Being able to allocate 1% of your taxes to the charity you choose, makes sense. It is actually in effect in some countries.
Being able to allocate 100% of your taxes as you like would be an unmanageable mess because people on average have no idea what is needed to keep a country or an economy running.
Somewhere in-between? Where? Without exact definitions what you mean by “tax choice” every discussion would be completely pointless.
What is a country or an economy if not all the people in it? In essence you’re saying that allowing people to allocate 100% of their taxes would be an unmanageable mess because people on average have no idea what is needed to keep themselves running.
Like I said in the FAQ… congress would still be there. If you have any evidence that leads you to believe that Elizabeth Warren knows better than you do what keeps you running… then you’d certainly have the option to give her some, or all, of your taxes.
If, in a pragmatarian system, most people do give their taxes to their impersonal shoppers… well… then you were right! Congratulations! We’d have solid evidence that most people do not know what keeps them running. Your theory would be proved correct. And no harm or foul by having it proved!
But what if your theory is incorrect? What if most people do not give their taxes to the impersonal shoppers that they voted for? Clearly this would mean that most people did not have enough evidence to believe that their impersonal shoppers know better than they do what keeps them running.
Can you see the problem with our current system if your theory is incorrect? If your theory is incorrect then it means that we’re currently giving an absurd amount of money (power, control, influence, responsibility) to a small group of people who really do not know what keeps us (the country/economy) running.
Is it possible that your theory is incorrect? Clearly I’m willing to bet a lot of my time on it. Maybe you should keep the possibility of being wrong in mind the next time you scratch your head or blame the other side when the economy/country ends up in the ditch.
Yet difficult as he [the modern politician] finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident in his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundreth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in ways he foresees, and fulfill ends he wishes. Is there not a marvelous incongruity between premises and conclusion? - Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State
Also...
What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Also...
What do we want with a Socialist then, who, under pretence of organizing for us, comes despotically to break up our voluntary arrangements, to check the division of labour, to substitute isolated efforts for combined ones, and to send civilization back? Is association, as I describe it here, in itself less association, because every one enters and leaves it freely, chooses his place in it, judges and bargains for himself on his own responsibility, and brings with him the spring and warrant of personal interest? That it may deserve this name, is it necessary that a pretended reformer should come and impose upon us his plan and his will, and as it were, to concentrate mankind in himself? - Frédéric Bastiat, What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen
And...
It is a paradox of our age that the interventionists think the public is too stupid to consult Angie’s List before hiring a lawyer, and so they need politicians to weed out the really bad ones by requiring law licenses. Yet, who determines whether a person (often a lawyer!) is qualified to become a politician? Why, the same group of citizens who were too stupid to pick their own lawyers. - Bob Murphy, Do We Need the State to License Professionals?
I think you should spend a little more time among the average, common, non-academic people, and learn how they think. Then you will understand why your ideas wouldn’t work.
If there’s a problem with how common people think, then where’s your critique of allowing them to vote for congresspeople?
The part that you really fail to appreciate is that taxpayers are the people who you voluntarily give your money to. Based on your actions… you clearly want them to have more influence over how society’s limited resources are used. Why do you want them to have more influence? It’s because they’ve given you concrete proof/evidence, in the form of a product or service, that they are using their influence for your benefit.
Even though you spend so much time shopping around to get the most bang for your buck, you immediately turn around and use your votes (words) to reduce the influence of taxpayers. Voters, such as yourself, shift massive amounts of influence from taxpayers to congresspeople. If congresspeople truly create more value for voters than taxpayers would… then why are you so certain that voters would allocate their taxes themselves rather than give them to the people that they say should have more influence?
Maybe you should spend a lot more time comparing the choices of humans to the choices of coywolves, plants and fungi...
Do us all a favor and come up with a decent explanation for why we should trust your words (votes) rather than your actions (spending).
It’s simple. The representatives don’t micromanage our daily life, they only work on laws within the confines of a constitution. Have you heard about the separation of powers? They can also make only minor, gradual changes to the existing system without risking a revolution.
On the other hand, a completely free-choice taxation system would bring a lot of instability into the system. How could your economy follow drastic changes in the tax allocation, which will inevitably happen as people’s moods are changing. For example, the school system would get one year 150 billion $, the next year 17 billion $, the third year 200 billion $. How could you plan ahead in such a chaos?
