A lot of anti-gay stance is based round the concept that being gay is a choice and not a fundamental attribute.
And that is a stupid debate, on both sides.
I like to eat blue cheese. A lot of other people think that's gross. Say some of them wanted to prohibit it. Would we then argue about why I like to eat blue cheese, whether I was born that way or learned that behavior or make a conscious choice every time I feel like eating blue cheese, whether other animals like to eat it too.... or would we ask simply whether there's anything wrong with it?
Likewise, if I were some kind of crazy who compulsively maimed people. There are some animals who are like that too, like dogs that have been mistreated and bite everybody. Maybe life broke my mind, or maybe I was just born that way. Does that excuse such behavior? It it's harmful, it's harmful, and should be prohibited no matter why people do it. And it it's harmless, it's harmless, and should be permitted, no matter why people do it.
It doesn't matter, at all, whether being gay is something you're "born with" or "a choice". The only reason that would be relevant was if you had already determined that there was something wrong with it and were looking for the cause in order to prevent it. By conceding that the cause of homosexuality is relevant, even defenders of it are tacitly agreeing that there is something wrong with it, and simply "excusing" said behavior with "but they can't help it!" That is hardly a helpful defense.
My original post wasn't about this article's topic of defamation, but about the oft-repeated "freedom is not freedom from consequences" tripe. I'm just tired of people saying that, because freedom absolutely is freedom from (legal) consequences. That doesn't mean that people should have a specific freedom, and I wasn't levying any opinion on that: just on the fact that legal consequences to an action absolutely do mean you are not free to do that.
On the subject of defamation though: If I offer to pay a hit man to kill someone, my crime is not a speech crime. My crime is conspiracy to commit murder, or something to that effect; despite the fact that the only thing that I did is speak the words "I'll give you a thousand bucks if you kill that guy". It has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt not only that I said that, but that I said that with the intent of getting the hit man to kill someone, and that there was real potential for that to happen as a result of my words.
Likewise, the point of defamation, libel, slander, etc, is not that you said something which offended someone, but that you caused material damage to someone; and the burden of proof is on that someone to prove that you caused said damage. The truth defense is there because if what you said is true, you didn't really cause any damage, whoever caused the facts you reported to obtain caused that damage.
Likewise (I would think), if I tell an angry neonazi skinhead "Dave is a Jew" and the skinhead goes and kills Dave, and Dave really was a Jew, then despite my saying something leading to another person killing a third person (just like my talking to a hit man results in someone else getting killed), I haven't committed any crime. I've just reported a fact.
(And I wonder now, if I were to publicly and frequently lie about Dave being a Jew, and that resulted in him getting harassed, maybe injured or otherwise materially harmed, by the local neonazi gang, would that be defamation? Would we let "being Jewish" be considered something damaging to your reputation? Seems a little politically incorrect. But if so, what then about people who actually are Jewish; should they be able to legally protect that information, if its publicity could cause them material harm? Now replace "Jewish" with "gay"; if publicly outing someone causes them material damage, and they really are gay, is that truth a defense? Or are we now in the realm of "hate crimes", where even saying true things can be criminal?)
Your freedom ends where it begins to infringe on the rights of another.
When we're talking about the use of force, absolutely, because one cannot enjoy any effective liberty rights unless one has claim rights against being harmed for exercising them. So, my right to act has to stop at the point where my actions would keep you from acting, otherwise we do not have equal* freedom.
Please let me know when my speech keeps you from speaking in return.
*(Freedom doesn't logically have to be equal; it is a possible, though not desirable, state of affairs for one person to have unrestrained freedom at the expense of everyone else, and that doesn't make him any less free. I am not at all advocating that, but making the point that freedom absolutely is the absence of restriction; yet that doesn't mean that the absence of all restrictions is a good thing. Just keep clear what we're saying: freedom is the lack of restriction, but absolute freedom for one person at the expense of everyone else is not a good thing, as some things should be restricted, since equal freedom is good, and one person's freedom requires some restrictions on everyone else).
For US-style libertarians, freedom has to be absolute, so that the idea that their freedom to wave their fists around stops at your nose is seen as an infringement on pure freedom of movement.
Absolutely not.
(In response to the person you're responding to as much as you): There are two different senses of right: liberty rights, which say that it is not wrong for you to do (or not do) something; and claim rights, which say that it is wrong for someone to do (or not do) something to you. Any person's claim right logically implies a limit on someone else's liberty rights. (These are different from the more-oft-mentioned positive and negative rights, but work in conjunction with them. A "freedom to" is a positive liberty right. A "freedom from" is a negative claim right.)
Libertarians say that there are minimal claim rights, and thus maximal liberty rights; but that the few claim rights there are are absolutely inviolable. The "your right to swing your fist ends at my face" principle is an extremely libertarian principle: it say "do whatever you want, until it treads on my domain". Without that last part, libertarians would have no ground for their strong defense of private property, so that is a very important part of the libertarian position.
The problem is that they interpret the US constitution in absolute black and white terms, so that any attempt to reduce absolute freedom of speech is tantamount to treason, and do not seem to realise that society doesn't work that way, never has worked that way, and never will work that way.
We have never had a perfect society.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it as good as possible, and complain when it gets worse or fails to live up to even its own proclaimed standards.
"It's not like that" is a complete non-sequitur in response to a claim that "it should be like this".
I'm not disputing that certain kinds of speech are, in fact, prohibited by law.
I am just saying that to the extent that speech is prohibited, whether prior or posterior to its being spoken, it is not free. A person is free precisely to the extent that he is not prohibited, tautologically. And a punishment entails the judgement that one has done something prohibited, otherwise it's not a punishment but just arbitrary harm.
So freedom of speech is not simply about prior restraint. If you get punished for speaking, then you were (judged to be) not free to speak, by definition.
The fact that some speech is legally punishable just means that we don't really have freedom speech.
Prior restraint: "You are not allowed to say X. If you say X, we will punish you."
'Consequences': "You said X. You are not allowed to say X. We will now punish you."
This "you are not free from the consequences of your speech" bullshit is just that, utter bullshit. OF COURSE you will not be legally protected from some consequences of your speech... if people dislike you, stop speaking to you, stop doing business with you, stop associating with you, or generally do anything which they have the freedom to do, because they dislike your speech, then you have (or should have) no legal recourse. You do not have a right to be popular or liked or have anybody listen to or agree with you, etc.
But freedom of speech is ENTIRELY ABOUT freedom from LEGAL consequences of speech. If you can be punished for saying certain things, then you are ipso facto NOT FREE to say those things. Whether the state warns you ahead of time that you will be punished or not is irrelevant.
As far as blanket protection goes:
"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" (plus "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States") sounds like a pretty blanket protection against legal consequences for speech anywhere in the United States at least.
Welsh and Scots are by no means English; but they are definitely British. Irish and Manx are also British in a broader sense; not from Great Britain, but still from the British Isles.
Of course, most of Ireland is at present distinctly not British in yet another sense, that of belonging to the United Kingdom of England and Whatever Else Is In Their Jurisdiction Is This Century.
The Geico Gecko may not actually have a British accent per se. There was one commercial where someone assumed he was British, someone else said they always thought he was Australia, and he began to say "Well actually, I'm--" and the scene cut away. So, I don't think they want to pin down a nationality for him.
Liberals believe there's finite amount of wealth to be had, and that's just not true
There very much is a finite amount of wealth (at least, as finite as the accessible part to the universe), and even venerable capitalists like Adam Smith would admit to that. I believe what you mean to say is "zero-sum game", not "finite wealth".
