In 1997, I got my Ph.D. in social science from Caltech. The topic that drew me into grad school, and much of what I studied, was mechanism and institution design: how to redesign social practices and institutions. Economists and related scholars know a lot about this, much of which is useful for reforming many areas of life. Alas, the world shows little interest in these reforms, and I’ve offered our book
Not quite. The declared value will be reservation price discounted by the ability to pay the tax. For the wealthy the declared value will be close to the reservation price, but for the poor it can be far apart.
The proposal discriminates against those people who set higher reservation prices (relative to perceived open market value) because they are more averse to risk or to change in their circumstances.
It discourages commitment to community, and the putting down of roots in a particular place, since to the extent that doing so raises reservation prices, these behaviours will now be taxed.
The folk who will benefit from the discrimination are those higher in trait openness, and perhaps those lower in trait agreeableness since they have thinner social networks: in other words, and speculatively, the people who like reading Robin Hanson.
Am I reading that last proposal right? Because it sounds like they're proposing that people could make a living selling their data... that could be used to target ads to them... in the hope that they'll buy things... using the money you paid them for their data?
No. In fact, my anecdotal evidence in that this couldn't get wide and strong support. But I don't take that as a reason to think it's a bad idea, or at least not worth proposing. Also, there just is no immigration policy in the US will get wide and and strong support. I think that for social justice reasons, the US government will have a hard time arbitrating whom to admit and whom to bar. One way to avoid this is with a blind lottery. Another way is to have semiporous borders and inconsistent enforcement, thus making a passive filter. And another is to turn over the job of selection to profit-motivated scouts in the private sector. I think the third has something going for it.
True. Unprecedented insufficient to be radical. Unprecedented and significant. Forcing people to post a sale price on everything they own is not a small detail.
I've made a similar sponsorship proposal on immigration, though I think that mine had fewer moving parts. The basic idea - to give sponsors skin in the game on immigrant success - seems to be cropping up in many places.
In my version, sponsoring an immigrant would cost each sponsor some money per person per year. However, a certain percentage of the taxes paid by the immigrant would go not to the government but to the sponsor, enough to make it profitable to sponsor someone who is earning a middle-class wage once they acclimate to the US. It would also incentivise sponsors to help immigrants with language training and other support.
The sponsors would have to demonstrate that they have the resources to pay over the long term in case their invitees turn out to have been bad bets, and the maximum number of people they could sponsor would be based on this. If someone they sponsored commits a serious crime in the US, the sponsors would be held financially liable. The state could still control immigration levels, but on my proposal, it would use the various cost and payment parameters to set demand for sponsorship. It could also set prices in a way that makes the sponsorship of women, health care workers, intact families, crisis refugees or undocumented immigrants who are already in the US more attractive. But apart from these sorts of global controls, the government would not be making decisions about who can and cannot immigrate into the US. It would be left up to the sponsors whom to invite.
I think you are misreading efalken's comment. He never mentions property taxes. A market were everything is for sale is quite different from a market where sellers get to decide WHEN to sell (if at all). Plenty of people can afford a house, but not 1.5x the price to defend against others deciding to buy it.
By the way, what price would you put on your blog?
Property taxes are hardly radical, and even if they were the whole point of being an intellectual is to calmly evaluate proposals based on arguments, regardless of how unexpected they might be. If you can't afford your house, maybe you should live somewhere else.
The idea that private property is some quaint notion of the Gilded Age that can be modified in such a radical way removes the bedrock of liberalism: private property. Private property implies I get to decide when I sell, which includes deciding to never sell. I'd love to see a dynamic model where in equilibrium asset owners don't sell to raise prices, as this would simply lower returns in the future.
Lots of people like their house, but can't afford to pay taxes on 150% of the market price to prevent people from buying it and kicking them out.
Not quite. The declared value will be reservation price discounted by the ability to pay the tax. For the wealthy the declared value will be close to the reservation price, but for the poor it can be far apart.
The proposal discriminates against those people who set higher reservation prices (relative to perceived open market value) because they are more averse to risk or to change in their circumstances.
It discourages commitment to community, and the putting down of roots in a particular place, since to the extent that doing so raises reservation prices, these behaviours will now be taxed.
The folk who will benefit from the discrimination are those higher in trait openness, and perhaps those lower in trait agreeableness since they have thinner social networks: in other words, and speculatively, the people who like reading Robin Hanson.
Am I reading that last proposal right? Because it sounds like they're proposing that people could make a living selling their data... that could be used to target ads to them... in the hope that they'll buy things... using the money you paid them for their data?
"everything they own" is a much wider application than I endorsed in the post.
No. In fact, my anecdotal evidence in that this couldn't get wide and strong support. But I don't take that as a reason to think it's a bad idea, or at least not worth proposing. Also, there just is no immigration policy in the US will get wide and and strong support. I think that for social justice reasons, the US government will have a hard time arbitrating whom to admit and whom to bar. One way to avoid this is with a blind lottery. Another way is to have semiporous borders and inconsistent enforcement, thus making a passive filter. And another is to turn over the job of selection to profit-motivated scouts in the private sector. I think the third has something going for it.
True. Unprecedented insufficient to be radical. Unprecedented and significant. Forcing people to post a sale price on everything they own is not a small detail.
Most every proposed change is "unprecedented" if small enough details matter for that description.
Do you have any evidence that such a sponsorship proposal could attract wide and strong support?
President Trump has exposed the democrats as the morons they truly are.
Forcing others to post an option to buy is unprecedented, aka 'radical.'
I've made a similar sponsorship proposal on immigration, though I think that mine had fewer moving parts. The basic idea - to give sponsors skin in the game on immigrant success - seems to be cropping up in many places.
In my version, sponsoring an immigrant would cost each sponsor some money per person per year. However, a certain percentage of the taxes paid by the immigrant would go not to the government but to the sponsor, enough to make it profitable to sponsor someone who is earning a middle-class wage once they acclimate to the US. It would also incentivise sponsors to help immigrants with language training and other support.
The sponsors would have to demonstrate that they have the resources to pay over the long term in case their invitees turn out to have been bad bets, and the maximum number of people they could sponsor would be based on this. If someone they sponsored commits a serious crime in the US, the sponsors would be held financially liable. The state could still control immigration levels, but on my proposal, it would use the various cost and payment parameters to set demand for sponsorship. It could also set prices in a way that makes the sponsorship of women, health care workers, intact families, crisis refugees or undocumented immigrants who are already in the US more attractive. But apart from these sorts of global controls, the government would not be making decisions about who can and cannot immigrate into the US. It would be left up to the sponsors whom to invite.
You decide when to sell anything via setting your reservation price.
I think you are misreading efalken's comment. He never mentions property taxes. A market were everything is for sale is quite different from a market where sellers get to decide WHEN to sell (if at all). Plenty of people can afford a house, but not 1.5x the price to defend against others deciding to buy it.
By the way, what price would you put on your blog?
Property taxes are hardly radical, and even if they were the whole point of being an intellectual is to calmly evaluate proposals based on arguments, regardless of how unexpected they might be. If you can't afford your house, maybe you should live somewhere else.
The idea that private property is some quaint notion of the Gilded Age that can be modified in such a radical way removes the bedrock of liberalism: private property. Private property implies I get to decide when I sell, which includes deciding to never sell. I'd love to see a dynamic model where in equilibrium asset owners don't sell to raise prices, as this would simply lower returns in the future.
Lots of people like their house, but can't afford to pay taxes on 150% of the market price to prevent people from buying it and kicking them out.
Coincidentally, I blogged about this today...https://tinyurl.com/ycs7z9n2