I agree votes should be household based not individual.
You can never convince me some genetic dead who hates man kind in their late 40s, is on loads of medicine , hates kids, could have societies best interest in mind when going to vote.
They will slowly destroy it until the barbarians eventually take over removing any right to vote.
https://video.nostr.build/018b2018ada211e0024fd6293216b90cadec9c890f9cc0c54fbac7688b45d70e.mp4
Heck yes! One household, one voice, and that voice has weight according to their stake in the future of society. One adult? A weight of one. A married couple? A weight of 2.5. With children? 0.5 per child*.
#Patriarchy is the future.
*Children should be legally under the roof of the father, that is living at home or otherwise fully financially supported by the father. Includes any child not independently living.
While we're at it. Let's agree that the federal government should have no business with individuals and should be financially supported by the states that compose it. And those states should be financially supported by cities and counties, and those are supported by households.
#subsidiarity and #localism
I honestly think it should be limited to reproducing households. If ten people live there, one vote. Should be cast by the male in charge with the council of his family.
Not single drug addicted women. Nor men who fail to provide and to create a household.
Infertile ? Adopt to gain voting rights.
Why should someone who failed to further the species have any say in how it's governed?
Even a half point is to much.
I'm aware we won't go back anytime soon. But that's my ideal scenario.
Wait a minute! Are you me? Other people have these thoughts? I want to get to the point that I can cosign a tax contract with my city wherein my wallet sends them a flat transaction tax. Just city, they can sign their own digital contracts with county -> State -> Federal.
The one hang up with the dependency thing is that I don't want to politically motivate adoption. Making the multiplier 0.5 instead of 1 might help, but there will still be incentive to only approve ideogically aligned adoptions.
😂 Yes sir! I am an internet cloning DVM that studies you and gives you a replica with just enough differences so that I can pass off as another human.
I do want to incentivize procreation and adoption. Those who decide to not procreate nor adopt are already ill-incentivized for fostering the future of the world, and those who decide to procreate or adopt because of the voting advantage will grow as people in doing so, so I'd feel okay with that small fraction of society gaining some advantage in exchange for putting much more power into the hands of those already well incentivized to foster our future.
I think as well that children only should add to the household's voting weight if the head of household legally married. Divorce would only cause a half-point loss otherwise. Those who get divorced, it seems to me, can hardly run their own lives, so why give them power of governance?
I think we over-estimate how motivated the average person is to gain political power. I don't think people will often change the way they live based on voting advantage. Financial advantage is a little different, though. We ought to incentivize what would make a better society while being careful to not over-incentivize and cause a game-theory paradoxical scenario. We already incentivize marriage by joint-filing tax brackets and child tax credits, but that doesn't change those who choose to not marry, procreate, or adopt.
so, this is what reasoning inside of satans hairy blazing ballsac sounds like - thanks. I was curious.
You make some great points. I made that "people don't change" mistake that I despise when made by other people. Whadda hypocrite!
I agree that you don't really want to mix in financial incentives too much. That is why I want to just use a transaction tax. Government picking incentives prevents the market from optimizing and has added a huge overhead in IRS agents and accountants, while disincentivizing interpersonal commerce. The loss of economic activity is immeasurable (not without being able to compare parallel realities)
The main thing I wish we could collectively knowledge is that the main function of a society, like every living thing, is to raise the next generation in the values that created it. We seem to think we can have a society that encourages goals other than continuing society and relationships without life.
The issues I see with a transaction tax is that it incentivizes lower velocity and/or system skirting. We already have transaction tax on Bitcoin, and we "skirt" that system by making a "joint account," if you will, and making off-chain transactions that don't get taxed, then settling later. The same thing will happen on new layers. It may also create an incentive to use custodial wallets that will reduce the number of "taxable" transactions. A flat tax is a lot more doable and less "skirtable", and the same goes for property tax. I wouldn't mind taxes if they're quite small and I and my neighbors can talk directly to the people who decide what it is. If I don't like it, I can move outside the city or county. A national tax however... not so much.
Again, #localism
Agreed on the localism. When I say "transaction tax" I mean paid locally. Kind of like a local sales tax. How would a flat tax work differently?
Would this be something only for business-customer transactions. Paying back for dinner shouldn't be taxed, and preventing that while also taxing payment for taxable sales in an automatic way will be difficult.
A flat tax is based on whether you live in an area, simply put. If you live/work here, you should support the community.
Hmm. I didn't think of reimbursement. It's a good thing I am not actually in charge. But no, I was not planning on different transaction types. My reasoning is that if you treat business-customer, business-business, differently then it adds extra friction for interpersonal commerce. Under our current tax system if I want to hire my neighbor to mow my lawn now and then, I need to register myself as an employer, get a tax id, file a w-4, then submit yearly w-2s. Or he could register as a contractor and do it himself. In either case it is a massive pain in the neck, so for odd jobs we either go under the table or just don't hire each other at all.
If your law requires people become (minor) criminals just to associate freely, then something is wrong. The case of reimbursement is an issue or not depending on the transactional tax rate. We seem to be ok already with 3% going to credit card processors.
You probably can't run a government on 3% But I think the size of the economy would be much larger with greater transactional velocity.
In your flat tax would everyone pay the same amount or is it a rate on income?
It's a bit simpler if your neighbor doesn't do it for a living. If you pay him less than $600, no reporting is needed. Even if it's greater, all you need is a 1099 and to include it on your annual tax filing. Only when you plan to hire people full time do taxes get tough. On the other hand, if he does it as a business, he should be the one to report it, not you. The tax code is messed up, and there's an untold number of dollars spent on trying to pay as little as possible that should really be put to use making things people need and want, but I digress.
The flat tax idea I have is to take 10% of the local poverty line and make that the flat tax, or 5% of income above 50% of poverty, whichever is less. I thought of treating it differently based on household size, like making the "above X%" line scale, but that's at least the basic idea.
Let's say poverty is $40k, as a round number, and the average contribution would be 8% of it. I think basic governance, police, and defense should easily run on $3.2M per 1000 households in today's dollars. A city of 100k people would be on the scale of 25k households, adding to $80M/yr.
I've also toyed with the idea of a small property tax. It seems right to have those who own property to contribute to its protection, right? A defense fund should be supported by owners of property, just like insurance to for home and autos. I'm thinking 0.25%/yr. A $400k home would have a $1k annual tax that goes to defense. The bigger the target, the more you contribute to its defense.