The big point of Wealth of Nations, the big consequential argument for free markets (besides the deontological ones put forth in other works like the Second Treatise on Human Nature), is that everybody trying to provide for their own need just by their own ability is not always the most efficient way of doing things. Smith was examining nations in particular, but the lesson applies to individuals just as much.
Prior to Smith's work, nations were trying to become and remain wealthy by buying as little as possible and selling as much as possible, by producing everything they needed domestically and selling off any surplus. It was seen as a loss to the nation if you had to import something from another nation, and a gain if other nations were importing things from you. That in every such trade, one person lost and another gained equally: and thus, every trade was zero sum, with no net gain or loss between the partners.
What Smith put forward, inventing free market capitalism in the process, was that sometimes, even often, it can be a net gain to trade; that both sides can win from it; and that, if trade was undirected by the state (but well regulated to prevent fraud or coercion), and all trades were thus strictly voluntary, nobody would ever mutually agree to a trade that wasn't a net gain, and so resources would naturally be allocated into the ways that produced the greatest wealth for everyone, one small step forward at a time.
That does not mean that infinite wealth can be had from finite resources. What it means is that wealth is just not the sum of resources; it is the sum of resources and how they are organized. (Nothing is ever just the sum of its parts; rather, all things are the sum of their parts and the relations between them). If I have tons of shit I don't need and am lacking something else, and you have more of that something else than you could ever want but are lacking what I have in surplus, then reorganizing who has what can make us both wealthier, even though no new resources have been gained between us. So I'll gladly trade you some of my surplus for some of yours, and you'll gladly accept, and we'll both win.
But, if we have now reached the best organization of our joint resources, and there is no longer any situation of us each having something worth more to the other than it is to us, then there is no way we can become any wealthier without some outside input.
In other words: resources are finite; but they are not all there is to wealth; organizational optimization also contributes to wealth; but such optimization also has a finite maximum; so, overall, wealth is still finite. Just shuffling tokens representative of wealth around more will never get anybody more of what they actually need.
Incidentally, lets look at those conditions where trades are a net gain again. Instead of each party providing for their own needs by their own ability, each sells what they're best at and buys what they're worse at; they trade whatever resources they have best ability of producing in exchange for whatever resources they have the greatest need of consuming. Thus, resources flowing from each according to his ability, to each according to his need is the quintessentially capitalist model for generating wealth.
You weren't talking about classical liberalism, but it's relevant because you were misdirecting your criticism.
You wrote that "those with leftist political views [...] seem to want to be told what to do, how to live, how much money to make, and even what to think by government." And I will agree that some people on the left want some of those things, or at least, as you say, "keep voting for politicians who advocate for those things". And I agree that that is wrong.
But there are plenty on the right who do the same, just about different subjects (different kinds of acts, speech, and thought curtailed), with the one possible (but arguable) difference of "how much money to make", which is all that anybody seems to really care about anymore.
So I pointed out that the left and the right both resort to authoritarianism when it suits them. You then responded that the left necessarily resorts to authoritarianism. As a counter, I brought up classical liberalism, which is about as anti-authoritarian as you can get and was originally propounded by leftists.
It's not any more, and that is sad. But the historical usage of the terms "left" and "right" does not tie them to the ideologies promoted by the people labelled thus today. Leftists do not necessarily advocate authoritarianism any more than rightists do. In contemporary American politics, both sides are dominated by authoritarians, and most of the libertarian minority are on the right. But that does not make libertarianism an inherently right position, or authoritarianism an inherently left one.
TL;DR: Direct your criticism at authoritarians, and I'll be right there with you. But left-right politics is non-sequitur to the issue.
You are just staunchly repeating your initial position in the face of argument to the contrary, without any counter-argument.
You've evidently never heard of classical liberalism, which is essentially the same thing as contemporary right-libertarianism. "Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets." (Emphasis mine). It was originally propounded by the left, that is, by people opposed to the feudal ancien regime of the crown and the aristocracy.
Certainly the contemporary (mainstream) left is not propounding that anymore, but your blindness to historical variation is precisely what I am trying to alleviate. The contemporary left advocates a degree of authoritarianism; so do many on the contemporary right, to an even greater degree; others on the contemporary right advocate a strongly libertarian position; but others on the left, and until about a century ago everybody on the left, advocated that same strongly libertarian position.
(And I will be the first to complain that too few on the contemporary left have any respect for a libertarian approach; what I would most love to see in contemporary politics is an argument between strong left-libertarian and right-libertarian parties, figuring out how to best refine the principles of a liberal society, instead of the left-authoritarian and right-authoritarian debate we have now, with an insignificant right-libertarian sideshow and virtually non-existent left-libertarians).
I am saying that it is a historical parochialism of yours to think that because the mainstream left is currently advocating an authoritarian platform, that leftism is inherently authoritarian. Or, more to my original point, I'm saying that your arguments against "leftism" are properly aimed at authoritarianism, which can be and has been shared by the left and the right both.
Your video link is broken, BTW. "The URL contained a malformed video ID."
Tell that to an anarcho-socialist. There may not be many of them around these days (at least not in this country), but they are definitely leftists and definitely anti-authoritarian.
Also, you are aware that free markets were original a leftist idea, as opposed to the mercantilism and feudalism of the old old right? As you say, it was a tool that empowered the masses, and liberated them from the privileged authority of the aristocracy and those with the state's special mandate.
The original left-right distinction was about the liberty of the people against the authority of the elites. Then that old old right was defeated and disappeared, but somehow there were still elites and commoners despite them all preaching the same old leftist free market mantra together, so many of the commoners decided that wasn't enough and that an authority of the masses was called for too. And then you got people on the right decrying that authority of the masses. And now the old old right is rising again, elitist authoritarians.
Left-right is about populism vs elitism, nothing more and nothing less, and either side will advocate whatever ideology (libertarian or authoritarian) best favors their side in the present circumstances.
As opposed to the people on the right like the administration which implemented this TSA nonsense to begin with, and want to tell people who they can marry, what they can watch, or read, or say, and would really love to be able to tell people who they can fuck and what religion they're allowed to have?
You're showing your obvious bias if you think totalitarianism is entirely a leftist thing. The right is just as bad if not worse these days. "Right" does not mean "libertarian" -- there are left-libertarians and right-libertarians both, and authoritarians on both sides too. (I'd say the American right is more polarized into extreme right-libertarian and extreme right-authoritarian groups, while the left is more unified into a pool of left-moderates).
The difference is not even "economic" vs "social" freedom as the Nolan Chart puts it; the only historically enduring difference between "left" and "right" politics is populism vs elitism.
Both of them have their authoritarian streaks which would force everybody to go along with their way, and their libertarian streaks who are concerned with fighting the other side's authoritarians. It's just a difference of whether they want everybody to go along with the majority, or everybody to go along with some minority.
There are as big of differences between anarcho-socialists and Stalin or Mao as there are between anarcho-capitalists and Hitler or Mussolini, yet the former three are all "left" and the latter three are all "right".
One-dimensional political analysis doesn't cut it at all. Even two-dimensional is barely acceptable.
Each of these scenarios is a different crime with different sentencing guidelines
1) Driving a car drunk with your spouse in it and getting into a crash where they die 2) Walking in on your spouse cheating on you and killing them in the heat of the moment 3) Meticulously planning how to kill your spouse over the course of several months
The difference between those three is the degree of intention, not the object of intention. It's accidental, passionate, and premeditated.
