TheJach.com

Jach's personal blog

(Largely containing a mind-dump to myselves: past, present, and future)
Current favorite quote: "Supposedly smart people are weirdly ignorant of Bayes' Rule." William B Vogt, 2010

Answers to two questions about government

I just sent out an email answering two questions, I'm going to copy them here because they're a good reference point for my current views going into 2014. Previously in the email I had mentioned http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html as a decent source of anti-libertarianism, though not without its own problems. The first question, referencing that link:

Some of his arguments are worth thinking about, but It seems to me that many of his argmumetns can be turned on their head fairly easily. What do you think of his marginal utility argument using the movie ticket example?

I think the concept of marginal utility is sound, but by itself it does not justify progressive taxes. So what if I'm so wealthy that an extra dollar is more or less useless for me personally because I already have everything I desire materially? It's still my dollar. What was left unjustified is that 'burden' should be the basis of a taxation policy. But the real problem with the movie ticket metaphor is that it ignores a crucial power of money: the power to create more of it through investing.

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