That said, a truly progressive taxation would be a fixed percentage otherwise. 20% of $1m is definitely going to be greater than 20% of $100k, so the rich actually would end up paying more, and literally their fair share of the overall governmental burden. The more you make, the more you pay. Anything else is objectively punitive, as it punishes success - we want to incentivize success. The point of progressive taxation is not to punish success, it is to place a larger proportion of costs on those a) most able to afford it and b) who benefit most from the services a stable Government and society provide.
If you were truly interested in having everyone pay their "fair share", you'd tax a flat percentage of all income above poverty level, with no loopholes, deductions, or credits.
But, nobody would go for that - even the most left-wing and right-wing ideologues would both decry it. Actually, right-wing types cheer on a flat income tax all the time. It suits their internal myths about "all men being equal" and "the self-made man". It's also relatively easy for corporations and the wealthy to dodge simply by moving their income to somewhere with low (or no) income taxes.
To get the right-wingers to decry a flat tax, you need to propose a flat tax on _wealth_. Then they're screaming from the rooftops about how unfair it is - even though (or perhaps because?) they're quite efficient and have low deadweight losses - because suddenly it's the wealthy who have to stump up a proportionally larger chunk of their stash.
Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, [...] The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].
That way it actually works as an incentive to keep creating.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
See Edward Snowden [wikipedia.org]. Last I checked he'd left the USA.
Meaning all that has to happen is a Federal LEA decide you're a person of interest or "under investigation" - no charges - and you can have your ability to enter another country eliminated. And in what situation are you expecting this to happen en masse so the whole country is locked down ?
The question raised was what to do if you don't want to "interact" with a Government you disagree with. You know, something similar to deleting your social media accounts.
Finally, if you're being genuinely persecuted by your Government, you can seek asylum in another country. No need for a passport to enter. Most countries have land borders to multiple other countries, so it shouldn't present an insurmountable obstacle.
And when said Government decides to revoke your passport? A corporation cannot stop you from traveling; the Government can. Passports are required to enter countries, not leave them.
What's your scenario for a Government revoking passports ? I'm sure I can come up with something equally corner-case for private industry behaviour.
I urge you however to look into Walter E. Williams and Milton Friedman. Already have.
Evidence on how destructive these systems are is overwhelming. Evidence on how destructive unrestrained private industry can be is pretty overwhelming as well.
Which is irrelevant since the origin poster explained the scope - "in America". That post was a reply to mine.
On top of which, the whole discussion's scope is about attitudes outside the US.
The original poster's point was that they weren't. The posts I see are trying to compare shopping for groceries with elections and using that as an argument against Government. What posts are you looking at ?
Keep in mind that this quote was in reply to your post on the alleged futility of shopping around. I made no comment about the "futility of shopping around".
What I actually said was that it may not be possible to "shop around" if you don't have any alternatives within easy reach. Note that just because two stores might have different names on the front, doesn't mean they're not both owned by the same parent company.
No, it's about the relative power of corporations and governments. Sure, you can contrive a situation (as you did) where it is somewhat difficult to avoid a particular business's machinations, but that's not true in general and it ignores that governments have considerably more power to interfere in the lives of their citizens than the business does. But Governments have substantially less incentive to do so.
So you're saying that I'm immoral for not giving money to someone who is holding a gun to my head because they are providing me with a service? No.
I'm saying if you're immoral if you want to benefit from publicly funded services without paying taxes.
If you do not want to pay taxes, there is a perfectly moral avenue to take - emigrate and leave the system entirely.
I am assuming here that you think you should be able to benefit from publicly funded services without paying taxes. I struggle to see any other interpretation of your assertions that incarceration for not paying tax is immoral, and that taxation is theft.
Wow. Not sure how to respond to that. Try staying away from straw men and other fallacies.
You're the first person who's ever proposed to me that the person from who the government is stealing from is the one who is immoral. Taxes aren't stealing. Stealing is when you take something from someone who has no choice in the matter and receives no benefit in return.
