I get your point. I tend to think of the political pressure of the “donor class” as being primarily directed at making their personal tax as low as possible, but of course there is also the pork-barrel effects of subsidising their own businesses … I can see where you’d simply get a runaway snouts-to-troughts situation.
I have no doubt my proposal would result in drastically lower government revenues, at least at first. But like I said, if you can’t convince people to contribute to a cause, maybe it’s not such a good idea? Of course it would require a significant rethinking of the whole concept of government.
I’m an anarchist, but I don’t support violent revolution and I still support social programs like universal healthcare and basic income. I think the system I proposed would be a great way to ease into such a “voluntary government” peacefully.
Freeloaders aren’t such a big problem. Almost half of us don’t pay federal taxes as it is. And don’t overlook the real benefit of letting the poor and middle class keep their earnings. People are pretty good at assessing their own needs. They don’t need a benevolent overlord to decide for them. Tax cuts are a form of “charity” all on their own.
And I’d suggest asking nicely for worthy causes wouldn’t necessarily result in huge drops in social spending. Perhaps all the money spent on tax preparation and enforcement would be better spent on public communication persuading people to give voluntarily? When the government stops being a secretive and violent protection racket, their persuasive power rises dramatically.
If I’m mugged, I would be very angry at handing over money, avoid it if at all possible, and if most of my money is hidden in my shoe and they don’t find it, good for me. But if someone asks me nicely to help the poor and disadvantaged, I’m much more generous and actually look for ways I can give more, even volunteering my time if I can. Especially if the institution I’m giving to is trustworthy enough and large enough to effect real change, as opposed to some unaccountable fly by night organization. I would feel bad if I didn’t give everything I could, and social stigma would be a powerfully motivating force for the rich.
The government is in a unique position to be the trusted arbiter of society’s charitable and social giving, and making it all voluntary (and transparent) increases that trust tremendously. I suspect the generosity of the American people is much deeper than it seems under the current system.
And judging by the responses to any criticism of taxation I’ve seen online, people freaking love roads. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there. I doubt we’d have so many crumbling roads and bridges under my proposal.
If you asked people if they’d rather not pay FICA taxes to cover medicare and social security and just keep the money, a lot would say yes. If you look at how few people have decent money in their voluntary 401ks, this is not an unrealistic claim. But what happens when they are elderly? They will demand new social programs for themselves because they didn’t want to pay their share for those programs. Society will be faced with ‘do we let people in their 70s die a slow painful death, or do we have mandatory taxes to clean up the mess because they didn’t want to pay FICA taxes’. This will create mass generational resentment, because at the end of the day we will pick mandatory taxes to clean up the mess these people created.
There are ballot initiatives to fund projects. Maybe a state or a city will have a ballot proposal to fund infrastructure or an expanded health care project. That is kind of close to what you mean, but it is still involuntary once 51% of the voting public agree to it.
According to some watchdog groups, we already have roads and bridges that are in wide states of disrepair.
If you can find a country that works this way, I’d be happy to see an example. But I’m still of the opinion that if this proposal worked, some city, state/province or country somewhere would have tried it by now. It sounds like a recipe for societal disrepair.
I think libertarianism overestimates how mature, responsible and informed the average person is.
Haidt rules because he saw the Indian caste system and thought, yeah, this kinda makes sense.
I admit to bafflement. Suppose Apple gave away its iPhones, saying “if you feel like contributing, fine; if not, that’s fine too — take it for free.” How many would pay? If only 10% would pay, would those 10% have the duty to pay $5000 each instead of $500 to make up for Apple’s lost revenue? Even if the freeloaders knew Apple would soon go bankrupt and have no more iPhones to give away, they still would have no incentive to pay. Google ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ or ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma.’
In fact, Apple turns away customers who refuse to pay; ‘public’ schools would turn away children too poor to pay; roads would all become toll roads; and I’ve now idea how you expect UHC to be funded with no taxes. It isn’t just government which must be funded involuntarily: consider homeowners association fees. This is all so obvious, I have to ask you, DrCube, how would you assess your knowledge of basic economics?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I notice that no conservative here has responded to my #60, nor answered (1)-(4). I am disappointed. Should we conclude that conservatives, after all, are unwilling to accept or learn that 2+2 is 4?
