At anytime throughout the year you could go directly to the EPA website and make a tax payment of any amount. The EPA would give you a receipt and you’d submit all your receipts to the IRS by April 15. Anybody who didn’t want to shop for themselves would have the option of giving their taxes to their impersonal shoppers (congress).
For sure my presentation is imperfect. And I definitely wish I could perfectly copy Hanson and Sumner. Unfortunately, I don’t have their skills. My skill set is in researching and thinking… definitely not writing. Do I wish it was the other way around? No way. I really wouldn’t want to be Moldbug!
In large part because I suck at writing… the reception to pragmatarianism has been less than positive. My perception of the immense benefits keeps me going as well as the fact that not a single critic has cited a single source which supports the idea of allowing a small group of people to allocate everybody’s taxes. Our system doesn’t exist because the evidence supports it… it exists because that’s how we’ve always done it.
Of course it was my hope that the majority of people on this website would seriously consider my evidence and arguments before they voted… but my webstats show that this is clearly not the case. Instead, people here simply showed their considerable bias. It doesn’t seem like whatever is going on here is really working. Yes, there are a few exceptions like yourself… but every forum I’ve participated on has roughly the same amount of thoughtful thinkers.
Anyways, because the evidence is on my side, it’s a given that eventually more and more people will realize this. It would happen sooner rather than later if I was a better writer but… I can’t cry over spilled milk.
You keep bringing up sucking at writing as a core reason there’s a poor reception to your ideas. This doesn’t seem correct to me, the mechanics of your writing seem fine. A couple things you could do to improve to improve your posts:
Cut the length. I’ve noticed this especially with your comments. You can’t assume a reader is going to take five minutes to really dig into what you’re saying. You need to make your basic case in the first twenty seconds or so, and keep it brisk.
Inline information. Instead of throwing a bunch of links out there, explain a little of an interesting idea, and then give the reader a link that will help them learn more.
Your tone. You can be a little heavy handed, which will discourage readers from clicking into your links. Talk less about the people in the conversation (yourself and the audience), and more about your core idea.
Learning these things was very helpful to me, and I hope I can pass that along to you.
If the value of my idea was readily apparent, then I wouldn’t be in this predicament. If people readily grasped the value of markets then socialism never would have been attempted. But here we are with a command economy in our public sector.
So it’s not just my writing… it’s also the fact that I’m trying to explain a concept that people have been struggling with for a really long time. Your suggestions are pretty reasonable but I don’t think they will boost me near enough to clear this epic obstacle. But maybe they can boost me enough to gain the attention of people who can?
Thanks for your feedback. From the FAQ…
For sure my presentation is imperfect. And I definitely wish I could perfectly copy Hanson and Sumner. Unfortunately, I don’t have their skills. My skill set is in researching and thinking… definitely not writing. Do I wish it was the other way around? No way. I really wouldn’t want to be Moldbug!
In large part because I suck at writing… the reception to pragmatarianism has been less than positive. My perception of the immense benefits keeps me going as well as the fact that not a single critic has cited a single source which supports the idea of allowing a small group of people to allocate everybody’s taxes. Our system doesn’t exist because the evidence supports it… it exists because that’s how we’ve always done it.
Of course it was my hope that the majority of people on this website would seriously consider my evidence and arguments before they voted… but my webstats show that this is clearly not the case. Instead, people here simply showed their considerable bias. It doesn’t seem like whatever is going on here is really working. Yes, there are a few exceptions like yourself… but every forum I’ve participated on has roughly the same amount of thoughtful thinkers.
Anyways, because the evidence is on my side, it’s a given that eventually more and more people will realize this. It would happen sooner rather than later if I was a better writer but… I can’t cry over spilled milk.
This sentence is prima facie evidence that you’re flying off to the cloud cuckoo land...
You keep bringing up sucking at writing as a core reason there’s a poor reception to your ideas. This doesn’t seem correct to me, the mechanics of your writing seem fine. A couple things you could do to improve to improve your posts:
Cut the length. I’ve noticed this especially with your comments. You can’t assume a reader is going to take five minutes to really dig into what you’re saying. You need to make your basic case in the first twenty seconds or so, and keep it brisk.
Inline information. Instead of throwing a bunch of links out there, explain a little of an interesting idea, and then give the reader a link that will help them learn more.
Your tone. You can be a little heavy handed, which will discourage readers from clicking into your links. Talk less about the people in the conversation (yourself and the audience), and more about your core idea.
Learning these things was very helpful to me, and I hope I can pass that along to you.
If the value of my idea was readily apparent, then I wouldn’t be in this predicament. If people readily grasped the value of markets then socialism never would have been attempted. But here we are with a command economy in our public sector.
So it’s not just my writing… it’s also the fact that I’m trying to explain a concept that people have been struggling with for a really long time. Your suggestions are pretty reasonable but I don’t think they will boost me near enough to clear this epic obstacle. But maybe they can boost me enough to gain the attention of people who can?