Then surely you can twist some part of the constitution to find some relevance to land value taxes as I’ve proposed them. If you can, then credit where credit’s due, you have a point worth considering. If you can’t, then your concerns seem a lot less plausible.
Also, do you concede you were wrong about the U.S. not taking on $1T of debt? Because it seems like you’re really confident about things that you shouldn’t be confident about. Like, stuff that a simple google search would disconfirm. I suspect you have a real problem admitting error. In our other conversation, you totally just Smoke Bombed without so much as a “Oh, my bad”.
I explicitly asked for "legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution", because that's what's actually relevant here. Then you bring up legislation that was struck down based off the 14th amendment's equal protection and due process clauses.
Have you got any examples that actually meet the specified criteria (i.e. within the last 100 years, laws that are legislation, that were struck down by the supreme court without even a tenuous reference to the constitution)? If you don't have any examples, then you need to concede that point, and then reference any places in the constitution that could, even unfairly, be used to invalidate my specific proposal (land value tax).
The type of law my proposal falls under is legislation. So you should give an example in the last 100 years where the supreme court invalidated legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution. (Roe vs Wade not being an example, because it's not legislation.)
Or concede that the supreme court hasn't overturned legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution in the last 100 years, and then point to any constitutional reason the court could give for overturning the specific policy I've advocated for (land value tax with a delay and a debt).
Your argument is too powerful. And by that, I mean it classifies all policy arguments as dumb. “Oh you want to do X? Well the whole system is screwed up, so you’re naïve for even suggesting it.” Substitute any policy that could conceivably involve the courts for X. That’s your argument. If your arguments can’t delineate between good and bad ideas, your arguments have no value.
Why should I take your legal claims more seriously than something that can pass the bar exam, when you’re unable to? If you still don’t like that source, you could have googled my claim and found that you’re incorrect:
https://www.google.com/search?q=U.S.+judges+cannot+overturn+laws+unless+they+are+unconstitutional
It is not possible for the debt to be anywhere near 1T because the government is going to refuse to get into debts that high, not because the number is not mathematically possible.
You're really not doing yourself any favours by claiming that the U.S. would never take on $1T of debt. It's currently $33T, and they need to continually roll over expiring debt. (Not to mention the fact that the exact number, $1T, plays no role in my argument whatsoever other than "big number that the government would not want to pay".)
ChatGPT4, which passed the bar exam, says you're wrong and that U.S. judges cannot overturn laws unless they are unconstitutional. This was my understanding. Speak to a legal professor, and see who's right here. There's no point discussing further until you do that.
Right, but I'm not arguing against gay marriage. Again if you can explain how land value taxes are unconstitutional, I'm all for it. You're saying "people can misclassify". So? Tell me how I've misclassified it as constitutional, even potentially. If you're going to duck my actual question yet again, I'm not interested in discussing further.
Oh, by “prove your proposal” I thought you were referring to the policies I would advocate for. Did you mean prove the enforcement perpetuities would work? In that case, it’s just a payoff matrix, and I’d have to show not reneging on the policy is the best course of action, which I've done in previous comments, but I'll summarise it one last time.
And even then all it would take is a single digit number of judges and the top decision makers in the debt market to disagree in 50 years time and the effort will be negated.
I have been very clear, I am not ad...
If you do discover some method to prove this proposal with the rigor of a bonafide mathematical proof then that may be promising but otherwise…
Yeah, voting theory probably has the level of mathematical rigour that would satisfy you. I suggest diving into the topic on your own time. The pattern of explanation is essentially: “We want a policy in the domain of interest (e.g. voting) to satisfy criteria C because it would be ridiculous to argue against that criteria for reasons X, Y, Z. Here’s a logical proof that policy P satisfies criteria C.”
I’m highly ...
Since society can change a lot in 50 years, this issue could very well be, in 2073, the equivalent of trying to make gay marriage illegal today.
I am confident that you don’t know much about land value taxes. I don’t think you wouldn’t make this claim if you did. From a broad theoretical perspective, they’re sound, though I’m not 100% sold on some implementation details. But as I said in the earlier article, “the examples I’ve given are simply for clarity”. I probably should have restated that here.
To give you an actual example of a policy that I’m 100%...
It’s not possible for the debt to be anywhere near 1T.
I suggest you look up the formula for the value of a 50-year inflation-adjusted annuity, and the value of an inflation-adjusted perpetuity, and plug in some realistic values. You’re 100% wrong here, so I don't know why you're making this claim so strongly. (A caveat, which I've already stated, is that the discount rate at the 50-year mark is around the same as it was upon issuance.) It's $1T exactly because of the lottery argument I gave.
...You can’t have a debt which disappears only if gay marriage i
The pure mathematics of voting systems, being mathematics, exists likewise, but its application to the physical world, like all applied mathematics, is contingent on the real world conforming to its ontology and its axioms.
