Clarifying The Popularity Of Three Economic Rules

[Galloism]

Yeah, I have absolutely nooooo idea who's responsible for supplying the large majority of things that I spend my money on. There's no need for me to knock on doors to figure this out. Even though you're right about this point... it really doesn't damage my argument. If we accept that Warren should have more influence by virtue of receiving more votes... then we should accept that whoever should have more influence by virtue of receiving more dollar votes. Votes reflect the will of the people and so do dollar votes.

Here's the thing: we're generally ok with someone having more economic power by getting more dollars, but not ok with letting people have more political power by having more dollars. We tend to consider that 'election buying' and we frown on it. We've even made laws against it, then the Supreme Court struck em down.

We're generally ok with people having more political power by getting more votes, but generally not ok with having more economic power by having more votes. In fact, if someone uses the power of their political position for economic gain, we tend to cry foul (it's called 'corruption').

Some bleed over occurs between the two, of course, but some of us are trying to limit that, and there's no reason to accept that because person A gives person B more economic power, they want them to have more political power as a priori. This is a false assumption that YOU have invented.

[Xerographica]

Xero, why do you keep on ripping off Molbug's writing style, despite the fact it makes your posts inconvenient to read?

Blakk Metal!? You too voila!?? First Imperializt Russia voila! And then Celseon voila!! And now you voila as well!!! It's like this thread overdosed on abracadabra.

Moldbug is infinitely more articulate than I am. He's a far better word wizard than I am. But yeah... his posts are unnecessarily long. I don't write nearly as well or as long as he does.

Even though Moldbug writes better than I do... he sucks at economics. He hates democracy but wants to replace it with... monarchism. His failure to understand the basic problem with democracy carries over to his failure to understand the basic problem with search.... The Future Of Search. Democracy and Search both have the same exact problem... they both break Tabarrok's Rule. So the solution for both of them is exactly the same... replace voting with spending.

I don't have a brilliant term for this solution as far as democracy is concerned. But for search... my brilliant term is "vuurch". Ugh, that's a terrible word. Or... "Crowd Sponsored Results".

[Xerographica]

So what you are saying is:

Logic entails that if we want to maximise an outcome (e.g. optimum allocation of resources), we can only use one mechanism of social interaction.

Your favourite is monetary transaction. If I say that that is all very well in some areas (private sector markets), but has obvious disadvantages on other areas (the provision of public goods), you are placing the burden on me to come up with another mechanism of social interaction which can be used in absolutely all aspects of social interaction (both private markets and the common provision of public goods) and which, on aggregate would be better at maximising our designated outcome.

Not quite. If you say that spending has obvious advantages in some areas... then I'm placing the burden on you to explain why, exactly, spending works well in these areas. I know why I think that spending works well in these areas. But I don't know why you think that spending works well in these areas.

Market institutions work well for the production and distribution of private goods.

Yes, this is true. I strongly agree. But again, I'm placing the burden on you to explain why, exactly, spending works well for private goods. If you can't even explain why, exactly, spending works well for private goods... then this will clarify why you oppose using spending for public goods. Clearly you're not going to recommend/support/endorse using spending for public goods if you have absolutely no clue why spending works for private goods.

There is overwhelming evidence that market institutions work atrociously poorly for the production of public and club goods. For the optimal production of these kinds of goods you need to use other mechanisms of social coordination, such as political negotiation and enforcement through the power of the state.

You see the "evidence"... but you don't understand the logic. If you understood the logic then you would see the value of creating a digital sector. The logic is simply the free-rider problem. We solve this problem with mandatory minimum contributions. Everything else is just harmful tradition.

Your response is: "oh well, if people won't choose to pay for education when given the free opportunity to do so, clearly they don't value education and we shouldn't do it." (education is a good with huge positive externalities and all evidence shows that if left to it, people would under-invest in it)

Seriously, you're really not dumb... but I've already told you, with great emphasis even, that I'm not an anarcho-capitalist. I'm a pragmatarian. It's like if you repeatedly say that you're an atheist but I repeatedly keep criticizing you for believing in god.

