The Gaming Den

Koumei specifically said she doesn't care about future generations because she won't be around to care about it. What baffles me is why she would then care about anyone at all besides the ones she actually, personally knows and who make her happy.

Chamomile wrote:Koumei specifically said she doesn't care about future generations because she won't be around to care about it. What baffles me is why she would then care about anyone at all besides the ones she actually, personally knows and who make her happy.

It makes sense to care in that I can easily see how mass poverty in the US could cause problems to the people I care about. Or comparable issues, involving the world economy might effect me and the people I care about in a way that future space colonies don't.

Yes, DSMatticus and Kaelik summed it up. Now granted, I am selfish enough that I care way more about people who exist and are also my family/friends more than people who exist and just happen to be close enough to affect me in that I notice them, and I care about them more than I care about people who exist and are "out there somewhere". But even those people have more value than people who just may potentially exist some time in the future (their potential existence has been realised, they actually exist now, and that there is suffering and starvation and disease and such at all is something that affects us in the comfy first world even a little in that we kind of feel bad about it, sometimes to the point of making a token gesture which helps one person and is great for that one person but doesn't dent the problem).

Civilization has interests. Its interests are to perpetuate and advance itself. Aligning your interests with those of civilization makes sense, because civilization is the thing that allows you to eat every day without having to hunt your own kangaroo.

So just as you have to pay taxes to help pay for the civilization we have now, you have to help with research and development projects to help pave the way for civilization in the future. Because in the meantime, civilization is giving you food and light on demand.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:and light on demand.

Woah, I'll have to stop you right there. Have you been to Ausfailia? Do you know how bad the electricity monopoly is over here? It's "light when we fucking feel like providing electricity. Oh also, because we're getting taxed for not using cleaner energy, we'll pass that on to you. Times ten. No, you're not getting better service, peons."

That said, I can accept that. I still feel there are more important things to current civilisation to spend current resources on, but yes, society gives me more than I possibly could put into it (not just a case of me being useless but the whole point of society is that if you can grow beans but not build houses or hunt deer or put fires out or stop bleeding, then just keep growing beans, because you're in fucking luck), so I don't really have problems with my taxes (the government's money once it leaves my account) helping civilisation in whatever way works. I guess thinking of civilisation as an actual entity with goals works.

FrankTrollman wrote:So just as you have to pay taxes to help pay for the civilization we have now, you have to help with research and development projects to help pave the way for civilization in the future. Because in the meantime, civilization is giving you food and light on demand.

I am not obligated to give a shit about civilization's interests because it is giving me things. If Hitler gave me a donut, I would take the donut and continue not giving a shit about what he wants.

Civilizations goals are important to me only so far as they help me achieve mine.

Paying taxes helps me achieve mine. Any research project or space colonization that will take place after my death is not helping mine (Not that it isn't helping someones, they can have different goals than me).

Not paying taxes would result in civilization not giving me food and light. Not supporting colonizing space in the future in no way prevents me from obtaining food and light.

who r all these small brains who dont care about the future

Humans as a species have difficulty thinking about the future, and beyond themselves. Given the alternative between immediate benefit and greater potential benefit in the future, most people will go with the former. Given the alternative between a moderate benefit for themselves and smaller benefit for everyone, most people will go with the former. It's more intense with some people than others, but the thing is everybody goes through a phase where they think the universe revolves around them - and some people never grow out of it.

Ancient History wrote:but the thing is everybody goes through a phase where they think the universe revolves around them - and some people never grow out of it.

Perhaps you could be honest and admit that only caring about yourself is different from thinking everyone else should only care about you.

Okay, I don't know why you want to get a debate started about self-centeredness vs. selfishness, but I'm game.

Selfishness is about wanting things for oneself, or sometimes one's group, at the expense of others and without rational thought behind the behavior. Selfish people want more things or want to keep things but have no viable basis for the behavior beyond their own needs or wants, and sometimes to detrimental effect. So for example, Germany is being selfish, because they want to preserve the Euro at the current rate of inflation even at the expense of other member-states and even when it is not in their long-term best interests.

Self-centered is about not being able to conceive of the world in terms that is not about the self. The individual is literally not able to conceive of something except in relation to their part of it. Anything anyone says must be about them, because why else would someone be talking, and who else would they be talking about? An example of this is Rush Limbaugh, who could not perceive of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises as anything except a liberal attack on the right - because Rush lives in a world where everything revolves around us vs. them politics.

An individual can be selfish without being self-centered: they recognize that life is not all about them, but they want things for themselves, even at the expense of other people; classic Gordon Gecko behavior. People can also be self-centered without being selfish; Oprah gives away plenty of money and stuff and still builds a world around her.

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And it should be said, a little bit of selfishness and self-centeredness is healthy. It's part of what separates humans from ants (no offense Ant). But there's a level at which that kind of behavior and viewpoint becomes unhealthy for the individual, group, community, and environment as a whole.

Ancient History wrote:Selfishness is about wanting things for oneself, or sometimes one's group, at the expense of others and without rational thought behind the behavior.