Actually, the exact opposite is true. It’s conservatives who are all about authoritarianism, coerced conformity, and imposing their moral strictures on everyone. And they’ll literally try to kill or imprison you if you don’t comply. That’s what their churches and police forces and armies are* for*.
We should also make anti-littering laws optional.
If people don’t want to have trash all over the place, they can just not throw their trash out their windows, and properly bag their trash for pickup rather than just tossing it into the street.
I am sure that everyone will comply, because they understand that while their individual actions will not contribute to preventing litter, their collective actions will, right?
Minor nitpick. Most roads would become impassible or gravel at best, the rest would become toll roads.
We need to understand what motivates authoritarian conservatives. Not so we can agree with them or excuse their behavior, but so we can push our own agenda of egalitarianism and social justice. I want to understand why whites in the South were so eager to uphold Jim crow in the 50s and 60s so they will be easier to beat in the courts and public squares, not so I can say ‘oh OK, carry on’.
Just a note, it wasn’t liberals who brought the “gay wedding cakes” issue to the federal level. Colorado passed a law requiring public accommodations to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The feds had nothing to do with any of that until Masterpiece Cakeshop appealed to the Supreme Court.
Additionally, on what basis do you make the claim that economic issues are “far more important”? To whom? Can you unequivocally state that gay people who want to buy wedding cakes would agree?
Powers &8^]
Why?
Why must I find merit in holding up authority as a moral value? Or sanctity? (I’ll concede Loyalty.)
Powers &8^]
Claims of clear correlations between political beliefs and structures in the amygdala have been debunked very thoroughly. All of this “research” depends on MRI imaging of the brain. There are many reasons to doubt any result based on MRIs, ranging from bug-ridden software to serious doubts about whether MRI results actually tell anything about which regions of the brain are active. But the first link that I gave focuses on only claims about politics linked to the amyglada:
Schreiber et al. predicted that when Democrats and Republicans were exposed to risky stimuli, these regions of the brain would display varying functional levels of activation consistent with the inference that Repubicans respond with greater emotional resistance, Democrats with greater reflection. Such differences, moreover, could also then be used, Schreiber et al. wrote, to “dependably differentiate liberals and conservatives” with fMRI scans.
But contrary to their hypotheses, Schreiber et al. didn’t find any significant differences in the activation levels within the portions of either the amygdala or the anterior cingulate cortex singled out in the 2011 Kanai et al. paper. Nor did Schreiber et al. find any such differences in a host of other precisely defined areas (the “entorhinal cortex,” “left insula,” or “Right Entorhinal”) that Kanai et al. identified as differeing structurally among Democrats and Republicans in ways that could suggest the hypothesized differences in cognition.
In response, Schreiber et al. simply widened the lens, as it were, of their observational camera to take in a wider expanse of the brain. “The analysis of the specific spheres [from Kanai et al.] did not appear statistically significant,” they explain,” so larger ROIs based on the anatomy were used next.”
Using this technique (which involves creating an “anatomical mask” of larger regions of the brain) to compensate for not finding significant results within more constrained ROI regions specified in advance amounts to a straightforward “fishing” expedition for “activated” voxels.
This is clearly, indisputably, undeniably not valid.
Tellingly, the article in Salon mentions none of this. And there are many other examples of “scientific” findings that are well-loved on the left but not true. One example is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), often offered as quantitative proof of the fact that white people are subconsciously racist, which happens to match what certain people want to believe. But it’s junk science.
Just my own WAG, but I believe the true agendas are protected behind a firewall of tribalism and egalitarianism. Whatever you want to do, no rationalization is going to get past that barrier. The barrier itself is the goal. When someone responds to a survey saying “I value authority and religion”, it’s a rationalization for protecting the barrier.
At some level I get it. Life is hard when you live every moment weighing the morality of every social interaction, or the trustworthiness of a stranger. Life can be much easier if you’re willing to build a moat around a community of similar and like-minded people. There was some such study that observed how, inconveniently, socialism works best in countries that have that kind of homogeneity. (Japan and Sweden are given as examples).
So I understand a morality that yearns for that kind of harmony, but the world has grown irretrievably beyond those constraints. There will never be another nation like Japan. Conformity applied to large populations ends up oppressing some of them, as well as the pipe dream of security for an enormous, diverse nation like the US. On scales like this, we need a system of morality that scales beyond tribal authoritarianism.
