// apologies for interfering in the discussion... On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
2013/11/29 Patrick Chkoreff wrote:
Forget retribution. The primary benefit of an investigation is the insight which enables you to prevent future crimes. That can be enormously valuable in terms of life and property.
Then why didn't you spend 10% of your wealth/income last year on investigating crime prevention? I appreciate that you feel this discussion is helping, and it's helping me get my thoughts clearer, but I truly think a community cannot be expected to behave in a way good for the community but bad for the individual.
(sidenote: what if a future "electronic monetary system" that relied on community taxation would have a voting option, such that 50% of taxes go towards a general system of operation, and the other 50%, say based on income, can be steered into categories of funding (e.g. crime prevention). such that localities or demographics could focus their tax contribution towards the issues of most relevance. in a realm of electronic currency, perhaps this could even be fractional, 0.001 percent of individual taxes going toward certain issues, say specific hereditary disease research based on given genetics, etc. and perhaps this micro-level adjustability of taxes could help both at the general level and allow steering of policy towards a more ground-up or public representational approach, via constituencies, by how they vote through their directed tax-feedback; with a robust fielded electronic monetary system, perhaps even a flat tax or sales tax model could do such fractional micro-taxation at the POS cash register, via a centralized system that sorts or divides a particular tax (for clothing, say, at a store) and takes some amount for a general fund and a remainder for such issues, as preferenced by each individual. info tech & currency versus paper-based bureaucracy as it seems today with formwork, outdated modeling for lightspeed data exchange and information transmission.)