Ok, in your defense, this is probably your first time debating a pragmatarian. So I understand if you want to keep using the same weapons that you've been using on whoever it is that you've been debating. But the sooner you accept that these weapons won't work on me... the sooner you're going to sit down and figure out how to craft weapons that actually work.

[Galloism]

Not quite. If you say that spending has obvious advantages in some areas... then I'm placing the burden on you to explain why, exactly, spending works well in these areas. I know why I think that spending works well in these areas. But I don't know why you think that spending works well in these areas.

I'll take a stab at this.

Because in these particular areas, prices (roughly) accurately reflect true costs and value. Since the prices accurately reflect true costs and value, the system of spending and pricing works well in these areas.

[Imperializt Russia]

Lilith the liberal buys a computer because she wants a computer. This logically helps Mr. Whoever to compete resources away from Ms. Whoever is in charge of supplying abortions. I think this is pretty straightforward. It's a pretty basic fact that the more resources that Mr. Whoever uses to make computers... the less resources will be available for Ms. Whoever to supply abortions.

Except Mr and Ms Whoever do not compete in the products or services they provide, and the resources and infrastructure they use to provide those products and services also do not compete.

The specific resources used in the computer Mr Whoever sells cannot be used by Ms Whoever to provide an abortion, this is true, but it's completely irrelevant.

The particles of oxygen I breathe in the UK cannot be used by you to breath, Xero, in the US. I am not stealing your oxygen, we are not competing for oxygen.

[Celseon]

Celseon, voila!?? First Imperializt Russia magically reappears and now you too!? And without any need whatsoever to offer an explanation?! People randomly coming and going is chaos!!!! It's no wonder that we can't have nice things!

Yes, without any need whatsoever to offer an explanation. Good catch.

Yeah, I have absolutely nooooo idea who's responsible for supplying the large majority of things that I spend my money on. There's no need for me to knock on doors to figure this out. Even though you're right about this point... it really doesn't damage my argument. If we accept that Warren should have more influence by virtue of receiving more votes... then we should accept that whoever should have more influence by virtue of receiving more dollar votes. Votes reflect the will of the people and so do dollar votes.

The challenge is seeing just how stupid it is to have both systems. Votes and dollar votes are very different... so they can't both be equally good at reflecting the will of the people.

More often than not people express answers to very different questions in distinct contexts with radically different goals in mind when they vote and make purchasing decisions. When people vote for Elizabeth Warren the purpose of the act is to express an endorsement of Elizabeth Warren as one's chosen representative in a governing body. Elizabeth Warren gains political power as a necessary and intended consequence of the act of voting for her. The top brass at Microsoft necessarily obtain additional economic power when people decide to purchase Windows operating systems even if the intended effect is just to obtain an operating system. Increasing the political power of the top brass at Microsoft, meanwhile, is not a necessary consequence of that purchasing decision and isn't likely to be the typically intended consequence either.

Voting and spending answer different questions in different contexts for the sake of completing different goals. That's why systems where both spending and voting exist, because they don't serve the same purpose.

Lilith the liberal buys a computer because she wants a computer. This logically helps Mr. Whoever to compete resources away from Ms. Whoever is in charge of supplying abortions. I think this is pretty straightforward. It's a pretty basic fact that the more resources that Mr. Whoever uses to make computers... the less resources will be available for Ms. Whoever to supply abortions.


Of course Lilith, being a liberal, wants it to be really easy for anybody and everybody who needs an abortion to have an abortion. So she votes for Elizabeth Warren and Warren helps determine how much funding is giving to Ms. Whoever. Giving more funding to Ms. Whoever logically helps her to compete resources away from Mr. Whoever is in charge of supplying computers. Again, I think this is pretty straightforward.

Of course Lilith, being a human, wants to have her cake and eat it too. But clearly it's problematic when, by voting for Elizabeth Warren, Lilith ends helping Ms. Whoever compete too many resources away from Mr. Whoever. It's problematic when Lilith tramples her own interests. It's problematic when she shoots herself in the foot.

