Tax Crime and Pollution, and you have fair taxes.

The problems society faces, crime and pollution, cannot be solved by building more prisons. It cannot be solved by building a prison state or a prison planet. It cannot be solved militarily by declaring a war on it.

I think one possible solution which is proven to work in psychological studies, is the training system of rewarding individuals for good behavior and punishing individuals for bad behavior.

The goal of any hard working individual, is to pay the least amount of taxes. However, our current system promotes criminal behavior, by allowing criminals to earn money tax free. The easier way to reduce criminal behavior is, to raise taxes on all who are convicted of a crime, and individualize the tax system to raise taxes based on human behavior.

The insurance industry, decides your rates based on your behavior. If you have unhealthy or stupid behavior, the prices you pay are higher. The same idea works in the credit and lending industry, if you are irresponsible your prices are higher.

The reason our current tax system does not work, is because it punishes the people who deserve it least.
One example of this is the income tax. It does not matter how good of a citizen you are, it does not matter if you've got no criminal record, no violent history, no history of robbing banks or people, no history of damaging society, you still get punished by the income tax, and most of your tax dollars will be used to fund a war to punish other people elsewhere, a war that perhaps you don't even agree with.

What if we could make it so that the people who pollute, and commit crimes pay most of the taxes and thus fund the wars, and fund the repair of society that they destroy? This in my opinion would be a fair tax, a tax based on karma, based on human behavior.

If an individual is convicted of robbing a bank, or of robbing many workers in an Enron type event, they should always pay higher taxes than an individual who has never commited a crime in their life. If a corporation is a criminal corporation, that corporation should pay higher taxes than a corporation that follows the letter of the law.

If a corporation is a polluting corporation, it should pay a pollution tax, and this money can be used by states and the federal government to heal the damage that their corporation causes to society. This is fair.

If an individual is robbing people in the community, and they get caught, they should be charged with a tax or/and fee, so that a portion of their wealth always goes to fighting crime, and promoting awareness/prevention.

If an individual is convicted of rape, that individual should pay a tax for the rest of their life, to pay for the treatment of all victims of rape, to pay for programs to help all victims of rape, everywhere. The rapists should pay to repair the damage the rapists generate.

If an individual is convicted of murder, that individual should pay a tax for the rest of their life, to fund federal agencies and state agencies that investigate murders. So murderers should pay for the damages that murder causes to society. The murderers should also pay the taxes to fund the sorts of programs that give something back to the victims they create, and if they never get released from prison, a portion of the money they generate while working in prison should go to the victims of murder.

The main crimes which should be taxed, should be violent crimes, because violent criminals do more damage to society than any other kind of criminal.

We can start with child molestors, if we tax them we can use that money to pay to heal the victims of child molestation, and also use their labor to fund schools instead of using tax dollars to fund prison construction.

The problem with our current tax system is, the current tax system is designed to reward you if you commit crimes and get away with it. Yes the IRS will come after you eventually, but for the most part, criminals pay the least taxes, and cause the most damage to society. This means the typical middle class worker, or middle class family, has to pay high income taxes, higher property taxes, etc to pay for police, and to fight crime, and to build prisons and pay for wars they don't believe in or support!

It's not about rich or poor, it's about right and wrong. The goal should be to create a tax system that by design puts the welfare of society as a whole first. The only way to do that is to tax individuals based on the actual damage they cause to society, which can be based on the amount of violent crimes they commit, and their criminal record.

If crime were taxed like this, crime would not pay, and the youth would have less incentive to want to be a criminal in the first place. The crime rates would go down as the incentives are removed, because human behavior is controlled by incentives/rewards.

Now, to the second part of the tax plan, the reward system. The way to reward good behavior, is through grants. The people who should pay the lowest taxes should be the people who has no criminal record, who have good social standings in the community, who pay child support, or stay married, etc. And not only should they pay the lowest taxes, but they should be able to make money as a reward for good behavior.

An individual who has no criminal record, should recieve a free income from the government even if they don't work, in the form of annual grants. If this person also is married for over 5 years, they should recieve an annual grant for that. If they has a history of community service, they should recieve a grant for that. If they want to go get an college education, it should be free, and then when they recieve a degree, they should recieve a huge grant to help them buy their first house.

If an individual stays married for over 10 years, their grants should double. If they stay married for 15 years it should triple, etc. We want to reward healthy marriages, we want to reward people who have no criminal record (because they respect the law), we want to reward people who get an education (because they have more to contribute to society), we want to reward people through grants, tax decreases, and even pay people to be model citizens.

If people knew being a good citizen pays, why would they ever have to be a criminal? If you can be a good citizen, respect the law, and know the government will take care of you and allow you to take care of your family, how many of you would accept the deal?

We should also reward people for community service, and for serving the country, such as veterans. These people should recieve GI bill like rewards, plus the extras if they keep a clean record.

If a person wants to install solar panels to reduce pollution, they should recieve a grant to buy and install that. And if you make houses for a living as an architect, you should recieve incentivies to design your houses to be efficient. These incentives have to be lower taxes, or tax benefits, or grants.

What we do not need to do anymore, is burden all our best and hardest working people with the oppressive income tax. The income tax is a lot like the draft, everyone has to pay the price, the war costs everyone because everyone has to pay the income taxes. This could mean that the troops who actually fight in the war could end up paying twice, once to serve, and then again for the national debt.

Who avoids paying for the war? The people who profit from the war don't pay for it. They profit from it. YOU pay for their profits. How fair is this?


