politics

my hottest take is that society can run on voluntary taxes if we align incentives properly and make the process transparent

incentivizing things @ poidh.xyz - come chill /poidh + follow @poidhbot

/ethereum foundation | opinions are my own but more than likely they come from Vitalik's blog paragraph.xyz/@chaskin

Ethereum is **kinda** experimenting with this via the protocol guild

needs to be 100% transparent who funds what and who accomplishes what so people care about building their reputations as funders or accomplishers

also need a solution that allows people to fund things without losing control of their money, they should have a say in whether or not the task was done to their standards

I've thought about this issue a lot and it's the problem I'm trying to tackle with poidh: https://paragraph.com/@poidh/poidh-v2

re: previous studies saying it doesn't work, the reason it doesn't work is the steps above can't be accomplished with fiat (crypto is uniquely capable of letting us or organize to get things done in a decentralized manner)

https://chainleft.art

Dad, data scientist, blockchain native artist.

Power consolidation=evil.

Anand Giridharadas has a book on this topic, with a bunch of consolidated data. Volunteer taxes, charity, philanthropy don't really work. It's cynical but also the reality.

What alignment are you referring to, that could hypothetically make it work?

Yes.  The waste is immense and comes in a couple buckets. 

Fraud/abuse/actual waste
And then
What I disagree with 

I can deal with the second and my blood boils at the first

Writer/ Crypto Idealist/ Privacy Ninja/ 
I like hard money and I dislike the state. 
Blog: paragraph.xyz/@thoughtcrimetraphouse

Voluntary???? What saddens me is that so many people truly think that if we don't force people to pay taxes society would immediately fall apart and the roads would vanish into thin air. They don't believe that anyone would voluntarily contribute money to help fund all sorts of things when they totally would. Probably not pointless wars and mass survelliance but the programs that are actually needed could find funding on a voluntary basis. Then the people who run these programs would be incentivized to actually deliver good results instead of sitting on their asses knowing they will collect a paycheck no matter what.

charities play a role for sure but those are private organizations you give your money to and trust they will do a good job (you lose control over how it's used)

and there are gaps that need to be filled and we do that by pooling our resources in the best way we know how (big centralized entity gathers the money under threat of violence then we vote some people in and pray they use the money properly)

imo there's room for a new method, enabled by programmable money, that will allow people to pool + deploy funds in a more fluid and efficient manner than clunky centralized governance systems

if we can do that, you'll see people happy to contribute as they can see the benefits of their contributions more clearly

This is what charities are 😁

Charities fund a lot of good things, but there are a lot of gaps that need to be filled in with tax dollars.

What we spend tax dollars on is, ultimately, entirely decided by voters. Seems to me that the entire role of a government is to figure out how to properly allocate tax dollars (and figure out who are the right people to tax).

pics or it didn't happen

gimme something you want to fund I'll spin it up on /poidh

I dont think this would work but I would be willing to test it out in a limited fashion somehow.

Which society? America? UK? It would never work.

I have opinions and I’m willing to share them.

1. wait did you mean the desires of those WITH money will take precedence?

2. issue of the day already wins out with funding in our current system, politicians don't rationally spend taxpayer funds, they do so in the way that is most likely to get them reelected (and their constituents don't rationally choose who they elect based on actions completed, they act emotionally)

I love the optimistic outlook, I wish I felt that way. Please explain how these outcomes will not happen, 1- the desires of those without money will take precedence over others, and 2- the “issue of the day” will win the funds (as happened in 2020 when a huge % of philanthropic giving went to BLM, not in addition to but at the expense of other needs (medical research, the poor, etc.). We now know the disappointing impact those funds had.

align incetives could be pay less now and avoid paying more later.
kind of like a pool where everyone registers a volunatry amount of his own networth and pays taxes on it. then there would be a fee to pay to take it out and a fee to put it in and this fee goes up over time. this would create an incentive to register your own networth sooner rather than later. any wallet that you transact to that is outside this pool the fee would have to be payed. which would be an aditional incentive for merchants the have their wallet registered within this pool because customers could transact without paying the fee

Transparent tax dashboards with real-time spending breakdowns would go so far. Imagine being able to track how your exact dollars were used