5 ms·

That is trivially not simpler.

pdonis 5y ago
Sure it is. People pay other people for goods and services all the time; it happens naturally and is simple. Forcibly taking money away from some people and giving it to others is not natural or simple: it takes a huge, bloated government bureaucracy, which does a terrible job at it anyway.
- ajmadesc 5y ago
  This is just plain false. The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple. In theory, sure. But as the saying goes, in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they aren't. No such "simple" system of taxing and redistributing has ever actually existed. The incentives to complicate and manipulate it are too strong.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  vs. the "huge, bloated" bureaucracy that has to exist to implement salaried & contract work? You actually believe that more people work in the government on redistribution than in companies? Also, people pay other people for goods & services that the people with the money want to pay for. The nature of my life should not be determined by the preferences of the people who've managed (frequently via heredity) to hoover up outsize chunks of wealth and power within the economy. As a human being, I do not exist to satisfy the wants of the rich (though I might choose to pursue doing so as means of making a living). The options available as a way to make a living should not be controlled by those who have already been successful.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    I agree with the general point you are making here. But you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation. I think the way to fix it is less government bureaucracy and regulation. Government bureaucracy and regulation is as bloated as it is because the rich set it up that way. Those regulations benefit them, not you and me. They want society to be set up that way, so that creating wealth requires navigating a complex maze that only they know how to navigate. The only way to fix that is to get rid of the maze.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      > you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation I don't assume that. I was merely contrasting your complaints about the bureaucracy required for the government to distribute money to people with the reality that any system for distributing money to people is going to be ... bureaucratic. I also don't agree with your assessment of things as they are. You claim that the bureaucracies are bloated, but have no evidence that the things they do can be achieved with less bureaucracy. Most regulations exist to check the power of the rich (or some subset of them), not to enable them (or some subset of them). Creating wealth does not involve navigating a complex maze any more than simply being alive does.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > any system for distributing money to people is going to be ... bureaucratic. Nope. Private charities like churches are not bureaucratic. They distribute money to people based on personal knowledge of those people and a personal judgment on the part of the church community that those people deserve charity. > You claim that the bureaucracies are bloated, but have no evidence that the things they do can be achieved with less bureaucracy. Many of the things that bloated government bureaucracies do should not be done at all. So it's pointless to ask for evidence that they could be done with less bureaucracy. > Most regulations exist to check the power of the rich That's what we are led to believe. I just don't think it's actually true. A whole new mess of regulations got put in place after the crash of 2008. Yet the rich are even richer now than they were then.
- adamcstephens 5y ago
  And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family?
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family? The fact that you, for example, don't have any goods or services that, say, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos wants does not mean Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have all the wealth and you have none. Wealth is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are rich because they founded companies that created enormous amounts of wealth. Say what you like about Windows and Amazon, but Windows made personal computing available to everyone, not just the affluent who could afford a Mac, and Amazon has made cheap products and easy, fast shipping available to everyone, not just the rich who could afford to hire personal shopping and delivery services. And the wealth those companies created had to be spread among everyone, by the very nature of what they did. Windows would have been useless if it were just Bill Gates' personal OS, and Amazon would have been useless if it were just Jeff Bezos' personal shopping service. The whole point was to make those things available to everyone. Similar remarks apply to everyone who creates wealth. The people who grow the food you eat grow more than they need just for themselves. Then they trade the excess for other things they need or want. The same applies to you. Want some food? Create some wealth that you can trade for it. The real complaint that can be made about the "1 percent" or "0.01 percent" or "elite" or whatever term you want to use, is that they have created a system that makes it harder for everyone else to create wealth, by putting all kinds of regulations and complications in place that only they know how to navigate. But you don't fix that problem with more regulations and complications. Nor do you fix it by just confiscating what the rich have now and redistributing it; that only works once. You fix it by scaling back all those regulations and complications so more and more people can create wealth themselves instead of having to wait for a few "elites" to do it.
    - adamcstephens 5y ago
      Regulations are the only reason Windows even exists. If had not been for government antitrust laws and their enforcement, IBM would have stifled the PC market before it even began.[1] The thing about these cases is that they don’t even have to fully succeed to open the space for competition. The case against Microsoft continued this trend, providing space for Google and the monopolies of today. So regulation isn’t just good for society, it’s necessary to ensure a competitive market. Taxation ensures that all of society benefits as the collective wealth increases. It pays for shared resources, and provides for a shared safety net. Taxation isn’t confiscation, it’s the cost of doing business and thriving in a complex society. Trickle down and deregulation are awful policies that only destabilize. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  >giving it to others is not natural Money is a completely unnatural invention - nothing about it is “natural”, so I don’t see this as a strong argument.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > Money is a completely unnatural invention Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". The reasons why money gets invented are common to all human societies that get beyond the tribal stage; money is as natural as the human societies that invent it are.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      >Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. You don't have to change nature to change society, you can change society by changing humans, which is a very specific subset of nature and not very representative of nature as a whole. The problems that can easily be solved by money may be natural but we still get to decide how we implement money and the way we do it can create human made problems.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. Okay, then that just means "unnatural" is not a bad thing, unless you think society is a bad thing. But if you think society is a bad thing, why are you taking advantage of the benefits it provides? I assume you are, because if you weren't, you wouldn't be able to post here. > you can change society by changing humans Really? And how do you propose to do that? Particularly without grossly violating the rights of the humans you want to change?

