3 ms·

I apologize for characterizing you a certain way. The viewpoint I was "painting you into a corner" on is unfortunately imo super common on HN. I think you have

I apologize for characterizing you a certain way. The viewpoint I was "painting you into a corner" on is unfortunately imo super common on HN. I think you have a contradiction in your viewpoint though. On one hand you say that human desires are unlimited, and on the other hand you say that if you tax robot productivity by 10% that means that the owners can't sell the other 90%. How is it possible that nobody needs the other 90% if human wants are unlimited? What I'm saying is that basic human needs are NOT unlimited. A human being is an animal that needs a certain amount of food, clothing, and shelter to stay alive. And furthermore, in the world we live in today, not every human being gets all the food, clothing and shelter necessary to survive. That's an empirical physical fact of reality. What I'm proposing is that the 10% surplus would be sufficient to provide for these needs, NOT for everything that anyone's heart could desire. Now it's possible that in a Star Trek future, the robots could even produce 100x what every human being needs to stay alive. In that case, you could give every human being 10x what they need and still have a 90% surplus. And because as you pointed out, human wants are unlimited, the owners of the robots will still be able to sell the 90% surplus. BTW, I don't actually believe this is practical to implement today. So I wouldn't advocate this level of massive redistribution. However, in a hypothetical super productive future society, I might. P.S. If you want to hear my reason why this society ISNT as good as it sounds (which has nothing to do with taxes or the morality of redistribution) see my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7255952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7255952

msandford 13y ago
Thanks for arguing like an adult. It's greatly appreciated. I do agree that I have a contradiction in my argument; you're spot on. I'm going to chalk that up to not fully explaining things. The first gallon of water per day I REALLY NEED to drink. The next I'd really, really like to have to brush my teeth and wash a bit. The next 5 gallons I still really want for washing and cooking. The next 20 are for bathing and laundry. The next hundred don't do me anywhere near as much good and eventually the utility I get from an additional gallon of water goes below the $0.01 per gallon that I pay my utility, so I don't use more. This kind of decreasing marginal value happens everywhere in the economy. For a lot of things (like energy) the demand is nearly flat but for large portions of the economy the demand is highly nonlinear. In other words, doubling the price might reduce consumption by 80% or more. In those situations if you take the first marginally very valuable portion of the production away from the factory owners they have to raise prices on the rest to recoup their losses. But the increased prices bring volume down, which could potentially increase prices again. I am sure that there are some situations where the 10% surplus really would be enough to provide for everyone's basic needs (however the hell you define that) and not totally fuck over the factory/robot owners. But there will also be large swaths of the economy where you can't. I do think taxes are fundamentally immoral because I can't get past the theft-like nature of "pay the taxes or you'll go to jail" but I'm pragmatic and understand that taxes are better than a completely uneducated populace. And honestly I'd be much happier with a world where taxes were only 10% in total rather than the 20%-40% that they are now. I just don't think you can feed, clothe, shelter, etc the whole world on 10% of total production. It would be great and I'd love to live in that world but I really feel like there's something that would prevent it; I can't put my finger on it but I'm pretty sure it's there.
- landryraccoon 13y ago
  Well we're debating a totally hypothetical situation. The premise to begin with is that we're talking about a far future post scarcity society. If you want to say that's implausible, sure, I might agree with you, but that's not the issue. As far as the theft like nature of taxes, we'll just have to agree to disagree. The concept of theft in and of itself only exists in the context of a society where laws exist and are enforced. That society can only exist with taxes. In the jungle, there's only what you can carry and what you can protect, and what stronger people want to take from you. But I can't say more without understanding where you get your morality from. If you get your understanding of morality from religion for example, most major religions justify allowing the government or head of state to use force to sustain that government. P.S. As far as the marginal value of goods; yes I think you are right in that if you took 10% of each good (like fresh water) and distributed it that way it would probably cause huge economic problems. My guess is that any workable way of implementing this tax would be more complex and progressive, much like our current tax system doesn't tax everything equally. For example, luxuries would probably be taxed more, and basic necessities such as water would probably be taxed less. I have no idea what the details of such a system would be, it would probably take a lot of thought to work out what would make sense.
  - msandford 13y ago
    Part of my hesitance to be persuaded that a Star Trek economy could possibly work is that in some senses it already has. In the 1850s 90% of the people in the US were farmers. Around 1900 that number shrank to 30% and today it now stands at about 3% so farmers can now grow 30x as much food as they used to be able to. But even given a 3000% increase in productivity there are still people starving in the world. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/ Why is that? Well part of it is that making a single farmer 30x as productive involves a LOT more capital. You need tractors, plows, planters, sprayers, combines, and somewhere to store it all. You also need a lot of fuel to make everything go and maintenance to keep it all working. Worse, most of these items can't be co-oped between farmers because they'll all need them at the same time. It's not uncommon for a farmers to have several hundred thousand to several million dollars worth of equipment. In response to the complexities you've mentioned I think that's the whole of the problem; implementation. The technology exists to feed the whole world at least twice over and probably a lot more. It's not being done in part because of logistics (getting the food there isn't trivial), but primarily because of the political and economic issues. How do we decide who pays for it? I can't see human nature changing, you know? I guess maybe I have a hard time accepting the premise that somehow the world will get to a place where you can work for a couple of days and live on that for a year.

