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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

taxation is a system of rules, and the very wealthy pay people to navigate those rules.

leftists make the mistake of thinking that intent == outcome. "If we tax the rich more, then the government will have more money to spend on social services and the rich will have less money and therefore less power". In reality it doesn't work that way. Adding a new rule changes the game but often not in the way you intend.

Or in other words, leftists tend to make the mistake of relying on reductionist thinking rather than systems thinking.

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Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It's tedious and repetitive, inevitably turns nasty, and is not what this site is for.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26722319.

I really wasn't trying to, I'm not interested in flaming - I just don't like being attacked.

> leftists make the mistake of thinking that intent == outcome.

That’s a common mistake for people of all ideological stripes.

> "If we tax the rich more, then the government will have more money to spend on social services and the rich will have less money and therefore less power".

The fiscal myth is increasingly unpopular on the left (and even starting to fall out of favor in the center-left, hence the rise of MMT). So, no, largely and increasingly leftists don’t think this way even if they mistake intent for effect.

> Adding a new rule changes the game but often not in the way you intend.

The “Law of Unintended Consequences”, while it relates to a real phenomenon, is both dramatically overstated and not meaningful as a rebuttal of any particular idea. If you want to rebut the argument that a specific proposal to increase high end taxes (not the generic concept which you then massage into a form most suitable for rebuttal) will not actually increase net revenues, you need a specific argument from the elements of the proposal, not a generic handwave in the direction of “sometimes changing the rules does something you didn’t expect”. Since, I mean, that can just as easily mean that it succeeds beyond expectations than that it fails, when the effect manifests at all.

> The fiscal myth is increasingly unpopular on the left (and even starting to fall out of favor in the center-left, hence the rise of MMT). So, no, largely and increasingly leftists don’t think this way even if they mistake intent for effect.

That can only be a good thing. I don't move in leftist circles much (or really any political circles) so sadly I'm not up-to-date on the current thinking.

> The “Law of Unintended Consequences”, while it relates to a real phenomenon, is both dramatically overstated and not meaningful as a rebuttal of any particular idea. If you want to rebut the argument that a specific proposal to increase high end taxes (not the generic concept which you then massage into a form most suitable for rebuttal) will not actually increase net revenues, you need a specific argument from the elements of the proposal, not a generic handwave in the direction of “sometimes changing the rules does something you didn’t expect”. Since, I mean, that can just as easily mean that it succeeds beyond expectations than that it fails, when the effect manifests at all.

It wasn't intended as a rebuttal, but as a call to action to engage in systems thinking. Basically, under a reductive model of causality it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that well-intentioned policies are all that's necessary. Instead, if you're looking to enact a specific effect you need to consider both the effect you're trying to counteract (a too-high power differential) and the response to the policy you enact (in my loose example, the policy just being included in the equation already in use by lawyers, accountants, wealth managers etc that the very-wealthy already employ).

I highlight this because I'm both interested in systems theory and in building a better society (as, I suspect, most people are) and one of the main applications of systems theory is how to get the outcome you desire when trying to change a complex system. The way to do this is usually not obvious - because if the obvious solution worked, the problem would be easily solved.

I'm not trying to dismiss the intent behind the suggested reform.

It’s really sad that you are blind to your own severe discrimination. If you think in sweeping generalizations like, “leftists make the mistake...” you really need to step back and spend time not commenting at all and work harder to gain more self-awareness about your own prejudices.

I know you will not like this comment and you will want to knee-jerk reply to “refute” it, but you need to resist that urge and admit you have really significant and really troubling prejudices that come through like a megaphone to others observing you, and spend time just dealing with that.

I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from. I agree with the goals of leftists - and with many left criticisms of late capitalism. My criticism comes from wanting those goals to be achieved more effectively. In other words, I think the left has successfully identified many problems in our society but lacks the tools to fix them, and I think I have an idea of what those tools might be (systems thinking primarily).

I don't particularly care about your recommendation to self-crit. I spend enough time trying to criticise my own mental models as it is.

I could cite some individual leftists that I think are doing great work in the space if you would like. I know the phrases I use are over generalising here, so feel free to imply the word "some" in front of the nouns.

hi!!!!!!

Hey there

Where in the world is the “severe discrimination” and prejudice in that comment? You’re knee-jerk character charging without addressing the main points.

This user stalked me from a previous comment chain. Essentially they are bought into critical theory and I'm bought into systems theory so we're talking past each other.

It's kind of amusing given we're presumably after the same thing (reducing power differentials) but by different means.

[flagged]

then consider me called out. For what it's worth, I don't think you are being particularly pleasant either. That's just disliking each other, and I'm OK with that.

> For example, you made a recent comment talking about how almost all software developers are horrible at their jobs and that a small set of gatekeeper senior engineers should guard all code review.

For what it's worth it was something of an ironic joke related to the idea that "half of all people are below average at X", but also pointing at the idea that the industry gets better as the individuals who make it up get better at what they do.

I support the idea that people who are better at a job should help to educate others. I try to humble myself to better engineers than myself.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, including personal attacks and ideological flamewar, and ignoring our many requests to stop. Not cool.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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