Wanted—Dangerous Ideas

The Edge--a website inhabited by some of my favorite pointy headed intellectuals, such as Stewart Brand, Susan Blackmore, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, Joel Garreau, Brian Greene, Ray Kurzweil, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridely, and J. Craig Venter--has announced its annual question:

The Edge Annual Question--2006

WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

In 2004, Foreign Policy magazine asked another bunch of policy intellectuals what they thought the world's most dangerous idea was. Robert Wright nominated a "War on Evil"; Eric Hobsbawn suggested the "Spreading of Democracy"; Paul Davies worred about "Undermining Free Will": and Francis Fukuyama warned against "Transhumanism."

BTW, I responded to Fukuyama's overblown fears about transhumanism in a column here.

I personally believe that no ideas are dangerous if they are true--false ones, though, can be a problem. I will periodically update Hit & Run on some of the "dangerous ideas" proposed over at the Edge and maybe even suggest a few risky ones myself.

Thanks to David Ridgely for the heads up on the Edge question.

Comments

[ChrisO]

The notion that ideas can be dangerous.

[Ron Bailey]

ChrisO: Damn! I wish I had said that.

[Pro Libertate]

Here's a Dangerous Idea: Mankind is too crazy to survive and should immediately devote itself to completely replacing the species with self-replicating robots.

[Ron Bailey]

Pro Libertate: We already are self-replicating biological robots.

[Qbryzan]

My dangerous idea is my theory of Universal Conservation of Freedom. Freedom can neither be created nor destroyed.

I have arrived at this idea as a way to explain the declining freedom in the US at the same time as the increasing freedom in Iraq.

[Pro Libertate]

Nice try, Ron, but I meant metal robots with positronic brains. Yes, positronic brains!!!!

[thoreau]

Robert Laughlin's idea that physics on every scale is just an emergent phenomenon. The implication is that the universe may be more complicated than just classical physics -> atomic physics -> nuclear physics -> quarks -> Planck scale phenomena.

Aside from the deadly threat that it poses to quantum gravity theorists everywhere, it also has a more sinister implication: Maybe nothing is fundamental. Instead of matter being made of atoms made of nucleons made of quarks made of strings, maybe the quarks are made or something that's made of something that's made of something....ad infinitum.

What is really fundamental, then? What if there is no intrinsic length scale, no lower bound? What if the Russian dolls keep getting smaller?

I don't know if he's right. I think he may be wrong in an ultimate sense, that there may very well be some fundamental structure. But he may be right for practical purposes for some time: It could be that there are many more layers of structure than people thought. I doubt that these layers will have technological applications for quite some time (if ever), but as a philosophical matter, it does raise questions about what is truly fundamental?

[Isaac Asimov]

Deciding to write more than three Foundation novels.

[Pro Libertate]

I've been meaning to say something about that, Dr. Asimov.

Another dangerous idea that Ron and other Reasonoids have discussed before is that it's okay to study the possibility that we can create Humanity 1.1 (moving us out of beta) and even Nature 1.1. That's no insult to God, since even a hardcore theist doesn't know that we weren't made or intended to modify ourselves and our surroundings.

[ChrisO]

Hey, I *liked* "Foundation and Earth."

[theOneState]

How 'about the idea that the middle east is really incapable of producing peace, democracy or porn?

(I haven't studied the porn issue, and that part of idea might be demonstrabley false. But if the rest is true, we're all screwed no matter how isolationist or interventionist we wish to be.)

[Yogi]

What a great collection of thought. This internet thing never ceases to amaze me. I'm so glad they have it for computers now.

[David]

That's no insult to God, since even a hardcore theist doesn't know that we weren't made or intended to modify ourselves and our surroundings.

Since when has that been a problem for hardcore theists. Come to think of it, isn't claiming to know exactly what God expects of people in every situation their specialty?

[Kevin]

Still dangerous after all these years:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ? That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ? That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

[Portlander]

A dangerous meta-idea: that my ideas are absolutely right and your ideas are absolutely wrong.

Much of history is summed-up right there.

[David]

Those are dangerous ideas, Kevin. Unfortuantely, they seem to be ignored or forgotten after a few generations in favor of "Hey wouldn't it be great if someone had the power to insert idea here."

[Pro Libertate]

David, good point. Never understood why it wasn't hubris of the worst sort to say we know what God has planned. Or doesn't.

Kevin, what is that nonsense? Something from the Communist Manifesto? The FBI will be coming by to take you and your radical notions away.

[thoreau]

I like Bart Kosko's idea. I don't know much about that subject, but I hear about it from time to time. I haven't worked on problems where it matters, or maybe I have and didn't realize it.

