us - public system

[Zenaan Harkness]

I am largely DC illiterate, so I shall only respond to 1 or 2 points.

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 03:53:09PM +0000, other.arkitech wrote:
> > Let's take example public health:
> >
> > Public implies a system applied to everybody.
> >
> > Libertarians/ voluntarists/ anarchists, usually say nothing should be
> > compulsory, all should be voluntary.
> >
> > So public health means "many people contributing to a money pool, so
> > those people who get sick and do not have money, can get medical
> > care".
> >
> > OK, so compulsory taxation is a mechanism.
> >
> > Voluntary donations is another mechanism.
> >
> > When we have a "universal" system - e.g. every txn is taxed, and tax
> > goes into a pool, then we must think about how to allocate the money
> > from that pool - public medical care, national defence, etc, and who
> > gets to make those decisions - and these sound like really
> > fundamental questions which we should probably think about, before
> > jumping into a particular technical proposal.
> 
> The top level main loop can be: (executed every consensus cycle (1 minute))
> 1.- all accounts are seen by the consensus public algorithm, who is in charge of modifying balances upon cryptographical evidence (transactions).
> 2.- Fees are accumulating as tx are being settled.

Even step 2 is beyond my ability to comprehend - sorry, I really am a
DC newbie. I don't understand "fees are accumulating".

My limited understanding of BTC is that nodes are computers, which do
the BTC tx calculations, and they get a fee for doing these
calculations. My understanding might be wrong.

So if I run a node, and help the network of nodes do txns, then I get
some fees or "commissions", which motivates me to keep running my
node (paying electricity and ISP fees).

Now, these "commissions" or fees, I assume, are accumulating into my
wallet - that is, I get the benefit of my txn commissions.


Now I can make a guess, in your system, there is txn fee, and part of
that is commission going into my wallet, and another part of that is
"tax fee" going into "global tax" wallet.


I am trying to understand the basic mechanisms here, and even that is
probably a bit of a "rabbit hole" - I think the basic philosophical
questions are probably more productive to discuss, before talking
about technical how to.


> 3.- Accumulated Fees are used to pay public services. They are fed into a structure of public budgets which are defined via [to be discussed further (dont want to mess the simplicity of this loop)]

Simple loops can be good sometimes, but too much simplicity can mask
or hide the real problems. When I see what looks like too much
simplicity to me, I sometimes think to myself "oh, he is just hand
waving away all the real problems".


> If not enough money is available to pay public services then
> the money is taken from the accounts (taxing).

Woah! This is another step which is written as though it is really
simple, easy, taken for granted, and "nobody needs to worry, it will
just work".

"If" means a condition. So "if" more money is needed, "then" more
money is collected.

This is a decision tree (re taxation), and sounds just like gov.

When we make simple statements, we make lots of assumptions.

Here's another assumption in the same statement - the word "need" (in
my statement, "if more money is needed") - so "need" is another
decision tree, another flow chart, involving more or same or other
people.

Here's another assumption - "public services" - what services
"should" be public, which should be private?

Who gets to decide?

Here's another one - if ... then money is "taken from accounts" - so
is money taken as part of TXNs, or is money taken outside of normal
txn (e.g. buy some petrol or milk) and a new "tax" TXN is created
against -all- accounts, to increase the public budget, because more
public money is needed for the public services?

This sounds too complicated for me, and I am way outside my depth
because I don't really know about BTC.

I still think the basic questions about "public services" should be
discussed more first...

> > (Of course, a technical system might be interesting and worthy of
> > discussion by itself - but you have presented a high minded (good
> > thing) 'big solution for A, B and C' type of conversation, so you
> > lead us automatically into these fundamental questions, the
> > philosophical questions.)

Good luck,