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New Opinions on O'Reilly's P2P Taxation idea?
I randomly ran across a [link|http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/07/06/p2p_taxation.html?page=1|proposal] for peer to peer taxation. I have some preliminary opinions on it, but I would be interested in having people read it and say their bit first...

Cheers,
Ben
New One problem
I see that the unpopular and unsexy required services would go begging. Military for one. The current system while bad is composed of folks grovelling at the trough for tax dollars and the popular ones get funding, others go without. In west Palm planned parenthood is well funded. In Anchorage AK they are ignored. While not taking a position on that agency in any way just multiply that result by all the communities in the nation on any issue. People would starve in some states while others would be magnets for the welfare folk.
I would suggest that the charitable contribution deductions be raised to do some of what the article lists. I could donate to the boy scouts while others would decide gay and lesbian public health services would be more appropriate. Ad nausium. Either way the money would go into a cesspool anyway as the agencies we have now are nepotistic graft machines, the idea proposed would only lessen what little oversite we have via the GAO.
thanx,
bill
can I have my ones and zeros back?
New Other problems
One of the questions might be how often people get to allocate funds to different budget items. The example Bill mentioned is defense spending. Suppose I feel 30% of the budget should be spent on defense. If my vote allocates 30% to defense and then I find out a quarter of the voters allocated 0% to defense I might want to change my allocations.

For people that vote, but actually pay no taxes because of low to no income the prospect of voting 100% to social services maybe terribly attractive. Only a budget reallocation by others can compensate for these "votes". Again, re-cycling the budget allocation might be needed to correct perceived "imbalances". On the other hand, frequent votes on the budget makes it difficult to do any long term planning by the agencies that do the spending.

There are many "single issue" folks and aggregators to match. For example health care for seniors, free abortion clinics, public education, training and supplying well armed militias. On average these may work out, but you can't be sure.

For those that want to allocate directly to budget items keeping up with events will be crucial.

The idea is still half-baked.
Alex
New Lots of problems
I can see lots of problems with actually implementing such a system. But I can certainly see why the idea is atractive, the amount of waste and overhead in most social services if huge.

The fundamental, unavoidable problem I see is that the system he is outlining doesn't have a connection between those receiving service and those paying for it. Normal markets work because people are motivated to find the best possible use for their money because they are ones that have to live with the consequences.

In the type of system he is suggesting, many people would just mark off the most well known or the one at the top of the list. This would result in charity organizations with most of their money going to advertising. Not exactly the desired direction

Jay
     Opinions on O'Reilly's P2P Taxation idea? - (ben_tilly) - (3)
         One problem - (boxley)
         Other problems - (a6l6e6x)
         Lots of problems - (JayMehaffey)

I've never used said feature, but the top Google results include words like "issues", "errors", "problem", and "madness".
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