There would also be a difference between:
1) Driving a car drunk with your gay roommate in it and getting into a crash where they die 2) Walking in on your gay roommate having gay sex and killing them in the heat of the moment 3) Meticulously planning how to kill your gay roommate over the course of several months
And that all makes perfect sense (though I'm honestly not too fond of the "crime of passion" level there in either case, as then we have to draw arbitrary lines about what it is "reasonable" to be emotionally unreasonable about, and how long it is "reasonable" to be so emotionally unreasonable).
But what doesn't make sense is differentiating between:
1) Meticulously planning how to kill your spouse over the course of several months 2) Meticulously planning how to kill your gay roommate over the course of several months
or, perhaps more poignantly:
1) Walking in on your spouse cheating on you and killing them in the heat of the moment 2) Walking in on your gay roommate having gay sex and killing them in the heat of the moment
In both of these pairs of examples, the degree of intention was equal. You decided for whatever reason to do something horrible, thought about it for a while, and followed through with it; or you walked in on something which sufficiently offended you and did something horribly in response.
The latter pair I think best illustrates it. In both cases, you walked in, saw someone having sex with someone you didn't approve of, and killed them. What does it matter who they were having sex with or why you are so offended by it; neither justifies murder any more or less.
It applies just as much in the premeditated case as well: it doesn't matter who you intended to kill or why you intended to kill them, what matters is you intended to kill someone, and did so.
I don't think anyone's disputing the equality in the accidental case, so no comment there.
And back to the topic at hand: how would it be different if someone had filmed his wife together with another man and showed it to other people, embarrassing and shaming her to the point of suicide, compared to what Ravi did here?
I am curious, what happens if someone accused of a crime (let us presume him innocent) gives no response to the accusation? Does not plead guilty to anything; does not plead innocent either; does not request his lawyer; does not request a public defender; does not make any effort to defend himself. Play dead. Shut down. Tight-lipped stony faced blank stare into space. Or if you really want, the P.O.W. approach: name and "Not guilty", nothing more, in response to everything. Let the world see you traumatized by being dragged through court despite your innocence. Non-violent resistance; jam the courts with mute, inert, innocent bodies.
What can the court do? They can't convict you without a guilty plea or a guilty verdict, so they will have to take you to trial. Even if you could afford a lawyer, if you refuse to call one or do anything to defend yourself, surely they can't consider you competent to defend yourself, and so you will get a public defender. Then you answer factual questions only to your public defender and give him the same silent treatment if he dares bring up plea bargaining, and refuse to speak to anyone unless advised by your defender to testify on the stand.
At that point we have the real test of how much "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is still practiced. A person who is truly not guilty should be able to get off scott free with no defense, because the burden of proof is on the prosecution; an innocent man should not have to prove his innocence in the slightest.
I'm curious: by this principle, if some piece of software is necessary to do something -- say you need an operating system to run a particular program you have but otherwise can't run to get at specific data that doesn't exist in any other format -- would the copyright on the software (in this case the OS) yield in that case? Or would the argument be that because it could, with prohibitive difficulty, be possible to write other software which perfectly emulated the functionality of this software, that it is not, in fact, necessary?
There used to be a thing in classical education called the "trivium". It's the origin of our modern English word "trivial", and the latter got its meaning because the trivium was considered the basic groundwork that every educated adult was expected to know already. It consisted of three subjects: grammar, (propositional) logic, and rhetoric. We only bother trying to teach the first of these to people today, and generally let them reach adulthood without having really mastered even it.
I think that these three "trivial" subjects should not only be reinstated, but they should be paired with comparable mathematical subjects which should be considered equally trivial requirements for any adult: arithmetic, (elementary) algebra, and statistics.
In primary school, kids should learn their grammar and arithmetic, and be capable of accomplishing basic tasks with words and numbers, writing and understanding qualitative and quantitative statements.
In middle school, kids should learn their elementary algebra and propositional logic, and be capable of meaningfully converting qualitative and quantitative statements between each other, seeing how words and numbers relate to each other in a more abstract way.
In high school, kids should learn statistics and rhetoric, to be able to persuade people with both words and numbers and, even more importantly, to avoid being mislead by others attempting to do the same.
Trigonometry, calculus, and all the more advanced mathematics are awesome and may be necessary depending on what you want to do, but are not necessary just to function in the world. Likewise predicate and modal logics and all the more complex variations on those; anyone who argues for a living (i.e. most politicians, lawyers, etc) should be required to understand them as much as a physicist needs to know calculus, but normal people can get by well enough without them.
But grammar, arithmetic, elementary algebra, propositional logic, rhetoric, and statistics... those are just... trivial.
Or, I guess, "sexial". Which might help sell it? Support sexium education today! It's the other "sex ed"!
Why aren't dividends mandatory? Or rather, shareholder-controlled?
The sole proprietor of a company gets 100% of its profits; and then decides how much of that he wants to reinvest back in the company.
Why should it be any different for a company owned by several parties? Each party gets their share of the company's profits; and then may reinvest some or all of that back in the company if they like (increasing their stake in the company, naturally).
In other words, why aren't all companies mandated to pay their shareholders dividends, and those shareholders in turn able to buy new stock with those dividends if they want to reinvest those profits?
Re:Simplify the tax code, don't complicate it
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1. What's to stop local governments from levying income taxes too? Also, I did acknowledge a property "tax" to cover the services provided to that property, such as roads, police and fire protection, etc. I am fine with "taxes" which are actually just use fees.
2. The problem you describe is one the article's proposal creates, not one it addresses. As the system stands, you buy at $X and sell at $Y and end up paying taxes on $Y-$X at the time of sale. If $Y>$X, you pay tax on your profit; if $Y$X, you write off your loss. The article's proposal would require somehow assessing the value of $Y* per tax cycle and doing the same $Y*-$X (or $Y2-$Y1, $Y3-$Y4, etc). This provides the negligible benefit of having the taxes paid or written off (and possibly refunded) sooner and more frequently, at the cost of the overhead of calculating and collecting that much more frequently, and the dubious methods of assessing the value of something without an actual transaction occurring.
Under my proposal, the buying and selling of things is not where the taxing takes place at all. In a given tax period, you make $S from selling your services and labor, $G from selling off goods and capital you already had for their equivalent in cash, and $X in gifts. You spend $g of that income more on goods and capital, $s of it others' services and labor, and save $x. You get taxed on $(S+X)-$s; the money you got new without losing any wealth in return, and subsequently kept or spent on acquiring new wealth; in other words, the amount of new wealth that you acquired.
Re:Simplify the tax code, don't complicate it
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It shouldn't matter where that income comes from, it should be taxed at the same rate, whether you're selling labor or capital, and no matter what kind of goods or services you're selling. Renting space on your web server, renting an office in your building, renting yourself to your employer (i.e. wage labor)? All the same. Selling doughnuts, gadgets, gold nuggets, or stocks? All the same too.
It also shouldn't matter what kind of entity you are, for what expenditures you can deduct from that income. A business can deduct from its income the portion it spends buying labor or services from its employees, contractors, etc; an individual should be able to do likewise, including deducting money spent on "services" like housing rent. The only portion of the income, for either a business or an individual, which should be taxed, is the portion spend on acquiring new goods or capital, and the portion unspent (as unspent money is capital).
