Tax. How do you feel about it?

[johnny9fingers]

Thesis: Once some sort of democratic civilisation is attained tax rates and civilisational complexity are necessarily linked.

The attempts by the Alt-Right and Libertarians to decouple tax from civilisational complexity and the needs of the participant voters in democratic institutions will IMHO lead to even further alienation of the voting public. Which is sort of the point really. When voters feel completely alienated from the political process they may riot, but it won't do much good, and will do a lot of harm. And the totalitarians can pick up the pieces.

The thing is that the folk at the bottom of the heap have to be looked after too. Even the Roman Empire had the dole. When the layers and the structure of society get so complicated, it takes resources to keep the thing going. Another as important thing is simplification is worse. By a country mile.

So... my contention is that the folk who deny the costs of modern life, and who live in some mythical past of rugged frontiersmen, or noble Lords sufficient unto themselves, just aren't socialised properly, or are playing with a few cards missing.

So how is the thesis flawed; wherein is the worm of doubt? Surely there must be a point where, maybe with AI, civilisational complexity can be managed cheaply? Resources can be directed where they are needed, with little wastage or excess. This may be possible, however, we might balk at the prospect of letting our lives be run in some respects by an AI. And that's not about money or reduced tax-takes.

I would contend that if we don't want cheap solutions, because they unsettle or offend some part of ourselves, we have to be prepared to pay for the expensive ones.

But I'm pretty sure there are other opinions out there.

Comments

[halialkers]

Essentially, you're entirely correct. The modern state with its highly centralized bureaucracy and strong military monopoly on force underpins the world that we know. But I don't think a sufficiently large-scale economy on a global scale focused on cities can ever be meshed with environmentally sound future. And to put it very brutally, the people that advocate a population cull of billions always want other people to die instead of themselves, so that in itself is revealing, honestly. And the problems are always ones to be fixed by drastic personal changes somewhere else over the hill and across the water because modern Western urbanites can't endure the kind of hard and cruel and backbreaking lives our ancestors took for granted.

The worm of doubt honestly is in the details of transforming a hypothetical concept like that into a reality. It remains science fiction, and if even a limited nuclear exchange happens that is basically a giant kicking over everything in a fit of temper and would obliterate the old order, all right. Not for the better.

[johnny9fingers]

But I don't think a sufficiently large-scale economy on a global scale focused on cities can ever be meshed with environmentally sound future.

That's the big question that we, as a species, are presently asking ourselves. Because we have to find a way to make it happen. And to continue the speculative theme, we have to get off-planet PDQ. If one accepted Jung's concept of a collective unconscious, this is probably what the surge in misplaced frontier mentality is predicated upon. Some sort of anthropo-cultural feedback mechanism programming folk to behave like complete tosspots until they find their new frontier. I'm being generous here, if you see what I mean, and my speculation gives some positives to their decontextualised behaviour, which comes across to the civilised as at best boorish, and at worst a virulent form of sociopatholgy destabilising to society in general.

[garote]

"Off planet" is absolutely not the solution.

To put it metaphorically, that's like saying, "Damn, I've got to stop being a pyromaniac. Maybe if I move to a house that's already on fire..."

[johnny9fingers]

I don't know if that's the solution, but it maybe a way for certain folk to exercise and maybe even thereby exorcise their misplaced frontier-ism, away from the civilised. They will get to be play out their heroic fantasies, just not around here. I'm sure that when the time comes and the next century's embryonic terraforming industries need shock troops these chaps will all volunteer as one to be first of the explorers... or not. It's what to do with them in the meantime that bothers me more.

[garote]

I think there's a reason apocalypse dramas are hot right now. It's not that people would rather live under an authoritarian junta in a brutal wasteland. It's that they really like the idea of fighting against such a thing and winning. They fantasize about it.

"What if the government was SO irredeemable, that the boring, difficult option of working within it to fix it is just entirely off the table? Then what's left is the exciting option, where we get to break stuff, shit on the leaders, and feel good about refusing to participate in government."

Whooo! FUN TIMES.

Maintenance is boring. Finding reasonable solutions that stand a chance of being implemented is not just unpopular, it is seen as losing. Quiet friendly adults are rarely ever recognized or lionized, but any social system - whether high taxes or low - that creates them and then enables them, is a better system.

IMHO. :D

[johnny9fingers]

Maintenance is boring. Finding reasonable solutions that stand a chance of being implemented is not just unpopular, it is seen as losing. Quiet friendly adults are rarely ever recognized or lionized, but any social system - whether high taxes or low - that creates them and then enables them, is a better system.

Maintenance is boring. And also necessary. And often expensive. But not as expensive as having to buy or craft an whole new vehicle polity. Not to recognise this is a sign of dysfunction or even insanity, especially given the recent examples of nation-tearing-down-and-never-quite-rebuilding of various kinds we have seen.

[tcpip]

I think you're on the right track.

As most would know I am of the opinion that resource rents of various sorts are the preferred way to raise public revenue. Good for production, good for employment, good for the environment, stops speculation etc.

However, on this particular point as civilisation improves and site-values increase the aggregate resource rent value increases proportionally. Joseph Stiglitz, I believe, made an observation several years back.