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>> "Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?" > Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that the

>> "Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?" > Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you. I'd set the reason as even more basic than that. Children are absolutely essential the future of society. There is literally no way to argue that is not true. Since they are essential to society, we should be working on ways to support them; as a society. Now, this can be argued against. But I feel pretty strongly that "I do not think it is important for us, as a society, to works towards goals that beneficial to society" is a fairly brain-dead stance. You can argue about the best uses for _available_ money; but to argue that's a matter of priorities, not "is it a valid goal".

hellojesus 1y ago
I think my most basic argument is that society is the result of many individuals' participation. It should be viewed as emergemt of individuals working together and not as an organism in-and-of itself. To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society. These redistributions are not pareto optimal and have major deadweight losses and introduce moral hazard.
- RHSeeger 1y ago
  > To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society. We have an entire system of laws we put in place to force people to increase their utility within society. What your statement is effectively arguing is... to go with anarchy; that we should not have rules that change human behavior, because human behavior _should_ be to maximize utility. I think it's pretty well accepted that "just let everyone do whatever they want" isn't a viable system for a society.
  - hellojesus 1y ago
    You still need constraints. The law should exist to protect private property. The government should collect taxes to fund the legal system and public goods. But I absolutely agree that the government shouldn't do much, if anything, more than that. Incentives to shape behavior should be extremely limited, because the government is the only entity that is allowed to force involuntarily transactions. Voluntary transactions ensure that the transacting parties have a pareto optimal outcome. This is what should be maximized, even at the detriment of the longevity of society itself.
    - immibis 1y ago
      Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness. I'm not deep enough in the theory to know whether "voluntary transactions create a Pareto-optimal outcome" is a true statement. I suspect not, because of information asymmetry and so on. Pareto-optimal is also kind of an arbitrary stopping point - you chose it because it supports your argument, not because it's actually a good one. If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - hellojesus 1y ago
        > Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness I want the government to provide the things that benefit Debbie and me equally, and only those things that benefit us equally. > If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that? How are you defining good? The same resources may be more equitably distributed, but ultimately the same fixed resources exist, and now poor Elon is far worse off. My point of search for pareto optimality is exactly that we should avoid this outcome because it's not better. Following it to it's logical conclusion, redistributing all wealth until it was exactly equally divided amongst the population would produce the most good outcome.

hellojesus 1y ago

I think my most basic argument is that society is the result of many individuals' participation. It should be viewed as emergemt of individuals working together and not as an organism in-and-of itself. To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society. These redistributions are not pareto optimal and have major deadweight losses and introduce moral hazard.

RHSeeger 1y ago
> To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society. We have an entire system of laws we put in place to force people to increase their utility within society. What your statement is effectively arguing is... to go with anarchy; that we should not have rules that change human behavior, because human behavior _should_ be to maximize utility. I think it's pretty well accepted that "just let everyone do whatever they want" isn't a viable system for a society.
- hellojesus 1y ago
  You still need constraints. The law should exist to protect private property. The government should collect taxes to fund the legal system and public goods. But I absolutely agree that the government shouldn't do much, if anything, more than that. Incentives to shape behavior should be extremely limited, because the government is the only entity that is allowed to force involuntarily transactions. Voluntary transactions ensure that the transacting parties have a pareto optimal outcome. This is what should be maximized, even at the detriment of the longevity of society itself.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness. I'm not deep enough in the theory to know whether "voluntary transactions create a Pareto-optimal outcome" is a true statement. I suspect not, because of information asymmetry and so on. Pareto-optimal is also kind of an arbitrary stopping point - you chose it because it supports your argument, not because it's actually a good one. If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - hellojesus 1y ago
      > Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness I want the government to provide the things that benefit Debbie and me equally, and only those things that benefit us equally. > If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that? How are you defining good? The same resources may be more equitably distributed, but ultimately the same fixed resources exist, and now poor Elon is far worse off. My point of search for pareto optimality is exactly that we should avoid this outcome because it's not better. Following it to it's logical conclusion, redistributing all wealth until it was exactly equally divided amongst the population would produce the most good outcome.