Another question is, how would you introduce such a system, assuming it worked? Just come up one year with it, and when people get to fill their tax forms, they will be surprised by a long form where they will need to specify where they are allocating they taxes to? Do you really expect that it will be at least a little similar to how the allocation was last year? Because otherwise the system couldn’t handle the large differences. Do you expect that everyone would know by heart how much the upkeep of certain institutions costs? Do you expect every citizen to become a financial expert and know what to allocate where to stop some essential services form completely collapsing because they received only a tiny percentage compared to what they got last year?
You came up with a lot of theory without any proof how it would work in practice, so please, show us a plausible scenario with concrete examples how you thing your ideas would be implemented.
You also didn’t answer my original question: to what extent would the choice extend? Completely free? So if no one allocated to the police (because they hate receiving speeding tickets) then would the whole police just disband? The more I think about your proposal, the closer it looks to anarchy.
If not completely free, then what would be the limits?
The entire point of pragmatarianism is that the supply of public goods should be determined by the demand for public goods. If the demand for public education is $150 million then that’s how much public education should be supplied. If, the next year, the demand for public education dropped to $17 million then why in the world would you think it’s ok to continue supplying $150 million dollars worth of public education?
In a pragmatarian system… that difference of $133 million dollars wouldn’t just vanish or go back into the taxpayers pockets. If they didn’t spend it on education then it’s because they spent that $133 million dollars on other public goods. Why did they spend it on these other public goods? Evidently because they valued greater quantities of these other public goods more than they valued greater quantities of public education.
If you want to argue that taxpayers consistently make terrible value judgements… then why wouldn’t you want to consistently apply your argument? Why wouldn’t you also argue that farmers are going to make equally bad value judgements in the private sector? Why would you worry about public education being incorrectly supplied but not worry about food being incorrectly supplied?
In the private sector nothing prevents a farmer from gambling all his income away in Vegas. They have this option but most don’t choose it. Instead, they spend most of their income on the inputs that they need to keep their farms operating.
In the public sector, however, these farmers wouldn’t even have the option to gamble all their taxes away in Vegas. Yet, you’re more worried about their value judgements in the public sector than you are about their value judgements in the private sector. Again, why are you inconsistently critiquing the value judgements of taxpayers?
Maybe it’s because you’re under the impression that farmers don’t depend on any public inputs? Perhaps Elizabeth Warren can help clear this up for you...
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
According to Elizabeth Warren, farmers and everybody else got rich because of public goods. And I absolutely agree with her. Here’s where I fundamentally disagree with her...
That Warren knows better than farmers do which inputs, public or private, they need more of to keep their business thriving.
That Warren has more incentive than they do to get the most bang for their buck.
Warren lacks the knowledge and incentive of millions and millions of taxpayers yet you want her value judgements to replace the value judgements of taxpayers. If your motivation is the perception that you benefit more as a result of this replacement… then wouldn’t you benefit even more if this replacement was extended to the private sector?
If you truly want more benefit… then allow taxpayers to have the influence that they’ve earned. Extending their knowledge and incentive to the public sector will benefit us all immensely.
This isn’t to say that the value judgements of taxpayers are always going to be correct… but how could it not be important to know when they are incorrect? When disparities in valuations are readily apparent, this facilitates the exchange of information. “Hey buddy, why you running?” “There’s zombies chasing me”. If you notice that the DoD suddenly has a huge influx of funding… then you might want to figure out what other people know.
Yeah, if nobody allocated their taxes to the police then the police would disband. Again, maybe taxpayers know something that you don’t. Is that so hard to imagine? It’s really easy for me to imagine which is why I love the idea of incorporating all this info and incentive into the public sector.
I haven’t heard a plausible argument for why it should be 1% allocation rather than 100%. Until I do then I’m going to argue for 100%. But this certainly doesn’t mean that I won’t celebrate a 1% step in the right direction. But if farmers truly needed training wheels then we would have all starved to death by now.
People need time to learn a profession. At least a few years to learn it, and at least a decade to be good in it. You cannot expect tens of thousands of teachers to lose their jobs and retrain to become medics, just for them to have to retrain as policemen next year, because the allocation changed.
