I was finishing P.J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich and had two thoughts on fairness. I'll break this into two posts.
A normal contract is bilateral, in that the seller and buyer both agree to the deal, and both come out ahead. It doesn't matter who initiates the transaction. By contrast, a transaction for the sake of "fairness" is unilateral. If Alice has $500,000 and Bob has nothing, Alice can initiate giving Bob $250,000, in which case she derives $250,000 worth of satisfaction from the deal; or Bob can initiate taking $250,000 from Alice, in which case she gets no benefit. The situations are not moral equivalents. The first is a gift, the second is theft.
If the government is taking on Bob's behalf, it's still theft. Ultimately taxes come down to "you will give us money or we will put you in jail"; if they were voluntary, they wouldn't be taxes. And it's a safe bet that Bob isn't even going to get the full $250k out of it either.
If the government wants to have "fairness", it should to give an incentive for charitable gifts, rather than promote a mentality that theft is socially sanctioned.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
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2 comments:
I think all you can say about a normal contract is that it is bilateral and both parties agree to it. I don't believe you can add "both come out ahead". Both may *think* they'll come out ahead, but that is NOT the same thing.
Taxation has always been a method of revenue transfer backed by power. In the case of a democracy, that power is the erstwhile 'will of the people' as embodied by the decisions of their elected representatives. In the case of autocratic governments, it is the will of the autocracy without reference to the people's wishes. It remains debatable if, at the end of the day, either are particularly better than the other.
Any law that attempts to enforce fairness falls down on several fronts:
- Somewhere, a definition of fairness must be agreed upon (here we have tyranny of the majority quite problably)
- That definition of fairness must them be turned into a concrete implementation (usually a revenue redistribution framework or tax system)
- Someone must implement that framework (civil service)
- No framework is a zero drag entity; There is always an overhead to be paid for in these entities. (government's cut)
And this all assumes that everyone and everything is conciously above-board and trying to be moral, ethical and efficient. That supposition is also problematic.
On the other hand, I remain unconvinced that a system encouraging charitable donations will ever produce a fairer distribution of wealth.
Actually, even if you grant ALL the conditions you list for fairness, things still won't be fair. But that's another post.
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