That's like saying it's immoral for slave to refuse to pick cotton because the master is providing him with food. No, it's nothing like that at all. A slave is not free to leave his slavery. You are.
You may, however, struggle to find somewhere you actually want (and can afford) to live that doesn't have any taxes.
Unsustainable. Great way to reduce the number of customers. It'll never work. Your theory is noted.
In practice, media companies seem to be doing OK.
In addition, this is usually done with the help of government by using the government police and government jail. Government does not force anyone to sue anyone. Companies choose to sue their customers of their own volition which is, I believe, counter to "pleasing your fellow man".
Or are you trying to argue that Government shouldn't be enforcing the law ?
Unsustainable. How long do you think that will last. Long enough to kill more people. Again, I believe, against the spirit of "pleasing your fellow man".
Government pollution through war dwarfs all other pollution. This is what we call a red herring fallacy.
Of course corporations will use government to do their dirty work. I'm glad you agree it is corporations who instigate the action. Once more, I believe, actions that aren't focussed on "pleasing your fellow man".
When governments disappear, so does lobbying and the guns. Of course. Without Governments there to protect, there's no need to get them to attack on your behalf - you can do it directly.
If monopolies are bad and the government is a monopoly then why do you think governments are good? This is what we call a straw man fallacy.
Ok, so they'll put you in exile at gun point. I'll feel better now... Sounds like a moral institution. If you aren't prepared to support the system, why should you be allowed to benefit from it (ignoring for now the substantial benefits you have already derived) ?
If you are able to pay taxes and refuse, it is immoral for you to live in a society that depends on those taxes to function.
Why do you say that there won't be any services without government? I didn't.
I said if you aren't going to pay taxes, then you shouldn't expect to live in a society that provides publicly-funded services.
it's far from surprising people "trust" their governments...over 50% of them (is the US) pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits. The only people who "pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits" are corporations and the rich hiding in tax shelters.
No-one living on welfare is "reaping untold benefits". They're "reaping" survival.
The best way to make a profit is by pleasing your fellow man [...] That's why corporations have sued their customers, knowingly sold lethally dangerous products, knowingly polluted the environment and spent millions lobbying to minimise workers rights and minimise their salaries.
The best way to make a profit is to be a monopolist and/or rentier. Which is why all capitalists strive for those outcomes.
You can only fire services that you pay for, except for government. If you try to fire government by not paying them for their shitty services they'll come get you with guns and put you jail. That's because they no longer have the option of exiling you to some other locale where you can't derive any benefit those services.
That's a good description of a government. A government owns all the [insert government service here] in the country. Yes. You might say that's the whole point of publicly funded services.
Or in simpler terms, a tautology.
It's generally only true at the edges, though. There are really only a handful of publicly-funded services with no privatised option at all (eg: police).
Yea, "in America" (which I assume means in the US as a whole) it's a duopoly with a few niche third party competitors. However, many other countries do not have this problem.
Which are quite comparable, especially in the context of the grocery store analogy. No, they're not. How is buy groceries comparable to an election ?
You can still travel to other stores. Not if they're not "within easy reach".
Just buy a lot more at a time. And it's worth noting that in most of the US, this situation just doesn't exist. This whole discussion is about hypotheticals. What's your point ?
Still better than government. In America, the majority of political "products on the market" are provided by just two political parties. Despite the belief of many, America does not have a monopoly on Government.
I have far more power to choose when I go to the grocery store than when I go to the polling booth. Apples to oranges.
What do you do when one company owns all the grocery stores within easy reach of you ?
You can fire companies far easier - just stop dealing with them. Hard to do when a proportional handful of them provide the vast majority of products on the market.
But the idea that GUIs are inherently superior to CLIs for all purposes has always seemed very odd to me. I don't think I've ever seen anyone make the argument that GUIs are inherently superior.
I've seen plenty of UNIX Nerds argue all you need is a CLI, though. I expect I'll even see a few more as I scroll down this page.
and pay for cost over head TB to get the same speed of sata? Yes. No-one using a Mac Pro for work purposes would even think twice about spending a hundred or two on a Thunderbolt to eSATA dock.