Assuming a fixed pool of people composed of two groups, those trained to manufacture computers and those trained to provide abortion services, and a fixed amount of resources for providing either computers or abortions available in the economy you only really run into problems when you either form an inefficient combination given the society's available personnel, resources, and technology or when you start committing so much of society's resources to provision of one or the other that you're pulling factory workers off the line and plopping them in women's health clinics to do a job they're not trained to do or taking nurses and doctors out of their clinics and putting them on a computer production line. Beyond that the opportunity costs are reasonably leveled out by the benefits of whatever efficient combination of computers and abortion services arises.

Incidentally, you've chosen a very interesting pairing of goods and services given the model you're using. The position of the curve representing the production possibility frontier is partially informed by the availability of resources and technology suitable for providing the goods and services being examined by the model. Guess what computers are to women's health clinics? Part of the necessary resources and technology for providing abortions. One of the goods supposedly in rivalry is among the resources and technology used to provide the other.

Can you argue that the same thing is true when Lilith buys a car? Does she shoot herself in the foot by helping Mr. Newever compete resources away from Mr. Whoever? While Lilith's car purchase does help Mr. Newever compete resources from Mr. Whoever... she would only shoot herself in the foot if she spent more money on a car than she truly wanted to.

As above.

If we trust Lilith to decide how much money she spends on computers... then we're trusting her to decide how many resources should be competed away from cars and abortions and gazillion other products that she also values. Except, when we expect Lilith to vote for a representative to decide how much money will be spent on abortions, which will logically determine how many resources are competed away from cars and computers, then we're untrusting Lilith. So we simultaneously trust and distrust her.

No. When Lilith elects a representative to Congress that representative is charged with setting policy, drafting, advocating, and considering legislation, and so on in Lilith's stead. It's not that Lilith is not trusted to make such decisions on her own. It's that if Lilith were expected to make all of these decisions herself she wouldn't have time to do anything else given the scale of the society she probably lives in. She wouldn't be able to make informed decisions based on accurate and complete information that she's taken the due time to examine and consider. This is the real reason why representative democracy exists. It's not about lacking trust in people to make their own decisions, it's about realistically examining the logistics of complex decision making at the scale of a society as large as the United States.

If this system doesn't seem fundamentally incoherent and blatantly harmful to Lilith's own true interests.... then you're really not thinking hard enough. Or, I'm doing a really terrible job of articulating the absurdity. Which is entirely possible.

It's that you don't know why representative democracies actually exist and are looking at dramatically simplified models like production possibility curves as though they're all the information you need to properly assess the appropriate use of a society's resources.

Here are the facts...

1. We trust Lilith to decide how much money she spends on computers
2. The more money that she spends on computers, the less resources that will be available for abortions
3. We trust Lilith to decide how many resources will be available for abortions and computers
4. We trust Lilith to vote for a representative who will protect her interests
5. Her representative will help determine how much money is spent on abortions
6. The more money that's spent on abortions, the less resources that will be available for computers
7. We don't trust Lilith to decide how many resources will be available for computers or abortions

1. True
2. False, computers are resources used for providing women's health services and their number is not fixed for the purposes of this model
3. True
4. True
5. True
6. False, computers are resources used for providing women's health services and their number is not fixed for the purposes of this model
7. False, because that's not the reason representatives are chosen

We really need to make up our minds! And by "we" I mean all of yous! I've already made up my mind that I truly trust Lilith. Well, my mind made up my mind. My mind refused to simultaneously hold such blatantly contradictory beliefs.

Xero, you set up a curve to illustrate tradeoffs between one good that is actually a useful and necessary resource for providing the other. You're in no position to sit smugly and sneer at everyone.

[Xerographica]

Elizabeth Warren gains political power as a necessary and intended consequence of the act of voting for her. The top brass at Microsoft necessarily obtain additional economic power when people decide to purchase Windows operating systems even if the intended effect is just to obtain an operating system. Increasing the political power of the top brass at Microsoft, meanwhile, is not a necessary consequence of that purchasing decision and isn't likely to be the typically intended consequence either.

