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Re: Bush and his politics

Posted By: Phil (static-64-65-138-250.mspcovdsl.eschelon.com)
Date: 6/11/2003 at 7:56 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Bush and his politics (Superfoborg)

"Socialism" and "capitalism" are the absolute extreme points of a continuum of economic freedom (in the sense that the government is not controlling money, not in the sense that you are financially independant). They do not exist in nature; such systems almost immediately self-destruct, they are so unstable. Every functional economy in the world is a mix of the two. "Capitalist" and "socialist" simply mean in the direction of those extremes; one can have a "partly socialist" economy and still have a "mostly capitalist economy at the same time.

Exactly.

My personal favorite economic theory is one which I call fractal semisocialism,

Good name. I like it. Sounds technical, and thus, as anyone in marketing will tell you, instantly credible.

Basically, take a fractal tier structure, which is the basis of all my socio-political-economic theories. People are the base units of small communities, which are the base units of cities, which are the base units of counties, and so on (in the complete constitution I'm writing, these units are dynamically determined every election based on population, and don't necessarily have a name per each level). In each tier level, take a base unit (person, city, etc)'s total income in profit and gifts recieved, subtract the total loss in operating expenses and gifts given, and call that value Net.

This system sounds interesting, so earlier today I decided to run some numbers and see how it works out. Unfortunately I didn't have enough confirmed figures to come to any solid conclusions and the numbers I often reached were odd. I will elaborate. In order to come up with a Net for any income group, I need to subtract "operating expenses" and donations from income and receivables. Both gifts and income are pretty self-explanatory. And operating expenses are fairly easy to calculate for a level of government as well. But what constitutes operating expenses for the basest base-unit, a person? Every expenditure made through the year?

Now take 1/2 of each unit's Net value, add them, subtract the operating expenses for that tier's government...divide that by the number of units in the tier, and subtract that average amount from 1/2 of each unit's Net. Now take the amount they have worked and/or schooled that tax period, divide the number of hours considered "full time" by that, and multiple the amount we got last alculation by that number. That is how much they owe the system; negative values (which many people will have) are what they are owed from the system.

This is where the math begins get a little hazy as far as I can calculate. At one point you say to divide the numbers of hours considered "full time" by the amount worked and/or schooled. What exactly do you mean by "amount worked and/or schooled?" I work one full time job, about 2000 hours per year. For me, 2000 hours seems like both the amount worked and the hours considered "full time." When divided this equals 1. Would you consider this solution to be correct for most people? I will proceed assuming that it is for now. Either way, the solution should be positive.

Let's assume a base-unit's (person's) Net is X and the tier government's (municipality's) operating expense is Y. Let's also assume that the tier consists of ten units. X can either be positive, negative, or zero based on whether the units income exceeds, is exceeded by, or equals its operating expenses. Y must be positive because it relates only to the tier's operating expense.

If the Unit's Net is positive:
Half of a Unit's Net = X/2
Sum of Tier's Unit's Nets = 10X/2 = 5X
Subtract Tier's OEs = 5X - Y
Divide by Units in Tier = (5X - Y)/10
Subtract from half of Unit's Net = (5X/10) - ((5X - Y)/10)

Our final equation looks like: 5X - (5X - Y) and this is fine. For any value of either X or Y the answer will be positive and the Unit will owe a part of his Net to the Tier. The problem arises when X is negative. The equation -5X - (-5X - Y), remembering that a positive from a negative will always be negative and a negative from a positive will always be positive, will yield a positive solution for any value of either X or Y. This means that someone whose net was already negative to begin with will always owe the tier government. Maybe I just missed something, I'm not sure. But I don't see any refunds.

-Phil.

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