[Ig]

"...Thats wrong (or sad, or dangerous, or etc...), and the GOVERNMENT ought to..."

Ask ten people who should take care of them if the proverbial sh@! hit the fan in their life and seven of them will tell you the Gubmint or some branch/agent thereof.

Thats a dangerous idea that we've been fermenting for plenty long enough without any help from Lenin or Marx, thank you very much!

[Neil Block]

Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man was a superb read; extremely insightful at least in terms of Hegel and the Enlightenment tradition. I think now he's just overthinking. That tends to be the problem for idealists with the wrong premises.

[theCoach]

"I personally believe that no ideas are dangerous if they are true." - There is something very strange about this. 'Idea' is used in the same confused way as the Edge question.

Nihilism seems like a dangerous true idea (at least at the Universe level). Another would be modifying our dna/biology so as to avoid the negative effects of aging ( I am not sure about the consequences of this, but it gets complicated pretty quickly, especially if it predates other technology advances). Are you a neo-Malthusian?

[Warren]

The proposition that there is existence beyond my immediate experience.

[Twba]

How 'about the idea that the middle east is really incapable of producing peace, democracy or porn?

Sam Harris writes:

Religion is fast growing incompatible with the emergence of a global, civil society. Religious faith - faith that there is a God who cares what name he is called, that one of our books is infallible, that Jesus is coming back to earth to judge the living and the dead, that Muslim martyrs go straight to Paradise, etc. - is on the wrong side of an escalating war of ideas. The difference between science and religion is the difference between a genuine openness to fruits of human inquiry in the 21st century, and a premature closure to such inquiry as a matter of principle. I believe that the antagonism between reason and faith will only grow more pervasive and intractable in the coming years. Iron Age beliefs - about God, the soul, sin, free will, etc. - continue to impede medical research and distort public policy. The possibility that we could elect a U.S. President who takes biblical prophesy seriously is real and terrifying; the likelihood that we will one day confront Islamists armed with nuclear or biological weapons is also terrifying, and growing more probable by the day. We are doing very little, at the level of our intellectual discourse, to prevent such possibilities.

Religion is a flaming sack of shit left on the world's doorstep. Until we kill God, the Middle East is fucked.

[Eric the .5b]

What is really fundamental, then? What if there is no intrinsic length scale, no lower bound? What if the Russian dolls keep getting smaller?

1) Permanent employment law (of nature) for physicists.

2) Endless opportunities for understanding and technology using as-yet-unknown aspects of the universe.

Sounds spiffy, though I more strongly suspect that at some point physics will hit THE basic physical laws or that newly-discovered physical laws will start to get trivial at some point, involving interactions that have no real effect on even the quantum level. (This is only intuition of course, but it's guided by my suspicion that physics wouldn't even be possible as a human endeavor if the the laws of nature were infinitely complex in a meaningful "affects the measurements" way.)

[Eric the .5b]

(Even given a fractal nature to the laws of physics.)

[Pro Libertate]

Isn't making decisions based solely on what you want to believe (i.e., faith) the most dangerous bad idea? I'm not picking on religion, either, because blind faith isn't a religious monopoly by any stretch. It's a universal human failing.

[pigwiggle]

Thoreau-

If the every increasing reduction of length scales corresponds to unification of forces there shouldn?t be a problem. If strings (or whatever) are responsible for the electroweakstronggravitational force; we?re done.

All-

Several not so publicized studies over the past decade have provided compelling evidence that income/success, and most recently longevity, are correlated to heritable IQ. I imagine the idea is very disturbing for many.

[Captain Holly]

Religion is a flaming sack of shit left on the world's doorstep. Until we kill God, the Middle East is fucked.

Goodness! How did we make it this far with that counterproductive First Amendment Freedom-of-Religion bulls#*t?

[Captain Holly]

In light of the above comment, I'd nominate the idea that Men (and women; sorry, Jennifer) should be free to worship as they please.

[Brian Courts]

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert agrees with ChrisO: The idea that ideas can be dangerous 🙂

I particularly liked this quite from Gilbert,

Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one.

[Yogi]

Several not so publicized studies over the past decade have provided compelling evidence that income/success, and most recently longevity, are correlated to heritable IQ. I imagine the idea is very disturbing for many.

Success is such a broad term and extremely subjective. I'd also love to see how they contained all the other variables leading to income and longevity and still had a meaningful data set. Dangerous idea, yes. Remotely having any solid evidence for it, no. Unless of course these studies can overcome my initials skeptism, but I doubt it.