Bad form to reply to myself, I know, but it occurs to me that this creates an asymmetry which overall favors the transfer of labor over the transfer of capital, as a capital-seller is taxed on his income from that and the capital-buyer can't deduct his expense, whereas a labor-seller is taxed on his income and the labor-buyer can deduct that expense. This discourages investment, by discouraging in the development of capital.
The workaround, to restore the symmetry, is to reflect the non-deducability of expenses on purchasing capital with a non-taxability of income from selling capital. If we're taxing only on money earned and kept or converted into other wealth, not money earned and passed on to someone else, then it only makes sense that we don't tax money earned only by converting other wealth into it, but only money actually gained with no corresponding loss.
So only income from labor (or gifts), which is expended on capital (or saved), is taxable, as that is the only transaction which results in actual accumulation of wealth. If you are selling off stuff to buy more stuff, or selling off stuff to employ someone else, or working to employ someone else, you are not taxed; which will reward the distribution of both capital and labor, even before making the tax rate progressive, even before spending any of that tax money on welfare.
Re:Simplify the tax code, don't complicate it
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Would you care to elaborate? Is something not sensible about only taxing each transaction once, or taxing all transactions the same way, or taxing all taxable entities the same way, or only taxing money that don't come in and go right back out again?
Simplify the tax code, don't complicate it
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We don't need to be adding wealth taxes like this - we need to be eliminating wealth taxes, like assessed-value property taxes*, because if a proper income tax is in place you've already been taxed on earning that money, and now you're being taxed on still having it; double taxation, as others have already said. Likewise as others have said, this means that people with small incomes who nevertheless manage to claw their way into modest wealth (say buying a home after years of hard saving) will have that wealth continuously eroded out from under them, perhaps at a faster rate than their income can provide.
*(Some flat rate of property tax per land area makes sense, to pay for the services to that land like roads, etc).
Sales taxes likewise need to be eliminated, because the seller is already paying tax on what he's earning from that sale, and then the buyer is paying tax on acquiring something with money he already paid tax on earning. And as many people have already pointed out again, sales taxes are regressive in relation to income, as the amount spent grows much more slowly than the amount earned, and so the high-earners spend a much smaller proportion of the income, and tax taxed much less in turn.
The only tax which makes sense is a tax on the acquisition of wealth; on income. Those who already have wealth and no income will have to spend that wealth to keep living and so will naturally spread it around to those they buy goods and services from. And we don't want to discourage them from doing this by taxing them for spending. Spending is good for the economy; it means more money being put to good use and more opportunities for it to spread around. If we don't touch the money when it's just sitting there (no wealth tax), let it flow out freely (no sales tax), and then progressively take what is needed as it flows back in to others, we end up with a net flow to the poor, even if we're not actually giving anything taken to the poor (i.e. not redistributing it, just letting those who acquire more bear a proportional burden of our collective social costs).
It shouldn't matter where that income comes from, it should be taxed at the same rate, whether you're selling labor or capital, and no matter what kind of goods or services you're selling. Renting space on your web server, renting an office in your building, renting yourself to your employer (i.e. wage labor)? All the same. Selling doughnuts, gadgets, gold nuggets, or stocks? All the same too.
It also shouldn't matter what kind of entity you are, for what expenditures you can deduct from that income. A business can deduct from its income the portion it spends buying labor or services from its employees, contractors, etc; an individual should be able to do likewise, including deducting money spent on "services" like housing rent. The only portion of the income, for either a business or an individual, which should be taxed, is the portion spend on acquiring new goods or capital, and the portion unspent (as unspent money is capital).
Money being created by moneylenders is hardly surprising, as money is essentially an I.O.U. If nobody owes anybody anything, there is no need or money. Of course, until everyone has their own personal TARDIS (its drive can be broken, just needs to be bigger on the inside) with a holodeck/replicator in it, so they have all the time, space, and material things they could possibly want, someone will always want to something from someone and money will be useful for facilitating those exchanges.
But, yeah, when everyone can get their basic needs met reasonably, then there will be much less wanting of things from other people and so much less owing of things to them in exchange for that, which means many fewer I.O.U.s, i.e. much less money.
Although, I think that might not even be an accurate prediction; it's probably what the people with the wealth, lending it out so as to accumulate more of it, are thinking, but it strikes me as the same kind of backward managerial thinking that floods workers with busywork so that you're not "wasting money" on paying them for "doing nothing", when all the great advances in history have come as people had more free time, and then found useful things to do with that free time, to improve things that they never had time to get to or even notice the problems with before.
Then again, society seems to be strongly encouraging people to waste every ounce of free time they get, even while at the same time making sure they have as little of it as possible. Cumulatively it seems like someone somewhere pulling the strings wants everyone to be as unproductive as possible, but I can hardly see the benefit to anybody from that.
All processes go towards higher-entropy states, that is second law of thermodynamics. Crystal-growth, coin sorting and living all lowers the local entropy at the expense of the total entropy of the universe.
Yes, quite unlike fire or a car battery. If you heat a system containing methane and oxygen, the entire system will spontaneously collapse to a higher-entropy state; no part of it will become lower-entropy. If you provide a conductor between two liquids of different pH, the entire system will spontaneously collapse to a higher-entropy state; no part of it will become lower-entropy. However, if you provide electricity to an electric coin-sorter, or food to a living creature, it will use that energy to reduce its internal entropy; still at a greater cost to the environment's entropy, but nevertheless differentiating it from fire and batteries.
You are correct about crystals being lower-entropy than their melts, which I overlooked in my first post. However, crystals don't take energy pumped into them and transform it to do work which lowers their own entropy, and so are not machines at all, and therefore not life by my definition as "self-productive machinery". Crystals simply enter a lower-entropy state when heat is taken away from them, which is hardly surprising at all: introducing a heat sink into a system at thermodynamic equilibrium reduces its entropy just as much as introducing a heat source does, and the only interesting thing about crystals in that regard is that at a certain temperature they suddenly become much more willing to give up their energy; but if there wasn't somewhere for that energy to go, the molecules could not give it up and the crystal could not form, as the heat given off during crystallization would immediately melt the crystal again.
You also run into the problem of defining the system. If we define me and the rock I hold in my hand as a system, is that system living? Does it count as living if I hit myself with the rock? If it doesn't because me and the rock are separate, how is that different from the DNA and the proteins of a cell being separate? Mostly, they act on each other, not on themselves, so it is only the aggregate that acts upon itself.
That is an interesting question, and I suppose the answer would have to be that whether or not a system is alive depends on how you've defined the system. Several systems which are not independently alive may, as an aggregate, form a system which is alive, such as the parts of a cell and the whole cell. Several systems which are individually alive may, as an aggregate, form a system which is not itself alive, although it is composed of living things - take for example a recently deceased body, which is made of up many still-living cells though it is not, as a whole, alive. Similarly, a system consisting of living things and nonliving things is not collectively alive, though it contains living things, such as you and a rock, or a an airplane full of people.
It becomes interesting, however, when you ask the question about organized groups or colonies of organisms, or of whole ecosystems, or planets. I think it's probably safe to say that the Earth as a whole takes in energy from the sun and transforms it in a way which reduces its internal entropy. Back on the subject, this is how aliens could tell that there is life on Earth, or that Earth is alive, and conversely how we can tell where life exists elsewhere, without having to look under rocks on the surface: we can tell from afar what the chemical composition of another planet's atmosphere is and whether they are in an unstable (low-entropy) state that must be maintained by some active process.