Emphasis Mine

No dummy wronghead, the definition of the word mean is not:

Not nice and acting without rational thought behind the behaviour.

You don't get to define selfishness as without rational thought. That's stupid.

The actual definition is "chiefly concerned with one's own interest, advantage, etc., esp to the total exclusion of the interests of others" Or you know, basically exactly your definition except without the part where you call people idiots for not agreeing with you.

It can be perfectly rational to only care about yourself and how things effect you to the same extent that it can be perfectly rational to care about other people.

Caring about anything at all is irrational act, but pretending that caring about yourself and everyone else only as a means to yourself is less rational than caring about others in the first place is a fucking joke.

I'm not sure what you're arguing with me about at this point. It sounds like you're accusing me of some Ayn Rand level shit, which is decidedly not what I'm trying to get across.

It can be perfectly rational to only care about yourself and how things effect you to the same extent that it can be perfectly rational to care about other people.

And, if you take it a little further, there's a place where caring about yourself and caring about other people come together - and that's humanity's happy place. Grandpa remembers to take his pills so that he feels better /and/ the people taking care of him have an easier time of it; John Q. Billionaire pays his taxes because he /and/ everyone else benefit from it; Simon Q. Beanpicker picks a bunch of beans so that the hunter-gatherer collective he's in can have beans tonight, but leaves enough pods so as not to deplete the bean fields so there are beans for future generations.

Which is all far and fucking away from what I was initially arguing, which is that humanity sucks at intuitive fortune-casting and some people are much more selfish and shortsighted about it than others. If you offer somebody a dollar now versus two dollars a week from now, most people will take the dollar now. If somebody has an opportunity to save a dollar in taxes now even though it will cost them more than a dollar in services in the long run, they'll probably do that too. Because lots of people's lives ride on a series of short-term gains - which works until it doesn't.

Ancient History wrote:And, if you take it a little further, there's a place where caring about yourself and caring about other people come together

No, there is no taking it further. That's not further. That's a completely unrelated, completely different thing which is not better or worse.

Ancient History wrote:Which is all far and fucking away from what I was initially arguing, which is that humanity sucks at intuitive fortune-casting and some people are much more selfish and shortsighted about it than others.

And what you were initially arguing is wrong. When call not caring about what happens after you are dead "sucking at forecasting" you are wrong. Not caring is not the same as not being able to predict.

When you equate selfishness with shortsightness, you are wrong. Some people don't care about other people, and not caring is not in any way even remotely related to not being able to see how things effect other people.

When you state that everyone who doesn't care about the same things you care about is an idiot who just can't see the whole picture, you are wrong.

Kaelik wrote:And what you were initially arguing is wrong. When call not caring about what happens after you are dead "sucking at forecasting" you are wrong. Not caring is not the same as not being able to predict.

Bolded part I'll agree with. You can know that what you do hurts other people and still do it. You can know that what you do hurts yourself and still do. I argued that selfishness == shortsightedness, and that people are sometimes selfish or self-centered because they do not know or understand the consequences of their actions. I totally admit there are many situations where that's just not the case, that people will do what is good for them in the short run with full knowledge that it hurts other people or is unsustainable. I think we can agree on that.

When you state that everyone who doesn't care about the same things you care about is an idiot who just can't see the whole picture, you are wrong.

I don't think I quite put it like that. If I just declared everyone who didn't agree with me as wrong, I'd be no better than npc310.

FrankTrollman wrote:But yeah, it's coming. Maybe not in four centuries or four millennia, but soon. Sooner than the Sun expands and swallows the Earth anyway. And that's what matters.

And somewhere, somehow, our civilization will endure.

*sniff* Tell me again about the salmon.

Ancient History wrote:You can know that what you do hurts yourself and still do.

Ancient History wrote:I totally admit there are many situations where that's just not the case, that people will do what is good for them in the short run with full knowledge that it hurts other people or is unsustainable.

No you dumbass, stop being intentionally stupid.

It doesn't hurt Koumei at all to not colonize space. It has literally fuck all to do with her or anything she cares about.

It is not unsustainable to only care about what happens when you are alive, because anything that happens after you are dead doesn't matter to you.

Ancient History wrote:

When you state that everyone who doesn't care about the same things you care about is an idiot who just can't see the whole picture, you are wrong.

I don't think I quite put it like that. If I just declared everyone who didn't agree with me as wrong, I'd be no better than npc310.

You did exactly that. You specifically said that the only possible reason someone could ever not care about what happens after they are dead is because they are a stupid idiot who can't see how shit that happens after they are dead really benefits them.

You are fucking wrong, and stop pretending that people who don't care about something are too stupid to see how it really effects them when it fucking doesn't.

Okay, at this point I have already agreed with you and you're still arguing shit, so I'm just going to stop responding.

Frank wrote:Civilization has interests. Its interests are to perpetuate and advance itself. Aligning your interests with those of civilization makes sense, because civilization is the thing that allows you to eat every day without having to hunt your own kangaroo.

Civilization has interests which are the aggregate of its component individual's interests. If there is a persuasive argument to not care about colonizing space, and people stop caring about colonizing space, then civilization will no longer have any interest in perpetuating itself by colonizing space. And it will die when something big explodes nearby.