[Rimfax]

That "coersive ethics", "personal ethics", and "interpersonal ethics" should all be separate things.

[thoreau]

pigwiggle-

To me, the most interesting question in quantum physics has nothing to do with gravity or nuclear forces. It has to do with whether our understanding of quantum mechanics is correct. Gravitons and even quarks have no technological significance. But electrons and photons are the basis of our technology.

Quantitatively, I have no serious doubts about quantum mechanics. The theory makes some astoundingly accurate predictions. But on top of the quantitative stuff there's a layer of interpretation that includes a whole bunch of mumbo-jumbo. I suspect that some of that mumbo-jumbo is either wrong, or at the very least unfalsifiable stuff that impedes understanding.

I'm partial to Bohmian mechanics. If the theory doesn't differ from orthodox QM in any testable manner (entirely possible), that equivalence would still undermine the perceived need for the confusing mumbo jumbo found in the Copenhagen interpretation. OTOH, if Bohm's ideas lead to predictions that cannot be made with the standard theory, then Bohmian mechanics represents a testable alternative.

FWIW, Bell (the guy whose inequalities helped refute some of Einstein's objections) was a big fan of Bohmian mechanics.

I speculate that the relationship between Bohm's ideas and the Copenhagen interpretation may turn out to be like the relationship between the heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system: Strictly speaking both ideas are valid (you can always do your calculations in a non-inertial reference frame and keep the earth at the center of all things), but one is far more useful than the other.

It's very likely that I'm wrong.

[thoreau]

For an interesting description of Bohmian mechanics, check out this book

[CTD]

Dangerous because it might be true: that increased biological knowledge and data handling capability will make it worthwhile to discriminate. "Oh, and your son is left-handed, with a tendency towards alcoholism. Together with your race, that puts his predisposition to crime at x%, so we implanted the standard tracking device."

[Hambone]

Mine would be to ask the gangbangers on the corner: Just how far is nigger gettin' ya?

[Heather]

(I haven't studied the porn issue, and that part of idea might be demonstrabley false. But if the rest is true, we're all screwed no matter how isolationist or interventionist we wish to be.

A friend of mine had a brother in the Israeli army working border patrol. They confiscated porn; it involved the use of poultry. This is a true story.

[Ron Hardin]

Letting women vote is a bad idea, and even women recognize it.

40% of them think like soap opera. That's a large enough bloc to be a swing vote for all sorts of unwise things, in terms of perverse side effects.

The women that vote responsibly vote like men anyway.

So let the men vote that way instead and get rid of the welfare-state bloc to the extent it's sex-linked.

The good ideas of the 60% of women are already represented in the men's vote.

[mediageek]

Here's two:

Only property owners should be allowed to vote.

Those who receive public assistance are not allowed franchise.

(I will note that the first option would actually disallow me from voting.)

[isildur]

Waiting for the punchline...

(There is a punchline, right?)

[Jennifer]

Only property owners should be allowed to vote.

So the rest of the taxpayers are just screwed?

[R C Dean]

Letting women vote is a bad idea

When I really want to yank someone's chain in conversation, I mention that I think the country has been going downhill since women got the vote. I'm only half-serious.

Certainly classical liberty has taken a beating, as women voting occurred just about the same time as rise of the nanny state the final ashcanning of the idea that we live under a limited government.

[pigwiggle]

Yogi-

"I'd also love to see how they contained all the other variables leading to income and longevity and still had a meaningful data set."

It's done all the time through sibling and twin studies.

"Success is such a broad term and extremely subjective."

Income, education, and so forth. Success was my word.

"Remotely having any solid evidence for it, no."

Really, there is plenty of evidence. Folks have been at this long enough to tease out how heritable IQ is, what the environmental contributions are, all that. The worlds a big place with lots of people to study. I just read a paper wherein the authors sifted through thousands of old IQ tests and death records of several states. Folks with a higher IQ live longer. I would have guessed as much.

Thoreau-

I like the CI; it's pragmatic. New Year's day I was riding in two feet of fresh Utah powder when I turned a bit late and ran ass first into a tree. Perception is reality; that tree was certainly real, as perceived by my rear. Why should I be so concerned about the why behind the strange behavior of metaphysical things? It's enough that QM works; I can run some electronic structure calculations, find charge distributions, use them to model atoms, make some predictions. None of this requires a 'deep reality'.

Certainly interpretations are fun to think about; what's mass, what's a force. My favorite interpretation (the most interesting I've read) for QM is the so-call transactional interpretation. A temporally staggered handshake of wave functions, forward and backward in time. It provides a reasonably intuitive (completely causal) explanation for single particle interference. Anyway, I wonder what function any interpretation would serve. There doesn't seem to be much point in constructing a coherent intuitive story about such unintuitive phenomena.