The only way society will ever change for the better, is if we change the tax system to tax people individually based on how much they contribute to or damage society. If we keep with these flat oppressive income taxes, all it will do is promote criminality. Why shouldn't a person profit by selling guns? Money is money right? There is no incentive in the tax system to make people want to avoid commiting crime or avoid polluting.

Sometimes the best solutions are the hardest, and this is a hard but nearly guarenteed solution, because it's based on sound economic theory, psychology, and generations of history which have proven that the tax system is the key to changing human behavior.

If we think, we can have business as usual, and that everything will suddenly get better if we just raise taxes on everyone (liberal approach), or raise taxes on the rich (socialist approach), or lower taxes for everyone (typical libertarian approach), then you aren't understanding what libertarianism and government is really about. The reason government exists is to protect society from the people, to protect the institutions, the constitutions, the laws, which are supposed to be sacred.

Raising taxes on the rich does not protect the constitution, the society, or the laws, but sure it does allow a government to be socialistic and have more money to use, (and most likely use inefficiently). Raising taxes on everyone punishes everyone, raising taxes on the rich punishes the rich, instead of having a class based tax system, we should more on to a more advanced behavior based tax system.

Sure, a rich person with bad behavior should pay more in tax money than a poor person with bad behavior, because the tax system should tax a % of wealth of the criminal. But if a rich person has no criminal record whatsoever, or the only crimes they ever commited were using drugs or driving drunk, they should not have to worry about higher taxes.

The crimes that make taxes higher or lower should be decided by individual states, with an exception being for violent crimes, which should be decided federally.

The same applies to pollution, if you reward people for not polluting and you punish only the people who do the most pollution, such as the top 100 pollutors in the country, or the top 100 polluting corporations, then there will be enough tax revenue to pay for socialism, if thats what you want, and if you don't want that, then that money can be used to fund venture capitalism to start new corporations that don't pollute or that investigate polluting corporations.

So the polluting corporations can be used to fund climate change and pollution control, otherwise you just end up making the people who pollute the least pay the most. Which in my opinion is as stupid as rewarding the criminals with greater access to guns and punishing the citizens with gun control laws and higher property taxes.

Our taxing system makes absolutely no sense and thats why society makes absolutely no sense. People follow the money, they always have, and if you move the money you can change the behavior of the masses.

Anyone is welcome to discuss these ideas, or offer more improved versions, but the theory is that the masses are trained, and their behavior is modified by moving the money.

 

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What makes no sense is that over 68% of Americans in prison are minorities....highest % per capita being Native Americans and the racists now want to crush them even further with higher taxes.

22% of young blacks between 16 and 25 are not going to avoid prison sentences because of future income tax levels. They will make the lowest incomes and continue the cycle through the generation. Why don't you want Leroy's kids to get the advantages of white kids?....too black for you?

Every American know that blacks and hispanics make up most of the prison population. Racists like the poster enjoy their back door dig at these groups. It's bad enough the 12 year old ghetto kid gets crappy health care, the worst schools and least opportunity in life but now you want to punish him throughout his life so his own children are even further behind the 8 ball.

Blacks, Hispanics and Native americans already paid with their sweat and blood to build the USA and targeting these groups with 'extra taxes' isn't going to happen anymore than Timetraveller would like the water fountains remarked 'White' and 'Negro'.

 

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That proposal looks reasonable - but only on the surface. Do you suppose even for a single second that the threat of higher taxes is going to prevent someone from committing a crime? OR that an increase in the taxes on the money that he doesn't even have in the first place is going to amount to anything at all?

There's absolutely nothing at all workable or worth considering in such a plan.

 

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What makes no sense is that we have millions of prisoners. What makes no sense is that so many minorities are in poverty, and that so many in poverty see crime as the only way out of it. So you see, it's not that minorities commit more crime than anyone else, they just get caught more.

Race has nothing to do with it. I say we protect society at any cost. If young black kids decide to be criminals, knowing they'll go to jail and pay higher taxes if they get caught, maybe they should not do the crime if they can't do the time. Race should not be a factor at all in the tax system. Bad behavior must be punished regardless of the race. No one should be allowed to hide behind their race. Many black kids have no criminal records, get good grades in school, go on to college and work a job like everyone else. Haven't you watched the Cosby show?

Why not reward these kids who beat the odds? Why punish these kids who beat the odds by making these kids pay for the damages of crime? Why should the good kids suffer and pay the expenses generated by the bad?

I'm not concerned with racial issues. The reason blacks and hispanics make up most of the prison sentences is because of the war on drugs. Not because crime was taxed. By making the good people pay for the bad, all you do is make the good people begin to hate the bad people, you make good people hate criminals, you make rich people hate the poor.

Why should Bill Cosby and his kids be responsible for a black kid who goes to prison for murder? or rape? or for robbing a bank? Why make Bill Cosby pay for the crimes commited in his community when we can make the actual criminals pay?

Why don't we target the corruption in the policing system, and unjust laws, instead of blaiming it on race? The war on drugs was unjust policy, the policing of that policy was also unjust, but we should not put any race ABOVE the law. The white race or the black race, must both live within the limits of the law. If you say that just because there are more minorities being convicted of crime, that all laws are inherently racist, thats a lazy excuse for an arguement. A better arguement is that all humnans are inherently biased, and that minorities can't afford good lawyers thus they lose a lot of cases.

But do not attack the system itself. It's not the system that is the problem, it's the humans within the system that cannot follow the design or intent of the system itself.

