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Many things that make intuitive sense to most people are wildly wrong. Reorganizing society to accommodate the grab bag of misunderstandings and prejudices that

by imgabe 4y ago

Many things that make intuitive sense to most people are wildly wrong. Reorganizing society to accommodate the grab bag of misunderstandings and prejudices that make up the intuitive sense of most people is usually a mistake. Indeed, every society that used their "intuitive sense" to confiscate wealth from private citizens ended up collapsing.

woodruffw 4y ago
> Indeed, every society that used their "intuitive sense" to confiscate wealth from private citizens ended up collapsing. Not ours[1]! Edit: At least, not yet. I, for one, welcome the application of this logic to our current scheme. [1]: https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/
- imgabe 4y ago
  No, not ours, not yet, unless the faction that thinks stealing someone else's stuff will solve all our problems gets their way.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    So much of this conversation is breathless: who said anything about "solving all our problems"?
    - imgabe 4y ago
      Then you just want to take people's stuff for fun, not to solve any problem? Is that supposed to be better?
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        No, I think I'd be happy with somewhere between "all" and "any."
        imgabe 4y ago
        And the solution to the problems is to give more and more money to the government that already spent trillions of dollars and didn't solve the problem. You don't see a problem with that? You don't think that maybe we should get the government working effectively with what we already give it before we decide to give it more? The government spent $6.8 trillion last year. Do think at some time in November they were like "Damn, we were just about to end homelessness, but we came up $100 billion short. Oh well!" Imagine if you had an employee who wasn't doing their job. Is the solution to give them a raise?
        woodruffw 4y ago
        Again: this is very breathless. I don't have to be any particular fan of how the US Government spends its money to observe that taxing wealthy people, even aggressively, is the civically appropriate thing to do. Edit: it's also worth nothing that this reasoning is perfectly symmetrical. Why in the world should I continue to allow a billionaire to profiteer, at the cost of immense civic damage?
        imgabe 4y ago
        > Why in the world should I continue to allow a billionaire to profiteer, at the cost of immense civic damage? 1. Because creating a valuable company that provides a useful service is not profiteering. 2. Because creating a company did not cause civic damage in the first place. 3. Therefore confiscating the value of that company and transferring it to the government could not reverse any civic damage. 4. Destroying the engine of wealth creation in our society would cause immensely more civic damage. This is also symmetrical in that once you realize this will not solve any problems - and that it will in fact create many more problems, you can then conclude it is not a civically appropriate thing to do. Even if it gives a sense of satisfaction to envious people "intuitively reason" that knocking people down a peg is "civically appropriate".
        woodruffw 4y ago
        You're using terms of anger and envy ("satisfaction," "knocking down a peg"), when neither is present. I'm really just interested in taxing them a bit more, because I don't think it's healthy for democratic, pluralistic societies to have such large wealth gaps. There are enough things to dislike about each other without bringing in immense, unspendable amounts of money.

by imgabe 4y ago

woodruffw 4y ago

> Indeed, every society that used their "intuitive sense" to confiscate wealth from private citizens ended up collapsing. Not ours[1]! Edit: At least, not yet. I, for one, welcome the application of this logic to our current scheme. [1]: https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/

imgabe 4y ago
No, not ours, not yet, unless the faction that thinks stealing someone else's stuff will solve all our problems gets their way.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  So much of this conversation is breathless: who said anything about "solving all our problems"?
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Then you just want to take people's stuff for fun, not to solve any problem? Is that supposed to be better?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      No, I think I'd be happy with somewhere between "all" and "any."
      - imgabe 4y ago
        And the solution to the problems is to give more and more money to the government that already spent trillions of dollars and didn't solve the problem. You don't see a problem with that? You don't think that maybe we should get the government working effectively with what we already give it before we decide to give it more? The government spent $6.8 trillion last year. Do think at some time in November they were like "Damn, we were just about to end homelessness, but we came up $100 billion short. Oh well!" Imagine if you had an employee who wasn't doing their job. Is the solution to give them a raise?
        woodruffw 4y ago
        Again: this is very breathless. I don't have to be any particular fan of how the US Government spends its money to observe that taxing wealthy people, even aggressively, is the civically appropriate thing to do. Edit: it's also worth nothing that this reasoning is perfectly symmetrical. Why in the world should I continue to allow a billionaire to profiteer, at the cost of immense civic damage?
        imgabe 4y ago
        > Why in the world should I continue to allow a billionaire to profiteer, at the cost of immense civic damage? 1. Because creating a valuable company that provides a useful service is not profiteering. 2. Because creating a company did not cause civic damage in the first place. 3. Therefore confiscating the value of that company and transferring it to the government could not reverse any civic damage. 4. Destroying the engine of wealth creation in our society would cause immensely more civic damage. This is also symmetrical in that once you realize this will not solve any problems - and that it will in fact create many more problems, you can then conclude it is not a civically appropriate thing to do. Even if it gives a sense of satisfaction to envious people "intuitively reason" that knocking people down a peg is "civically appropriate".
        woodruffw 4y ago
        You're using terms of anger and envy ("satisfaction," "knocking down a peg"), when neither is present. I'm really just interested in taxing them a bit more, because I don't think it's healthy for democratic, pluralistic societies to have such large wealth gaps. There are enough things to dislike about each other without bringing in immense, unspendable amounts of money.