(Assuming they actually had any clients who used eSATA drives, of course, which is highly questionable to start with.)
You are missing DarkOx point people use external SATA disks so why pay a lot more for a TB dock when all you need is a cable and the sata ports that are part of the chipset. Because people who think a thunderbolt dock is "a lot more" are not the demographic for a Mac Pro.
I understand light and thin quite well. That's why I have thin and light devices.
I don't understand why someone would choose to watch a video on a smaller screen when a larger one was available, all else being equal. I've watched people (who I know have 13" laptops with them) sit on planes holding an iPhone up (or bending over it on their lap) for hours watching a movie (often a movie that that was also available in the AVOD).
I simply don't get it. Or maybe I just have too much sympathy for my poor old back, neck and eyes.
They don't know what other companies are offering, who I've already interviewed with, whether I have any backup offers (or brothers-in-law in high places, or whatever), and any of 500 other potentially relevant factors. Yes they do. Perhaps not specific data pertaining to you as an individual, but certainly aggregate data that is representative of you as an applicant or employee.
Your employer knows how much people working the same job as you earn. They know how much other employers are offering new employees. They know how much recruiters are baiting applicants with. They know how much they've offered other applications. They have access to a vast array of salary data that "salary surveys" accessible to normal people are but a tiny, heavily sanitised sliver of.
An employee wants to be paid a dollar less than too much for the employer. An employer wants to pay a dollar more than too little for the employee. The employer generally has access to data that gives them a pretty good idea what those numbers are. The employee generally does not.
As soon as the rest of the world rebuilt, well, we had the 1970s... And the subsequent spoils going almost entirely to the top few (being generous) percent of the population.
So if you were rich, then the disappearance of unions was great.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice straw man. Those things don't require almost half of my income.
Please show your working as to how your tax amounts to half your income.
That said, a truly progressive taxation would be a fixed percentage otherwise. 20% of $1m is definitely going to be greater than 20% of $100k, so the rich actually would end up paying more, and literally their fair share of the overall governmental burden. The more you make, the more you pay. Anything else is objectively punitive, as it punishes success - we want to incentivize success.
The point of progressive taxation is not to punish success, it is to place a larger proportion of costs on those a) most able to afford it and b) who benefit most from the services a stable Government and society provide.
If you were truly interested in having everyone pay their "fair share", you'd tax a flat percentage of all income above poverty level, with no loopholes, deductions, or credits.
But, nobody would go for that - even the most left-wing and right-wing ideologues would both decry it.
Actually, right-wing types cheer on a flat income tax all the time. It suits their internal myths about "all men being equal" and "the self-made man". It's also relatively easy for corporations and the wealthy to dodge simply by moving their income to somewhere with low (or no) income taxes.
To get the right-wingers to decry a flat tax, you need to propose a flat tax on _wealth_. Then they're screaming from the rooftops about how unfair it is - even though (or perhaps because?) they're quite efficient and have low deadweight losses - because suddenly it's the wealthy who have to stump up a proportionally larger chunk of their stash.
Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, [...]
The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].
That way it actually works as an incentive to keep creating.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
See Edward Snowden [wikipedia.org].
Last I checked he'd left the USA.
Meaning all that has to happen is a Federal LEA decide you're a person of interest or "under investigation" - no charges - and you can have your ability to enter another country eliminated.
And in what situation are you expecting this to happen en masse so the whole country is locked down ?
The question raised was what to do if you don't want to "interact" with a Government you disagree with. You know, something similar to deleting your social media accounts.
Finally, if you're being genuinely persecuted by your Government, you can seek asylum in another country. No need for a passport to enter. Most countries have land borders to multiple other countries, so it shouldn't present an insurmountable obstacle.
And when said Government decides to revoke your passport? A corporation cannot stop you from traveling; the Government can.
Passports are required to enter countries, not leave them.