Just because you are in poverty, it does not mean you should be immune to crime, if you commit a violent crime it does not matter what your race is, you are an equal threat to all races, and an equal threat to society. The threat of a white violent murderer or rapist is equal to society as that of a black violent murderer or rapist. If the white criminal does not get caught it's because SOCIETY is not funding the systems neccessary to catch the white criminal. That's a policy problem, not a race problem, and if you want to keep blaming race for all humanities problems, why don't we blame gender too?

How about we also claim that equal rights for women is wrong because then women would have to serve in the military? Make up your mind. Either you want equality or you don't. If you want equality, you have to create policy which is completely and 100% race neutral and behavior specific.

Basically, we need to move to the age of fighting behaviors and not races.
We have technoology today, to detect criminal activity based on behavior.
Behavioral surveillance allows for behavior modification. When someone clearly is displaying bad behavior, we should watch them more carefully, and when they do something violent, there must be a consequence, and anything less, allows people to get away with murder.

Is this what you want? So, if you are concerned, that being tough on crime and taxing criminals, will harm specific minority groups, are you also concerned that being soft on crime harms those same minority groups by making it so they cannot maintain a community? Where are the children supposed to play when it's so dangerous that children are afraid to go outside? How can parents raise their kids to be a doctor, a professor, a lawyer, or anyone great, when their children live in gang infested crime infested neighborhoods with a shortage of police, but an excess amount of prisons?

Don't you get it? The way things are going now, prisons are being built and the prison industry shapes the policy after the fact as a way to fill them. So you aren't going to change anything by being soft on crime, the guns will still get into the hands of criminals, and criminals will still have shootouts in playgrounds filled with kids in broad daylight. Criminals will still rape people and murder, and while liberals of your sort fight for gun control, it ends up disarming the citizens who are the least corrupt and arming the most corrupt citizens. Is that what you want?

If you are worried about racism, and you are white, why don't you do something about it? If you are worried about crime, why prevent others from doing something about it when you have no ideas to endorse on your own?

If criminals are not punished just because they are white, are you saying the correct answer is to stop punishing crime because white criminals get away with it? Maybe the correct answer is to punish certain behaviors automatically with a computer generated program, and mandetory punishments. Maybe the answer is to simply prosecute ALL violent offenses.

Because I don't see how doing nothing solves anything, if you do nothing, or if you go soft on crime, you'll make society even more corrupt, and instead of just having rich white criminals be above the law, eventually it wont just be rich white criminals, but eventually criminals will become the law itself, and society may just collapse. Think about it.

 

Er ... no.

One of the fundamental problems with this idea is characterized by a decision made years ago in Oregon to fund the state health plan with cigarette taxes: if everybody stopped smoking, the health plan would collapse.

Taxing crime means that there can come a point when too few criminals are left to support society. Taxing pollution means the government has an incentive to not encourage pollution reduction. In other words, the better things get, the worse they will get in the long run as the government runs out of money and can no longer pay for anything.

Which is well and fine for the closet Anarchists, but imagine going to the grocery store and not being able to buy and food because the eco-friendly trucks that bring the food couldn't get there for the decaying roads? What next? Interstate Disney (I-5), or the Boeing-Microsoft Interstate (I-90)? That will help create monopolies and strange bedfellows. Get your kicks on Route Apple-WalMart? Wildfire season: Can you imagine the National Guard out on the fire line in Coca Cola jerseys, while the firemen are emblazoned with Pepsi? Math classes by Accenture? (Aren't they the former Arthur Andersen, or am I smearing the wrong company in my quest for irony?) The University of Washington Smith & Wesson Medical Center?

I think the better solution is to implement a better tax structure and for the people to take a greater role in their own political decisions. We elect people, and then just whine and complain. But actually breaking down the insulative barriers between the people and their elected representatives is, at present, considered impolite, uncool, not stylish, whatever. I think it's just an excuse, that most would prefer to be lazy and apathetic. As such, we get what we pay for, so to speak.

 

Freedom is a privilege, based on good behavior. This means some people should be more free than others. The most responsible among us should be the most free. If we don't decide to do it this way, we could end up creating a complete prison society where we are all enslaved by the worst among us.

How could that happen? Every community, every neighborhood, every society, has it's criminal / destructive element. Law enforcements job is to manage that destructive element. If we decide to punish all of society as a response to the actions of some in society, then both the corrupt, and the honorable, get punished together, and thats unacceptable.

If you are corrupt or decide to be a criminal, there are risks involved. You know the risks before you decide to take the gamble. I'm not saying we need to increase the risk, I'm saying we need to decrease the rewards.

If someone decides to rob a bank because bankrobbing pays, and they know even if they go to prison they'll still keep the money, why not rob the bank? If you can rob a bank, serve years in prison, get released, and still have all the money that you hid away, why not?

Can you blame the guys at Enron for doing what they did when they found out they could profit in the hundreds of millions or even billions? What do you expect a corrupt person to do when they can get free money for being bad?

People follow the money, if you reward bad behavior with cash, people will do bad behavior to get the cash. I'm saying move the cash from rewarding bad behavior to rewarding good behavior. Tell me, why can't we reward people for being a good citizen? Why can't we pay people to be good? Why can't we have socialism for people who want to be good citizens, and have pure capitalism for people who want to make money off bad behavior?

Why should you, or anyone else pay for bad behavior? Because thats what the current system has you doing. You could be 50 years old, never commited a serious crime in your life, and be forced to pay for murderers and child molestors, you'll have to pay to feed them, to shelter them, and you'll also pay for their prisons to be built, and they'll just take and take from society and never give anything back.

Why the hell?! Why not make them pay for their crimes? Giving them free shelter, food, water, is not making them pay for their crimes. And allowing a private prison industry to build to exploit their labor is even worse because the prison industry is likely headed by corrupt individuals who are just in the business of robbing the corrupt. What about the victims? What about the destroyed communities? Who is going to help them?