When I buy a computer, I am only able to do so because enough other people gave enough money/influence to the people who produce computers. My intention is to have a computer and this depends entirely on computer producers having money/influence. And however you spin it... influence/power/control over society's limited resources is a zero sum game. Giving more influence to computer producers means giving less influence to Warren. Giving more influence to Warren means giving less influence to computer producers.

With democracy it's one person one vote. Everybody has the same influence. What happens if we give you, and only you, two votes? Clearly your influenced doubled. But this obviously means that everybody else has marginally less influence than they used to have. Because if they don't, then your influence really didn't double.

Assuming a fixed pool of people composed of two groups, those trained to manufacture computers and those trained to provide abortion services, and a fixed amount of resources for providing either computers or abortions available in the economy you only really run into problems when you either form an inefficient combination given the society's available personnel, resources, and technology or when you start committing so much of society's resources to provision of one or the other that you're pulling factory workers off the line and plopping them in women's health clinics to do a job they're not trained to do or taking nurses and doctors out of their clinics and putting them on a computer production line. Beyond that the opportunity costs are reasonably leveled out by the benefits of whatever efficient combination of computers and abortion services arises.

At any given time, there's a finite pool of intelligence. Allocating more intelligence to supplying abortions means allocating less intelligence to supplying computers. Markets work because consumers use their cash to indicate how they want society's intelligence to be allocated. The government doesn't work because it overrides the spending decisions of consumers.

No. When Lilith elects a representative to Congress that representative is charged with setting policy, drafting, advocating, and considering legislation, and so on in Lilith's stead. It's not that Lilith is not trusted to make such decisions on her own. It's that if Lilith were expected to make all of these decisions herself she wouldn't have time to do anything else given the scale of the society she probably lives in. She wouldn't be able to make informed decisions based on accurate and complete information that she's taken the due time to examine and consider. This is the real reason why representative democracy exists. It's not about lacking trust in people to make their own decisions, it's about realistically examining the logistics of complex decision making at the scale of a society as large as the United States.

Really? This is the real reason that representative democracy exists? It has nothing to do with some barons taking the power of the purse from some king?

Representative democracy continues to exist because voters want it to exist. Taxation continues to exist because voters want it to exist. If enough voters stopped desiring these things then guess what? They would cease to exist.

In a pragmatarian system... our representatives would still be there. The only difference is that Lilith would have the option to directly allocate her taxes. Are you worried that she's going to choose this option? If so, why? Because you don't trust her? You don't trust her to know what she does, and doesn't, have the time to do?

Here are the facts...

1. We trust Lilith to decide how much money she spends on computers
2. The more money that she spends on computers, the less resources that will be available for abortions
3. We trust Lilith to decide how many resources will be available for abortions and computers
4. We trust Lilith to vote for a representative who will protect her interests
5. Her representative will help determine how much money is spent on abortions
6. The more money that's spent on abortions, the less resources that will be available for computers
7. We don't trust Lilith to decide how many resources will be available for computers or abortions

1. True
2. False, computers are resources used for providing women's health services and their number is not fixed for the purposes of this model
3. True
4. True
5. True
6. False, computers are resources used for providing women's health services and their number is not fixed for the purposes of this model
7. False, because that's not the reason representatives are chosen

Like I already explained, intelligence (aka ability to solve problems) is, at any given time, a finite resource. Allocating more problem solvers to computing means allocating less problem solvers to aborting. Allocating more problem solvers to aborting means allocating less problem solvers to computing.

We really need to make up our minds! And by "we" I mean all of yous! I've already made up my mind that I truly trust Lilith. Well, my mind made up my mind. My mind refused to simultaneously hold such blatantly contradictory beliefs.

Xero, you set up a curve to illustrate tradeoffs between one good that is actually a useful and necessary resource for providing the other. You're in no position to sit smugly and sneer at everyone.

