5 ms·

Government services obviously require a resource surplus (and some mechanism to direct that surplus to paying for these services, of which taxation is the most

by smsm42 4y ago

Government services obviously require a resource surplus (and some mechanism to direct that surplus to paying for these services, of which taxation is the most common one). If everybody are chill fishermen, there's no surplus - there's no reason for the fisherman to create one.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Surplus can come in the form of a small number of large surpluses, or a large number of small ones. The fisherman is quite capable of being part of the latter example.
- smsm42 3y ago
  He is capable, but the whole point of the story is that he doesn't want to use this capability, and is lauded for that.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    He doesn't wish to organize his life around maximizing his output. The entire point of the story is to get people to consider to what extent that makes sense, and under what circumstances. If you consider a good life to be precisely how the fisherman already lives, it takes a rather compelling argument (and it make even require compelling force) that he should behave otherwise.
    - smsm42 3y ago
      > If you consider a good life to be precisely how the fisherman already lives That's a pretty big if. I'd start with asking how is dental care in his village. Does the village doctor use anesthesia? Would the anesthesiologist accept fish as a payment, and how many fishes a pain-less root canal treatment costs? Maybe after learning the answers to these questions I'd consider some other definition of a good life.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        I strongly encourage you to take a vacation in the Greek Islands, preferably with some incipient emergency dental issue just starting to flare up. I think you'll find the dentist to be just fine.
isleyaardvark 3y ago
The idea that the archetypical businessman in this story is ultimately necessary to provide for government spending is a pretty unique take.
- nickpp 3y ago
  There was a statistic saying that top 10% of income earners pay something like 80% of all income taxes (not exact numbers but you get the gist).
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. In a society where few people earned more than Nx the lowest (pick your own N), this distribution of tax origin would look very different. Think of it a different way: suppose a government explicitly targets being able to spend 23% of GDP on government (i.e. publically) chosen goals. How does it collect 23% of GDP? Well, if everyone earned precisely the same, it would collect it equally from each person. On the other hand, if one person earned 99% of GDP and everyone else combined collectively earned the remaining 1%, then obviously the super rich person will be be paying almost all of the tax revenue themselves. The current situation in the US is obviously not this extreme, but the thought experiment shows why it works the way it does. Also important is the concept of marginal utility of income, which describes how each additional currency-unit of income becomes less and less significant as your total income grows. In short, 10%-pay-80% reflects the other decisions that have been made about how the US economy works (or doesn't work), and don't have much to do with taxation in general, or the provision of public services.
    - throwawaysalome 3y ago
      You managed to burn another 212 words that added nothing to the statistic you were replying to.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      > Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of productivity and value creation. I've also lived under communism, where they ignored this uneven contribution and tried to squash the incomes uniformly. The result was quite predictable: we were equally starving, of course. Except the nomenklatura, but that's another story.
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
The surplus is created by the environment that grows the fish. Sunlight, plankton, little fish, big fish, plate. Then someone brings in a trawler that scoops up all the fish, and the heretofore independent fishermen now need to do something to convince the seafood company to give them the fish sticks now pooped out by the ship. So the fishermen become tax accountants and baristas, to provide services for the fish company's clerks. Net, there is now more economic activity and more GDP. Whereas before, the country only produced as much fish as the fishermen needed to eat (and some surplus to sell at the local market), now it also produces tax services, and espresso services, and fishstick exports. This lasts for about a decade until the fish stocks are depleted. The fishermen, who used to live in bamboo huts they'd rebuild themselves every few years, now live in concrete apartment blocks, and they can no longer afford rent.

by smsm42 4y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

Surplus can come in the form of a small number of large surpluses, or a large number of small ones. The fisherman is quite capable of being part of the latter example.

smsm42 3y ago
He is capable, but the whole point of the story is that he doesn't want to use this capability, and is lauded for that.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  He doesn't wish to organize his life around maximizing his output. The entire point of the story is to get people to consider to what extent that makes sense, and under what circumstances. If you consider a good life to be precisely how the fisherman already lives, it takes a rather compelling argument (and it make even require compelling force) that he should behave otherwise.
  - smsm42 3y ago
    > If you consider a good life to be precisely how the fisherman already lives That's a pretty big if. I'd start with asking how is dental care in his village. Does the village doctor use anesthesia? Would the anesthesiologist accept fish as a payment, and how many fishes a pain-less root canal treatment costs? Maybe after learning the answers to these questions I'd consider some other definition of a good life.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      I strongly encourage you to take a vacation in the Greek Islands, preferably with some incipient emergency dental issue just starting to flare up. I think you'll find the dentist to be just fine.

isleyaardvark 3y ago

The idea that the archetypical businessman in this story is ultimately necessary to provide for government spending is a pretty unique take.

nickpp 3y ago
There was a statistic saying that top 10% of income earners pay something like 80% of all income taxes (not exact numbers but you get the gist).
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. In a society where few people earned more than Nx the lowest (pick your own N), this distribution of tax origin would look very different. Think of it a different way: suppose a government explicitly targets being able to spend 23% of GDP on government (i.e. publically) chosen goals. How does it collect 23% of GDP? Well, if everyone earned precisely the same, it would collect it equally from each person. On the other hand, if one person earned 99% of GDP and everyone else combined collectively earned the remaining 1%, then obviously the super rich person will be be paying almost all of the tax revenue themselves. The current situation in the US is obviously not this extreme, but the thought experiment shows why it works the way it does. Also important is the concept of marginal utility of income, which describes how each additional currency-unit of income becomes less and less significant as your total income grows. In short, 10%-pay-80% reflects the other decisions that have been made about how the US economy works (or doesn't work), and don't have much to do with taxation in general, or the provision of public services.
  - throwawaysalome 3y ago
    You managed to burn another 212 words that added nothing to the statistic you were replying to.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    > Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of productivity and value creation. I've also lived under communism, where they ignored this uneven contribution and tried to squash the incomes uniformly. The result was quite predictable: we were equally starving, of course. Except the nomenklatura, but that's another story.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

The surplus is created by the environment that grows the fish. Sunlight, plankton, little fish, big fish, plate. Then someone brings in a trawler that scoops up all the fish, and the heretofore independent fishermen now need to do something to convince the seafood company to give them the fish sticks now pooped out by the ship. So the fishermen become tax accountants and baristas, to provide services for the fish company's clerks. Net, there is now more economic activity and more GDP. Whereas before, the country only produced as much fish as the fishermen needed to eat (and some surplus to sell at the local market), now it also produces tax services, and espresso services, and fishstick exports. This lasts for about a decade until the fish stocks are depleted. The fishermen, who used to live in bamboo huts they'd rebuild themselves every few years, now live in concrete apartment blocks, and they can no longer afford rent.