From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jul 07 2002 - 01:00:27 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Damien Broderick wrote:
>
>> When this line of thought is applied to taxation, it seems to be
>> assumed that teeny weeny slices of your tax payment is being
>> applied to whatever programs you detest: mandatory traffic lights,
>> state supported schooling, cancer research, nuclear power or its
>> regulation, water fluoridation, bridges, etc. But mightn't you, an
>> individual, support some of these measures while disliking some of
>> the others (while other taxpayers feel the same way about different
>> measures)? Might you not assuage your pangs of dispossession by
>> regarding the share you pay as going preferentially to *your*
>> favorite scam, and theirs as paying for what they favor?
>
> Well, my biggest gripe with taxes is that those "teeny slices" add up
> to over 60% of my income! I have a very difficult time that
> believing I should devote 60% of my renumeration to purposes chosen
> by others. There just aren't that many people who have a better idea
> how to spend my money imho.
Yep. But of course, there are a lot of people who *think* they have a
better idea how to spend your money. It is a bad idea to give these
people the ability to pick your pockets just by persuading a few
Congressfolk.
The government takes such an enormous proportion of your income that it
can't help but spend some of it on something useful. But to be consoled
by this would be absurd. It is like asking someone to be consoled if a
pickpocket gives away 10% of the money found in your wallet to charity.
The end result of government is *not* to create the same distribution
of effort that would exist if people were allowed to decide for
themselves. It is far more wasteful and inefficient. What else do you
expect when some people have the right to pick others' pockets? The end
result is that the people who are skilled at shoving their snouts in the
public trough receive more, while the efforts that free-willed people
would favor receive less.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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