I really don't deny that computers facilitate abortions... and a gazillion other things. Which is why it's really important to prevent Warren, and all the other representatives, from stealing influence from computer producers. If we give people the option to directly allocate their taxes and few, if any, taxpayers choose this option then I will certainly stand corrected. I will be the first to admit that representatives are not stealing influence from computer producers. I will be the first to admit that representatives earned their influence fair and square.

But let's say that most taxpayers actually choose the option to directly allocate their taxes. Will you be the first to admit that you were wrong in assuming that representatives earn their influence fair and square? Are you even capable of admitting the possibility that you might be wrong about the necessity of representatives spending our money for us?

Let's say that you earn $70,000 dollars a year but one year you solve some really big problems for your company and they bump your pay up to $100,000 dollars. Are you overwhelmed with the possibility of having to allocate an additional $30,000 dollars? Do you wonder how you're going to find the time to spend this extra money? Does is stress you out thinking about all the research you're going to have to do in order to ensure that you don't waste this extra money? Do you decide to turn down the raise? No?

Yet, if Lilith earns $100,000 year... and she is given the option to spend her $30,000 dollars in taxes in the public sector... for some reason you don't think she's going to be able to handle all this extra responsibility.

Let's say that your boss says, "hey Celseon, I'm going to give you an extra $30,000 dollars a year... but you can only spend it in the non-profit sector... deal?" How are you going to reply? Are you going to tell your boss "No Deal!"? Because... the non-profit sector is... too big? You'd be overwhelmed with options? You'd be overwhelmed with all the homework that you'd have to do in order to ensure that you didn't waste this $30,000 dollars?

How many options do you think are in the public sector? Do you think there are more options in the public sector than in the private sector?

Let's say that some aliens visited our planet tomorrow and said, "Let's trade!" How would you respond? "Ok, but only as long as you don't have too many options for us to choose! If you have too many options then only our representatives should be allowed to trade with you. Because even though we are primitive in comparison to you... we are advanced enough to understand that smaller groups of individuals are better at processing information than larger groups of individuals."

Yeah... no. Right now 500 congresspeople... plus a small army of staffers... process a large amount of information. And you think this large amount of information is more information than Lilith can handle. Ok. That's true. But Lilith really wouldn't be the only taxpayer. There are millions and millions of taxpayers and, as a group, they can process infinitely more information than congress and its staff can. Many hands make light work.

Right now you think it's a smart idea to remove nearly everybody's brains from the task of allocating taxes. We're going to make infinitely more progress when you realize just how dumb this idea is.

[Pope Joan]

Betting is bad for society. Families go hungry so that Dad can feed his habit. Look at Niagara Falls, ON after the casino went there; an international gem, a beauty, became visibly degraded. Trash everywhere, hookers on streetcorners, men in trenchcoats in the summer heat, sleaze everywhere.

Atlantic City is like that too.

Now, Native American casinos seem to avoid this. Perhaps it is because they are usually isolated in rural areas, or perhaps there is a stronger community around them.

[Xerographica]

Betting is bad for society. Families go hungry so that Dad can feed his habit. Look at Niagara Falls, ON after the casino went there; an international gem, a beauty, became visibly degraded. Trash everywhere, hookers on streetcorners, men in trenchcoats in the summer heat, sleaze everywhere.

Atlantic City is like that too.

Now, Native American casinos seem to avoid this. Perhaps it is because they are usually isolated in rural areas, or perhaps there is a stronger community around them.

There's a difference between A. saying you want a coconut and B. actually buying a coconut. The latter is how "betting" is being defined in this thread.

[Celseon]

When I buy a computer, I am only able to do so because enough other people gave enough money/influence to the people who produce computers. My intention is to have a computer and this depends entirely on computer producers having money/influence. And however you spin it... influence/power/control over society's limited resources is a zero sum game. Giving more influence to computer producers means giving less influence to Warren. Giving more influence to Warren means giving less influence to computer producers.

With democracy it's one person one vote. Everybody has the same influence. What happens if we give you, and only you, two votes? Clearly your influenced doubled. But this obviously means that everybody else has marginally less influence than they used to have. Because if they don't, then your influence really didn't double.