 

I will say that you certainly have some lofty goals - however, the methodology you propose is completely unworakble.

For example, you talk about white-collar crime and corporate executives going to jail for it. But in the very same breath you propose taxing them upon release from jail on the money they hid away? Very silly! Hidden money cannot be taxed - and that's just ONE of the reasons it's hidden.

You also talk about private prison industry exploiting the labor of the incarcerated - aside from a few prisions that use inmates as telemarkerters exacly WHAT labor are you talking about? There IS none! In other countries, perhaps, but not in the U.S.

I have an even better solution to propose. Take a fair-sized piece of Florida (temperate weather), build 100' x 100' foot concrete cells twenty feet high. Place violent criminals, sex offenders and drug suppliers in them. Give them seeds and garden tools and force them to feed themselves. No TV, no exercise facilities and check on them once a week to see if they've developed health problems.

Beyond that, leave them there to rot! They can cause no furthur harm to society, will not reproduce and train their offspring in criminal ways, and will cost us very little to maintain them there. Regardless of race, color, creed or any other qualifier - they should be dropped in their cell and remain there until they die. Attrition is a wonderful thing! It would be a slow process but eventually their numbers would decrease.

 

That's exactly the point. When we reach Utopia we won't need taxes anymore.
When everyone is healthy, smart, and good, why do we need police, or a big government to manage the people?

The day when we have too few criminals is the point where we reach Utopia.
No more crime? A completely safe society? Why would we need a lot of police? Why would we need guns? Why would we need a big government and high taxes in a world where everyone is responsible and where everyone is safe? If theres less criminals, we won't need as many police, we won't need to continue with a police state project, because every citizen will have the mental fortitude and ability to police themselves.

The better things get, the less we should be paying. Why pay to fix something that is no longer broken? If the society is like the human body, and we pay for surgery and medicine, and finally that body is back to 100% again, shouldn't we slowly reduce the pain killers so as to avoid an addition to painkillers? It's just more efficient to have taxes based on needs than to have traditional taxes that exist for no purpose anymore, thats inefficient and creates bloated/big government.

When the roads become a problem, we can establish tolls, or use the money to build trains so people don't need roads anymore, or we can build or design self repairing/self healing roads which are more efficient than the current roads, OR we can let the private sector handle roads. There are a lot more options than you make it seem, it's not the 1930s, it's 2007, we have robots now, we have remote controlled robots that can make construction of roads an automated task. We can always build roads as we need them, or create taxes as we need them based on actual data. You drive a car? You pay a roads tax or private transportation that. You ride public transportation? You don't have to pay a tax. Let the people who want luxury pay for the maintnance of luxury.

You forget that non-profits can build toll-roads too. What stops a community from creating it's own non-profit to pay for development of it's roads, and creating it's own system? A neighborhood transportation authority could pay to build the roads, and the people of that community can then profit by tolling the roads out to visitors from other communities, allowing the community to profit from tourism as a group.Tell me whats wrong with that?

You act as if only big corporations can build roads or do anything. You act as if big corporations make up the majority of corporations when in reality, small corporations do. And no one said that NGO's could not be used to do what big government does today. Many big corporations could join forces to form an NGO/Non-Profit that can handle transportation. Big corporations like Google want to provide wifi to the masses, internet service providers created the internet super highway for the masses, we all pay a fee, to some corporation, but we aren't all paying the same corporation and nothing stops you from starting your own. As long as the mergers and monopolizing does not get out of control, it can work, and if monopoly does get out of control, then the UN, or state governments can get involved.

Society is not that simple. You are right about one thing, corporations do have the power, in specific, families have the power and families own corporations. So a last name could have more power than a dozen corporations. However, the only way to get anything done is to work with the good people currently in power. Not every corporation is corrupt, not every rich or powerful person is bad, and not everyone wants to make money off of pollution and crime. Why don't you work with the people who might be rich, but who care about the welfare of society?

You cannot do this when you punish the rich as a group. So raising taxes on the rich is counter productive. And the income tax is a way to raise taxes on the middle class and thats also counter productive. The way to get anything done is to combine the best solutions, from a non partisan apolitical, non racialized point of view. We see the problem, we organize around ideas, which become solutions to the problem, and then we select the best solutions.

Just because you are not a libertarian, it does not mean that all libertarian solutions are bad, as libertarian solutions tend to be reasonable and efficient.
And, libertarians should not automatically say that government is bad, government is neccessary in some situations. When the government can increase liberty and quality of life, as a libertarian, I'm pro government. When the government decreases liberty and quality of life, I'm anti government. Do you see?

Reducing crime and pollution increases quality of life and liberty for the majority of libertarians, socialists, communists, etc. In general, most humans want the maximum amount of liberty and quality of life. We don't want to sacrifice liberty for security, or liberty for social services. If you want to have social services, that's fine, but find a way to fund them that does not remove liberty. If you want to have the money to build a road, figure out which behavior destroys the road, and then use the money generated form taxing that behavior to pay for the road. The energy of destruction should be channeled into creative energy, it's like Yin and Yang, and until you balance the two, you wont be able to get anywhere.

The reason it's not currently balanced right now is because we allow the destructive forces to destroy anything they like, and then we blame the creative forces for it. Maybe if we could balance these two forces, we could have a system that is truly fair, where everyone gets out of life what they put into it it, and if someone destroys society, society should not pay, they should.