OK, so the difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives place a high value on “purity” and “in-group”, while liberals don’t.
Can someone please explain to me how “purity” and “in-group” are any different from “bigotry”?
If you call them pure, they don’t get as angry as if you call them bigots.
The econ department at my college begged me to change majors because I did so well at macro and micro economics. I’m not saying I know a lot about the subject, but I feel like I have the basics down pretty well. The vast majority of economic transactions are voluntary. It makes sense to me that they all could be and the world would go on just fine. I don’t claim to have all the details worked out. I’m envisioning a cultural shift that snowballs from lots of people like me making the case for real freedom.
Your iPhone example is a good one, in my opinion. Don’t want an iPhone? Don’t pay. That’s exactly how it works today. Nobody forces people to buy them, but they still sell very well. Why would anybody voluntarily pay for an iPhone when nobody is forcing them to? Maybe they find the product worth the price?
Homeowner’s association fees are also optional. I, for one, will never buy a property subject to an HOA, and there are millions of others just like me. You like HOAs and feel their fees and rules add value to your life and property? Feel free to join. Don’t like them? Nobody with guns will come and put you in a cage. HOAs still exist and do just fine.
And if public schools and UHC are so unpopular that they can’t get funding without forcing people at gunpoint to cough up, I’m comfortable looking for less violent solutions to those problems. I’m not as confident as you that they won’t get funded though. Public education, Medicare and Social Security are wildly popular on both sides of the political aisle, as are roads. Furthermore, these programs bring a lot of value to the public. Most of us see them as a worthwhile investment. If we didn’t, they wouldn’t exist.
I’d like to add another misconception I see: that laws are what cause society to change. There’s probably something to that, but you’ll notice that things like civil rights or anti-littering laws didn’t come into effect until after a large portion of the populace changed their minds on the subject. And it’s usually not the threat of punishment but the public messaging associated with the new laws (and just peer pressure) that sparks further change.
Seat belts were invented in the 19th Century, but nobody cared to use them until the 1950s brought evidence that they significantly improved outcomes in car accidents. Then usage grew until it became important enough to enough people in the 70s and 80s to push for laws mandating them. But still, it’s the serious danger that comes from not wearing a seat belt that makes me wear them, not the insignificant risk of a $50 fine.
A very similar story could be said about littering, or even more serious stuff like worker safety or civil rights. It’s my contention that a “government” based on educating and informing the public rather than browbeating them into compliance would leave us in a similar place today regarding things like littering, seat belts, tolerance, et cetera, minus a whole lot of ruined lives, police brutality, stolen money and distrust.
Laws and propaganda (in the original sense of the word as “propagating” ideas) are both tools society uses to convince others to act in its best interest. I merely suggest that with enough of the latter, the former becomes unnecessary and counterproductive.
I agree that most of these things I propose couldn’t happen today without a deep shift in cultural attitudes. But the same could have been said about Civil Rights, worker’s rights, universal suffrage, or democracy itself. And yet we accomplished them.
As to your questions in post #60, septimus, I don’t really consider myself a conservative at all (though I suppose I’m more sympathetic to their ideas than most here), but I think I’ve made my answers to those questions clear, even if not in a handy list form. I do think we should have a military, and a strong one, but that its budget could be significantly reduced without sacrificing our safety or national integrity at all.
I am even more baffled now.
Procuring iPhones is obviously not a Commons-Tragedy problem. It was included in my post to help you grasp the distinction between voluntary individual purchases and public purchases where there is no individual incentive to pay. The way you responded makes clear you didn’t have a clue what my point is. I don’t care how many A-plusses you got, nothing in your post makes me think you’re acquainted with, e.g., the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
and solve a Commons-Tragedy problem only for those particular homeowners. You state that you personally would never live in such a community. Do you live in a community where you make involuntary payments for police or fire protection?
Whether a child has funds to attend school or get healthcare is not directly a Commons-Tragedy problem. Some would consider letting poor children remain sick and uneducated is a social problem, but let’s move on. We’re not concerned with your humanitarian values here, just whether you know what a Commons-Tragedy problem is.
And what’s with the “at gunpoint”? Just colorful language, or does your behavior alarm IRS agents so much they arm themselves? 