[James Aach]

Stewart Brand posited a number of "dangerous" (if not new) ideas for environmentalists in a May 2005 Technology Review article. This included a re-consideration of nuclear power. He has also recently endorsed a novel about the American nuclear power industry written by a longtime nuclear engineer that's designed to give the general public a clear picture of how a US nuclear plant is operated (warts and all) and how an accident might be handled. This book is available at no cost on the net. See http://RadDecision.blogspot.com.

[Eric the .5b]

Those who receive public assistance are not allowed franchise.

Would that include anyone who got a student loan or anyone who purchases products subject to price controls?

[David]

Or farmers who own their farm but recieve farm subsidies?

[Stevo Darkly]

If I tie a towel around my neck like a cape and jump off the roof, I bet I could fly.

[mediageek]

"So the rest of the taxpayers are just screwed?"

Until they get property, I suppose.

Quite frankly, I'm all for any system that discourages people from voting, especially those who would likely only vote as a way of helping themselves to money that isn't theirs. (Hence the bit about public assistance.)

It ties a direct negative to people attempting to manipulate the system for their gain at the expense of others.

[not that]

That dangerous is a contextually bound concept making all ideas dangerous/not

[Bonar Law]

"Religion is a flaming sack of shit left on the world's doorstep. Until we kill God, the Middle East is fucked."

Yes, governments in the Middle East should adopt atheistic and/or secularist policies. Look how well the killing of God worked in Russia and Cuba; I can't wait to see how well it works in the Mideast!

As a matter of fact, the Syrian ruling party has already come up with a secular outlook. Check out the party constitution:

The Pan-Arab National link is the only link that exists in the Arab State and assures harmony among the citizens and their fusion in one crucible of one Nation and combats all kinds of denominational, sectarian, tribal, ethnic and regional fanaticism.

No denominational fanaticism! What excellent progress they're making in Syria!

The Party's policy in Pedagogy aims at the creation of new Arab generation that believes in the unity of the Arab nation, the immortality of its mission that adopts scientific thought and free from superstitions, reactionary traditions and infused with the optimism spirit, struggle and solidarity with its nationals for the fulfillment of the comprehensive Arab Revolution and progress of humanity.

You can't put it any more clearly. The scientific spirit takes precedence over superstitious traditions.

Syria sounds like a paradise!

[Grand Moff Tarkin]

The Rebellion is a dangerous idea. . .well, not to this battlestation.

[Ruthless]

The link to The Edge was fantastic. What was there could keep H&R busy for all of 2006.
I had one quibble with the set-up: Responders should have simply explained their most outrageous idea that they haven't yet figured how to prove or disprove. Asking them to go further and assess an idea's dangerousness, I found distracting because it added an unnecessary layer of complication to material pretty complicated to begin with.

Okay, here's my outrageous idea:
Cyberspace will become an anarchic utopia. It will be where we live. What we call reality now will become more like what we now call a dream.

[thoreau]

How much property would a voter need to own?

I could imagine somebody paying $100 k for a large vacant lot in the cheapest part of town and dividing it into ten thousand plots of, say, 1 square foot each. Sell the plots for $20 apiece, turn a nice profit, and 10,000 apartment dwellers can now vote.

All numbers are approximate, of course, but probably in the right ballpark.

[Jennifer]

Thoreau--

I was thinking something very similar, only I was going to charge a bit more than your guy.

Another thing to consider is that property-size minimums would have to vary, and be periodically changed, based on where the person lived. After all, what's a big chunk of land in Manhattan is pretty small out in the sticks. Even if you based it on the minimum cash value of property, that would also have to vary based on location. A hundred thousand dollars can get you a nice house in some parts of the country, but in places like Manhattan you couldn't even buy a toolshed with that.

[Jennifer]

Also, if you buy property with a mortgage (as most Americans do), do you have to build up a certain amount of equity before you officially "own" the land for voting purposes, or do you own it the minute you sign the papers, even if it was a no-money-down loan?

[thoreau]

Jennifer-

$100k isn't much for a house, but I was thinking of an empty lot in the crappiest, most run-down and polluted neighborhood of the city. The absence of a house is important: Tiny little fences could be placed between plots, maybe even plaques indicating ownership.

Of course, in New York I guess $100k wouldn't be enough for my idea.

Still, even if the numbers change, the basic idea remains the same: Buy a big lot, carve it up into miniscule parcels, and sell them so that people can vote.