The fact that people think perpetuating humanity is a noble goal makes it an interest of civilization. But that just means I have a lot of people to disagree with, not that it has the privilege of being right and that makes me wrong.

Ancient_History wrote: Okay, at this point I have already agreed with you and you're still arguing shit, so I'm just going to stop responding.

Well, I'm kind of confused why you brought it up. Sure, short-sightedness of humans is a thing, but it wasn't really relevant. The "why colonize space position" is not one of short-sightedness. It simply rejects the assumption that sustaining humanity is inherently valuable. It's compatible with the assumption (should you wish to posit it) that human happiness (your own or in general) is valuable, and it's compatible with the belief that helping other can be a means to accomplish a selfish goal, and it's compatible with the belief that pursuing selfish goals sometimes benefits people around you. It can be exactly as utilitarian as you need it to be. But the real gist of the "why colonize space position" is that if Adam and Eve don't want to, they don't have to have kids and that is morally okay because their happiness is more important than sustaining the human race.

I was responding to Dr Noface, the post immediately above mine. My comments had nothing to do with space travel.

Ancient History wrote:Okay, at this point I have already agreed with you and you're still arguing shit, so I'm just going to stop responding.

Well no, you just "agreed" that people who don't care about what happens after they are dead could just be idiots.

That's not an agreement.

Now if you actually went so far as to admit that you were actually wrong to claim that Koumei is an idiot who can't see the consequences of her actions because she doesn't care about stuff that happens after she is dead, that would be actually agreeing with me.

But you won't do that, and the next time this comes up, you'll say that not caring about stuff that happens after you dead can only ever occur because the person is too stupid to see how it affects them.

Kaelik wrote:Well no, you just "agreed" that people who don't care about what happens after they are dead could just be idiots.

That's not an agreement.

For fuck?

Now if you actually went so far as to admit that you were actually wrong to claim that Koumei is an idiot who can't see the consequences of her actions because she doesn't care about stuff that happens after she is dead, that would be actually agreeing with me.

I never explicitly claimed that of Koumei, but I do agree with you that Koumei is not an idiot for not caring about stuff that happens after she is dead, and any general statement I made in that regard was wrong.

Not caring about stuff that happens after you die doesn't make you an idiot, it makes you a dick.

Edit: By stuff I mean people. AND IMPORTANT ROCKS.

People should generally be glad I have such little care about what happens after I'm dead. For one thing, various people will get kidneys and stuff (assuming I die from being shot through the head by a German sniper while still moderately young, I suppose). For another, "I won't be there to enjoy the joke" is the reason why I won't have what's left cremated and the ashes mixed into whatever gets served at the funeral/wake, with a note at the bottom of the plate explaining what they've just eaten.

Why should I care for people after I die? Those unborn assholes aren't doing anything for me, fuck'em!

The topic has migrated from the original suggestions, which are mostly awful.

To quote Paul Krugman quoting John Meynard Keynes: "In the long run, we are all dead."

Sashi wrote: Eliminate the Mortgage interest tax deduction.

The short term effect of this would be to crash housing prices, balance-street-constraining the population and reducing demand, shrinking the economy. It is regressive, that's true.
The long term benefits couldn't possibly match the damage to the economy. Stupid idea.

Eliminate tax deductions for employer-provided health care. Helps decouple employment and healthcare, reduces the distortion of healthcare costs.

Likewise, the short term effect of this would be to force people to buy more overpriced healthcare, as Frank described.
Now, after we have instituted a single payer system, people would still be able to purchase health insurance on top of that (as they do in Canada) and that probably shouldn't be tax deductible; not that it would matter much because it would be a tiny portion of the economy as compared to the free health care everyone should just get.

Zero Corporate Income Tax.

it's giant payouts to preferred stockholders and yachts for CEOs that we don't like, so tax that.

These together would be sorta okay, but this is one area where stupid politics completely foil the plan.
That said, the argument misses a crucial point - corporations shield their stockholders from liability for the debts of the corporation, and that has historically incurred significant social costs, to which the stockholders do not have any natural right or entitlement, and which rich people who choose not to act through a corporate intermediary do not incur.
So, in fact, no: corporations should pay taxes as an intermediary and if you don't like it, you should own the enterprise personally yourself and incur the associated risks.
The "no brainer political" move would be to require all corporations doing business in the U.S. to pay these taxes, regardless of where they are headquartered. So for example a Toyota plant in the U.S. still allows the Stockholders to not pay the pension benefits of the employees if the plant goes bankrupt; so the Toyota corporation should pay their share of the social costs of this arrangement, if it should exist at all (a distinct question.)
If you can't provide an accounting trail past some point "X" (say, when you purchase something from your own subsidiary overseas) then you pay taxes on any money that goes through point-X as profits.

Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. Replace them with a consumption tax like ...

Tax carbon emissions. Surprisingly, even the Libertarian agreed on this.

K thoroughly demolished this one.

Legalize Marijuana (and possibly other drugs). Standard organized crime, enforcement costs, and tax revenue arguments.

I'll agree with that one.