~~Open Questions for Xerographica~~

[Pragmatarian]

Feel free to ask your questions to Xerographica here too. I know that I for one have a dozen of them.

1) I just wanted to say that you've changed my life...in a good way. I'm so much more tolerant of other peoples' perspectives, these days. How can I change other people's perspectives to help make them more tolerant, without being intolerant to their intolerance?

2) I wish you would put all of your blog stuff into a book one day...if you do, could I have you sign it for me? Really, I respect you as the greatest philosophical innovator of the age. Will you ever consider writing a book?

3) So how many other pragmatarians are there on the web? Just us two?

4) I'll make sure to get your blog out there as much as possible...after all, it would suck for you to be a one man army. And two is better than one. But where do you suggest I plug your blog? All over a bunch of forums in a bunch of random threads?

5) Should I make a blog too??

6) What would you say is the best way to advocate pragmatarianism? I'm very excited about all this. So so excited!!!!!!

7) What is the best way to live a pragmatic lifestyle?

8) Who is your favorite philosopher? Mine is you.

9) Why isn't there a pragmatarian wikipedia page!?!?

10) What do I do if I get on everyone's ignore list like you did?

11) Xerographica, if you could save me or an AnCap from a fire, who would you choose? What would be the opportunity cost?

12) Did you notice that my avatar is a xerographica flower?

 

[Xerographica]

1) I just wanted to say that you've changed my life...in a good way. I'm so much more tolerant of other peoples' perspectives, these days. How can I change other people's perspectives to help make them more tolerant, without being intolerant to their intolerance?

I'd say focus on helping people understand the economic benefits of tolerance.

2) I wish you would put all of your blog stuff into a book one day...if you do, could I have you sign it for me? Really, I respect you as the greatest philosophical innovator of the age. Will you ever consider writing a book?

Why write a book when you can write a blog?

3) So how many other pragmatarians are there on the web? Just us two?

Well...maybe not. Look what Curt Doolittle wrote in the comments of this blog...
http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/notes-on-a-general-theory-of-the-social-cycle/

4) I'll make sure to get your blog out there as much as possible...after all, it would suck for you to be a one man army. And two is better than one. But where do you suggest I plug your blog? All over a bunch of forums in a bunch of random threads?

Well...it would probably help if the threads weren't so random.

5) Should I make a blog too??

Of course...everybody should start a blog.

6) What would you say is the best way to advocate pragmatarianism? I'm very excited about all this. So so excited!!!!!!

You have to thoroughly understand people's objections to pragmatarianism...Unglamorous but Important Things

7) What is the best way to live a pragmatic lifestyle?

Always try and keep in mind just how limited your perspective truly is

8) Who is your favorite philosopher? Mine is you.

If I was truly your favorite philosopher then you would have known that Deng Xiaoping is my hero

9) Why isn't there a pragmatarian wikipedia page!?!?

Labels are just variables... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_choice

10) What do I do if I get on everyone's ignore list like you did?

Try and give them the benefit of the doubt

11) Xerographica, if you could save me or an AnCap from a fire, who would you choose? What would be the opportunity cost?

All things being equal I'd save you.

12) Did you notice that my avatar is a xerographica flower?

Yeah, I noticed...it's nice. A minor detail though is that it's actually a picture of the plant...not the flower.

 

[Pragmatarian]

If I was truly your favorite philosopher then you would have known that Deng Xiaoping is my hero.

Ah, very interesting! While you are my favorite philosopher, I have only been convinced of pragmatarianism for a month, so I may not have read your older stuff. I'll have to check it out.

 

[Pragmatarian]

Oh, btw, I saw on your blog that you thought I was this "noneedtoaggress" guy? Not the case. While his meme and my appearance did coincide, correlation by no means implies causation. I actually really am a pragmatarian, not sure how I can convince you of this.

 

[Xerographica]

Oh, btw, I saw on your blog that you thought I was this "noneedtoaggress" guy? Not the case. While his meme and my appearance did coincide, correlation by no means implies causation. I actually really am a pragmatarian, not sure how I can convince you of this.

The proof is in the pudding. Go out there and help people understand how the invisible hand works. Then start a blog that contains links to all the web pages where you've made an honest to goodness effort to explain basic economic concepts to people.

 

[Pragmatarian]

Can't I just spread your stuff (and help people understand on, say, these forums)? I'm more of a follower than a leader, and don't want to take as much effort. Just IMO. I'm not as smart as you are. You, after all, have devised an entirely new - and I think the only consistent - ideology.

 

[fisharmor]

(Interested in seeing who gets it.)