msandford 13y ago

Thanks for arguing like an adult. It's greatly appreciated. I do agree that I have a contradiction in my argument; you're spot on. I'm going to chalk that up to not fully explaining things. The first gallon of water per day I REALLY NEED to drink. The next I'd really, really like to have to brush my teeth and wash a bit. The next 5 gallons I still really want for washing and cooking. The next 20 are for bathing and laundry. The next hundred don't do me anywhere near as much good and eventually the utility I get from an additional gallon of water goes below the $0.01 per gallon that I pay my utility, so I don't use more. This kind of decreasing marginal value happens everywhere in the economy. For a lot of things (like energy) the demand is nearly flat but for large portions of the economy the demand is highly nonlinear. In other words, doubling the price might reduce consumption by 80% or more. In those situations if you take the first marginally very valuable portion of the production away from the factory owners they have to raise prices on the rest to recoup their losses. But the increased prices bring volume down, which could potentially increase prices again. I am sure that there are some situations where the 10% surplus really would be enough to provide for everyone's basic needs (however the hell you define that) and not totally fuck over the factory/robot owners. But there will also be large swaths of the economy where you can't. I do think taxes are fundamentally immoral because I can't get past the theft-like nature of "pay the taxes or you'll go to jail" but I'm pragmatic and understand that taxes are better than a completely uneducated populace. And honestly I'd be much happier with a world where taxes were only 10% in total rather than the 20%-40% that they are now. I just don't think you can feed, clothe, shelter, etc the whole world on 10% of total production. It would be great and I'd love to live in that world but I really feel like there's something that would prevent it; I can't put my finger on it but I'm pretty sure it's there.

landryraccoon 13y ago
Well we're debating a totally hypothetical situation. The premise to begin with is that we're talking about a far future post scarcity society. If you want to say that's implausible, sure, I might agree with you, but that's not the issue. As far as the theft like nature of taxes, we'll just have to agree to disagree. The concept of theft in and of itself only exists in the context of a society where laws exist and are enforced. That society can only exist with taxes. In the jungle, there's only what you can carry and what you can protect, and what stronger people want to take from you. But I can't say more without understanding where you get your morality from. If you get your understanding of morality from religion for example, most major religions justify allowing the government or head of state to use force to sustain that government. P.S. As far as the marginal value of goods; yes I think you are right in that if you took 10% of each good (like fresh water) and distributed it that way it would probably cause huge economic problems. My guess is that any workable way of implementing this tax would be more complex and progressive, much like our current tax system doesn't tax everything equally. For example, luxuries would probably be taxed more, and basic necessities such as water would probably be taxed less. I have no idea what the details of such a system would be, it would probably take a lot of thought to work out what would make sense.
- msandford 13y ago
  Part of my hesitance to be persuaded that a Star Trek economy could possibly work is that in some senses it already has. In the 1850s 90% of the people in the US were farmers. Around 1900 that number shrank to 30% and today it now stands at about 3% so farmers can now grow 30x as much food as they used to be able to. But even given a 3000% increase in productivity there are still people starving in the world. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/ Why is that? Well part of it is that making a single farmer 30x as productive involves a LOT more capital. You need tractors, plows, planters, sprayers, combines, and somewhere to store it all. You also need a lot of fuel to make everything go and maintenance to keep it all working. Worse, most of these items can't be co-oped between farmers because they'll all need them at the same time. It's not uncommon for a farmers to have several hundred thousand to several million dollars worth of equipment. In response to the complexities you've mentioned I think that's the whole of the problem; implementation. The technology exists to feed the whole world at least twice over and probably a lot more. It's not being done in part because of logistics (getting the food there isn't trivial), but primarily because of the political and economic issues. How do we decide who pays for it? I can't see human nature changing, you know? I guess maybe I have a hard time accepting the premise that somehow the world will get to a place where you can work for a couple of days and live on that for a year.