What you say is true, but:
1) When it comes to my universal dividend scheme, I would make an exception for taxes being funnelled into mitigation programmes.
2) From a distributional equity perspective the proper thing to do with Pigouvian taxes is to distribute them to the people harmed by the externality.
These are legitimate complications to my fairly simplistic picture.
Some of the stuff you're talking about is less of a focus for me because of how government accounting works in New Zealand (for one thing off-Budget expenditure is some combination of illegal and unheard of). But still, there would be a lot of careful construction of accounting rules necessary to implement this.
As a matter of sound financial management you are correct. I guess my point (or Elias's and Smith's point) is that government can't be trusted to engage in sound financial management.
I'm not so sure about that last part. Last election, InTrade gave Paul the best odds of beating the Democratic nominee, conditional on being nominated.
Try mobilising your anti-war base when your opponent is Ron Paul.
Decisions are made at the margin. The question is who pays for the next dollar of government spending. And at the moment, the answer to that question is some unspecified group of people in the future.
What the above passage reminded me of most immediately was the feeling of exhausting, frustration and dread that at times overcomes me whenever I’m shopping in a grocery store.
This happens to me occaisonally, but the way to break out of it is to realise that if you are indifferent to the prevailing alternatives, the utility-maximising rule is the one that minimises the time and effort of decision-making. Or, in layman's terms, if you can't choose between two things, pick one at random.
Another approach, for a repeat decision, is to choose what you chose last time. I have a lot of habit for this reason alone, it's easier than deciding what to do anew every time. Though I like to break a habit occasionally just to make sure I'm not missing out on anything.
Why is it that this kind of thinking is so absent from our political conversation? When you look back at politics from, say, a century ago, it wasn’t so much the case. For good and (sometimes titanic, world-destroying) ill, national politics across the world often concerned themselves with what kind of life was worth creating and sustaining on this Earth.
One reason that government does a lot more than it used to. I know from personal experience how much paper a modern government generates (and I suspect our government is quite a bit more efficient than yours). The more a government does, the more the leading figures in that government have to make decisions about. Politics fills up with discussions of minutiae and that crowds out the big discussions.
Secondly, most people don't think about politics much, because there's no point. It's not like your vote actually matters, so why bother wasting good effort. Only strange people like you and I think about politics, because we derive some please from it. I think you may be overstating the influence of "big issues" on popular thought in the past. As a general rule hoi polloi are pulled along by big ideas, they provide the mass for a revolution, but not the direction (Keynes's line about defunct economists is applicable here).
Tywin hates Tyrion because he blames her for his wife's death. It would seem his wife was the only person he really held genuine affection for.
To be fair the smallfolk in King's Landing seem to hate him because he's a dwarf. That's why they attribute Joffrey's madness to him, but his attempts to restore sanity to Joffrey. Because Joffrey is blond and pretty, and Tyrion is neither.
In the absence of a deity, it can be difficult to find a morality that doesn’t feel founded on sand.
This may be true, but the security of the believer is a falshood. This is true, even if some kind of God actually exists.
To explain why, consider the Ori. Now the Ori are energy being of great power. Their prophets (the Priors of the Ori) have miraculous powers, including near-invulnerability, creating deadly plagues from nothing, and raising the dead. They have created human life (not earthlings, but other humans on other planets). They also demand that all humans convert to worship them, and their followers will exterminate any humans that don't comply.
So far, so Old Testament. Here's the question: The Ori aren't omnipotent, but they would meet the definition of gods for many religions. So if an Ori ship sowed up above Earth tomorrow, would it be morally right to obey their commands?
I’ve always thought it’d be interesting if someone made a Mortal Kombat-style fighting game called GOD WARS. You could choose from characters like YHWH which initially takes the form of an old man with a beard but can turn into a burning bush whenever it’s time for a-smiting. Others characters would be Jesus, Buddha, Satan, Joseph Smith, Mohammed (yes, Mohammed would be included, but I’m not sure if it would be funny to censor him or not), Baal, who’d bludgeon his enemies with his massive member, Crom, Amaterasu, Cthulhu, Aslan, and Richard Dawkins would have to be in there as well. Of course, this game would offend literally every last human being alive for some reason or another. And of course, the people who weren’t offended and liked the game would be marginalized and accused of being un-American or somesuch.
This is a brilliant idea. And the best part for me is that I can like it all I want since I'm effectively immune to charged of being unAmerican (since my lack of American-ness is objectively established).
The only change I'd suggest is to put PZ Myers in for atheism instead of Dawkins. Dawkins may be the better known, but PZ has 2 advantages:
1) Cephalopod-based attacks.
2) The special "Pharyngulate" attack, where the target is dog-piled by hundreds of thousands of science geeks.
The risk of meltdown isn't that big a deal. I'd wager that lung cancer caused by inhaling coal dust (not to mention mine explosions) is a bigger health risk per kWh than nuclear meltdown.
That stereotype annoys me as well. By "going to work in any serious way" I'm not talking about manual labour, but rather work you devote a substantial fraction of your time to so you can get paid.
What I imagine more people doing in the future is entering a sort of half-retirement where they do what amounts to a hobby they get paid for. In other words, something they do principally do because they enjoy, and simply couldn't make a living doing it. Effectively they're living off saved capital, but they are still technically working for pay.
Read the Old Testament. There are no gulags, but there is a lot of genocide. Christianity is a religion of peace now, but that's because the Enlightenment neutered it.
On “Taxation and Skin”
What you say is true, but:
1) When it comes to my universal dividend scheme, I would make an exception for taxes being funnelled into mitigation programmes.
2) From a distributional equity perspective the proper thing to do with Pigouvian taxes is to distribute them to the people harmed by the externality.
