Fun fact: The government doesn’t actually need to use taxes to pay for things. The amount of currency in the market isn’t fixed, and so the government actually is fully capable of “printing more money” however, this has the potential to cause rapid inflation. So, taxes are a way of reducing inflation, rather than paying for government services.
That’s assuming printing money is the default solution. Taxes have existed for longer than that. The earliest taxes were literally a portion of a farmers harvest. You can’t just print more food, or gold, or whatever else. Printing money to fund government was never really an option, so positioning taxes as a solution to inflation just doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that instead of eating at a restaurant, you could eat roadkill, which you aren’t going to do because of disease, and therefore restaurants are a way of reducing disease rather than providing food.
That’s assuming printing money is the default solution.
I’m not operating with a model of solutions being “default” or not, so no it absolutely does not. What I’m doing is intentionally ignoring the historical context of how these systems developed to observe how they work in the present moment. Doing so allows me to understand the flaws of the model where money is viewed as a resource, rather than a pure social construct that exists in the minds of those who use it. Resources are limited by physical reality, whereas money flows like a clockwork river who’s source is infinite and who’s sink has infinite capacity. Changing the ammount of money available too much, too quickly, or in particular ways has negative consequences but it is possible. Resources don’t do that.
Resteraunts are a way of reducing disease instead of providing food
I’d say they have more to do with entertainment, but they do all of those, yes. It’s just a matter of perspective.
There is a Planet Money (podcast) episode about this. It’s a fairly new economic theory, but actual PhD level economists have said this. Government prints money, and to bring down inflation they need to get taxes to reduce the amount of money in circulation, to control inflation. The epidsode was in the 2019 timeframe, I think.
Something that absolutely works in the abstract, but kinda hard to fit into my current model of reality.
You have to look at it from the perspective of mathematics, like systems control theory and balance / equilibriums. Money flow is comparable to energy flow. Mathematical equivalence principles allows for multiple descriptions of the same phenomenon because externally visible every system behavior can be implemented in many different ways.
So even if that’s not how the underlying implementation looks like, you can switch the system to work like that without changing anything about how you interact with it. And that allows you to analyze the system in different ways that might not work in the current system
I’m a mathematician, so yes; I can confirm. 😂 I was trying to avoid that comparison, but I did use the same techniques I use to compare algebras when my sister and I stumbled on this way of thinking about the economy. I’ve never heard of systems control theory, though.
Fun fact: The government doesn’t actually need to use taxes to pay for things. The amount of currency in the market isn’t fixed, and so the government actually is fully capable of “printing more money” however, this has the potential to cause rapid inflation. So, taxes are a way of reducing inflation, rather than paying for government services.
That’s assuming printing money is the default solution. Taxes have existed for longer than that. The earliest taxes were literally a portion of a farmers harvest. You can’t just print more food, or gold, or whatever else. Printing money to fund government was never really an option, so positioning taxes as a solution to inflation just doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that instead of eating at a restaurant, you could eat roadkill, which you aren’t going to do because of disease, and therefore restaurants are a way of reducing disease rather than providing food.
I’m not operating with a model of solutions being “default” or not, so no it absolutely does not. What I’m doing is intentionally ignoring the historical context of how these systems developed to observe how they work in the present moment. Doing so allows me to understand the flaws of the model where money is viewed as a resource, rather than a pure social construct that exists in the minds of those who use it. Resources are limited by physical reality, whereas money flows like a clockwork river who’s source is infinite and who’s sink has infinite capacity. Changing the ammount of money available too much, too quickly, or in particular ways has negative consequences but it is possible. Resources don’t do that.
I’d say they have more to do with entertainment, but they do all of those, yes. It’s just a matter of perspective.
There is a Planet Money (podcast) episode about this. It’s a fairly new economic theory, but actual PhD level economists have said this. Government prints money, and to bring down inflation they need to get taxes to reduce the amount of money in circulation, to control inflation. The epidsode was in the 2019 timeframe, I think.
Something that absolutely works in the abstract, but kinda hard to fit into my current model of reality.
You have to look at it from the perspective of mathematics, like systems control theory and balance / equilibriums. Money flow is comparable to energy flow. Mathematical equivalence principles allows for multiple descriptions of the same phenomenon because externally visible every system behavior can be implemented in many different ways.
So even if that’s not how the underlying implementation looks like, you can switch the system to work like that without changing anything about how you interact with it. And that allows you to analyze the system in different ways that might not work in the current system
I’m a mathematician, so yes; I can confirm. 😂 I was trying to avoid that comparison, but I did use the same techniques I use to compare algebras when my sister and I stumbled on this way of thinking about the economy. I’ve never heard of systems control theory, though.