If the allocation in a certain sector dropped significantly, you argue that it just shows that demand dropped. But what to do with the thousands or maybe millions of people suddenly without a job?
If the allocation in a certain sector increased significantly, because demand suddenly soared, how would you get so many trained professionals for those jobs? You couldn’t train them overnight.
Demand will fluctuate significantly, because people are emotional beings. For example, I’ve seen in a European country, that a party’s votes dropped from over 50% to below 20% in a year because their leader was found out of doing something stupid. A completely new government was elected, but life went on with little changes, because they didn’t drastically changed the tax allocation, the new government made just small changes. Had they completely eliminated the funds of a sector, people would have gone on strike or maybe started a revolution.
Now imagine what would happen if an image of a dying child circulated through the media, with a message that there isn’t enough money for health-care. Next you know, that sector receives more then double the founding. How quickly you think you could train new staff for it? The same time a scandal breaks out because of a single teacher being found out that the abused a child. Tax allocation for education would drop significantly because of that single event, and now tens of thousands of teachers are without a job, and hundreds of thousands of pupils don’t have a classroom to study in. Even if next year the situation is stabilized, hundreds of thousands of students missed a school year, and there would be a job opening for tens thousands of teachers: how could you fill these instantly before the beginning of the school year?
The only time we see such drastic changes to labor in the private sector is when it’s caused by creative destruction (ie cars causing the shut down of buggy whip factories) or outsourcing. But even if for some unknown reason labor displacement was more pronounced in the public sector than in the private sector, then this concern would motivate more people to allocate their taxes towards improving the public safety net (ie unemployment benefits, job training, etc.). With pragmatarianism you maximize the number of people who can soundly sleep at night.
People are emotional beings? If people misallocate their resources for whatever reason (emotion, irrationality, carelessness, mistakes)… then they lose influence/power/control over how society’s limited resources are used. Think about it. Mistakes decrease your influence. Clearly there are few lucky exceptions… but they are by no means the rule. Taxpayers are the people who make the least mistakes. As a result they have gained, rather than lost, influence over how society’s limited resources are used.
You keep conflating voters and taxpayers… not only that but you still don’t seem to appreciate the fact that talk is cheap. Voting is talking. Therefore, voting is cheap. You can’t apply how people vote to how they spend their money. If you could, then we wouldn’t go around saying that actions speak louder than words. Neither would we encourage people to put their money where their mouth is.
If you’re going to effectively critique pragmatarianism… then you really have to have this concept under your belt. And you’re in luck because here’s a page just for you… louder. While you’re at it… you might as well make sure you thoroughly grasp these other key concepts.
Who in the world would people strike or revolt against in a pragmatarian system? Their neighbors? Power wouldn’t be centralized… it would be completely decentralized. You’re going to need a bigger bullhorn. If you wanted to change people’s minds/values then you’d have to do it the hard way… just like I’m doing it. It’s too much work unless you’re pretty sure it’s worth it.
An image of a dying child doubles funding? You might want to consult those non-profits which have used this technique.
Again, for sure there are going to be knee-jerkers out there… but a fool and his money are soon parted. Don’t take my word for it....
And the rich do not tend to throw their money away easily; those who do, do not stay rich very long. - Robin Hanson
People who’ve earned their money by doing their homework generally aren’t going to spend their money without doing their homework. And we’ll have far more people doing homework in a pragmatarian system than we do now with the current system. Why? Because as you would know if you had done your homework (ie read the FAQ)… our current system of government is the cause of rational ignorance. With the current system, unless you’re a lobbyist, it doesn’t pay to do your homework… so why bother? In a pragmatarian system, being able to sleep soundly at night is a pretty good incentive to make sure that your tax allocations are based on adequate evidence.
You still didn’t answer how you could keep up retraining the workforce to constantly shifting demands.
Also you didn’t answer how you would introduce your system without causing great societal upheaval or even societal collapse as millions of people would lose their jobs and millions of other jobs won’t have a skilled workforce. If you don’t come up with a plan how to handle such drastic changes, then your “pragmatarianims” has absolutely no difference from complete anarchy.
It seems this discussion is leading nowhere. Instead of discussing it, you seem to play an artillery game, just like what politicians do in a public “debate”: you answer to the few of my claims you think you can refute, while completely ignoring those which you can’t.