Once again, you are conflating the concepts of market power and political power and assuming that people should have identical expectations for individuals playing radically different roles in society. I'm not explaining the difference again.

At any given time, there's a finite pool of intelligence. Allocating more intelligence to supplying abortions means allocating less intelligence to supplying computers. Markets work because consumers use their cash to indicate how they want society's intelligence to be allocated. The government doesn't work because it overrides the spending decisions of consumers.

Does the government tell people what they will or will not do for a living, whether they will attend university or receive vocational training, and what field they will study if they are to go to university to such an extent that the allocation of intelligence in the United States is so dramatically driven toward either women's health services or computer manufacturing that the resultant combination, even assuming it is efficient, creates an unbearable opportunity cost? Is the United States producing so many computers that work in women's health clinics simply isn't available even for those who are trained to provide abortions, is the reverse true, or is neither the case?

Also, computers are still resources used to provide abortion services, so the relationship between computer manufacturing and women's health services is still more complex than a production possibilities frontier can show on its own.

Really? This is the real reason that representative democracy exists? It has nothing to do with some barons taking the power of the purse from some king?

You want to join us in the context of the conversation we're actually having? You know, discussing the nature and purpose of representative democracy in the United States of America in the year 2016?

Representative democracy continues to exist because voters want it to exist. Taxation continues to exist because voters want it to exist. If enough voters stopped desiring these things then guess what? They would cease to exist.

In a pragmatarian system... our representatives would still be there. The only difference is that Lilith would have the option to directly allocate her taxes. Are you worried that she's going to choose this option? If so, why? Because you don't trust her? You don't trust her to know what she does, and doesn't, have the time to do?

The problem is not a lack of trust. The problem is the relative complexity of the system and unavoidable limitations on Lilith's time and access to complete information. We've been over this, and I'm not explaining it all to you again.

I really don't deny that computers facilitate abortions... and a gazillion other things.

So you don't deny that some of the very technology and factors of production that drive a society's ability to provide abortion services upward is what you set up as something that would take away from society's ability to provide abortion services? Good. he United States doesn't produce so many computers that nearly everyone who could hypothetically be trained to provide abortions is already busy working in a factory making computers, and it's definitely not producing so many that even those who are trained to provide abortions are also working in factories making computers.

Which is why it's really important to prevent Warren, and all the other representatives, from stealing influence from computer producers. If we give people the option to directly allocate their taxes and few, if any, taxpayers choose this option then I will certainly stand corrected. I will be the first to admit that representatives are not stealing influence from computer producers. I will be the first to admit that representatives earned their influence fair and square.

But let's say that most taxpayers actually choose the option to directly allocate their taxes. Will you be the first to admit that you were wrong in assuming that representatives earn their influence fair and square? Are you even capable of admitting the possibility that you might be wrong about the necessity of representatives spending our money for us?

I'm going to be blunt, Xerographica. You've been advocating for "pragmatarianism" with obsessive, feverish devotion for years now. You have run roughshod on the internet, spamming forums with threads, blogging, editing Wikipedia articles, you've given your cause plenty of exposure over plenty of time. I'd say the experiment you propose has already been run, and that your cause passed away as a stillbirth as people have opted not to change the system to what you want to in the first place. Want evidence? The latest bill in the US legislature that would've granted any power to the public to reallocate any taxes whatsoever that is cited on the tax choice Wikipedia article, which you had an extensive hand in creating, died in committee in 2007. The next most recent cited example before that is a full seven years before that, and it also died in committee. The next one after that was in 1971, and is the only successful example of tax choice ever happening in the United States.

People don't seem to be terribly interested in building upon that 1971 fund's legacy by claiming the option to direct the full amount of all taxes they pay wherever they please, Xerographica. It's been nearly half a century now and NOTHING is happening.

[Xerographica]

You want to join us in the context of the conversation we're actually having? You know, discussing the nature and purpose of representative democracy in the United States of America in the year 2016?

Please cite any sources that support the idea that...

