimenting with new forms of governance and someone who wants to dominate the poor? Surely some of those ideas attract selfish people, but is it that unreasonable to think that a lot of them actually believe in the stated mission?

skywhopper 7y ago

Probably not really. If you really hate paying taxes you can convince yourself that taxes are bad. If you ignore all evidence to the contrary and just really hate filing paperwork and following rules, you can convince yourself that regulation is harmful. If you actually want to experiment with new forms of governance, you will need to convince lots of other people to go along instead of just declaring yourself sovereign and then complaining that other countries don't recognize your right to do that just because you're rich.

DuskStar 7y ago
And if you hate the rich, you can convince yourself that no tax rate is too high. If you just really hate big business, there's no such thing as a bad regulation, because anything that makes life harder for business is a good thing. Is it possible to distinguish someone who thinks taxes are good from society from someone who hates everyone better off from themselves?
- defterGoose 7y ago
  Absolutely you can distinguish. The person who hates everyone better off than themselves would have to make a special exemption for themselves so that all their money wouldn't be taxed away too and leave them at best on an even playing field with those they (previously?) hated. The person who believes taxes are good for society would of course happily (or at least voluntarily) pay their share of whatever the mandated tax was. Inverting the original question semantically doesn't mean that you've provided a valid counter-example.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    > The person who hates everyone better off than themselves would have to make a special exemption for themselves so that all their money wouldn't be taxed away too and leave them at best on an even playing field with those they (previously?) hated. The person who believes taxes are good for society would of course happily (or at least voluntarily) pay their share of whatever the mandated tax was. So what does this mean for people who support progressive tax brackets? Since they think they should pay a smaller share of their income than others - and specifically that those better off should pay more than they do.
    - Voloskaya 7y ago
      > Since they think they should pay a smaller share of their income than others What's your point? They also think they should pay a higher share of their income than others.
      - dorchadas 7y ago
        Yep. And if they make more, they think they should pay an even higher share. Which, notes, will still leave them with more money. Hell, my roommate pays as much in taxes than I make, yet he still comes home with more money than I do.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        I think the point is that by the GGP's (defterGoose's) standards, that's not differentiable from someone who just hates the rich. (And, frankly, if I started saying that the optimal tax brackets would be 99% for all income over $200k and 1% for all income $50k-$200k, the fact that I would pay more than some other people would not be particularly relevant)
    - defterGoose 7y ago
      This simply speaks to the impetus behind progressive taxes: that each additional dollar has decreasing marginal utility. Therefore, to extract the maximum amount of value for society in aggregate, it makes the most sense to put the highest taxes on money that has the least utility. You could also make the argument along other lines, such as that the wealthiest individuals have benefitted most from the cohesion/quality of the society, and should therefore be most responsible for its upkeep in kind.
potta_coffee 7y ago
TLDR: "Anyone I disagree with is justifying incorrect opinions." Your argument cuts both ways and can be applied to any issue, and is therefore illogical.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sandworm101 7y ago

>> Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? Yes. All the flat tax supporters. A great many people, wealthy people, feel that taxation should not be progressive. They agree that taxes are necessary but disagree with them paying more than poor people do. Also, use-based taxation proponents. They agree that infrastructure needs to be built and that taxes are required to do so, but do not believe that they should pay for such things if they are not using them. So yes, there are a great many east lines to be drawn between people who think taxation is evil and those simply unhappy with how much they as individuals have to pay.

DuskStar 7y ago
Aren't seasteders of this sort just extreme use-based taxation proponents, when you get down to it?

joe_the_user 7y ago

I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? If that is a problem, it is a problem for those advocating these policies. If you selflessly advocate policies benefiting the wealthy, low and behold, many of those seeking to benefit will appear. If these types generate corruption or exploitation, how do you filter them out? In general, a lot of low-regulation, low-tax advocates claim that selfishness isn't a problem, that these approaches can benefit everyone even when everyone looks out for themselves. The problem with such approach is they don't consider that those attracted to these approaches for selfish reasons aren't going to be satisfied with simply an efficient, meritocratic system that turns selfishness to a universal benefit and that instead the truly selfish cheat, take any resource they can get access to and essentially spoil many idealized "general benefit through individual benefit" systems, turning them into just "the strong prey on the weak" approaches. And those on the sidelines looking at the situation can say, "Oh, looks a few people actually believed this stuff, too bad for them that the overall process was swamped by those just aiming for a buck." But this situation doesn't raise our overall admiration for any of them.

chr1 7y ago
With high taxes, governments must have huge amount of power to be able to collect and spend all the money. So then, this same people you talk about, go into the government. And usually they manage to do much more harm this way than in low tax case where power is distributed to more people.
- boh 7y ago
  Feel free to give us a historical example where the "low tax case" distributed power to "more" people.
  - chr1 7y ago
    This year Russia introduced new taxes and that worsened the already bad economic situation. Europe doesn't produce nearly the same amount of innovation and startups as US, most likely because of higher taxes on business. Because taxes in US are not higher, people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk can spend their money on things they find important instead of all that money being handled by the few people in the government. I am not saying that the tax should be 0% as governments provide some useful services, but 50% is way too much to buy a bundle of services you can't pick from. The only way to find a better balance is to be able to experiment with different ways of organizing government, and seasteading could help with this.

yongjik 7y ago

> Is it possible to distinguish between someone who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy about their tax bracket? In the end, does it matter? We don't really know what each other is thinking. If we're debating social framework (like tax), we can only judge people based on their behavior. If their behavior is indistinguishable, how they arrived there is irrelevant, in a sense.

boh 7y ago

Not really. People make moral arguments to justify economic gains. Whether they really believe in the argument makes no difference if the same argument is being made.