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Have you tried doing what I suggested? As an addendum to what I said to your sibling commenter: people in developed countries take a lot of shit for granted. O

Have you tried doing what I suggested? As an addendum to what I said to your sibling commenter: people in developed countries take a lot of shit for granted. Of course there is a judicial system. Of course sewage is properly dealt with. Of course there is a fire department, etc. etc. The whole point of the exercise is realizing what your taxes are actually providing. All that shit ain't free: it costs a lot of money and a lot of constant work from a lot of people who don't do it for the fame or fortune, yet publicly mostly just get shit on and called "lazy". Don't get me wrong: Government isn't perfect and a lot can be and should be improved, but the framing that it is somehow scandalous or immoral to have to spend half of your earnings on the collective (mostly) good, or even to call that theft (as so many do) is entitled, spoiled and ignorant of history. Edit: as to the prosperity of Germany, on a global scale and compared to other points in history it is actually doing fucking fantastic. It's citizens lead lives that are easily top 1% of any lives that have ever been and easily top 5% of lives currently on this planet.

cyberpunk 8d ago
I'd like more control where my money goes. I'd happily spend the time every year deciding what % of my contribution goes where, and it would be more democratic. I'm happy to have sewers, police, schools, infrastructure and so on. I'm less enthused about the growing debt pile my children will inherit, and obvious wastes (e.g - the F126 story, everything Claudia Roth ever touched, 2.6 million* euros on whatever 'antisemitism funding' is, etc). edit: I was wrong, it was 2.6 million in antisemitism, not billion, so that's a pretty much irrelevant sum.
- dinfinity 8d ago
  > edit: I was wrong, it was 2.6 million in antisemitism, not billion, so that's a pretty much irrelevant sum. Do you see how your initial feeling was far more extreme than the actual data show? That is the point of doing the actual work of looking at what your contribution funds: a scientific, solid basis for reasoning, rather than social media fueled primitive outrage. You should really try it. > I'd like more control where my money goes. Would you like everybody to have more control of that? What if people don't want to contribute to roads because they contribute to pollution (even though society would pretty much collapse without roads). Would you be okay with that? Are you familiar with the Tragedy of the Commons [0]? Or perhaps any real world libertarian experiments? Turns out individual people are generally selfish, highly incompetent and very fallible in making decisions on complex matters affecting lots of people. It's really, really hard to train individuals to make decisions that lead to collective prosperity, especially if they can choose options that are beneficial for them in the short term. The reason we effectively work towards collective prosperity at all is the evolution of systems and processes that mitigate individual incompetence (most voters really don't know how to run a sewage system), elevate individual specialization (experts), and push for a well-reasoned basis. This evolution took place over a long time and in the process a lot of people and systems died. We can and must evolve it further, but that evolution should not ignore everything that went before it for the sake of feelings. See also Chesterton's Fence [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [1] https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
dingaling 8d ago
" to spend half of your earnings on the collective" Why not 99% then? Or 90%? Or a bargain 85%, leaving you some money for bread and circuses ? It's for the collective good, so how could you complain?
- dinfinity 8d ago
  That's a very valid and hard question. You do immediately frame it in a non neutral way, which is unhelpful. There are good reasons to still have a significant amount of personal freedom in spending earned money: we have an economic system that works faster with it. Citizens can vote with their wallets on matters where collective spending is not necessary, thereby steering development of technology (and society) in a certain direction in a crowdsourced way. Personal spending power is also used as a reward for doing things (although technically this does not have to be in terms of money in a hypothetical future society). The crowdsourced part is important. Technically a government could buy all the stuff for its citizens, but that is very inefficient for certain things as the knowledge of what is needed is local to the citizens. Additionally in the way we currently structure our governments there is too little room for experimentation: A government that would regularly try multiple different approaches to serve the same market simultaneously would be hammered by its citizens in a democracy for "wasting money", even though that is exactly what a healthy free market would do (bankruptcies and failed projects are a feature of free markets). Coming back to the question what the percentage should be: it is partially a question of which markets should be publicly funded and which shouldn't. Clearly things like defense, the fire department and the justice system should never be privately funded. I believe health care shouldn't either, btw. The point here is that we have reasonable grounds on which to make the decision, namely what amount of free market capitalism can be allowed in a market without detrimental effects to society (what are essential services and whatnot) or rather which way of funding produces the most desirable results for society. Determining which market needs what amount of resources is much harder (technically you could spend 99% of GDP on defense), but also part of it. How much investment do these publicly funded markets need? Is that even the right question? There is clearly some minimum to facilitate bare functioning, but what is a reasonable amount/service level? I would say this is a matter of experts making decisions based on a democratic mandate. The other angle would be to think about what amount of personal spending money is beneficial to society: above what amount do people start spending it mostly on things they don't need and that don't make their lives or technology better? This is tricky, because it is highly intertwined with what services are provided publicly and because it's hard to come up with solid reasoning if there is an upper limit to what more spending does for (technological) progress. There is probably some value in stimulating the caviar and yacht markets, but I'd guess not that much. All in all, it is tricky. Given all the above it may actually be a lot better if the tax rate was 80% for low earners and 95% for high earners. It may also be better if it was 20% and 35%. I don't think the latter is true, but I can't say with certainty that the former is either. Again, it is a hard question.