I'm not against socialism, I like socialism, but it's just not going to work like it did in the time of FDR because we aren't in that generation, and it did not really work all that well in the FDR generation either because it only lasted for less than 100 years. The only way you can have a permanent system in place that will adapt to human behavior, and be self healing, is to have a fair and balanced system that promotes good behavior, and punishes bad.

If you don't want to tax crime, then you should allow people who work for non profits to make money tax free, you should allow people who work for eco-corporations with no criminal record to not pay income taxes, you have to find some way to reward good behavior, because as things are today, people who do whats right get punished, society is like "screw you do-gooders", and instead seems focused on giving unlimited rewards to people who will do anything for money.

When are we going to start rewarding people for being responsible? When will we live in a society where people can be guarenteed a comfortable existance as long as they are a good person, and responsible? Until we do that, well, someone always has to be punished. So either we give unlimited rewards to model citizens, or we punish bad behavior. But we cannot give unlimited rewards to bad behavior, while punishing model citizens with high taxes and gun control.

I'm not an anarchist, I just want to see good behavior rewarded more than bad behavior. I don't want crime to pay better than honest work, otherwise why the hell should anyone be honest?

 

It's going to become much more difficult to hide money once people organize to find hidden money. Right now people are ignoring white collar crime, so white collar criminals are having a field day. Thats going to change after enough Enrons happen and enough people lose their life savings. Money can be hidden by criminals, and likely always will be hidden by criminals who are smart enough, but why make it easy?

Actually, private prisons are being built as we speak. You should research that a bit online. These prisons are built by private corporations, and they profit.

I'm fine with that idea. But like I said, the private prison industry won't go for it, and the public prison industry generally wont go for it either, so I'm not sure why we don't do that. Also I do think the prisoners who commit these crimes owe something to society, and to the victims. Maybe murderers should be forced to works for the victims families from within prison. Maybe a rapist should pay a portion of their paycheck to the victims families.

I think if you just farm them then you waste human resources, it's better to allow criminals to actually use their talents, they could do telemarketing but they could also do computer programming or study quantum physics, there is no limit to what kinda work they can do, and so we should not limit them in that way. We just don't want them to have the freedom to continue with bad behavior.

I disagree. I think it's wasteful of human resources to allow humans to sit and rot. These humans can generate income for the victims. They could lower taxes for entire communities with their labor, they could be used to pay for schools. They can work in prison, and pay half their money in taxes, and the other 25% to the immediate family of the victim/s, and keep the remaining 25% for themselves. This way, they can dedicate the rest of their lives doing good work from within the prison itself and not have a way to escape their debt to society, to their community, and to the victims.

 

But how are we going to get there? As with the cigarette taxes in Oregon, you're going to hit problems long before you achieve the idyll.

That's a bit like saying, "Once we reach Disneyland, we won't need to buy any more gas to get to Disneyland." That doesn't account for the cost of the trip itself, and doesn't even consider the need to drive home, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Would you suggest, if you achieve 100% health, that food and vitamin supplements are no longer needed to maintain that condition?

The tolls are still the equivalent of taxes inasmuch as they would be an institutional revenue-collection system. And the people who don't drive would still be paying for the tolls. Increased costs in, say, food distribution, are passed on to consumers.

As to self-repairing and self-healing roads, look, I'm all for nanotech and so forth, but the last thing I want is for my entire human world to be constructed with, and therefore infested with nanites. I know, it's just me. Especially since we all know from our experience with Microsoft that humans never screw up the code that tells computers how to work.

If people were to tax themselves only on what they wanted in society, the only big winners would be the companies that step up to fill in the gap. It's kind of like the 1997 election when King County, Washington voters decided to cease all funding for the county's emergency medical services. Once they recognized the impact of what they'd done, they begged the government for a special election to reinstate the funding.

As for communities and "tourism", it only reinforces silly notions of property, which lead to local rivalries. Such a condition would actually disrupt the march toward Utopia. Should you send collections after a child from the next neighborhood over who rides his bike to see a friend, or should you send thugs after his parents?

In the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, an independent grocery store called Marketime has weathered the intrusion of newer, upscale stores run by both large and small corporations. Why? Because that's the nature of Fremont. There's a bloody statue of Lenin in the public square. The people simply don't want chain stores on their streets. The city's only solution to the Fremont problem has been to flood it with corporate interests to the point that they're in danger of losing everything about the neighborhood that made it attractive.

Oh, dear heaven: the UN vs. an American 501(c)(3)?

Part of the problem you're facing is the same reason the People's Revolution (e.g. communism) hasn't succeeded: We cannot, at this point, pretend that everyone is on board. People are already upset enough that public health care money includes things like birth control and abortion. People in Oregon have been caught up in a running drama about homosexuals in which the Christians are upset that the medical schools don't throw out science and defer to religion. People across the country are upset that they can't shoot someone for looking at them askew.

A place for everything, and everything in its place? Fine. Just sell it to the people. No system will work unless enough people are on the trolley, and Utopia requires that everyone be on board. Otherwise, you're going to end up with exclusion, crime, prisons, poverty ....

True, but the fact is that when companies argue that their implicit contract with consumers allows them to lie, the people aren't out en masse reminding them that they're wrong. Even when companies aim to deceive, people still give over.

What about the criminals? In order to tax them, you're going to need them out on the street. Thus, thieves need jobs, murderers need jobs, and sexual predators need jobs. This implies that they will be circulating in society. Fine, fine. I'm not going to personally object, but how many serial child molesters do you really want living on your street? Is it worth the trade? "Well, he's a danger to my children, but my tax bill is lower. It's a fair trade." Personally, I don't see it that way. Furthermore, the startup investment for such a program is immense. Much of our crime is related to lack of skills and opportunities. How much money are we willing to spend getting gang-bangers sent up for murder a college degree so that they can get a job that will provide enough money to keep them from returning to crime and also support this new tax structure?