I never would have disputed this. But you’re being binary: basically “either we know it or we don’t”. It's not that you're wrong, it's that your categories aren't useful in practice. You're implicitly bucketing things you're 99.9% sure about with things that you're 20% sure about.
In contrast, my view is that you should assign some cre...
On the first point, if they renege on the policy, the debt is worth $1T if they don’t default (assuming the same discount rate as it was upon issuance). It’s like if you bought a $1M lottery ticket and you won but they didn’t pay out. By your argument, “The ticket was never worth much, so it doesn’t matter”. In reality, that logic doesn’t fly. You’d be very upset, and rightfully so. Again, you could ask other finance professionals their opinion; I don’t think I’m going to convince you.
But yeah, good second point, I retract the method of default not matter...
The only reason I gloss over it is its implausibility to me. I think that defaulting on $1T of debt, no matter how odd the conditions are, would significantly affect the credit-worthiness of a country. I think it’s rather obvious that it would. I’d say it’s akin to a government claiming “Oh don’t worry, we’re just defaulting on the debt issued in 2023, the rest of our debt is safe”. Nor does it matter how the debt is defaulted (e.g. by the courts), if you’re an investor.
If you disagree with that assessment, you can speak to other finance professionals. Specifically, I’d recommend people who do credit risk modelling. If you do have those discussions, let me know what they think.
Me: “For the CCP to declare themselves as ‘Communist’ means they are likely to disregard much granularity that good policy must have”
You: “The fact that North Korea someone publically declares themselves to be democratic in the name of their country. That tells you little about how it’s actually governed.”
Again, to highlight the problem, I said “Countries that call themselves communist tend to do this communist thing”, which is demonstrably true. Then you overgeneralised it to “Anything that calls itself an X acts like an X” and then gave an example of you...
There are cases where there's a consensus among lawmakers that it would be good to do something and there's current opposition that can be circumvented by writing the law into the future
This is exactly my point. It's actually the entire point of the article. Everything else was simply trying to describe this problem and give examples so that it's easier to understand. Whether anyone agrees with the examples does not matter. The article literally emphasises this point: “The examples I’ve given are simply for clarity.”
...Actually addressing your specific e
Well that's good, but regardless of how you feel, having no points on a post makes almost no one see it. At least for the current recommendation system we have. And as I said, LessWrong should be a place where the best ideas can be considered, not hidden. I don't think it currently lives up to that.
No, you're universalising my claim to something that I don't agree with. My claim is not that the short-term interests of those in power always prevent the institution of policies that are in the long-term interests of the country, or that this is always the main barrier.
My actual claim that it is sometimes it is the case. E.g. gerrymandering. E.g. Republicans arguing against the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And so on. And just because ballot initiatives can be started, doesn't mean they're going to pass into law. They can still have the misal...
The reason the U.S. has been able to pay a low interest rate on its debt is because of investors' trust that the U.S. will fulfil its promises (namely, pay its debts on time, and target inflation).
If the U.S. steals money in the eyes of its investors, then the U.S. will be forced to pay a higher interest rate on all of its future debts. Essentially, they would lose some of their customers. So some investors sell, and the only possible buyers are their remaining customers, who would then be overweight on U.S. debt. So the remaining customers would demand a ...
Spitballing is fine, but I feel like in most of those cases, the user should make it a New Question, not a New Post.
Would you downvote a new post that's thoughtful and interesting, but it's one that you strongly disagree with? If so, and if that user is new, basically no one else will see that post. Maybe you don't do this, but others do. I don't think this is a fair response, to essentially negate all of someone's work in writing a good essay. If downvotes didn't affect viewing priority, this would be much less of an issue.
I don't think people know how to downvote. Your idea is interesting and worth discussing, even if most readers strongly disagree with it. Downvoting means that “this is a waste of time”.
I think you've identified a real and serious problem, or at least gotten near it.
Imagine we have a million accounts posting regularly. Then it'll be near impossible for a new account to get their idea heard. If this forum is supposed to be a place where the best ideas can be considered, and we're honest about the fact that most ideas are either trite or wrong (my own includ...
I'm not from the U.S., but if I recall correctly, it's the Department of the Treasury who issues new government debt (which is probably why those bonds are called “treasuries”), and I'd keep that responsibility with them. I don't think who issues these securities affects much, as long as they have the same oversight mechanisms as that of the issuance of typical government bonds.
Sure, you can't manipulate the world at will, but you can certainly predict some subset of future actions that will result from some subset of your own actions. People do this every day (e.g. “If I don't go to work, I'll be fired.”).
The plan I've laid out only doesn't work if the incentives fail for some reason.
Your suggested failure mode is that the government can simply not abide by a financial contract. But that is the government defaulting on its debt. I work in the finance industry. Government defaults are a very big deal with serious consequences for...