It’s really fine if you want to predict that pragmatarianism would cause great social upheaval. But you really have to appreciate that this prediction of yours is a double edged sword. You’re essentially arguing that there’s a huge disparity between the current supply of public goods and the actual demand for public goods. If you can convince me that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this disparity that you’re predicting exists… then you completely take the wind from my sails.
Unlike yourself, I’m not extremely confident that this disparity does indeed exist. For all I know the guesses of congresspeople, for whatever reasons, are extremely good. If they are extremely good then there wouldn’t be any great social upheaval if taxpayers could choose where their taxes go. Public education and public healthcare and defense would all receive pretty much the same amount of funding that they are currently receiving. No harm no foul. There wouldn’t be millions and millions of public employees trying to learn how to do whichever public jobs were in greater demand.
Based on my research though… I really wouldn’t be surprised if your prediction was correct. So let’s predict that you’re truly omniscient! You correctly foresee great social upheaval that would be caused by the correction of the massive disparity between public demand and supply. Are you really going to argue that this correction isn’t worth it?
Fortunately, we aren’t without precedent here. It’s 1977 and I’m Deng Xiaoping and you’re my biggest opponent. I’m arguing that we should create a market in China and you’re arguing that doing so would cause great social upheaval. Well.… it turns out that we were both correct. Millions and millions and millions and millions of people migrated from their farming villages to the cities in order to work in a multitude of new factories that were started thanks to a massive inflow of foreign investment. As a result, millions and millions and millions and millions of people were lifted out of poverty and China quickly caught up to the US. For the extended version of this story please see… builderism.
To put it somewhat less scholarly… imagine that the government is paying somebody to kick you in the balls. If you derive benefit from this person’s productivity… then, if we transitioned to a pragmatarian system, you’d allocate your taxes accordingly. If you want to predict that this guy who’s kicking you in the balls would lose his job if we implemented pragmatarianism… then… you’re arguing that he’s doing something that nobody in their right mind would pay him to do.
Command economies misallocate resources… that’s just what they do. Our government, with its hordes of lobbyists who represent diverse interests, isn’t a perfect command economy but, given that taxpayers can’t choose where their taxes go, it’s close enough for me to strongly suspect that significant amounts of society’s limited resources are being misallocated.
If your prediction is correct that pragmatarianism would cause a massive correction to the allocation of society’s limited resources… then for sure it’s terrible that so many people would lose their jobs… and I should hope that taxpayers would help support the smoothest possible reallocation… but you’re going to have to come up with a pretty good argument to convince me that we’re better off allowing massive amounts of society’s limited resources to be majorly misallocated.
The question is, how much tax choice.
Being able to allocate 1% of your taxes to the charity you choose, makes sense. It is actually in effect in some countries.
Being able to allocate 100% of your taxes as you like would be an unmanageable mess because people on average have no idea what is needed to keep a country or an economy running.
Somewhere in-between? Where? Without exact definitions what you mean by “tax choice” every discussion would be completely pointless.
What is a country or an economy if not all the people in it? In essence you’re saying that allowing people to allocate 100% of their taxes would be an unmanageable mess because people on average have no idea what is needed to keep themselves running.
Like I said in the FAQ… congress would still be there. If you have any evidence that leads you to believe that Elizabeth Warren knows better than you do what keeps you running… then you’d certainly have the option to give her some, or all, of your taxes.
If, in a pragmatarian system, most people do give their taxes to their impersonal shoppers… well… then you were right! Congratulations! We’d have solid evidence that most people do not know what keeps them running. Your theory would be proved correct. And no harm or foul by having it proved!
But what if your theory is incorrect? What if most people do not give their taxes to the impersonal shoppers that they voted for? Clearly this would mean that most people did not have enough evidence to believe that their impersonal shoppers know better than they do what keeps them running.
Can you see the problem with our current system if your theory is incorrect? If your theory is incorrect then it means that we’re currently giving an absurd amount of money (power, control, influence, responsibility) to a small group of people who really do not know what keeps us (the country/economy) running.
Is it possible that your theory is incorrect? Clearly I’m willing to bet a lot of my time on it. Maybe you should keep the possibility of being wrong in mind the next time you scratch your head or blame the other side when the economy/country ends up in the ditch.
Also...
Also...