Sure it is. People pay other people for goods and services all the time; it happens naturally and is simple. Forcibly taking money away from some people and giving it to others is not natural or simple: it takes a huge, bloated government bureaucracy, which does a terrible job at it anyway.

ajmadesc 5y ago
This is just plain false. The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple. In theory, sure. But as the saying goes, in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they aren't. No such "simple" system of taxing and redistributing has ever actually existed. The incentives to complicate and manipulate it are too strong.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
vs. the "huge, bloated" bureaucracy that has to exist to implement salaried & contract work? You actually believe that more people work in the government on redistribution than in companies? Also, people pay other people for goods & services that the people with the money want to pay for. The nature of my life should not be determined by the preferences of the people who've managed (frequently via heredity) to hoover up outsize chunks of wealth and power within the economy. As a human being, I do not exist to satisfy the wants of the rich (though I might choose to pursue doing so as means of making a living). The options available as a way to make a living should not be controlled by those who have already been successful.
- pdonis 5y ago
  I agree with the general point you are making here. But you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation. I think the way to fix it is less government bureaucracy and regulation. Government bureaucracy and regulation is as bloated as it is because the rich set it up that way. Those regulations benefit them, not you and me. They want society to be set up that way, so that creating wealth requires navigating a complex maze that only they know how to navigate. The only way to fix that is to get rid of the maze.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation I don't assume that. I was merely contrasting your complaints about the bureaucracy required for the government to distribute money to people with the reality that any system for distributing money to people is going to be ... bureaucratic. I also don't agree with your assessment of things as they are. You claim that the bureaucracies are bloated, but have no evidence that the things they do can be achieved with less bureaucracy. Most regulations exist to check the power of the rich (or some subset of them), not to enable them (or some subset of them). Creating wealth does not involve navigating a complex maze any more than simply being alive does.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > any system for distributing money to people is going to be ... bureaucratic. Nope. Private charities like churches are not bureaucratic. They distribute money to people based on personal knowledge of those people and a personal judgment on the part of the church community that those people deserve charity. > You claim that the bureaucracies are bloated, but have no evidence that the things they do can be achieved with less bureaucracy. Many of the things that bloated government bureaucracies do should not be done at all. So it's pointless to ask for evidence that they could be done with less bureaucracy. > Most regulations exist to check the power of the rich That's what we are led to believe. I just don't think it's actually true. A whole new mess of regulations got put in place after the crash of 2008. Yet the rich are even richer now than they were then.
adamcstephens 5y ago
And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family?
- pdonis 5y ago
  > And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family? The fact that you, for example, don't have any goods or services that, say, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos wants does not mean Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have all the wealth and you have none. Wealth is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are rich because they founded companies that created enormous amounts of wealth. Say what you like about Windows and Amazon, but Windows made personal computing available to everyone, not just the affluent who could afford a Mac, and Amazon has made cheap products and easy, fast shipping available to everyone, not just the rich who could afford to hire personal shopping and delivery services. And the wealth those companies created had to be spread among everyone, by the very nature of what they did. Windows would have been useless if it were just Bill Gates' personal OS, and Amazon would have been useless if it were just Jeff Bezos' personal shopping service. The whole point was to make those things available to everyone. Similar remarks apply to everyone who creates wealth. The people who grow the food you eat grow more than they need just for themselves. Then they trade the excess for other things they need or want. The same applies to you. Want some food? Create some wealth that you can trade for it. The real complaint that can be made about the "1 percent" or "0.01 percent" or "elite" or whatever term you want to use, is that they have created a system that makes it harder for everyone else to create wealth, by putting all kinds of regulations and complications in place that only they know how to navigate. But you don't fix that problem with more regulations and complications. Nor do you fix it by just confiscating what the rich have now and redistributing it; that only works once. You fix it by scaling back all those regulations and complications so more and more people can create wealth themselves instead of having to wait for a few "elites" to do it.
  - adamcstephens 5y ago
    Regulations are the only reason Windows even exists. If had not been for government antitrust laws and their enforcement, IBM would have stifled the PC market before it even began.[1] The thing about these cases is that they don’t even have to fully succeed to open the space for competition. The case against Microsoft continued this trend, providing space for Google and the monopolies of today. So regulation isn’t just good for society, it’s necessary to ensure a competitive market. Taxation ensures that all of society benefits as the collective wealth increases. It pays for shared resources, and provides for a shared safety net. Taxation isn’t confiscation, it’s the cost of doing business and thriving in a complex society. Trickle down and deregulation are awful policies that only destabilize. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html
alasdair_ 5y ago
>giving it to others is not natural Money is a completely unnatural invention - nothing about it is “natural”, so I don’t see this as a strong argument.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Money is a completely unnatural invention Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". The reasons why money gets invented are common to all human societies that get beyond the tribal stage; money is as natural as the human societies that invent it are.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. You don't have to change nature to change society, you can change society by changing humans, which is a very specific subset of nature and not very representative of nature as a whole. The problems that can easily be solved by money may be natural but we still get to decide how we implement money and the way we do it can create human made problems.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. Okay, then that just means "unnatural" is not a bad thing, unless you think society is a bad thing. But if you think society is a bad thing, why are you taking advantage of the benefits it provides? I assume you are, because if you weren't, you wouldn't be able to post here. > you can change society by changing humans Really? And how do you propose to do that? Particularly without grossly violating the rights of the humans you want to change?