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RE: With great power comes great responsibility

in #sociology6 years ago

Oh...

Oh no.

I'm gonna have to be that guy... huh?

Ok... I'll try to keep this short, since I don't particularly like leaving excessively long comments. But even as an admitted Utopian fantasy, your description of society and the role of government is NOT a place I would want to live.

  • Pumping money into education has not been demonstrated as producing results. That makes sense, as paying a person more does not increase their ability to do their job. You seem to understand this concept when you propose a max salary, which makes me wonder why you don't realize it under a different context. Education is important, but I'm not of the opinion that simply giving them more money will make students perform at higher levels... and I have seen nothing that has yet changed my mind on this.
  • Video games are art, and the fact you don't consider them culturally important makes me wonder what other artistic outlets you would target with high taxes
  • You go in the exact opposite direction of religious organizations receiving special tax exemptions, and tax them heavily. Congratulations, you just drove every single religion underground, and tore a gaping hole in the societal fabric by disenfranchising massive portions of the population. (I guess you did explicitly say you were a dictator in this utopia of yours...) Oh, and banks too? Well... seems like keeping your money safe is going to get a LOT more expensive. More people will be keeping their money under their mattresses, that's for sure.
  • A max salary is an interesting idea... if you want people to stop creating new businesses or technology. Why take the risk and put in all that effort if, given you have above average IQ, you can make the max amount of money as a teacher? Just do that, let the less talented people create the cure for cancer, and make the exact same amount of money as you!

Suffice it to say, I think this utopia with the stated policies would likely turn out awful. It's not full on government dystopian awful, at least not right off the bat, but I certainly don't want to live under a government which not only persecutes the religious but also squelches any demand for any products or services it deems unnecessary.

Now, I'm perfectly aware that, as I am a more politically right wing individual, you would think I'm anti education. I'm not, I have a college degree that has allowed me to get a job in that all-virtuous technology field. But there is another side to this, one that I may need to present myself in a future post. I've been planning on writing up my ideal government structure for awhile now, and just like an anarchist bad mouthing me on Minds encouraged me to finish my full dissection of Anarchy, this may be just the push I need to finish it.

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  1. Education needs more money. If it got more money it would first be put to good use by educating the educators. The point is to create quality teachers who would not only know what they teach but how to teach it. Pays would be bigger but so would the responsibility. Not everyone could be a teacher but those that would need to be properly rewarded.
  2. Video games would not be banned but they would have taxes
  3. I see no reason why religion does not pay taxes, none what so over. I like what some countries already have, if you say you are a Catholic for example, a part of your salary goes to the church, if you say you are not, it does not. That is one solution but I would still tax them.

Congratulations, you just drove every single religion underground

I see no problem with that :D Faith is one thing, organized religion another. There is far too much money in religion and not enough in other more important parts of society. I am ok with people worshiping God but do they really need to worship with a golden altar? As for the banks, yeah. Taxes. If a cleaning lady, scientists, doctor, singer etc need to pay their taxes, why shouldn't the bank and the church? Is what church does more important than what doctor does so the doctor has to pay tax and church does not? I am very anti-religion person and without going into too much history and current data, religion should be taxed and taxed a lot.

4.Max salaries would prevent unrealistic salaries and even make some bigger. When someone makes 50 million a year, does he need all that money? Would he live just fine and have everything that he needs if he had 10 million?

The fact that you have a college degree does not make you pro-education, it simply means that you have an education. Thank you for "being that guy" hihi, I always appreciate it when someone can challenge my views and be open for discussion so even though I may not agree with you, your comment is very much appreciated and I would be very happy to talk to you again. I am also looking forward to reading that post of yours, I have a feeling that it will be very interesting. Maybe I will return the favor and be that guy for you. 💚

I'm not going to keep this going too long, but I'm surprised you still don't seem to see the disconnect in saying that teachers need to be payed more because it will help them perform at a higher level, but other disciplines need to be payed less and it somehow won't affect their performance. This is economic interventionism, and has been known to crash economies and cause mass starvation.

But I'll just leave some quick responses and be on my way...

  1. Yes, you would get talent in education... to the detriment of every other field. Also, because of the artificial demand, you would get better teachers by your stated criteria, not necessarily better overall education. I recommend this video to give you an idea what kind of scammers such a setup could attract.
  2. Came to agreement in another comment thread, so ignoring. :)
  3. Yes, I can see you are openly anti-religious... I guess for a dictatorship, that is pretty standard. But religious organizations are responsible for a large amount of social cohesion and community outreach(feeding the homeless, taking care of the sick, consoling the grieving). If you tax them heavily, many will simply disband and try to help their community without that organized effort, and will certainly not be able to do as much. I know, you will say that your dictatorship will certainly help the communities better, and I can't prove it won't since it's all hypothetical... but I just hope you eventually realize what you are actually doing here. You made the government the god of the people. Maybe that's your intention in this utopia of yours, but I dunno... I wouldn't really want to live under a government that demands so much from its citizenry.
  4. Ah, yes. This is called envy. You hear about someone making a lot of money, and you think they don't deserve it. If someone manages to provide a product that millions of people want, and is paid what he charges for it completely willingly, what did he do wrong? The customers aren't upset, they got what they paid for. The person selling them didn't lie, didn't scam them... heck, he gave them something that otherwise wouldn't of even existed. If corruption does occur, of course, go after that, but otherwise you are angry at a person simply because they are successful. The actual effects of targeting the rich in this way by taking large chunks of their salary is they flee to entirely separate countries where they aren't taxed into oblivion, taking their businesses with them and crashing the economy of the place they flee. This has been tried before, multiple times in all kinds of contexts, always with these same results.

Btw, I just posted that previously mentioned ideal governing structure earlier today. Feel free to offer critiques it if you wish.

https://steempeak.com/politics/@rhethypo/putrid-politics-my-ideal-government

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