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A lot of anti-gay stance is based round the concept that being gay is a choice and not a fundamental attribute.
And that is a stupid debate, on both sides.
I like to eat blue cheese. A lot of other people think that's gross. Say some of them wanted to prohibit it. Would we then argue about why I like to eat blue cheese, whether I was born that way or learned that behavior or make a conscious choice every time I feel like eating blue cheese, whether other animals like to eat it too.... or would we ask simply whether there's anything wrong with it?
Likewise, if I were some kind of crazy who compulsively maimed people. There are some animals who are like that too, like dogs that have been mistreated and bite everybody. Maybe life broke my mind, or maybe I was just born that way. Does that excuse such behavior? It it's harmful, it's harmful, and should be prohibited no matter why people do it. And it it's harmless, it's harmless, and should be permitted, no matter why people do it.
It doesn't matter, at all, whether being gay is something you're "born with" or "a choice". The only reason that would be relevant was if you had already determined that there was something wrong with it and were looking for the cause in order to prevent it. By conceding that the cause of homosexuality is relevant, even defenders of it are tacitly agreeing that there is something wrong with it, and simply "excusing" said behavior with "but they can't help it!" That is hardly a helpful defense.
My original post wasn't about this article's topic of defamation, but about the oft-repeated "freedom is not freedom from consequences" tripe. I'm just tired of people saying that, because freedom absolutely is freedom from (legal) consequences. That doesn't mean that people should have a specific freedom, and I wasn't levying any opinion on that: just on the fact that legal consequences to an action absolutely do mean you are not free to do that.
On the subject of defamation though: If I offer to pay a hit man to kill someone, my crime is not a speech crime. My crime is conspiracy to commit murder, or something to that effect; despite the fact that the only thing that I did is speak the words "I'll give you a thousand bucks if you kill that guy". It has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt not only that I said that, but that I said that with the intent of getting the hit man to kill someone, and that there was real potential for that to happen as a result of my words.
Likewise, the point of defamation, libel, slander, etc, is not that you said something which offended someone, but that you caused material damage to someone; and the burden of proof is on that someone to prove that you caused said damage. The truth defense is there because if what you said is true, you didn't really cause any damage, whoever caused the facts you reported to obtain caused that damage.
Likewise (I would think), if I tell an angry neonazi skinhead "Dave is a Jew" and the skinhead goes and kills Dave, and Dave really was a Jew, then despite my saying something leading to another person killing a third person (just like my talking to a hit man results in someone else getting killed), I haven't committed any crime. I've just reported a fact.
(And I wonder now, if I were to publicly and frequently lie about Dave being a Jew, and that resulted in him getting harassed, maybe injured or otherwise materially harmed, by the local neonazi gang, would that be defamation? Would we let "being Jewish" be considered something damaging to your reputation? Seems a little politically incorrect. But if so, what then about people who actually are Jewish; should they be able to legally protect that information, if its publicity could cause them material harm? Now replace "Jewish" with "gay"; if publicly outing someone causes them material damage, and they really are gay, is that truth a defense? Or are we now in the realm of "hate crimes", where even saying true things can be criminal?)
Your freedom ends where it begins to infringe on the rights of another.
When we're talking about the use of force, absolutely, because one cannot enjoy any effective liberty rights unless one has claim rights against being harmed for exercising them. So, my right to act has to stop at the point where my actions would keep you from acting, otherwise we do not have equal* freedom.
Please let me know when my speech keeps you from speaking in return.
*(Freedom doesn't logically have to be equal; it is a possible, though not desirable, state of affairs for one person to have unrestrained freedom at the expense of everyone else, and that doesn't make him any less free. I am not at all advocating that, but making the point that freedom absolutely is the absence of restriction; yet that doesn't mean that the absence of all restrictions is a good thing. Just keep clear what we're saying: freedom is the lack of restriction, but absolute freedom for one person at the expense of everyone else is not a good thing, as some things should be restricted, since equal freedom is good, and one person's freedom requires some restrictions on everyone else).
For US-style libertarians, freedom has to be absolute, so that the idea that their freedom to wave their fists around stops at your nose is seen as an infringement on pure freedom of movement.
Absolutely not.
(In response to the person you're responding to as much as you): There are two different senses of right: liberty rights, which say that it is not wrong for you to do (or not do) something; and claim rights, which say that it is wrong for someone to do (or not do) something to you. Any person's claim right logically implies a limit on someone else's liberty rights. (These are different from the more-oft-mentioned positive and negative rights, but work in conjunction with them. A "freedom to" is a positive liberty right. A "freedom from" is a negative claim right.)
Libertarians say that there are minimal claim rights, and thus maximal liberty rights; but that the few claim rights there are are absolutely inviolable. The "your right to swing your fist ends at my face" principle is an extremely libertarian principle: it say "do whatever you want, until it treads on my domain". Without that last part, libertarians would have no ground for their strong defense of private property, so that is a very important part of the libertarian position.
The problem is that they interpret the US constitution in absolute black and white terms, so that any attempt to reduce absolute freedom of speech is tantamount to treason, and do not seem to realise that society doesn't work that way, never has worked that way, and never will work that way.
We have never had a perfect society.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it as good as possible, and complain when it gets worse or fails to live up to even its own proclaimed standards.
"It's not like that" is a complete non-sequitur in response to a claim that "it should be like this".
I'm not disputing that certain kinds of speech are, in fact, prohibited by law.
I am just saying that to the extent that speech is prohibited, whether prior or posterior to its being spoken, it is not free. A person is free precisely to the extent that he is not prohibited, tautologically. And a punishment entails the judgement that one has done something prohibited, otherwise it's not a punishment but just arbitrary harm.
So freedom of speech is not simply about prior restraint. If you get punished for speaking, then you were (judged to be) not free to speak, by definition.
The fact that some speech is legally punishable just means that we don't really have freedom speech.
Prior restraint: "You are not allowed to say X. If you say X, we will punish you."
'Consequences': "You said X. You are not allowed to say X. We will now punish you."
This "you are not free from the consequences of your speech" bullshit is just that, utter bullshit. OF COURSE you will not be legally protected from some consequences of your speech... if people dislike you, stop speaking to you, stop doing business with you, stop associating with you, or generally do anything which they have the freedom to do, because they dislike your speech, then you have (or should have) no legal recourse. You do not have a right to be popular or liked or have anybody listen to or agree with you, etc.
But freedom of speech is ENTIRELY ABOUT freedom from LEGAL consequences of speech. If you can be punished for saying certain things, then you are ipso facto NOT FREE to say those things. Whether the state warns you ahead of time that you will be punished or not is irrelevant.
As far as blanket protection goes:
"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" (plus "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States") sounds like a pretty blanket protection against legal consequences for speech anywhere in the United States at least.
British is not just English.
Welsh and Scots are by no means English; but they are definitely British. Irish and Manx are also British in a broader sense; not from Great Britain, but still from the British Isles.
Of course, most of Ireland is at present distinctly not British in yet another sense, that of belonging to the United Kingdom of England and Whatever Else Is In Their Jurisdiction Is This Century.
The Geico Gecko may not actually have a British accent per se. There was one commercial where someone assumed he was British, someone else said they always thought he was Australia, and he began to say "Well actually, I'm--" and the scene cut away. So, I don't think they want to pin down a nationality for him.
Liberals believe there's finite amount of wealth to be had, and that's just not true
There very much is a finite amount of wealth (at least, as finite as the accessible part to the universe), and even venerable capitalists like Adam Smith would admit to that. I believe what you mean to say is "zero-sum game", not "finite wealth".