What's your scenario for a Government revoking passports ? I'm sure I can come up with something equally corner-case for private industry behaviour.
I urge you however to look into Walter E. Williams and Milton Friedman.
Already have.
Evidence on how destructive these systems are is overwhelming.
Evidence on how destructive unrestrained private industry can be is pretty overwhelming as well.
Which is irrelevant since the origin poster explained the scope - "in America".
That post was a reply to mine.
On top of which, the whole discussion's scope is about attitudes outside the US.
The original poster's point was that they weren't.
The posts I see are trying to compare shopping for groceries with elections and using that as an argument against Government. What posts are you looking at ?
Keep in mind that this quote was in reply to your post on the alleged futility of shopping around.
I made no comment about the "futility of shopping around".
What I actually said was that it may not be possible to "shop around" if you don't have any alternatives within easy reach. Note that just because two stores might have different names on the front, doesn't mean they're not both owned by the same parent company.
No, it's about the relative power of corporations and governments. Sure, you can contrive a situation (as you did) where it is somewhat difficult to avoid a particular business's machinations, but that's not true in general and it ignores that governments have considerably more power to interfere in the lives of their citizens than the business does.
But Governments have substantially less incentive to do so.
So you're saying that I'm immoral for not giving money to someone who is holding a gun to my head because they are providing me with a service?
No.
I'm saying if you're immoral if you want to benefit from publicly funded services without paying taxes.
If you do not want to pay taxes, there is a perfectly moral avenue to take - emigrate and leave the system entirely.
I am assuming here that you think you should be able to benefit from publicly funded services without paying taxes. I struggle to see any other interpretation of your assertions that incarceration for not paying tax is immoral, and that taxation is theft.
Wow. Not sure how to respond to that.
Try staying away from straw men and other fallacies.
You're the first person who's ever proposed to me that the person from who the government is stealing from is the one who is immoral.
Taxes aren't stealing. Stealing is when you take something from someone who has no choice in the matter and receives no benefit in return.
That's like saying it's immoral for slave to refuse to pick cotton because the master is providing him with food.
No, it's nothing like that at all. A slave is not free to leave his slavery. You are.
You may, however, struggle to find somewhere you actually want (and can afford) to live that doesn't have any taxes.
Unsustainable. Great way to reduce the number of customers. It'll never work.
Your theory is noted.
In practice, media companies seem to be doing OK.
In addition, this is usually done with the help of government by using the government police and government jail.
Government does not force anyone to sue anyone. Companies choose to sue their customers of their own volition which is, I believe, counter to "pleasing your fellow man".
Or are you trying to argue that Government shouldn't be enforcing the law ?
Unsustainable. How long do you think that will last.
Long enough to kill more people. Again, I believe, against the spirit of "pleasing your fellow man".
Government pollution through war dwarfs all other pollution.
This is what we call a red herring fallacy.
Of course corporations will use government to do their dirty work.
I'm glad you agree it is corporations who instigate the action. Once more, I believe, actions that aren't focussed on "pleasing your fellow man".
When governments disappear, so does lobbying and the guns.
Of course. Without Governments there to protect, there's no need to get them to attack on your behalf - you can do it directly.
If monopolies are bad and the government is a monopoly then why do you think governments are good?
This is what we call a straw man fallacy.
Ok, so they'll put you in exile at gun point. I'll feel better now... Sounds like a moral institution.
If you aren't prepared to support the system, why should you be allowed to benefit from it (ignoring for now the substantial benefits you have already derived) ?
If you are able to pay taxes and refuse, it is immoral for you to live in a society that depends on those taxes to function.
Why do you say that there won't be any services without government?
I didn't.
I said if you aren't going to pay taxes, then you shouldn't expect to live in a society that provides publicly-funded services.
it's far from surprising people "trust" their governments...over 50% of them (is the US) pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits.
The only people who "pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits" are corporations and the rich hiding in tax shelters.
No-one living on welfare is "reaping untold benefits". They're "reaping" survival.
