[extropy-chat] Income Tax

[Adrian Tymes]

--- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> > Someone's got to tally the sales taxes, even under
> > your new proposal.
> 
> Not nessarily. With such new technology as RFID and
> smartcards, the money could automatically tally the
> taxes and send the tally to a computer in DC.

Someone's got to make sure that tally isn't hacked, then, and someone's
got to sign off.

Besides, cash tender is still legal, as are handwritten records.
Someone's got to enter that data into the system.  (Handwriting
recognition systems are very good, but not perfect, as the USPS can
attest.)

Automation can and should greatly reduce this sort of workload.  But it
won't completely replace it, short of AIs complex enough to demand
their own rights (and thus form a new IRS).

> Well I guess an underground barter economy might arise
> but what can one do? I doubt the abuses of the new
> system would surpass those of the current system, at
> least not until the rich have had a century or two to
> work at it, like they have the current ever-changing
> one.

This is an argument I've been thinking about regarding other matters:
change for change's sake.  Not necessarily because the new system is
that much better, but mostly to shake up the institutionalized abuses
that have grown in the current system.  And then once the new system
grows old enough to develop its own institutionalized abuses, change to
something else.

The counter-argument seems to be that, alongside institutionalized
abuses, comes institutionalized fairness, and the benefits of the
latter outweighs the detriments of the former.  I wonder...

> > Ergo, it seems that
> > in the present political climate, attempting to
> > implement this would do
> > more harm than good.
> 
> Do you still think so, if there is no food exception?

The problem is that they'd create exceptions, even if the food
exception was not there.  It might be more difficult to justify the
first exception, but there's a very high chance they'd think they have
enough reason to.  And once the first exception was made, others would
follow more easily.

The problem is the distinction between what you want and what you'd
actually get.