The big point of Wealth of Nations, the big consequential argument for free markets (besides the deontological ones put forth in other works like the Second Treatise on Human Nature), is that everybody trying to provide for their own need just by their own ability is not always the most efficient way of doing things. Smith was examining nations in particular, but the lesson applies to individuals just as much.
Prior to Smith's work, nations were trying to become and remain wealthy by buying as little as possible and selling as much as possible, by producing everything they needed domestically and selling off any surplus. It was seen as a loss to the nation if you had to import something from another nation, and a gain if other nations were importing things from you. That in every such trade, one person lost and another gained equally: and thus, every trade was zero sum, with no net gain or loss between the partners.
What Smith put forward, inventing free market capitalism in the process, was that sometimes, even often, it can be a net gain to trade; that both sides can win from it; and that, if trade was undirected by the state (but well regulated to prevent fraud or coercion), and all trades were thus strictly voluntary, nobody would ever mutually agree to a trade that wasn't a net gain, and so resources would naturally be allocated into the ways that produced the greatest wealth for everyone, one small step forward at a time.
That does not mean that infinite wealth can be had from finite resources. What it means is that wealth is just not the sum of resources; it is the sum of resources and how they are organized. (Nothing is ever just the sum of its parts; rather, all things are the sum of their parts and the relations between them). If I have tons of shit I don't need and am lacking something else, and you have more of that something else than you could ever want but are lacking what I have in surplus, then reorganizing who has what can make us both wealthier, even though no new resources have been gained between us. So I'll gladly trade you some of my surplus for some of yours, and you'll gladly accept, and we'll both win.
But, if we have now reached the best organization of our joint resources, and there is no longer any situation of us each having something worth more to the other than it is to us, then there is no way we can become any wealthier without some outside input.
In other words: resources are finite; but they are not all there is to wealth; organizational optimization also contributes to wealth; but such optimization also has a finite maximum; so, overall, wealth is still finite. Just shuffling tokens representative of wealth around more will never get anybody more of what they actually need.
Incidentally, lets look at those conditions where trades are a net gain again. Instead of each party providing for their own needs by their own ability, each sells what they're best at and buys what they're worse at; they trade whatever resources they have best ability of producing in exchange for whatever resources they have the greatest need of consuming. Thus, resources flowing from each according to his ability, to each according to his need is the quintessentially capitalist model for generating wealth.
You weren't talking about classical liberalism, but it's relevant because you were misdirecting your criticism.
You wrote that "those with leftist political views [...] seem to want to be told what to do, how to live, how much money to make, and even what to think by government." And I will agree that some people on the left want some of those things, or at least, as you say, "keep voting for politicians who advocate for those things". And I agree that that is wrong.
But there are plenty on the right who do the same, just about different subjects (different kinds of acts, speech, and thought curtailed), with the one possible (but arguable) difference of "how much money to make", which is all that anybody seems to really care about anymore.
So I pointed out that the left and the right both resort to authoritarianism when it suits them. You then responded that the left necessarily resorts to authoritarianism. As a counter, I brought up classical liberalism, which is about as anti-authoritarian as you can get and was originally propounded by leftists.
It's not any more, and that is sad. But the historical usage of the terms "left" and "right" does not tie them to the ideologies promoted by the people labelled thus today. Leftists do not necessarily advocate authoritarianism any more than rightists do. In contemporary American politics, both sides are dominated by authoritarians, and most of the libertarian minority are on the right. But that does not make libertarianism an inherently right position, or authoritarianism an inherently left one.
TL;DR: Direct your criticism at authoritarians, and I'll be right there with you. But left-right politics is non-sequitur to the issue.
You are just staunchly repeating your initial position in the face of argument to the contrary, without any counter-argument.
You've evidently never heard of classical liberalism, which is essentially the same thing as contemporary right-libertarianism. "Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets." (Emphasis mine). It was originally propounded by the left, that is, by people opposed to the feudal ancien regime of the crown and the aristocracy.
Certainly the contemporary (mainstream) left is not propounding that anymore, but your blindness to historical variation is precisely what I am trying to alleviate. The contemporary left advocates a degree of authoritarianism; so do many on the contemporary right, to an even greater degree; others on the contemporary right advocate a strongly libertarian position; but others on the left, and until about a century ago everybody on the left, advocated that same strongly libertarian position.
(And I will be the first to complain that too few on the contemporary left have any respect for a libertarian approach; what I would most love to see in contemporary politics is an argument between strong left-libertarian and right-libertarian parties, figuring out how to best refine the principles of a liberal society, instead of the left-authoritarian and right-authoritarian debate we have now, with an insignificant right-libertarian sideshow and virtually non-existent left-libertarians).
I am saying that it is a historical parochialism of yours to think that because the mainstream left is currently advocating an authoritarian platform, that leftism is inherently authoritarian. Or, more to my original point, I'm saying that your arguments against "leftism" are properly aimed at authoritarianism, which can be and has been shared by the left and the right both.
Your video link is broken, BTW. "The URL contained a malformed video ID."
Tell that to an anarcho-socialist. There may not be many of them around these days (at least not in this country), but they are definitely leftists and definitely anti-authoritarian.
Also, you are aware that free markets were original a leftist idea, as opposed to the mercantilism and feudalism of the old old right? As you say, it was a tool that empowered the masses, and liberated them from the privileged authority of the aristocracy and those with the state's special mandate.
The original left-right distinction was about the liberty of the people against the authority of the elites. Then that old old right was defeated and disappeared, but somehow there were still elites and commoners despite them all preaching the same old leftist free market mantra together, so many of the commoners decided that wasn't enough and that an authority of the masses was called for too. And then you got people on the right decrying that authority of the masses. And now the old old right is rising again, elitist authoritarians.
Left-right is about populism vs elitism, nothing more and nothing less, and either side will advocate whatever ideology (libertarian or authoritarian) best favors their side in the present circumstances.
As opposed to the people on the right like the administration which implemented this TSA nonsense to begin with, and want to tell people who they can marry, what they can watch, or read, or say, and would really love to be able to tell people who they can fuck and what religion they're allowed to have?
You're showing your obvious bias if you think totalitarianism is entirely a leftist thing. The right is just as bad if not worse these days. "Right" does not mean "libertarian" -- there are left-libertarians and right-libertarians both, and authoritarians on both sides too. (I'd say the American right is more polarized into extreme right-libertarian and extreme right-authoritarian groups, while the left is more unified into a pool of left-moderates).
The difference is not even "economic" vs "social" freedom as the Nolan Chart puts it; the only historically enduring difference between "left" and "right" politics is populism vs elitism.
Both of them have their authoritarian streaks which would force everybody to go along with their way, and their libertarian streaks who are concerned with fighting the other side's authoritarians. It's just a difference of whether they want everybody to go along with the majority, or everybody to go along with some minority.
There are as big of differences between anarcho-socialists and Stalin or Mao as there are between anarcho-capitalists and Hitler or Mussolini, yet the former three are all "left" and the latter three are all "right".
One-dimensional political analysis doesn't cut it at all. Even two-dimensional is barely acceptable.
Each of these scenarios is a different crime with different sentencing guidelines
1) Driving a car drunk with your spouse in it and getting into a crash where they die
2) Walking in on your spouse cheating on you and killing them in the heat of the moment
3) Meticulously planning how to kill your spouse over the course of several months
The difference between those three is the degree of intention, not the object of intention. It's accidental, passionate, and premeditated.
