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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 s

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

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.