[TallDave]

Probably the most "dangerous idea" promulgated over the last 5 years is that democracy and freedom are universal aspirations deserving of military support.

[Russ R]

Jennifer, thoreau & mediageek:

I'd like your opinons on a modification to the idea that "Only property owners should be allowed to vote."

What do you think of the idea that:

1. The only tax should be on unimproved property value.
2. Only taxpayers get to vote.
3. Votes are multiplied by the net amount of tax dollars paid less public assistance dollars received since the last election.

[Windypundit]

What if you own land in another country? I hear that tundra is usually really really cheap.

[Stevo Darkly]

More dangerous ideas I have known:

1) "I bet I could use my finger to test the sharpness of this new X-Acto blade without actually cutting myself."

2) "Wow, who is that over there? That chick is so hot. From the back, anyway."

3) "At this point, I'm so drunk that another shot of Jagermeister isn't going to make any noticeable difference."

4) "Since my co-wrkers and I are all drunk, the amusing but incredibly perverted notion that just popped into my head can be spoken aloud with no consequences whatsoever."

[Stevo Darkly]

More dangerous ideas I have known:

1) "I bet I could use my finger to test the sharpness of this new X-Acto blade without actually cutting myself."

2) "Wow, who is that over there? That chick is so hot. From the back, anyway."

3) "At this point, I'm so drunk that another shot of Jagermeister isn't going to make any noticeable difference."

4) "Since my co-wrkers and I are all drunk, the amusing but incredibly perverted notion that just popped into my head can be spoken aloud with no consequences whatsoever."

[Stevo Darkly]

More dangerous ideas I have known:

1) "I bet I could use my finger to test the sharpness of this new X-Acto blade without actually cutting myself."

2) "Wow, who is that over there? That chick is so hot. From the back, anyway."

3) "At this point, I'm so drunk that another shot of Jagermeister isn't going to make any noticeable difference."

4) "Since my co-wrkers and I are all drunk, the amusing but incredibly perverted notion that just popped into my head can be spoken aloud with no consequences whatsoever."

[Stevo Darkly]

Whoa! My first ever double post is, in fact, a triple post! Sorry about that.

[Devo Starkly]

5) "If there is any delay in one's internet connection, the [Post] button should be clicked repeatedly."

[Stevo Darkly]

I clicked on "Post" twice at the most -- maybe only once. Usually even if there is a delay in posting, I still see a little progress bar that indicated the page is loading. Which is why I usually refrain from hitting "Post" again. Which is why I've never double-posted before, IIRC.

[Barbar]

I personally believe that no ideas are dangerous if they are true--false ones, though, can be a problem.

I personally believe that this idea isn't true, and it might even be dangerous.

For example, if it were the case that democracy was a sort of myth that granted greater legitimacy to the ruling classes of a society, thereby ensuring greater societal stability, then the truth about democracy might very well be dangerous to the beneficiaries of such stability (possibly everyone, possibly not).

More generally speaking, much human behavior is dicatated by cultural norms. Many of these norms (like property rights) are ultimately somewhat arbitrary, although not entirely so. If the truth about these norms became widely known and accepted, so that the norms themselves eroded, this might be dangerous.

Mind you, I normally sneer at those who argue that the fate of civilization depends on people being docile and ignorant. Nonetheless, it seems to me too much to say that the truth is always bound to be good. Although I would appreciate that viewpoint becoming more common in our society, I can't agree that it is necessarily true.

[joshua corning]

Religion is a flaming sack of shit left on the world's doorstep. Until we kill God, the Middle East is fucked.

Militant agnostics would be the most dangerous but luckly they don't breed much so they are short for this world.

here is a good dangerous idea..

"Man has evolved to belive in gods not biology."

Hayek thinks you are an idiot Twba and so do I...who knows what Edward O Wilson thinks

[Twba]

Joshua,

At least you spelled idiot correctly.

[mediageek]

" Look how well the killing of God worked in Russia and Cuba; I can't wait to see how well it works in the Mideast!"

From where I sit, Communism is a religion.

[mediageek]

Jennifer, thoreau, and Russ- I was really only halfway serious when I tossed the "only property owners should vote" meme out there.

Ultimately, though, I do believe that there is merit to the concept that only members of the productive class should be allowed to vote, though instituting it in the nation as it is today would be utterly infeasible.

Where it gets sticky is how you draw those definitions. After all, Heinlein outlined a similar concept in "Starship Troopers" where only those who'd served in the military were allowed to vote*.

Ultimately, there's a sort of intuitive appeal to the idea that only those who have a personal/financial/property/liberty-based stake in a nation are the ones who are most likely to be well-informed citizens.