There would also be a difference between:
1) Driving a car drunk with your gay roommate in it and getting into a crash where they die
2) Walking in on your gay roommate having gay sex and killing them in the heat of the moment
3) Meticulously planning how to kill your gay roommate over the course of several months
And that all makes perfect sense (though I'm honestly not too fond of the "crime of passion" level there in either case, as then we have to draw arbitrary lines about what it is "reasonable" to be emotionally unreasonable about, and how long it is "reasonable" to be so emotionally unreasonable).
But what doesn't make sense is differentiating between:
1) Meticulously planning how to kill your spouse over the course of several months
2) Meticulously planning how to kill your gay roommate over the course of several months
or, perhaps more poignantly:
1) Walking in on your spouse cheating on you and killing them in the heat of the moment
2) Walking in on your gay roommate having gay sex and killing them in the heat of the moment
In both of these pairs of examples, the degree of intention was equal. You decided for whatever reason to do something horrible, thought about it for a while, and followed through with it; or you walked in on something which sufficiently offended you and did something horribly in response.
The latter pair I think best illustrates it. In both cases, you walked in, saw someone having sex with someone you didn't approve of, and killed them. What does it matter who they were having sex with or why you are so offended by it; neither justifies murder any more or less.
It applies just as much in the premeditated case as well: it doesn't matter who you intended to kill or why you intended to kill them, what matters is you intended to kill someone, and did so.
I don't think anyone's disputing the equality in the accidental case, so no comment there.
And back to the topic at hand: how would it be different if someone had filmed his wife together with another man and showed it to other people, embarrassing and shaming her to the point of suicide, compared to what Ravi did here?
Am I the only one who read this as "Turkey Bans Baste pin and Tinyurl" and wondered "Wait, what does tinyurl have to do with basting a turkey?"
I am curious, what happens if someone accused of a crime (let us presume him innocent) gives no response to the accusation? Does not plead guilty to anything; does not plead innocent either; does not request his lawyer; does not request a public defender; does not make any effort to defend himself. Play dead. Shut down. Tight-lipped stony faced blank stare into space. Or if you really want, the P.O.W. approach: name and "Not guilty", nothing more, in response to everything. Let the world see you traumatized by being dragged through court despite your innocence. Non-violent resistance; jam the courts with mute, inert, innocent bodies.
What can the court do? They can't convict you without a guilty plea or a guilty verdict, so they will have to take you to trial. Even if you could afford a lawyer, if you refuse to call one or do anything to defend yourself, surely they can't consider you competent to defend yourself, and so you will get a public defender. Then you answer factual questions only to your public defender and give him the same silent treatment if he dares bring up plea bargaining, and refuse to speak to anyone unless advised by your defender to testify on the stand.
At that point we have the real test of how much "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is still practiced. A person who is truly not guilty should be able to get off scott free with no defense, because the burden of proof is on the prosecution; an innocent man should not have to prove his innocence in the slightest.
I'm curious: by this principle, if some piece of software is necessary to do something -- say you need an operating system to run a particular program you have but otherwise can't run to get at specific data that doesn't exist in any other format -- would the copyright on the software (in this case the OS) yield in that case? Or would the argument be that because it could, with prohibitive difficulty, be possible to write other software which perfectly emulated the functionality of this software, that it is not, in fact, necessary?
This. Basic statistics education for the win.
There used to be a thing in classical education called the "trivium". It's the origin of our modern English word "trivial", and the latter got its meaning because the trivium was considered the basic groundwork that every educated adult was expected to know already. It consisted of three subjects: grammar, (propositional) logic, and rhetoric. We only bother trying to teach the first of these to people today, and generally let them reach adulthood without having really mastered even it.
I think that these three "trivial" subjects should not only be reinstated, but they should be paired with comparable mathematical subjects which should be considered equally trivial requirements for any adult: arithmetic, (elementary) algebra, and statistics.
In primary school, kids should learn their grammar and arithmetic, and be capable of accomplishing basic tasks with words and numbers, writing and understanding qualitative and quantitative statements.
In middle school, kids should learn their elementary algebra and propositional logic, and be capable of meaningfully converting qualitative and quantitative statements between each other, seeing how words and numbers relate to each other in a more abstract way.
In high school, kids should learn statistics and rhetoric, to be able to persuade people with both words and numbers and, even more importantly, to avoid being mislead by others attempting to do the same.
Trigonometry, calculus, and all the more advanced mathematics are awesome and may be necessary depending on what you want to do, but are not necessary just to function in the world. Likewise predicate and modal logics and all the more complex variations on those; anyone who argues for a living (i.e. most politicians, lawyers, etc) should be required to understand them as much as a physicist needs to know calculus, but normal people can get by well enough without them.
But grammar, arithmetic, elementary algebra, propositional logic, rhetoric, and statistics... those are just... trivial.
Or, I guess, "sexial". Which might help sell it? Support sexium education today! It's the other "sex ed"!
Why aren't dividends mandatory? Or rather, shareholder-controlled?
The sole proprietor of a company gets 100% of its profits; and then decides how much of that he wants to reinvest back in the company.
Why should it be any different for a company owned by several parties? Each party gets their share of the company's profits; and then may reinvest some or all of that back in the company if they like (increasing their stake in the company, naturally).
In other words, why aren't all companies mandated to pay their shareholders dividends, and those shareholders in turn able to buy new stock with those dividends if they want to reinvest those profits?
1. What's to stop local governments from levying income taxes too? Also, I did acknowledge a property "tax" to cover the services provided to that property, such as roads, police and fire protection, etc. I am fine with "taxes" which are actually just use fees.
2. The problem you describe is one the article's proposal creates, not one it addresses. As the system stands, you buy at $X and sell at $Y and end up paying taxes on $Y-$X at the time of sale. If $Y>$X, you pay tax on your profit; if $Y$X, you write off your loss. The article's proposal would require somehow assessing the value of $Y* per tax cycle and doing the same $Y*-$X (or $Y2-$Y1, $Y3-$Y4, etc). This provides the negligible benefit of having the taxes paid or written off (and possibly refunded) sooner and more frequently, at the cost of the overhead of calculating and collecting that much more frequently, and the dubious methods of assessing the value of something without an actual transaction occurring.
Under my proposal, the buying and selling of things is not where the taxing takes place at all. In a given tax period, you make $S from selling your services and labor, $G from selling off goods and capital you already had for their equivalent in cash, and $X in gifts. You spend $g of that income more on goods and capital, $s of it others' services and labor, and save $x. You get taxed on $(S+X)-$s; the money you got new without losing any wealth in return, and subsequently kept or spent on acquiring new wealth; in other words, the amount of new wealth that you acquired.
It shouldn't matter where that income comes from, it should be taxed at the same rate, whether you're selling labor or capital, and no matter what kind of goods or services you're selling. Renting space on your web server, renting an office in your building, renting yourself to your employer (i.e. wage labor)? All the same. Selling doughnuts, gadgets, gold nuggets, or stocks? All the same too.
It also shouldn't matter what kind of entity you are, for what expenditures you can deduct from that income. A business can deduct from its income the portion it spends buying labor or services from its employees, contractors, etc; an individual should be able to do likewise, including deducting money spent on "services" like housing rent. The only portion of the income, for either a business or an individual, which should be taxed, is the portion spend on acquiring new goods or capital, and the portion unspent (as unspent money is capital).