And...
I think you should spend a little more time among the average, common, non-academic people, and learn how they think. Then you will understand why your ideas wouldn’t work.
Cf. “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”—H. L. Mencken
Pragmatarianism is the theory that democracy ignores the fact that talk is cheap.
If there’s a problem with how common people think, then where’s your critique of allowing them to vote for congresspeople?
The part that you really fail to appreciate is that taxpayers are the people who you voluntarily give your money to. Based on your actions… you clearly want them to have more influence over how society’s limited resources are used. Why do you want them to have more influence? It’s because they’ve given you concrete proof/evidence, in the form of a product or service, that they are using their influence for your benefit.
Even though you spend so much time shopping around to get the most bang for your buck, you immediately turn around and use your votes (words) to reduce the influence of taxpayers. Voters, such as yourself, shift massive amounts of influence from taxpayers to congresspeople. If congresspeople truly create more value for voters than taxpayers would… then why are you so certain that voters would allocate their taxes themselves rather than give them to the people that they say should have more influence?
Maybe you should spend a lot more time comparing the choices of humans to the choices of coywolves, plants and fungi...
What Do Coywolves, Mr. Nobody, Plants And Fungi All Have In Common?
Do us all a favor and come up with a decent explanation for why we should trust your words (votes) rather than your actions (spending).
It’s simple. The representatives don’t micromanage our daily life, they only work on laws within the confines of a constitution. Have you heard about the separation of powers? They can also make only minor, gradual changes to the existing system without risking a revolution.
On the other hand, a completely free-choice taxation system would bring a lot of instability into the system. How could your economy follow drastic changes in the tax allocation, which will inevitably happen as people’s moods are changing. For example, the school system would get one year 150 billion $, the next year 17 billion $, the third year 200 billion $. How could you plan ahead in such a chaos?
Another question is, how would you introduce such a system, assuming it worked? Just come up one year with it, and when people get to fill their tax forms, they will be surprised by a long form where they will need to specify where they are allocating they taxes to? Do you really expect that it will be at least a little similar to how the allocation was last year? Because otherwise the system couldn’t handle the large differences. Do you expect that everyone would know by heart how much the upkeep of certain institutions costs? Do you expect every citizen to become a financial expert and know what to allocate where to stop some essential services form completely collapsing because they received only a tiny percentage compared to what they got last year?
You came up with a lot of theory without any proof how it would work in practice, so please, show us a plausible scenario with concrete examples how you thing your ideas would be implemented.
You also didn’t answer my original question: to what extent would the choice extend? Completely free? So if no one allocated to the police (because they hate receiving speeding tickets) then would the whole police just disband? The more I think about your proposal, the closer it looks to anarchy.
If not completely free, then what would be the limits?
The entire point of pragmatarianism is that the supply of public goods should be determined by the demand for public goods. If the demand for public education is $150 million then that’s how much public education should be supplied. If, the next year, the demand for public education dropped to $17 million then why in the world would you think it’s ok to continue supplying $150 million dollars worth of public education?
In a pragmatarian system… that difference of $133 million dollars wouldn’t just vanish or go back into the taxpayers pockets. If they didn’t spend it on education then it’s because they spent that $133 million dollars on other public goods. Why did they spend it on these other public goods? Evidently because they valued greater quantities of these other public goods more than they valued greater quantities of public education.
If you want to argue that taxpayers consistently make terrible value judgements… then why wouldn’t you want to consistently apply your argument? Why wouldn’t you also argue that farmers are going to make equally bad value judgements in the private sector? Why would you worry about public education being incorrectly supplied but not worry about food being incorrectly supplied?
In the private sector nothing prevents a farmer from gambling all his income away in Vegas. They have this option but most don’t choose it. Instead, they spend most of their income on the inputs that they need to keep their farms operating.
In the public sector, however, these farmers wouldn’t even have the option to gamble all their taxes away in Vegas. Yet, you’re more worried about their value judgements in the public sector than you are about their value judgements in the private sector. Again, why are you inconsistently critiquing the value judgements of taxpayers?
Maybe it’s because you’re under the impression that farmers don’t depend on any public inputs? Perhaps Elizabeth Warren can help clear this up for you...
According to Elizabeth Warren, farmers and everybody else got rich because of public goods. And I absolutely agree with her. Here’s where I fundamentally disagree with her...