It seems to me that a system ought to have a built in mechanism that disallows those who profit directly from that system from having a controlling interest in it.

Note that this does not mean that there would be an end to charity. Heck, in such a system, it's quite likely that there would even be social welfare programs, and any number of positions for busybody civil servants. But it would be far more rational due to an inherent bias towards those with the most to lose.

To me it's kind of a question.

If there is to be no taxation without representation, then isn't the inverse true?

After all, what point is there to having representation if you pay no taxation?

*A concept I found quite distasteful.

**It's late, I'm making words up.

[mediageek]

Just a quick note.

It's nearly 1am here. I'm freakin' tired, and I didn't proof-read my previous post.

If it's an incoherent, steaming pile of gibberish, I hope y'all understand.

[jimmyboy]

That you can figure out scientifically how to teach and learn.

This idea has prostrated the country's education system. It doesn't seem to be a meta-idea at first glance, but its pernicious influence affects almost everyone in our country. It was debunked a century and one-half ago by Dickens in "Hard Times" but the beast can't be killed.

A corollary: It is possible to improve education by following sound business practices.

Actually, you vould get closer to meta-ideahood by simply saying that the most dangerous idea alive in moderntiy is that it is possible to scientifically understand human beings, either singly or in groups. A corollary of this is that human beings are simply complex animals.

The idea that these are dangerous and/or fallacious ideas is not my own: the first was identified (if not labeled dangerous) in several placesin his writings by Richard Feynman, and the second was a cast off line by J. Bronowski in "Ascent of Man". Both ideas (actually their identification as pernicious) have greatly influenced me since I read them.

[jimmyboy]

One other note: when I was a kid, one of the breakfast cerael companies pack a deed to one square inch of land in gold mining country in their boxes.

If I had only kept one of these, I could be a voter.

[CayugaCthuga]

"From where I sit, Communism is a religion."

Right, but that means you can agree with everything Sam Harris says and still be religious. Which throws a lot of Harris' analysis out the window.

[gaijin]

MediaGeek, etal...

So if you own your own body, does that mean we all get to vote? And then I guess we're right back where we started.

[Jennifer]

What do you think of the idea that:

1. The only tax should be on unimproved property value.
2. Only taxpayers get to vote.
3. Votes are multiplied by the net amount of tax dollars paid less public assistance dollars received since the last election.

I don't like any of these "property-owners-only" scenarios. In the first place you'd have mass disenfranchisement of city dwellers, who are FAR more likely that suburban or rural people to rent an apartment rather than own land. Secondly, simply being a major property owner already gives one a good chunk of social and economic power; what will be gained by giving these people greater political power as well? Thirdly, all adults are still expected to obey the law, but you're suggesting that a lot of non-criminal adults who have to obey these laws will have no say in what they are or who makes them.

I prefer "government of, by and for the people," not "government of, by and for the property owners."

There's also the issue of property vs. assets. Last year Jeff and I briefly thought we might have to move to Indianapolis (long story), and when I checked realty prices there I was astonished. There are houses there selling for less than ten thousand dollars! (Crummy houses in bad neighborhoods, granted, but still, you can become a property owner for a very small amount of money there.)

I don't own any land right now, but I have enough money to buy some houses in Indianapolis without even having a mortgage. So there are people in Indianapolis who own more real estate than I do, but I have more assets than they do, AND I pay more taxes, too. But under your proposal, I'm not as much of a citizen as they are. (Although I could afford to buy voting rights in Indianapolis far more easily than I could here on the East Coast.)

No, I don't support any system that ties voting rights to property ownership. The simple phrase "buy voting rights" should be enough to turn people off the idea--rights are not to be bought and sold.

[Jennifer]

Also, since property can be inherited from one's parents, that means the right to vote can be, as well. I might buy into the "votes for property" meme if someone can explain to me how our system would be better for all (not just the rich) under a system wherein Paris Hilton gets a bigger say in running the government than all of us regular posters and Reason staff writers combined.

[Twba]

Syria sounds like a paradise!

If we impeach BasharMcChimpyHalliburtonAssad and stop Diebold from rigging the next Syrian election, it will be paradise.

[Twba]

Paris Hilton gets a bigger say in running the government than all of us

That's hot!

[Bonar Law]

"From where I sit, Communism is a religion."

My comments were directed to twba's claim that we need to "kill God" in order to improve the Middle East.

Whether or not we classify Communism as a religion, it certainly is militantly atheistic.

