4 ms·

I'm not sure I lean one way or the other, but that isn't a good analogy. There's no benefit to anybody from a baseball bat to the head. Now, if a certain number

I'm not sure I lean one way or the other, but that isn't a good analogy. There's no benefit to anybody from a baseball bat to the head. Now, if a certain number of baseball bats to heads is required to appease the gods and increase fertility, health, etc in a majority of the population, you've got a better comparison. Maybe not everybody needs all those benefits, but the options on the table are to let some people opt out, and decrease the benefits globally, or let some people opt out and increase the bat to head frequency for everyone else, force the holdouts to just quit whining and take their bat to the head for the greater good, or maybe see if there's some alternative way to appease the gods and reap their benefits with less head batting.

philh 11y ago
I agree that those features would make the analogy more accurate wrt taxation, but if that was the only important thing about an analogy, we wouldn't use analogies at all. (And it's quite possible that I shouldn't have used an analogy in this case.) I don't think those features are particularly relevant to the mistake Frondo was making.
- bryondowd 11y ago
  I'm not sure what point the original analogy was meant to make, and I apologize if I missed it. Frondo claimed that "anti-taxers" were free riders, which models well with the modified analogy as those who opt-out of being hit in the head, at the expense of everyone else, yet still likely benefit, even if only indirectly, from living in a world where others take the hits to achieve the benefits. Note that I'm not saying Frondo is correct, I was just showing that the analogy given didn't refute his claim in any way I could see. Personally, I expect most people against taxes fall under my last category of people trying to find another way to get the needed benefits without being hit in the head, or at least want to get more bang for their buck or a more fair distribution of cost/benefit.
  - philh 11y ago
    Analogies don't refute things, they just make other things easier to understand. My refutation of Frondo's original claim amounts to: "you're just plain wrong". (Anti-taxers are not free riders. They don't want other people to pay for them.) The analogy was: "here's a similar mistake".
yellowapple 11y ago
> There's no benefit to anybody from a baseball bat to the head. Sure it is. It's good for the people being employed to operate the baseball bats. It's also good for the people being employed to make the baseball bats.

philh 11y ago

I agree that those features would make the analogy more accurate wrt taxation, but if that was the only important thing about an analogy, we wouldn't use analogies at all. (And it's quite possible that I shouldn't have used an analogy in this case.) I don't think those features are particularly relevant to the mistake Frondo was making.

bryondowd 11y ago
I'm not sure what point the original analogy was meant to make, and I apologize if I missed it. Frondo claimed that "anti-taxers" were free riders, which models well with the modified analogy as those who opt-out of being hit in the head, at the expense of everyone else, yet still likely benefit, even if only indirectly, from living in a world where others take the hits to achieve the benefits. Note that I'm not saying Frondo is correct, I was just showing that the analogy given didn't refute his claim in any way I could see. Personally, I expect most people against taxes fall under my last category of people trying to find another way to get the needed benefits without being hit in the head, or at least want to get more bang for their buck or a more fair distribution of cost/benefit.
- philh 11y ago
  Analogies don't refute things, they just make other things easier to understand. My refutation of Frondo's original claim amounts to: "you're just plain wrong". (Anti-taxers are not free riders. They don't want other people to pay for them.) The analogy was: "here's a similar mistake".

yellowapple 11y ago

> There's no benefit to anybody from a baseball bat to the head. Sure it is. It's good for the people being employed to operate the baseball bats. It's also good for the people being employed to make the baseball bats.