Pages

Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Granularity of Congress in a Pragmatarian System

It's not in the top 5 different responses to pragmatarianism...but the topic of granularity has got to be in the top 10.  Granularity basically refers to how narrowly/specifically you would be able to directly allocate your taxes.  For example, in this thread...Debunking the Crowding Out Concept...Deuce posted the following...
So wait. Under your plan people are responsible for funding individual actions by government agencies now? Like, I can fund the purchase of 10,000 M-16's for a base in Ohio but not fund an invasion of Afghanistan?
When it comes to granularity in a pragmatarian system...anybody's guess is as good as mine.  Just recently though I thought about granularity in terms of congress.  So far nobody has brought it up.

In a pragmatarian system, if somebody didn't want to directly allocate their taxes, then they would still be able to just give their taxes to congress.  But would any taxpayers want to only give their taxes to specific congresspeople?  

It's kind of interesting to try and imagine how that would play out.  Would you be inclined to give any congressperson your taxes?  If so, which one?  Which congressperson would receive the most/least amount of taxes?  Does the thought of any single congressperson receiving too much tax money make you nervous?  If so, what would that amount be?  

Kind of along a similar vein...in terms of how the scope of government might expand...here was my response to Daniel Kuehn's comment which he posted here...Pragmatarianism Disproved?
In my post on awesomeness spotting...I talked about how a private individual...a physician by the name of Jeffrey Brenner...completely of his own accord studied ways to reduce healthcare costs. Clearly there are very significant positive externalities associated with the success of his efforts. In a tax choice system I'd vote for him to be considered a public good. If enough other people agreed then we'd be able to directly allocate some of our taxes to him. In that case then he would be able to give his taxes back to himself. 
That's the only type of situation in which somebody would be able to give their taxes back to themselves. Of course...if Jeffrey Brenner bought a fancy car and a mansion...then he better be significantly reducing healthcare costs if he wanted taxpayers to continue supporting his efforts. 
While you're at it...try and figure out what would happen to the political parties in a pragmatarian system.  

No comments:

Post a Comment