[Jennifer]

The more I think about "property voting" the worse it sounds. Many members of the military, especially the low-ranking ones, do not own property. Will they be exempt from this rule, of will you have young men getting killed overseas to defend a country in which they have no say?
And in many neighborhoods, absentee landlords will have more say over the local government than the people who actually live under said government.

[Russ R]

" I might buy into the "votes for property" meme if someone can explain to me how our system would be better for all (not just the rich) under a system wherein Paris Hilton gets a bigger say in running the government than all of us regular posters and Reason staff writers combined."

If she pays more taxes than I do, then she should have proportionally more say in how the money is spent than I should. Shareholders get voting power in proportion to the amount of money they have contributed to fund the operation, and this system seems to serve people's interests pretty well. Why shouldn't it work for government?

Basically, this system should appeal greatly to anyone who complains that "the rich" don't pay their fair share of taxes. (I'm not saying that you're one of these people) It assigns voting power not on the basis of wealth, but on the basis how much money the government took from you. To my knowledge, the government doesn't tax wealth, but taxes income, property and consumption.

So you can be inordinately rich and live extremely well, while paying very little in taxes, and you wouldn't have a whole lot of voting power (a hypothetical example which is probably quite descriptive of Ms. Hilton).

[Jennifer]

Shareholders get voting power in proportion to the amount of money they have contributed to fund the operation, and this system seems to serve people's interests pretty well. Why shouldn't it work for government?

For starters, being a shareholder of any given company is a choice, whereas being a citizen of a certain country is not (for all practical purposes). More importantly, government controls far more of your life than does any corporation in which you own shares. Also, you can't compare a corporation with a government--the sole purpose of a corporation is to make monetary profits for its memers.

Also, poor, disgruntled people who cannot possibly hope for change via the voting process would probably be more likely to try and bring about change via revolution.

[mk]

THere is a historical precedence for not allowing those who receive public assistance to vote. A class of people who receive subsistence from the state and who have political power would classically have been called an aristocracy, right?

[Russ R]

"Many members of the military, especially the low-ranking ones, do not own property. Will they be exempt from this rule, of will you have young men getting killed overseas to defend a country in which they have no say?"

Young men (and women) are performing the oxymoronic feat of "getting killed overseas" to "defend their country" because they want the paycheck. They chose to work in the armed forces with as much free will as did the folks who chose to work as firefighters, or the folks who chose to be burger-flippers at McDonalds. Without conscription, someone's employer is an irrelevant issue.

Does it similarly concern you that a large number of enlisted service men and women are not citizens, and can't vote under the present state of affairs?

FWIW, I joined the military before I was old enough to vote, or drink, or buy cigarettes, etc... (but I think we've already had the age debate).

[Jennifer]

THere is a historical precedence for not allowing those who receive public assistance to vote. A class of people who receive subsistence from the state and who have political power would classically have been called an aristocracy, right?

That, perhaps, I could get behind. But as somebody asked earlier on this thread, what qualifies as "public assistance" in this case? Subsidized student loans? Military veterans collecting benefits? Civil servants on a pension? Parents with children in the public schools?

What about a taxpayer who was unfortunate enough to become the victim of a crime, and the amount of money the cops spend to track down the criminal is more than the victim pays in taxes that year?

[mk]

I guess my assumption was that "public assistance" meant that that they received money from the state but did not contribute any. So those who pay taxes, either from personal taxes or through payroll taxes, would still be allowed to vote. Only those who don't pay any taxes would be disallowed.
Of course, that would include retired people. hmmm, interesting.

[Russ R]

"More importantly, government controls far more of your life than does any corporation in which you own shares. Also, you can't compare a corporation with a government--the sole purpose of a corporation is to make monetary profits for its memers."

I don't disagree that government controls much of our lives. The goal here is for them to control less of our lives. And with less money to finance all of the controlling, the amount of control would diminish. If the people who are giving government the money are the ones to decide how it gets spent, we'd see a whole lot fewer government programs, and hence less control.

Would your opinion change if we looked at the "taxes = votes" on a municipal scale instead of federal, since most municipal taxes are raised from property owners already, and municipalities have little to no control over individuals who aren't property owners?

BTW, I do appreciate the opportunity to discuss this... it's one of those ideas that I've been toying with for a few years, but up to now I've really wanted a few "reasonable" people to poke holes in it.

[Jennifer]

Would your opinion change if we looked at the "taxes = votes" on a municipal scale instead of federal, since most municipal taxes are raised from property owners already, and municipalities have little to no control over individuals who aren't property owners?