SocSec is, more-or-less, self-funded through payroll taxes. But I’m still intrigued that public education and roads will be funded without taxes. In your model do childless people give to schools altruistically?
It sounds like you’re citing the existence of anti-littering laws as evidence that those laws were unnecessary.
Wearing a seat-belt is good for the seatbelt-wearer. This is not a Commons-Tragedy problem.
How do you pay for the military, reduced or not? Set up booths for charitable donations like the Salvation Army does? Threaten violence to extort from countries where governments do have revenue sources?
Come back with a post that demonstrates your understanding of the Tragedy of the Commons and explains how you will fund military, police, and education and healthcare for poor people.
Its the same thing. But calling it bigotry tends to make people defensive, phrases like in-group or out-group makes people less defensive about their beliefs (in my experience).
Keeping their society pure means keeping the outgroups out of their society, or failing that, keeping them submissive and out of positions of power and influence (non-whites, non-christians, foreign born, alternative values)
I was hoping to be a moderating influence in this thread, but my posts were misinterpreted by conservatives (and I’m disappointed that conservatives apparently can’t even Google ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ or ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ and can’t even speak of taxation without throwing in a gratuitist Farnabyism like “at gunpoint”).
But I’ll try again. I encourage liberals to approach conservative moral values with an open mind.
In-group/out-group differentiation is very normal. In this very board we sometimes see liberals wishing ill on “red states.” Liberal aversion to out-sourcing would make it harder for fellow humans who don’t live in the U.S. to achieve prosperity: pro-U.S. policies are themselves an example of in-group affinity. Whenever prosperous blacks react to help the cause of disadvantaged blacks, you are seeing in-group affinity in action.
I’m NOT saying it’s wrong for liberals to reject in-group based morality; I’m just saying they should understand it as a natural part of the human condition instead of insisting on treating it pejoratively.
And ‘purity’ does not mean ‘racial purity.’ Purity can refer to many ethical, aesthetic or religious values that transcend (or are believed to transcend) the strict utilitarian values favored by many liberals. The sanctity of human life is a good example, or belief in God, human dignity, or abstract values like freedom. The moral values conservatives have that liberals lack are NOT evil or ignorant, and may serve a constructive purpose for society whether liberals share those values or not.
The pressing problem in the U.S.A. is political polarization. The ignorance of many right-wingers who have been deceived by kleptocrats like Trump and the Kochs is part of that problem, but this thread has shown me that liberals share responsibility for the polarization.
The sanctity of human life, the right to self-defense, the need to protect one’s family or in-group are natural instincts as old as humanity, but some liberals insist on turning these into insults — no wonder that conservatives reject the “liberal mainstream” and embrace liars and demagogues.
:: post snipped ::
It is a bit funny that your response comes down to ‘Tee Hee, bet that dumb conservative doesn’t know this!!!?!?!’ after claiming that you have tried to reach out.
We will start at the beginning and go slow.
I am not really a conservative. You stated that you found it odd that this thread ‘demonstrate how conservatives refuse to dialog even when liberals make an effort’. Well, I don’t because it appears you aren’t paying attention to what people actually say.
I stated that I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I posted my results from the Haidt app to back up my position. And you come out with a ‘Slee the conservative’ narrative. Just out of curiosity, have you even looked at Haidts stuff? Taken the tests?
You then want to go off on a tangent with the whole ‘Unfortunately, as I already implied in my previous post, another relevant gap is between Information and Ignorance.’ bit. In other words, Conservatives are stooopid!'.
So you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you are actually paying any attention.
Now, on to your ‘Conservatives are stooopid’ questions. You start from a premise that I don’t really accept and toss in insults.
#1. HINT! Government spending matters in the context of debt. If our debt to GDP ratio were 80% my views on deficeit spending would be very different than they are when our debt to GDP ratio is ~106% (2016). LinkyIn other words, the (unstated) premise in your question that government spend exists in a vacuum is false.
#2. Cut spending and keep taxes where they are or maybe a short term increase. However, history has shown that that won’t happen, regardless of which party is in power. Both parties suck at cutting spending. That leads me to believe, unless we start tackling the debt in a real way soon we will have a couple ways out of the debt when the shit starts hitting the fan. One is painless, one hurts and one is catestrophic. A note, the surplus under Clinton was, imho, a result of a lucky set of circumstance, namely Clinton getting his ass handed to him in the midterms and the Rs being somewhat serious about the economy in middle of the tech boom.