cyberpunk 8d ago

I'd like more control where my money goes. I'd happily spend the time every year deciding what % of my contribution goes where, and it would be more democratic. I'm happy to have sewers, police, schools, infrastructure and so on. I'm less enthused about the growing debt pile my children will inherit, and obvious wastes (e.g - the F126 story, everything Claudia Roth ever touched, 2.6 million* euros on whatever 'antisemitism funding' is, etc). edit: I was wrong, it was 2.6 million in antisemitism, not billion, so that's a pretty much irrelevant sum.

dinfinity 8d ago
> edit: I was wrong, it was 2.6 million in antisemitism, not billion, so that's a pretty much irrelevant sum. Do you see how your initial feeling was far more extreme than the actual data show? That is the point of doing the actual work of looking at what your contribution funds: a scientific, solid basis for reasoning, rather than social media fueled primitive outrage. You should really try it. > I'd like more control where my money goes. Would you like everybody to have more control of that? What if people don't want to contribute to roads because they contribute to pollution (even though society would pretty much collapse without roads). Would you be okay with that? Are you familiar with the Tragedy of the Commons [0]? Or perhaps any real world libertarian experiments? Turns out individual people are generally selfish, highly incompetent and very fallible in making decisions on complex matters affecting lots of people. It's really, really hard to train individuals to make decisions that lead to collective prosperity, especially if they can choose options that are beneficial for them in the short term. The reason we effectively work towards collective prosperity at all is the evolution of systems and processes that mitigate individual incompetence (most voters really don't know how to run a sewage system), elevate individual specialization (experts), and push for a well-reasoned basis. This evolution took place over a long time and in the process a lot of people and systems died. We can and must evolve it further, but that evolution should not ignore everything that went before it for the sake of feelings. See also Chesterton's Fence [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [1] https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

dingaling 8d ago

" to spend half of your earnings on the collective" Why not 99% then? Or 90%? Or a bargain 85%, leaving you some money for bread and circuses ? It's for the collective good, so how could you complain?

dinfinity 8d ago
That's a very valid and hard question. You do immediately frame it in a non neutral way, which is unhelpful. There are good reasons to still have a significant amount of personal freedom in spending earned money: we have an economic system that works faster with it. Citizens can vote with their wallets on matters where collective spending is not necessary, thereby steering development of technology (and society) in a certain direction in a crowdsourced way. Personal spending power is also used as a reward for doing things (although technically this does not have to be in terms of money in a hypothetical future society). The crowdsourced part is important. Technically a government could buy all the stuff for its citizens, but that is very inefficient for certain things as the knowledge of what is needed is local to the citizens. Additionally in the way we currently structure our governments there is too little room for experimentation: A government that would regularly try multiple different approaches to serve the same market simultaneously would be hammered by its citizens in a democracy for "wasting money", even though that is exactly what a healthy free market would do (bankruptcies and failed projects are a feature of free markets). Coming back to the question what the percentage should be: it is partially a question of which markets should be publicly funded and which shouldn't. Clearly things like defense, the fire department and the justice system should never be privately funded. I believe health care shouldn't either, btw. The point here is that we have reasonable grounds on which to make the decision, namely what amount of free market capitalism can be allowed in a market without detrimental effects to society (what are essential services and whatnot) or rather which way of funding produces the most desirable results for society. Determining which market needs what amount of resources is much harder (technically you could spend 99% of GDP on defense), but also part of it. How much investment do these publicly funded markets need? Is that even the right question? There is clearly some minimum to facilitate bare functioning, but what is a reasonable amount/service level? I would say this is a matter of experts making decisions based on a democratic mandate. The other angle would be to think about what amount of personal spending money is beneficial to society: above what amount do people start spending it mostly on things they don't need and that don't make their lives or technology better? This is tricky, because it is highly intertwined with what services are provided publicly and because it's hard to come up with solid reasoning if there is an upper limit to what more spending does for (technological) progress. There is probably some value in stimulating the caviar and yacht markets, but I'd guess not that much. All in all, it is tricky. Given all the above it may actually be a lot better if the tax rate was 80% for low earners and 95% for high earners. It may also be better if it was 20% and 35%. I don't think the latter is true, but I can't say with certainty that the former is either. Again, it is a hard question.