Additionally, what you're proposing is a life sentence for any given crime. And I reject life sentences for mundane crimes. What if you blow a 0.082% on a breathalyzer? What if you blow a 0.04%, and the officer arrests you anyway, and the jury convicts you? (Currently, the laws allow your arrest for any BAC while driving. The "legal limit" of 0.08% is simply the line where you no longer get to argue that you weren't drunk.)

Given that the excessive burdens placed on ex-cons is a powerful factor in recidivism, I'm not sure assigning a general life sentence will do much good. Should I pay higher taxes for the rest of my life if I'm ever arrested and convicted for possessing marijuana? That would be laughable, except that it's cause for revolution--the bad kind, the kind where people get hurt and blood flows and government offices burn.

Ah, the crux of the matter. Civilized society is our obligation. We can certainly shrug it off and go back to primitivism, but I don't think that's good for anyone, and it's not good for the species. In this case, I think the greedy people who want to enjoy the benefits of civilized society without contributing to its upkeep are the evil ones.

Will scrach 'n' sniff stickers and merit badges suffice?

I suppose that's true:

Good behavior rewarded? What are we, at summer camp? Hell, you want everyone to be that nice kid that doesn't win anything, that doesn't do anything outstanding, can't run the fastest, can't score the most baskets, can't jump the highest ... but they're nice, so we give them "Citizenship" awards.

Life is. When people start demanding rewards for being mundane, we've gone off the deep end. We are not separate from the rest of nature. We are still subject to considerations of species. Sending that obligation to the gallows so that everyday folks can feel better about themselves, be "rewarded" for being exceptional, is absurdly dangerous.

Then there are a number of reasonable proposals: make the minimum wage livable, cap annual incomes with occasional adjustments according to COLI necessity. The American dream used to be to live well and securely. Now it's to gather as much wealth as possible at the direct detriment of everyone else. Fix this and you'll do more to reduce crime and detrimental deviation than by taxing the serial rapist or drug addict.

 

68% of the incarcerated American prison population is Black, Hispanic or native. A small % of those are rapists, murderers, etc. The overwhelming majority have juvenile records and escalated to drug crimes and theft. They were raised by mother's who didn't receive adequate pre-natal care... were educated in less than ideal schools...and are repeating the life patterns of their absentee fathers. Now the KKK and timetraveller wants to put a lifetime tax on their 18 yearold heads for the rest of their lives?

Wow! Great solution if you want to make sure the pattern continues for another generation. Scratch the surface and 'lock em up' and 'punish them bad guys' means 'get those niggers out of my neighborhood' and 'we don't serve anyone speaking spanish around here'.

There's never a solution to all crime. The best way to reduce it is to break the cycle. Crackhead mothers need the very best pre-natal care and post natal support. Their babies the best schools and best teachers. Billions for nutrition, wellness clinics and scholarships will produce trillions of increased productivity.

'Increase taxes for poor black men getting out of jail '...what idiocy.

 

You are working under a major misconception. Yes, private prisons already exist and more are being built, and they make a profit - BUT not from the labor of the prisoners (with the rare exception of the few telemarketers). They are paid by the governments to operate them - THAT'S where they make their profit. I suggest YOU should do more research, not me.

 

Tiassa

Taxing by behavior, is more individualized, which means it's more flexible while at the same time more efficient. The reason it did not work taxing cigarettes is because cigarettes are not a behavior, it's a product. However if you were to tax drug addiction, it would be taxing a behavior, and more similar to what I'm talking about. By the way, I don't agree with taxing drug addiction, but if cigarettes, soda, coffee and alcohol all were given a high sales tax I'm fine with that.

Why would you need to drive home? Once we evolve to the level where there is less crime, we won't need as many police, or as many prisons, or as many laws to regulate behavior. Once we develop teleportation, we won't need to drive. Why can't you think outside of the box and stop thinking within these limits? The only limits are your own imagination.

The depends on the sosphistication of the program. If we added vitamins to tap water, it would be highly efficient and cost next to nothing to maintain health. The reason we cannot do this currently is because theres too much corruption, and most people don't give a shit about the health of others. Thus we don't even have universal healthcare.

Instead of worrying about how to get to universal healthcare, we have to actually first create the sorta environment that rewards people who actually desire universal healthcare, because currently the system rewards people who don't give a shit about health, or even rewards people who want bad health.

I'm just saying, if you want to change the world, you need a paradigm shift, and neither the Democrats or Republicans offer any real imaginative solutions. They both think within the box, as if they both follow the same script and are just taking turns implementing the same agenda. The Democrats want to pay for the wars that Republicans launch. The Republicans get demonized at the War party, even though the Democrats always seem to pay for it.

When is this going to end? Well it's not, because if the Democrats and Republicans both want a big government, and both secretly support the war, well what can change? I'm not an anarchist, I'm saying use imaginative solutions to these problems. Promote imaginative solutions. And the best solutions from a rational perspective, are solutions which promote liberty.

You cannot improve your quality of life if you have no liberty. If you keep choosing solutions which rob you of liberty, your quality of life goes down with either party. If Republicans want to build a police state, and Democrats want to control what you think and watch on TV and radio, and establish gun control, it seems like both parties are on the same team.