The demand for public goods doesn't matter

OR

The current system is adequately good at determining the demand for public goods

Maybe I'm not a genius but I'm certainly not an idiot. If credible sources existed to support these ideas then I really wouldn't spend so much time barking up the pragmatarian tree.

You look at our system and believe that it must be based on something substantial... and/or... scientific... and/or... solid. For sure the taxation part is! The free-rider problem is super substantial. I've found a ton of credible sources which do a great job of explaining that the free-rider problem is a real problem. But if you understand and agree that the free-rider problem is a real problem... then you'll understand and agree that you won't be able to find credible sources which support the representative part of our system.

The free-rider problem is a problem, and only a problem, because it results in a disparity between supply and demand. And if you want to assume that representation somehow eliminates this disparity for public goods... then you have to assume the same exact thing for private goods as well. Which means you assume that markets are entirely unnecessary. But that's a really idiotic thing to assume. And no scholar with half a brain would assume it. So no, you're not going to find any credible sources which provide a substantial explanation for representation. And by credible I obviously mean somebody who knows anything about economics.

But maybe I'm wrong! Yeah? Go ahead and prove it! Make me eat my words by overwhelming me with plenty of economists substantiating the necessity of representation. You would certainly be the first to do so. Need me to help you narrow down the search? Of course you do! The relevant field is "public finance".

I'm going to be blunt, Xerographica. You've been advocating for "pragmatarianism" with obsessive, feverish devotion for years now. You have run roughshod on the internet, spamming forums with threads, blogging, editing Wikipedia articles, you've given your cause plenty of exposure over plenty of time. I'd say the experiment you propose has already been run, and that your cause passed away as a stillbirth as people have opted not to change the system to what you want to in the first place. Want evidence? The latest bill in the US legislature that would've granted any power to the public to reallocate any taxes whatsoever that is cited on the tax choice Wikipedia article, which you had an extensive hand in creating, died in committee in 2007. The next most recent cited example before that is a full seven years before that, and it also died in committee. The next one after that was in 1971, and is the only successful example of tax choice ever happening in the United States.

People don't seem to be terribly interested in building upon that 1971 fund's legacy by claiming the option to direct the full amount of all taxes they pay wherever they please, Xerographica. It's been nearly half a century now and NOTHING is happening.

Every single time somebody like you completely fails to credibly substantiate the necessity of forced representation it fuels my fervor. I become more and more convinced that I'm barking up the right tree.

Yet, I am still perfectly capable of recognizing that it's entirely possible that I'm the modern day equivalent of Don Quixote. LOL. Yeah, that would definitely suck. It would really suck. The thought of wasting so much of my limited time and energy on a fool's errand has provided me with the maximum incentive to do my fucking homework. To do a ton of fucking homework. And if there's one thing that I'm good at...and really love doing.... it's researching the shit out of things that fucking fascinate me. And that's what I've done. And because I have done my homework... I'm certain that you have not done your homework. So if anybody is barking up the wrong tree... then chances are really good that it's not me... it's you.

And maybe you don't care that you're probably barking up the wrong tree. So you'll quit and somebody else will come along. Maybe they won't care either so they'll quit as well. But eventually, maybe not in my lifetime, somebody will come along and see how fucking clear the pattern is. And then they'll do a much better job than I have of clarifying the problem with blocking so much difference from the public sector. Perhaps their explanation will be a lot more accessible to most people than the following explanation is...

Individual decision making is closely connected to creativity not because all choices are excellent, but because they constitute a broad field out of which the best responses can emerge. If we wished to establish a connection to Darwinian ideas, we could say that the wide spectrum of decisions is similar to the field of the spontaneous variations of living things from which the pressure of natural selection preserves only the most apt. Without such experimental structures and behaviours, responses remain stagnant and life sinks under the weight of institutionalised routine. Freedom multiplies actions and ideas, some of which turn out to be brilliant and others fundamentally flawed. The important fact, however, is that few if any of them could have occurred under conditions of enforced conformity. To leave people alone with their projects is to permit - even to encourage - the exercise of private imaginations. - John Lachs