Bad form to reply to myself, I know, but it occurs to me that this creates an asymmetry which overall favors the transfer of labor over the transfer of capital, as a capital-seller is taxed on his income from that and the capital-buyer can't deduct his expense, whereas a labor-seller is taxed on his income and the labor-buyer can deduct that expense. This discourages investment, by discouraging in the development of capital.
The workaround, to restore the symmetry, is to reflect the non-deducability of expenses on purchasing capital with a non-taxability of income from selling capital. If we're taxing only on money earned and kept or converted into other wealth, not money earned and passed on to someone else, then it only makes sense that we don't tax money earned only by converting other wealth into it, but only money actually gained with no corresponding loss.
So only income from labor (or gifts), which is expended on capital (or saved), is taxable, as that is the only transaction which results in actual accumulation of wealth. If you are selling off stuff to buy more stuff, or selling off stuff to employ someone else, or working to employ someone else, you are not taxed; which will reward the distribution of both capital and labor, even before making the tax rate progressive, even before spending any of that tax money on welfare.
Would you care to elaborate? Is something not sensible about only taxing each transaction once, or taxing all transactions the same way, or taxing all taxable entities the same way, or only taxing money that don't come in and go right back out again?
We don't need to be adding wealth taxes like this - we need to be eliminating wealth taxes, like assessed-value property taxes*, because if a proper income tax is in place you've already been taxed on earning that money, and now you're being taxed on still having it; double taxation, as others have already said. Likewise as others have said, this means that people with small incomes who nevertheless manage to claw their way into modest wealth (say buying a home after years of hard saving) will have that wealth continuously eroded out from under them, perhaps at a faster rate than their income can provide.
*(Some flat rate of property tax per land area makes sense, to pay for the services to that land like roads, etc).
Sales taxes likewise need to be eliminated, because the seller is already paying tax on what he's earning from that sale, and then the buyer is paying tax on acquiring something with money he already paid tax on earning. And as many people have already pointed out again, sales taxes are regressive in relation to income, as the amount spent grows much more slowly than the amount earned, and so the high-earners spend a much smaller proportion of the income, and tax taxed much less in turn.
The only tax which makes sense is a tax on the acquisition of wealth; on income. Those who already have wealth and no income will have to spend that wealth to keep living and so will naturally spread it around to those they buy goods and services from. And we don't want to discourage them from doing this by taxing them for spending. Spending is good for the economy; it means more money being put to good use and more opportunities for it to spread around. If we don't touch the money when it's just sitting there (no wealth tax), let it flow out freely (no sales tax), and then progressively take what is needed as it flows back in to others, we end up with a net flow to the poor, even if we're not actually giving anything taken to the poor (i.e. not redistributing it, just letting those who acquire more bear a proportional burden of our collective social costs).
It shouldn't matter where that income comes from, it should be taxed at the same rate, whether you're selling labor or capital, and no matter what kind of goods or services you're selling. Renting space on your web server, renting an office in your building, renting yourself to your employer (i.e. wage labor)? All the same. Selling doughnuts, gadgets, gold nuggets, or stocks? All the same too.
It also shouldn't matter what kind of entity you are, for what expenditures you can deduct from that income. A business can deduct from its income the portion it spends buying labor or services from its employees, contractors, etc; an individual should be able to do likewise, including deducting money spent on "services" like housing rent. The only portion of the income, for either a business or an individual, which should be taxed, is the portion spend on acquiring new goods or capital, and the portion unspent (as unspent money is capital).
Money being created by moneylenders is hardly surprising, as money is essentially an I.O.U. If nobody owes anybody anything, there is no need or money. Of course, until everyone has their own personal TARDIS (its drive can be broken, just needs to be bigger on the inside) with a holodeck/replicator in it, so they have all the time, space, and material things they could possibly want, someone will always want to something from someone and money will be useful for facilitating those exchanges.
But, yeah, when everyone can get their basic needs met reasonably, then there will be much less wanting of things from other people and so much less owing of things to them in exchange for that, which means many fewer I.O.U.s, i.e. much less money.
Although, I think that might not even be an accurate prediction; it's probably what the people with the wealth, lending it out so as to accumulate more of it, are thinking, but it strikes me as the same kind of backward managerial thinking that floods workers with busywork so that you're not "wasting money" on paying them for "doing nothing", when all the great advances in history have come as people had more free time, and then found useful things to do with that free time, to improve things that they never had time to get to or even notice the problems with before.
Then again, society seems to be strongly encouraging people to waste every ounce of free time they get, even while at the same time making sure they have as little of it as possible. Cumulatively it seems like someone somewhere pulling the strings wants everyone to be as unproductive as possible, but I can hardly see the benefit to anybody from that.
All processes go towards higher-entropy states, that is second law of thermodynamics. Crystal-growth, coin sorting and living all lowers the local entropy at the expense of the total entropy of the universe.
Yes, quite unlike fire or a car battery. If you heat a system containing methane and oxygen, the entire system will spontaneously collapse to a higher-entropy state; no part of it will become lower-entropy. If you provide a conductor between two liquids of different pH, the entire system will spontaneously collapse to a higher-entropy state; no part of it will become lower-entropy. However, if you provide electricity to an electric coin-sorter, or food to a living creature, it will use that energy to reduce its internal entropy; still at a greater cost to the environment's entropy, but nevertheless differentiating it from fire and batteries.
You are correct about crystals being lower-entropy than their melts, which I overlooked in my first post. However, crystals don't take energy pumped into them and transform it to do work which lowers their own entropy, and so are not machines at all, and therefore not life by my definition as "self-productive machinery". Crystals simply enter a lower-entropy state when heat is taken away from them, which is hardly surprising at all: introducing a heat sink into a system at thermodynamic equilibrium reduces its entropy just as much as introducing a heat source does, and the only interesting thing about crystals in that regard is that at a certain temperature they suddenly become much more willing to give up their energy; but if there wasn't somewhere for that energy to go, the molecules could not give it up and the crystal could not form, as the heat given off during crystallization would immediately melt the crystal again.
You also run into the problem of defining the system. If we define me and the rock I hold in my hand as a system, is that system living? Does it count as living if I hit myself with the rock? If it doesn't because me and the rock are separate, how is that different from the DNA and the proteins of a cell being separate? Mostly, they act on each other, not on themselves, so it is only the aggregate that acts upon itself.
That is an interesting question, and I suppose the answer would have to be that whether or not a system is alive depends on how you've defined the system. Several systems which are not independently alive may, as an aggregate, form a system which is alive, such as the parts of a cell and the whole cell. Several systems which are individually alive may, as an aggregate, form a system which is not itself alive, although it is composed of living things - take for example a recently deceased body, which is made of up many still-living cells though it is not, as a whole, alive. Similarly, a system consisting of living things and nonliving things is not collectively alive, though it contains living things, such as you and a rock, or a an airplane full of people.
It becomes interesting, however, when you ask the question about organized groups or colonies of organisms, or of whole ecosystems, or planets. I think it's probably safe to say that the Earth as a whole takes in energy from the sun and transforms it in a way which reduces its internal entropy. Back on the subject, this is how aliens could tell that there is life on Earth, or that Earth is alive, and conversely how we can tell where life exists elsewhere, without having to look under rocks on the surface: we can tell from afar what the chemical composition of another planet's atmosphere is and whether they are in an unstable (low-entropy) state that must be maintained by some active process.