"
These are legitimate complications to my fairly simplistic picture.
Some of the stuff you're talking about is less of a focus for me because of how government accounting works in New Zealand (for one thing off-Budget expenditure is some combination of illegal and unheard of). But still, there would be a lot of careful construction of accounting rules necessary to implement this.
"
As a matter of sound financial management you are correct. I guess my point (or Elias's and Smith's point) is that government can't be trusted to engage in sound financial management.
On “Why Do Liberals Care About Ron Paul’s Goldbuggery?”
I'm not so sure about that last part. Last election, InTrade gave Paul the best odds of beating the Democratic nominee, conditional on being nominated.
Try mobilising your anti-war base when your opponent is Ron Paul.
On “Skin in the game”
Decisions are made at the margin. The question is who pays for the next dollar of government spending. And at the moment, the answer to that question is some unspecified group of people in the future.
"
Indeed, arguably one of the problems with the US government at the moment is that no one has skin in the game.
On “Bloody Madness”
The chief reason why not is that he'd have kicked your ass all the way back to the US.
On “False Evidence, DNA, and Innocence”
I would fully support congress receiving such an exception unless they are actually under oath.
Otherwise you'll probably just get politicians who say the same things they do now, but actually believe them.
A self-deception detector though? That would be awesome.
On “Why Don’t Liberals Care About Foreign Policy?”
I'm inclined to agree.
On “Pop-tarts and prophets: on the emptiness of our politics”
This happens to me occaisonally, but the way to break out of it is to realise that if you are indifferent to the prevailing alternatives, the utility-maximising rule is the one that minimises the time and effort of decision-making. Or, in layman's terms, if you can't choose between two things, pick one at random.
Another approach, for a repeat decision, is to choose what you chose last time. I have a lot of habit for this reason alone, it's easier than deciding what to do anew every time. Though I like to break a habit occasionally just to make sure I'm not missing out on anything.
One reason that government does a lot more than it used to. I know from personal experience how much paper a modern government generates (and I suspect our government is quite a bit more efficient than yours). The more a government does, the more the leading figures in that government have to make decisions about. Politics fills up with discussions of minutiae and that crowds out the big discussions.
Secondly, most people don't think about politics much, because there's no point. It's not like your vote actually matters, so why bother wasting good effort. Only strange people like you and I think about politics, because we derive some please from it. I think you may be overstating the influence of "big issues" on popular thought in the past. As a general rule hoi polloi are pulled along by big ideas, they provide the mass for a revolution, but not the direction (Keynes's line about defunct economists is applicable here).
On “Krauthammer & Me: The American Constitution Works”
New Zealand does not have a constitution as such.
On “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
And honestly I don't think it matters much who did it. He signed his name to those things and if you sign something you own it.
On “Two Sides of the Same Lannister Coin”
I think the reason Littlefinger is doing so well for himself is that he's fully aware of this fact.
"
But that was Tywin's idea. Perhaps it's just a misattribution problem generally then.
On “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Just roll it back into the Army, like in WWII.
On “Two Sides of the Same Lannister Coin”
Tywin hates Tyrion because he blames her for his wife's death. It would seem his wife was the only person he really held genuine affection for.
To be fair the smallfolk in King's Landing seem to hate him because he's a dwarf. That's why they attribute Joffrey's madness to him, but his attempts to restore sanity to Joffrey. Because Joffrey is blond and pretty, and Tyrion is neither.
On “Confession”
This may be true, but the security of the believer is a falshood. This is true, even if some kind of God actually exists.
To explain why, consider the Ori. Now the Ori are energy being of great power. Their prophets (the Priors of the Ori) have miraculous powers, including near-invulnerability, creating deadly plagues from nothing, and raising the dead. They have created human life (not earthlings, but other humans on other planets). They also demand that all humans convert to worship them, and their followers will exterminate any humans that don't comply.
So far, so Old Testament. Here's the question: The Ori aren't omnipotent, but they would meet the definition of gods for many religions. So if an Ori ship sowed up above Earth tomorrow, would it be morally right to obey their commands?
"
This is a brilliant idea. And the best part for me is that I can like it all I want since I'm effectively immune to charged of being unAmerican (since my lack of American-ness is objectively established).
The only change I'd suggest is to put PZ Myers in for atheism instead of Dawkins. Dawkins may be the better known, but PZ has 2 advantages:
1) Cephalopod-based attacks.
2) The special "Pharyngulate" attack, where the target is dog-piled by hundreds of thousands of science geeks.
On “Jobs and Other Wastes of Worldly Effort”
The risk of meltdown isn't that big a deal. I'd wager that lung cancer caused by inhaling coal dust (not to mention mine explosions) is a bigger health risk per kWh than nuclear meltdown.
"
That stereotype annoys me as well. By "going to work in any serious way" I'm not talking about manual labour, but rather work you devote a substantial fraction of your time to so you can get paid.
What I imagine more people doing in the future is entering a sort of half-retirement where they do what amounts to a hobby they get paid for. In other words, something they do principally do because they enjoy, and simply couldn't make a living doing it. Effectively they're living off saved capital, but they are still technically working for pay.
On “A Little Atheism for Y’all”
Or as Terry Prathett put it "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy."
On “Austerity and Stimulus”
That's another possibility.
On “A Little Atheism for Y’all”
Read the Old Testament. There are no gulags, but there is a lot of genocide. Christianity is a religion of peace now, but that's because the Enlightenment neutered it.
"
Well said.
"
Oh quest away for the ground of existence, CERN is doing that at the moment with the Large Hadron Collider. But making up stories gets us nowhere.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.