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RobinHanson's avatar

My first priority is to figure out what changes seem best, and only secondly to try to sell them.

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Nicholas Weininger's avatar

Yeah, that's true. Thanks.

On reflection, I think the distributional effects of this proposal are still underrated in this discussion. You wave some of them away elsewhere by saying "well, on average everyone else will face the same threats as you" but there is considerable variation in how change-averse and how "rooted" in particular local arrangements people are. Taxing them this way is going to have a strong first-order redistributive effect from the more change-averse/rooted to the less change-averse/rooted. This is probably, in aggregate, a redistribution from an already-less-well-off majority to an already-better-off minority.

You might counterargue that:-- some second order redistributive effect will go the other way-- efficiency increases will swamp the redistributive effect and make everyone better off long term-- justice demands this redistribution because currently the change-averse/rooted majority is unfairly burdening the less change-averse/rooted minority by indulging their preference for stability without paying for it

But none of these are likely to prevail against the easy stories to tell, which are all going to be about people who already have a lot of advantages in the modern world being able to use those advantages to disrupt the lives of less-advantaged people in a way that looks very predatory. Again, this could be considerably mitigated by exempting primary residences.

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