Now try to not interact with a Government you do not agree with.
It's called emigration.
The best way to make a profit is by pleasing your fellow man [...]
That's why corporations have sued their customers, knowingly sold lethally dangerous products, knowingly polluted the environment and spent millions lobbying to minimise workers rights and minimise their salaries.
The best way to make a profit is to be a monopolist and/or rentier. Which is why all capitalists strive for those outcomes.
You can only fire services that you pay for, except for government. If you try to fire government by not paying them for their shitty services they'll come get you with guns and put you jail.
That's because they no longer have the option of exiling you to some other locale where you can't derive any benefit those services.
That's a good description of a government. A government owns all the [insert government service here] in the country.
Yes. You might say that's the whole point of publicly funded services.
Or in simpler terms, a tautology.
It's generally only true at the edges, though. There are really only a handful of publicly-funded services with no privatised option at all (eg: police).
Yea, "in America" (which I assume means in the US as a whole) it's a duopoly with a few niche third party competitors.
However, many other countries do not have this problem.
Which are quite comparable, especially in the context of the grocery store analogy.
No, they're not. How is buy groceries comparable to an election ?
You can still travel to other stores.
Not if they're not "within easy reach".
Just buy a lot more at a time. And it's worth noting that in most of the US, this situation just doesn't exist.
This whole discussion is about hypotheticals. What's your point ?
Still better than government. In America, the majority of political "products on the market" are provided by just two political parties.
Despite the belief of many, America does not have a monopoly on Government.
I have far more power to choose when I go to the grocery store than when I go to the polling booth.
Apples to oranges.
What do you do when one company owns all the grocery stores within easy reach of you ?
You can fire companies far easier - just stop dealing with them.
Hard to do when a proportional handful of them provide the vast majority of products on the market.
But the idea that GUIs are inherently superior to CLIs for all purposes has always seemed very odd to me.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone make the argument that GUIs are inherently superior.
I've seen plenty of UNIX Nerds argue all you need is a CLI, though. I expect I'll even see a few more as I scroll down this page.
and pay for cost over head TB to get the same speed of sata?
Yes. No-one using a Mac Pro for work purposes would even think twice about spending a hundred or two on a Thunderbolt to eSATA dock.
(Assuming they actually had any clients who used eSATA drives, of course, which is highly questionable to start with.)
You are missing DarkOx point people use external SATA disks so why pay a lot more for a TB dock when all you need is a cable and the sata ports that are part of the chipset.
Because people who think a thunderbolt dock is "a lot more" are not the demographic for a Mac Pro.
I understand light and thin quite well. That's why I have thin and light devices.
I don't understand why someone would choose to watch a video on a smaller screen when a larger one was available, all else being equal. I've watched people (who I know have 13" laptops with them) sit on planes holding an iPhone up (or bending over it on their lap) for hours watching a movie (often a movie that that was also available in the AVOD).
I simply don't get it. Or maybe I just have too much sympathy for my poor old back, neck and eyes.
They don't know what other companies are offering, who I've already interviewed with, whether I have any backup offers (or brothers-in-law in high places, or whatever), and any of 500 other potentially relevant factors.
Yes they do. Perhaps not specific data pertaining to you as an individual, but certainly aggregate data that is representative of you as an applicant or employee.
Your employer knows how much people working the same job as you earn. They know how much other employers are offering new employees. They know how much recruiters are baiting applicants with. They know how much they've offered other applications. They have access to a vast array of salary data that "salary surveys" accessible to normal people are but a tiny, heavily sanitised sliver of.
An employee wants to be paid a dollar less than too much for the employer. An employer wants to pay a dollar more than too little for the employee. The employer generally has access to data that gives them a pretty good idea what those numbers are. The employee generally does not.
As soon as the rest of the world rebuilt, well, we had the 1970s ...
And the subsequent spoils going almost entirely to the top few (being generous) percent of the population.
So if you were rich, then the disappearance of unions was great.
If you were anyone else, it was disastrous.