lol taxes just exist because people have malice against others

Wrong, but fun.

Taxes exist because the dominant gang must have its vig, its loot, and it is the price we pay to not have to fight them when they devolve into simple marauders.

You know how time consuming it is to dig a six foot pit?

@Wisecrack the marauders have free way rn so no

it's just pure parasitism for appearance of rule

@jestdotty "it's just pure parasitism for appearance of rule"

When throughout history has it not been?

The only ruler throughout history known explicitly for not being a total parasite, is known for having "the trains run on time."

And as much as I like trains to run on time, I don't think that outweighs living under a dictator.

@Wisecrack it is unknown what happened then. too many voices argue about it

at any rate seems your story has changed...

@jestdotty "at any rate seems your story has changed..."

how so?

@Wisecrack protection vs marauders vs saying it's just for appearance and is not ever been about protection from marauders

@jestdotty I'm not consistent at all in convos b/c I play a character online. Most people say they want authenticity, but when faced with that, they reveal, like all people, that they rather be entertained.

I didn't realize you were being serious.

nope, taxes exist because there's projects that benefit whole communities, but can not be done by individual people (or it's just a terrible idea to privatise it), so the whole community goes and chips in.

but keep swallowing the neo-liberal koolaid.

@tosensei theres a clear middle ground.

taxes exist for big projects that shouldn't be privatized (or ones that cant get economy of scale without either public funding, or public-private partnership), but taxes also tend to be raised too high, or lowered too much to be effective, and big projects end up expanding in budget commiserate with available tax monies.

@tosensei dislike of taxes is far-right in the slandering ideologies...

neo liberals are left and love taxes, and are socialism-lite turning into marxism

@Wisecrack government doesn't even need taxes

they use bonds and force banks to buy them. and this causes inflation lol

@tosensei do you admit you have malice for your fellow man?

after all you think his money should be taken from him against his will for not wanting to fund public projects. or does the malice clear once you loot him? what if he hid his money, does the malice appear evident to you then?

to view man as a tax-slave... if he doesn't pay, then he's evil. didn't they teach normies about unconditional love instead of using and exploiting others? didn't you say capitalism bad and communism good earlier, believing in the intrinsic worth of every person... and yet here you think someone should be made lesser for "public projects" against their will, and if they mention it's against their will then they're the evil ones instead you being evil for violating the wills of an intrinsically valuable person...

I don't think you actually think about this stuff any way deeply though

@jestdotty you assume I'm okay with taxes just because I've generally provided a for/against argument.

But you haven't asked me how I think taxes should be implemented, so without being asked, I'll explain how I think they should work.

I think taxes should be voluntary, and covered under a bond.

Everyone who contributes gets bonds. Bond value should be calculated either by a public usage fee (pay for what you use), or based on how many dollars of economic activity and/or GDP is calculated and contributed to the economy by the given project.

Bonds pay out yearly, or at maturity.

There is therefore incentive to invest, by the public, in public projects, and to become better at predicting this. Theres a market for marketing public projects, and theres a market for the bonds themselves.

Therefore public projects and taxes become strictly pro-social and voluntary.

I think this is a very middle-of-the-road and reasonable set of policies. Thoughts?

@Wisecrack I like it

crypto had something called quadratic voting, this way there was a soft cap to how much "vote" some money someone put in would have with the system. you'll be approaching 2 votes but never reaching it. something like that. would prevent monopolizing

@jestdotty not a huge crypto guy, but what you're saying is kinda interesting.

First massively reduce the influence of money, while simultaneously creating a soft lobby. Arguments often get made that "of course the rich should have such a huge influence, they're very successful, and thus highly competent at directing thing",

but beyond that feeling thats wrong-headed, however competent the well-off are (be they middle class, multimillionaire, or even billionaire), it seems far more wealth has been created by lobbying and graft than by real competence, orders of magnitude more.

Quadratic voting is interesting because it doesn't entirely dump the notion that the most competent have more influence, and "wealth is a measure of competence", it just scales it way way down.

Whether I agree with it, I don't know. It's definitely bound to start huge arguments for *and* against, but it is interesting.

Good comment.

@Wisecrack well you still need money to grease the wheels of the work that must be done (wages have to be paid so people can afford to live and eat and all that)

I am not making a comment about whether the money was achieved unethically. but I do want to prevent the scenario where someone with a lot of money would do a public work that then preys on others living in the ecosystem. a soft cap would prevent wolves eating the sheep, so to speak

and it still allows "those with more money which is potentially a proxy for competence" to have more sway, provided they can foot a bigger portion of the bill to help the work be done

@jestdotty

> neo liberals are left and love taxes

typical statement of someone who has no idea about politics. at all.

even when ignoring the fact that politics is much more complicated than "left<->right" - when you simplify it onto this single axis, neoliberalism is basically the polar opposite of communism/socialism/everything left, and from the economical perspective is about as right as it can go. it's the most unregulated market you can possibly get.

@jestdotty

> do you admit you have malice for your fellow man?

no. i don't. only disgust, at best.

but it's simple: if someone lives in a country where things are paid by taxes, and uses those things (public roads, healthcare, affordable and clean drinking water everywhere, fire brigades), that someone ought to pay taxes - or move somewhere where those things are privatised, so that person is still paying for it - only directly to a for-profit entity that doesn't care about the wellbeing of the people, only their own pocket.

but hey, some people just aren't able to think beyond their own, personal, immediate needs, and only think about "gimme gimme gimme, i want i want i want, screw the others". some people are just short-sighted, anti-social egoists like that.

@tosensei idk why you lecture if you know me to find you an unreliable narrator

@tosensei huh people not paying their fair share and using services they didn't pay for is actually the point of taxes...

@jestdotty

> huh people not paying their fair share and using services they didn't pay for is actually the point of taxes...

are you living in bizarro-world? or are you just so fixated on opposing me that your brain flips to automatically denying everything i say, no matter how obvious it is? lets' try that:

the sky, during a cloudless day, is blue.

@tosensei I'm just using logic