I'm not saying you have to be pro gun, I'm saying be pro liberty, and so yes, security is important, but if you don't increase your liberty, and your ability to have freedom from government control, eventually you'll be a government pawn. So I guess both parties want to be controlled by their government. How about we call the parties, the Public Servant party, and the Private Servant party? Because both serve the same masters, and both seem to only diagree on who the masters should be.

I'm saying, sure, we need bosses, but I'd prefer that we have a more rational, efficient, and decentralized structure so that we have more bosses, so that some of us can be our own boss. Everyone should follow the laws, but the government should not control every aspect of our lives. How do you like it when the government wants to track your sexual orientation, your health, your religious and political beliefs, just because you want to go on vacation and ride in a plane? You can thank the outdated belief systems of Democrats and Republicans for this. This current situation is what you paid taxes for, so enjoy it.

You don't need nanites to build self repairing roads. I'm worried about nanites also, but I don't think we were talking about source code being involved.

So you are a socialist who wants services? Fine. But why pay for services we don't need anymore? Why not be efficient and pay for services on an as needed basis? I'm not saying we should not have services, I'm saying the services should kick in when there is a need for them. If there is a flood, like hurricane Katrina, then taxes should increase for a while to pay for the repair services, and after it's rebuilt, the taxes should go back down to ordinary levels, this is if we can't get the private sector and the NGO's to do it, but I'm guessing if it's a big enough disaster, yes the feds should be involved, but so should the private sector, and NGO's, everyone should be involved and the private sector should be allowed to repair the city tax free, the feds and state should not charge taxes on construction during a natural disaster.

We need local rivalries. If there is no local rivalry what are people supposed to organize around? How can you have a community if there is no rivals to compete with? People work for their families, they buy property for their families, and families make up a community. These families all know each other, so they work together, they profit together, and of course there will be rivalries between families because thats what fuels capitalism. So rivalries are good unless you expect us to become a completely communist state, there is no better way for society to be organized than to have rivalries between families.

I doubt we will ever have a Utopia, and if we ever did it would not be under capitalism, but if we are going to be capitalist, then we need competition between families.

Why is it a problem to have a Fremont neighborhood? That's the essence of what a community is. A community is a group of families who live together, work together, and profit together. You have economic communities, you have communities of property owners, etc. But you aren't going to have a world anytime soon where communities don't compete with each other, it's not going to happen in our lifetime.

This is why society must be made up of small, self sufficient, competiting communities. This is why each community will compete with another. Different religious beliefs will divide people up, and people will want to live amongst people who think like them. That's how it's supposed to be, why would you want to live amongst people who have different moral values?

No, actually it does not. You can have a utopia without unity, but you cannot have unity without a utopia. So basically, if we are all happy and competiting with each other, thats still utopia. It's not utopia if we are unhappy and competiting with each other. If we stay capitalist, but we allow for certain people to live as socialists, and then even allow for some to live as communists, then everyone can live how they want to live. We don't all have to live in the same community, or go to the same church, as long as we all play fair and by the same rules.

The rules are the laws that govern proper behavior. Not laws which tell you how to live and what to think. I don't care if you are a communist, it does not bother me, as long as you don't try to take freedom away from me. Freedom of religion, thats your right, if you want to be a communist and go to a different church, thats your right, and if you want to live in a communist style community, thats your right too.

Thats because people don't want to organize any other entity to compete with corporations. Corporations are nothing more than organizing tools to control behavior of people. If you don't like the direction corporations are going, then change your laws so you can organize and create tools to compete with the corporation. Remember a corporation is just a concept, a tool, so invent something else to compete with it. People follow the money, they'd work for something else if it paid money and did only good work.

Make a deal, that upon their release, they are to be chipped, and tracked for the rest of their life, added to a sex offender database, etc. Then let them work. The chip will track them and prevent them from ever molesting another child, or commiting another murder. Now, I know you don't want to be chipped right? Rather than have everyone get chipped, why not chip the actual threats to society? And if you don't want to put a chip inside the criminal body, due to civil liberties, you can put it on their body and arrest them if they ever take it off their body. And if thats too extreme, then a criminal ID card with a chip in it.

We will know where they are, what their names are, where they work, etc etc. They'll have no privacy, so what do you have to fear?

They don't need a college degree to be plumbers, to be chefs, to work retail, to be brokers, or work security at nightclubs, or just to be security officers in general.

I never said a life sentence for any given crime. I said for violent crime. Rape and murder in specific. I did not say drug dealers, thieves, or gangbangers. You can be in a gang, thats not the problem. However if you are in a gang and you start to rape or murder, then you are a threat to society.

Not all ex-cons are alike,. you know this, even ex-cons know this. I'm not talking about ex-cons who aren't violent being punished in this way. I'm talking about violent criminals who have killed or raped a human. We have to keep an eye on them, and they do the kinda damage that a prison sentence cannot pay back. They are lucky to be released at all, if they get released, they should spend the rest of their life doing good work of some sort. There should be jobs for them in community service, which we should create, and it would be good to have them installing solar panels, and cleaning up the community, working with the youth.

Exactly, so why don't we make it so crime does not pay, so only greedy people who are good citizens can be rewarded? Every human is greedy, greed is not the problem, it's more that some people are takers and never give anything back, and we have to make everyone give back what they take.

That's what capitalism was invented for. It's a tool for behavior modification. Society trains humans to learn and adopt good behavior, thats the whole reason society exists. If you disagree with the purpose of society, then you don't understand the point of the arguement. Yes, we are at summer camp, the citizens have to be trained to do whats right. And if you are saying the only way to win anything is to be an asshole or criminal, well now you are promoting crime, and saying "We need our criminals so we can win!", which I think is a stupid arguement because these criminals rob you of your security and are causing you to pay for a police state and for a sorta prison which will make everyone a prisoner. Is this what you want? Do you want to give up your freedom so criminals can be free to rape and murder at will? Because thats what ultimately will happen, in the end, you'll end up practically a slave because there will be no way to trust anyone to be responsible.