 

[TheTexan]

(Interested in seeing who gets it.)

That's quite the puzzle. Is he wearing a kilt? NTTAWTT

 

[kuckfeynes]

(Interested in seeing who gets it.)

Except you need more than one person for that...

 

[Czolgosz]

Just wow.

 

[Xerographica]

Can't I just spread your stuff (and help people understand on, say, these forums)? I'm more of a follower than a leader, and don't want to take as much effort. Just IMO. I'm not as smart as you are. You, after all, have devised an entirely new - and I think the only consistent - ideology.

Pragmatarianism is all about hedging your bets...so why put all your eggs in one basket?

 

[Anarcho-Capitalist]

Pragmatarians have already been disproved.

Not sure how we can have TWO people advocating a disproved ideology now. Crazy.

 

[Wesker1982]

(Interested in seeing who gets it.)

punk band, the C***** **r*s. I had this tshirt way back lol.

Pragmatarians have already been disproved.

Not sure how we can have TWO people advocating a disproved ideology now. Crazy.

Still one as far as I can tell.

 

[Xerographica]

Pragmatarians have already been disproved.

Not sure how we can have TWO people advocating a disproved ideology now. Crazy.

You can't disprove something that you don't even understand. Here's what you wrote in this thread...Taxes Are Not the Problem...

Geeze dude, this is the whole point. (Thank god, you may be getting it). And the larger point is that at higher tax rates, it (pragmatarianism) would suck just as much as socialism. - Bourgeois (aka Anarcho-Capitalist)

Here was my response...

Errr...I've always understood that taxes on their own represent an inefficient allocation of resources...Is There a Platypus Controlling You?

What you don't seem to grasp is that pragmatarianism at a higher tax rate would certainly not suck just as much as socialism. Socialism sucked because you had a committee determining the distribution of an entire nation's resources. Everybody makes mistakes which is why you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. In a pragmatarian system though...you would have millions and millions taxpayers directly allocating their own taxes. They would determine the distribution of public funds.

What you also still seem to be missing is an explanation of how we ended up at a higher tax rate. Like I said, congress would determine the tax rate...and taxpayers would be in charge of funding congress. Not only would taxpayers be in charge of funding congress but they would also be in charge of funding the IRS.

How could the tax rate gradually rise...but millions and millions of self-interested taxpayers wouldn't do anything about it? Why wouldn't millions and millions of taxpayers notice the suck? The only reason they wouldn't do anything about it would be because there wouldn't be any suck to act purposefully against.

Regarding your water park example. Is the private sector or the public sector better at supplying water parks? If you say that the private sector is better at supplying water parks then how did the water park end up in the public sector? Why would enough people vote for the water park to be a public good? Of course they would have to realize that as the public sector expanded...then congress would have greater justification for raising the tax rate.

Let's say it ends up in the public sector and I value water parks. When I go to the water park website I see their fundraising progress bar is maxed out. Clearly I wouldn't derive any utility from spending any of my hard-earned taxes on a fully funded government organization. So I'd move on to my next priority...if it wasn't fully funded then I'd spend my taxes there. If it was fully funded then I'd move on to my next priority. What happens if all my valued public organizations are fully funded?

Well...either the tax rate is too high or I should have more government organizations to spend my taxes on. So either I rally for something I value to be added to the list...perhaps a botanical garden...or I rally congress to lower the tax rate.

If you're going to use a high tax rate example in your critique of pragmatarianism...then you have to explain exactly how we arrived at that tax rate. Congress would only raise taxes if enough people noticed that the government organizations that they valued hadn't met their fundraising goals for the year. But if you hate water parks...then even if the tax rate was 100%...you still wouldn't give any of your taxes to water parks.

Therefore...at high tax rates pragmatarianism would NOT suck just as much as socialism. That you think it would suck just as much as socialism clearly reveals that you have no idea what you're talking about. Therefore, you did not disprove pragmatarianism...you merely proved your own ignorance...and demonstrated that you are perfectly capable of disproving strawman arguments that solely exist because you created them.

Feel free to try again...unless you understand that it is not possible to disprove pragmatarianism. Sure, there's no doubt that taxes represent an inefficient allocation of resources. So how exactly would allowing the invisible hand to determine the distribution of public funds result in an even more inefficient allocation of resources? How would the invisible hand expand...rather than shrink...the public sector? How would the invisible hand increase...rather than decrease...the tax rate? In other words...how would the invisible hand inefficiently allocate resources?

 

[ProIndividual]

@ 2+2 forums we call this kind of thread "a level".

 

[Conza88]