THe painless way is to grow out of it. Basically the 1990s all over again. However, that is a type of situation you cannot plan on. If it happens, it happens. I suspect that if it is going to happen it will require a big change in power generation. I think tech (computer stuff) is pretty played out for while. In tech there will be advances but I don’t see anything that will be as big as the 1990s coming along. The next area that I think could help us grow out of it is energy. If we come up with a cheap, clean, reliable energy source that could give us a huge kick. I am less than confident this will happen soon. However, my crystal ball is kinda foggy and something might come along that makes the debt no big deal. However, I wouldn’t bet on it.
So that leaves the painful choices. First is inflate our way out. If we end up going down that route, it is going to hurt, especially the poorest folks in the country.
The catastrophic route is haircuts/default. I hope that we get our shit together long before this becomes an option but I am not particularly optimistic about that.
There are things that can be cut. Fluff programs that don’t amount to much like the NEA to start. But hey, 146 million here and 146 million there, pretty soon you are talking real money. The big ones, of course, are Defense, Medicare, Medicade and Social Security. If the choice is inflate our way out of our coming problem or haircut/default our way out, cuts now will be way less painful over the long haul. So, cut defense, eliminate extra overhead, revamp pay and benefits and the acquisition process. There are ideas out there on how it can be done. link.
Cut future S.S. payouts and let everyone know ahead of time so they can plan for it. The S.S. demographics suck, everyone knows it but no one has the balls to tackle the problem. Also we need to get a handle on health care costs, which no one want to touch. The argument is always about who pays, not who gets a less money. Note, I don’t expect to collect S.S. when I retire and am planning on it not being there. Getting the debt under control will be painful no matter when we do it. A little pain now is better than a lot of pain later.
#3. Taxes. First your w+x+y+z misses a point. Would you rather have 90% of 1,000 or 10% of 10,000. I assume you understand what you missed. Now you can debate whether tax cuts will increase growth but ignoring the argument that cutting taxes will increase growth which will lead to increased tax revenue is disingenuous at best. Note, the tax cuts = growth argument depends on a lot of other factors. Those aren’t particularly clear to me at this time and I have no idea on what effect this will have at this time. A side note, a bunch of companies have reported that they will be passing on some of the tax cuts to their employees. Link
#4. Trumps opinions aren’t mine. I think we need to get our debt under control and more borrowing is bad. I’ve stated in threads I know you participated in that I did not vote for Trump (or Clinton) and that I don’t particularly care for the guy.
You ask “How do you go from my conciliatory post to the claim that “septimus [thinks] ‘Truth and Justice!!!’ are on the liberal side”?”
Easy, you said “The real political divide is between Truth and Fiction, with conservatives rejecting the truthful but liberal media, and listening to FakeNews which panders to their moral views.”
I am not sure how you expect me to read ‘…conservatives rejecting the truthful but liberal media, and listening to FakeNews which panders to their moral views’ as anything but liberals know the truth while conservatives don’t. I added Justice in there just because it sounds better that way. If you meant that in a different way please let me know what you really meant.
I am going to add in another question asked by k9bfriender.
He asked “Could you better describe your moral foundation, so that we liberals can better understand it?”.
The answer is, I will but it won’t shed much light as I am not really a conservative as understood by 'Dopers. I’d be a libertarian if most libertarians weren’t nuts. Fiscally conservative, socially liberal.
I believe that consensual trading is the moral way for individuals to deal with each other. I believe that the state, in a perfect world, should exist to protect individual rights with those rights being defined along the lines of classical liberalism. I don’t care who you sleep with or marry, as long as it is consensual. I don’t care about what religion you believe. I do believe in fairness, with likely a different definition of fair than most 'Dopers. Fair means ‘You get what you earn’ and not ‘Everyone should get what they need’. I believe in charity that helps those receiving the charity stand on their own. I could go on, but it is rather late and one of my twins is getting fussy. If you have any more questions let me know.
On preview, unearned suffering drives me nuts. If someone is suffering and they really don’t own it, I have a lot of empathy. If they create their own problems, help is ok so long as the person understands that they need to change their behavior.
If someone wants help but refuses to change, well, sucks to be them. Helping is only going to delay the inevitable bitchslap from reality.
Slee