I'm a promoter of personal responsibility, not group responsibility. You are not responsible for the irresponsible actions of criminals in your community. Stop worrying about criminals. And no, you don't have to be a criminal to be successful either. And no, you don't have to be a "mean" kid to be good at something. Most people who are scientists, doctors, professors, lawyers, etc etc, were not mean kids, they were the kids who got bullied. Most of the artists, most of the people who actually created the atomic bomb, were nerds who would have been bullied to death by the criminals if there were no laws against it. And you are telling me that you are worried about the mean kid?

It's about behavior modification. A mean kid can be made nice, if rewarded for being nice instead of for being mean, and meanness does not make anyone successful, unless your career is a career where you have to intimidate your way to success, and bully everyone around you.

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When you say people should only be rewarded for being a criminal, but not for being a good person, you are assuming that it's EASIER to be a good person than to be a criminal, but it's easier being a bad person than it is to be a good person. So why the hell reward someone for being a bad person when the bad person is mundane and average and the good person is rare? It's hard to be a nice person, it's hard to be a model citizen, and it's hard to live a life and never have trouble with the law, never be arrested, and never be violent, and if you don't think it's hard, then you aren't a mundane individual.

The American dream always rewarded bad behavior. Thats why theres so much bad behavior and corruption throughout American history. Maybe if we did reward good behavior, there would be more good behavior, but people like you seem to think "oh if we rewarded good behavior, we'd be filled with mundane people, blah blah blah" Well, we are going to be filled with the same mundane people either way, but if we reward good behavior, we can modify the behavior of the mundane people so that their behavior is not self destructive.


You aren't going to make people less mundane by just doing nothing. You are not going to make people good by ignoring good behavior and rewarding bad behavior, and then act shocked when people behave badly. Maybe if you reward the nice kid instead of the bully, you'd actually have less bullies in society, and as a result, you'd have a little bit less crime, and maybe you would not need so many police. The police? The poilice are the anti-bullies, they exist to bully the bullies! When you do nothing, all you are doing for yourself is creating a police state, because when people are insecure and don't feel safe, they join the police department, they fight crime, they build an entire police state to fight terrorism, etc.

Is this what you want?

 

If they are murderers and rapists, yes. If they aren't murderers or rapists, no.

Did you even read my posts or do you just want to bring up race and ignore everything I said? And just tossing around phrases like KKK and race cannot make up for your lack of an arguement. Stop race baiting and come up with a serious arguement.

No, increase taxes for murderers and rapists, including poor black murderers and rapists. You said it yourself, most people in prison are not violent criminals, so this does not apply to non-violent offenders. Can't you read?

Inherently racist statement. Stop assuming most murderers and rapists are black and hispanic. Most rapists and murderers are white. Most prisoners are black and hispanic.When you look at what the expected profile is for a serial killer, or murderer, it's a middle aged white male.

And stop making it about race, what about women? Are you telling me, that these women could not find anyone else other than a criminal to have kids with? And what about marriage? are you telling me that it's societies fault that these women made bad choices? As far as I'm concerned, it's not the fault of the women or children, it's the fault of the man who was irresponsible in the first place. If you know you have kids, why the hell be involved in a murder or a rape? And if you are involved in a murder or a rape, your kids and wife become victims too! Drug offenses I'm soft on, but when you talk about murderers and rapists, they should be taxed and it does not matter what their race or class is. No one wants to live next to a child molestor, or a murderer, and race has absolutely nothing to do with it. Hispanics don't want to live near crime of this sort just like Blacks don't, and Whites don't, and the rich don't want to live near it, thats why they gate their community up, and the poor don't want to live near it either. No one feels safe around rapists and murders and if you do, fine, go live amongst that.

I never said we should target drug dealers and petty criminals, I never said we should target people who break ANY law, I specifically said violent criminals should be targetted, because violent criminals are the biggest threat to the community. And despite what you say, no one in any community wants to live next door to a rapist or murderer, would you want to live next to the murdering child rapist? Well? Do you? Would you want to live next to OJ Simpson if you were black? No one wants OJ Simpson to live next to them, not blacks, not whites, not anybody.

 

Thats even worse!

 

Why do you believe that?? They are doing a service that the general population WANTS - keeping criminals off the street and away from them. They should be paid for that service - and they are. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Now - where exactly are your forced labor prisons you keep talking about????

 

The criminal justice system as it is now, is a joke.
Sure they keep criminals off the streets, but what about the ex-cons that get released? We do absolutely nothing for them.

We should do a better job dealing with the criminals who are released. And no, I don't think we should build so many prisons because eventually they will create laws as an excuse to fill them up, and then fill the prisons with brown drug dealers and thieves instead of murderers and rapists.

 

If minorities choose to do more crimes than others maybe it makes them racists. Maybe taxing them for it would stop them from doing it. The original poster has a good idea that might work.

 

I'll ask you the same question I asked him. How do you expect to tax people MORE who have little or nothing?? People that resort to crimes - like the minorities you just mentioned - have nothing to tax anyway!

Very poorly thought out idea, overall.

 

Forget it. It's been shown time and time again that rehabilitation has VERY little effect on the criminal mind. A huge number of those in jail are repeat offenders. Why? Because they are are basically lazy to begin with and stealing, etc. is FAR easier than working!