That Warren knows better than farmers do which inputs, public or private, they need more of to keep their business thriving.
That Warren has more incentive than they do to get the most bang for their buck.
Warren lacks the knowledge and incentive of millions and millions of taxpayers yet you want her value judgements to replace the value judgements of taxpayers. If your motivation is the perception that you benefit more as a result of this replacement… then wouldn’t you benefit even more if this replacement was extended to the private sector?
If you truly want more benefit… then allow taxpayers to have the influence that they’ve earned. Extending their knowledge and incentive to the public sector will benefit us all immensely.
This isn’t to say that the value judgements of taxpayers are always going to be correct… but how could it not be important to know when they are incorrect? When disparities in valuations are readily apparent, this facilitates the exchange of information. “Hey buddy, why you running?” “There’s zombies chasing me”. If you notice that the DoD suddenly has a huge influx of funding… then you might want to figure out what other people know.
To learn how it would work check out the FAQ.
Yeah, if nobody allocated their taxes to the police then the police would disband. Again, maybe taxpayers know something that you don’t. Is that so hard to imagine? It’s really easy for me to imagine which is why I love the idea of incorporating all this info and incentive into the public sector.
I haven’t heard a plausible argument for why it should be 1% allocation rather than 100%. Until I do then I’m going to argue for 100%. But this certainly doesn’t mean that I won’t celebrate a 1% step in the right direction. But if farmers truly needed training wheels then we would have all starved to death by now.
People need time to learn a profession. At least a few years to learn it, and at least a decade to be good in it. You cannot expect tens of thousands of teachers to lose their jobs and retrain to become medics, just for them to have to retrain as policemen next year, because the allocation changed.
If the allocation in a certain sector dropped significantly, you argue that it just shows that demand dropped. But what to do with the thousands or maybe millions of people suddenly without a job?
If the allocation in a certain sector increased significantly, because demand suddenly soared, how would you get so many trained professionals for those jobs? You couldn’t train them overnight.
Demand will fluctuate significantly, because people are emotional beings. For example, I’ve seen in a European country, that a party’s votes dropped from over 50% to below 20% in a year because their leader was found out of doing something stupid. A completely new government was elected, but life went on with little changes, because they didn’t drastically changed the tax allocation, the new government made just small changes. Had they completely eliminated the funds of a sector, people would have gone on strike or maybe started a revolution.
Now imagine what would happen if an image of a dying child circulated through the media, with a message that there isn’t enough money for health-care. Next you know, that sector receives more then double the founding. How quickly you think you could train new staff for it? The same time a scandal breaks out because of a single teacher being found out that the abused a child. Tax allocation for education would drop significantly because of that single event, and now tens of thousands of teachers are without a job, and hundreds of thousands of pupils don’t have a classroom to study in. Even if next year the situation is stabilized, hundreds of thousands of students missed a school year, and there would be a job opening for tens thousands of teachers: how could you fill these instantly before the beginning of the school year?
The only time we see such drastic changes to labor in the private sector is when it’s caused by creative destruction (ie cars causing the shut down of buggy whip factories) or outsourcing. But even if for some unknown reason labor displacement was more pronounced in the public sector than in the private sector, then this concern would motivate more people to allocate their taxes towards improving the public safety net (ie unemployment benefits, job training, etc.). With pragmatarianism you maximize the number of people who can soundly sleep at night.
People are emotional beings? If people misallocate their resources for whatever reason (emotion, irrationality, carelessness, mistakes)… then they lose influence/power/control over how society’s limited resources are used. Think about it. Mistakes decrease your influence. Clearly there are few lucky exceptions… but they are by no means the rule. Taxpayers are the people who make the least mistakes. As a result they have gained, rather than lost, influence over how society’s limited resources are used.
You keep conflating voters and taxpayers… not only that but you still don’t seem to appreciate the fact that talk is cheap. Voting is talking. Therefore, voting is cheap. You can’t apply how people vote to how they spend their money. If you could, then we wouldn’t go around saying that actions speak louder than words. Neither would we encourage people to put their money where their mouth is.
If you’re going to effectively critique pragmatarianism… then you really have to have this concept under your belt. And you’re in luck because here’s a page just for you… louder. While you’re at it… you might as well make sure you thoroughly grasp these other key concepts.