Probably not good, which is why I've invented these “enforcement perpetuities”. As far as I know, nobody has used these financial instruments before, so we have no data on them, and must use logic instead. Your question is like asking the inventor of car whether anybody has travelled 100 miles an hour before. It's not only a totally irrelevant question, it's exactly the problem that I'm solving.
So, do you have any logical explanation on why enforcement perpetuities wouldn't sufficiently incentivize future governments? Either the future government can enact...
Why is it that mathematicians are confident about their results? It's evident that they are highly confident. And it's evident that they're justified in being confident. Their results literally hold for the rest of time. They're not going to flip in 100 years. So why is this the case?
Basically, there are a few stages of belief. Sometimes a belief is stated on its own without anything else. Sometimes a justification is given for that belief. And sometimes it's explained why that justification is a reliable indicator of truth. Now, you may think you have inf...
Hmm, I didn't have the zero-carbon commitment in mind when I wrote this, but you're right, this post's idea is basically just a wider application of that. Although I do think my subsequent post is probably more novel (see here: Enforcing Far-Future Contracts for Governments).
As far as the tax changes go, I completely agree, forewarning is great, and totally underutilised. There's also a faster alternative, which is to nullify any immediate wealth transfers that result from the change. So for instance, if you're lowering the corporate tax, stock prices will...
I work at an investment fund. If we held these assets, I assure you we would be trying to get paid if the government reneged. It would be a default, and government defaults are a very big deal with serious consequences for the country. So your suggestion is not really an option. Either the future government can enact the policy and get their debt wiped for free, or they can continue to pay the debt.
It's a very strong enforcement mechanism, since the benefit to enacting the policy is so high.
I see your point about constitutionality, but I think something such as the electoral system falls within its remit, which was my recommendation. But yeah, I would have no problem with extending the uses of the constitution, although I know that others would.
I agree that the financial product is more promising, because of its generality. The interesting thing is that even if they issue the asset with the intention of breaking the promise, they lose basically nothing in net present terms (because those cashflows 50 years into the future are discounted by 1+...
I've just written a post on how exactly to enforce these contracts: Enforcing Far-Future Contracts for Governments.
Let me know what you think!
I think it's rather unfair to classify me as a confidently underinformed fanatic. I've worked in federal government, the country's largest bank, and am now an investment analyst at a large fund. High confidence usually indicates overconfidence, sure, but that correlation breaks down when someone really has thought deeply about a topic. Mathematicians, for instance, are nearly 100% confident of long-known peer-reviewed claims.
I've written quite extensively on optimal policy methodology. Have a read here, The Benevolent Ruler’s Handbook (Part 1): The Policy ...
Let me start by saying I think I really should have said 50 years instead of 100. That seems to a big sticking point for people.
I haven't made myself clear. What I'm saying is create a contract to enforce the institution of a law. The government is the signatory, not any particular person. Governments can and do hold by agreements that past governments made, even if they disagree with their predecessors.
Now, sometimes they break those promises, and that's why I'm talking about creating a binding contract. As in, if you break the contract, a penalty occurs....
I'm not a legal expert, but I'm sure we've solved the problem of how to create a binding contract.
What's weird about the laws I've suggested?
Depends on domain we're talking about. The post I linked in the last paragraph will probably answer your question in more detail than you'd ever want, but I'll answer it briefly here.
I'd very happily back the two examples that I gave. And that's because we can define reasonable optimality criteria for each of those areas (voting systems and tax policy) and show that our policy proposals satisfy those criteria under some reasonable assumptions.
The key point here is that, for the land value tax, the optimality criteria and the assumptions required are extrem...
Great post!
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of EAs see my takes here as a slippery slope to warm glow thinking and wanton spending that needs to be protected against.
It's a shame that we have to caveat things like this when we write. Some readers, perversely, see what they don't want to see and will attack you for it.
I'm not sure why you think I'm generalising from one example. Sure, I wrote only one example, but this article is not the sum of my knowledge. There are many, many examples of this.
I'll give you another one. Policymakers in the area of university funding saw that universities were underfunded by about 15%. Their solution? Increase student fees by 15%. At no point did they ask themselves, “Why does funding get out of sync every decade?” Or “How could we design a system of scratch so that this will never be an issue, and so that degrees are always priced app...
I appreciate it. If I do write a longer version, it won't be on here, because I have no tools to moderate the comment section.
How would the enforcement perpetuity be valued? I agree, it would not be worth $1T at the moment before default because the market would assign some probability that the legislators would follow through the land value tax. Now, the important question is, “Does that matter?” I say no, it doesn't, and my reasoning is as follows.
If you bought a $100M lottery ticket, what's it worth before the numbers come out? Basically zero. But what ... (read more)