Who in the world would people strike or revolt against in a pragmatarian system? Their neighbors? Power wouldn’t be centralized… it would be completely decentralized. You’re going to need a bigger bullhorn. If you wanted to change people’s minds/values then you’d have to do it the hard way… just like I’m doing it. It’s too much work unless you’re pretty sure it’s worth it.
An image of a dying child doubles funding? You might want to consult those non-profits which have used this technique.
Again, for sure there are going to be knee-jerkers out there… but a fool and his money are soon parted. Don’t take my word for it....
People who’ve earned their money by doing their homework generally aren’t going to spend their money without doing their homework. And we’ll have far more people doing homework in a pragmatarian system than we do now with the current system. Why? Because as you would know if you had done your homework (ie read the FAQ)… our current system of government is the cause of rational ignorance. With the current system, unless you’re a lobbyist, it doesn’t pay to do your homework… so why bother? In a pragmatarian system, being able to sleep soundly at night is a pretty good incentive to make sure that your tax allocations are based on adequate evidence.
You still didn’t answer how you could keep up retraining the workforce to constantly shifting demands.
Also you didn’t answer how you would introduce your system without causing great societal upheaval or even societal collapse as millions of people would lose their jobs and millions of other jobs won’t have a skilled workforce. If you don’t come up with a plan how to handle such drastic changes, then your “pragmatarianims” has absolutely no difference from complete anarchy.
It seems this discussion is leading nowhere. Instead of discussing it, you seem to play an artillery game, just like what politicians do in a public “debate”: you answer to the few of my claims you think you can refute, while completely ignoring those which you can’t.
It’s really fine if you want to predict that pragmatarianism would cause great social upheaval. But you really have to appreciate that this prediction of yours is a double edged sword. You’re essentially arguing that there’s a huge disparity between the current supply of public goods and the actual demand for public goods. If you can convince me that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this disparity that you’re predicting exists… then you completely take the wind from my sails.
Unlike yourself, I’m not extremely confident that this disparity does indeed exist. For all I know the guesses of congresspeople, for whatever reasons, are extremely good. If they are extremely good then there wouldn’t be any great social upheaval if taxpayers could choose where their taxes go. Public education and public healthcare and defense would all receive pretty much the same amount of funding that they are currently receiving. No harm no foul. There wouldn’t be millions and millions of public employees trying to learn how to do whichever public jobs were in greater demand.
Based on my research though… I really wouldn’t be surprised if your prediction was correct. So let’s predict that you’re truly omniscient! You correctly foresee great social upheaval that would be caused by the correction of the massive disparity between public demand and supply. Are you really going to argue that this correction isn’t worth it?
Fortunately, we aren’t without precedent here. It’s 1977 and I’m Deng Xiaoping and you’re my biggest opponent. I’m arguing that we should create a market in China and you’re arguing that doing so would cause great social upheaval. Well.… it turns out that we were both correct. Millions and millions and millions and millions of people migrated from their farming villages to the cities in order to work in a multitude of new factories that were started thanks to a massive inflow of foreign investment. As a result, millions and millions and millions and millions of people were lifted out of poverty and China quickly caught up to the US. For the extended version of this story please see… builderism.
To put it somewhat less scholarly… imagine that the government is paying somebody to kick you in the balls. If you derive benefit from this person’s productivity… then, if we transitioned to a pragmatarian system, you’d allocate your taxes accordingly. If you want to predict that this guy who’s kicking you in the balls would lose his job if we implemented pragmatarianism… then… you’re arguing that he’s doing something that nobody in their right mind would pay him to do.
Command economies misallocate resources… that’s just what they do. Our government, with its hordes of lobbyists who represent diverse interests, isn’t a perfect command economy but, given that taxpayers can’t choose where their taxes go, it’s close enough for me to strongly suspect that significant amounts of society’s limited resources are being misallocated.
If your prediction is correct that pragmatarianism would cause a massive correction to the allocation of society’s limited resources… then for sure it’s terrible that so many people would lose their jobs… and I should hope that taxpayers would help support the smoothest possible reallocation… but you’re going to have to come up with a pretty good argument to convince me that we’re better off allowing massive amounts of society’s limited resources to be majorly misallocated.