No, because you'd still have problems wherein absentee landlords have more say in government than the people who actually have to live under it. Think of how many current voters would be disenfranchised in Manhattan alone! I'd be willing to settle for a compromise, though: only property owners are allowed to vote on matters pertaining to property (i.e. zoning regulations and the like).

The problem with just a pure "property equals votes" system is that the government has command over far more than just what people do with their property; even if you own nothing there are still plenty of laws you must obey, and therefore you should have a say in what they are.

Put it another way: I believe my landlord should certainly have the authority to tell me I can or cannot paint the walls of my apartment, or grow a garden in the yard, but I don't think he should be the only one who gets to vote on things like whether or not my (hypothetical) teenage child should be subject to a teen-specific curfew, or what I must do to keep my car street-legal, or whether or not I can smoke on the street.

[Twba]

Letting everyone vote isn't a big deal if we had something like a constitution that strictly limits the scope and powers of the government. We need a revolution followed by a constitutional convention.

[Russ R]

"I don't think he [absentee landlord] should be the only one who gets to vote on things like whether or not my (hypothetical) teenage child should be subject to a teen-specific curfew, or what I must do to keep my car street-legal, or whether or not I can smoke on the street."

Good points. I agree that some of the authority of municipal governments does impact more than just property owners.

On the flip side of that, the voting landlord might believe that a midnight curfew for teens, a ban on Honda Civics with turbocharged engines and loud exhaust systems, or more smoke-free zones might increase their property value, however, if such restrictions prompt people to move to other jurisdictions, then rents will inevitably fall. That is unless the bylaws are appealing to a particular subset of tenants (perhaps senior citizens).

What I'm trying to get across is that the agency problem between voting landlords and non-voting tenants is significantly reduced by market forces.

[Jennifer]

Russ, what did you think of my compromise wherein only property owners get to vote on property matters?

As for the pure property-voting idea, remember that at least in theory, our country was founded on the notion that "government derives its power from the consent of the governed." And non-property-owners are among "the governed," and thus should be among those whose consent is required.

[David]

Aren't renters indirectly paying property tax anyway? No thinking landlord is going to cover that expense. They understandably build it into the rent.

[mediageek]

"What about a taxpayer who was unfortunate enough to become the victim of a crime, and the amount of money the cops spend to track down the criminal is more than the victim pays in taxes that year?"

An argument could be made for a dispensation here. After all, it's pretty unlikely that someone is going to be victimized so repeatedly that they will suddenly decide to vote themselves more money via police investigation funds, let alone an entire voting block.

[mediageek]

Ultimately, no system can be expected to last when people find that they can benefit by simply voting themselves money from others' pocketbooks.

By putting control of the system in the hands of those who are most likely to be victimized by the system it seems that the result is one set of checks and balances. And a pretty good one at that, I would think.

[Jennifer]

Mediageek, what did you think of my compromise, that only property owners get to vote on matters relating to property?

It goes back to the "consent of the governed" bit. I can maybe buy the argument that only property owners are "the governed" in regards to property laws. But there are plenty of laws which everyone--property owners and non-owners alike--has to follow. I don't own land but I do use the Internet; why the hell shouldn't I be able to vote out a guy who wants to read my email communications without a warrant?

[thoreau]

Aren't renters indirectly paying property tax anyway? No thinking landlord is going to cover that expense. They understandably build it into the rent.

Well, it depends on how competitive the market is. Say that there was a sudden increase in property tax due to legislative action (not just an increase in assessed values). If the market was fairly competitive, landlords might eat some or all of that tax increase by taking lower profits, and leaving rents the same or only slightly increased. OTOH, if it's a seller's market, landlords would pass on most or all of the increase, with little or no change in profit.

I'm not saying I'm cool with mediageek's idea, but it's not entirely true that tenants are the ones who pay the taxes. Market conditions determine whether changes in taxes will affect rents or profits.

[mediageek]

"Mediageek, what did you think of my compromise, that only property owners get to vote on matters relating to property?"

Honestly, it didn't do much for me, because it still leaves a big gaping hole wherein public servants and those on the dole can still vote themselves money out of the wallets of the productive class.

I'm not utterly convinced that property ownership is a good way to delineate between citizens and non. Whether one is an overall producer of tax revenue or consumer of it is probably a better way.

[bluestar]

Dangerous Idea: There are certain people who should not be allowed to vote.
Theory: If it were made a law that every legal citizen in the United States (with the ability to understand and make their mark upon the ballot) should have to vote, there would be no need for revolution.
In my personal observations, most of the people who do not vote are the very people who are not represented, simply because they do not speak their minds. If everyone were required to vote, everyone would be represented by themselves; therefore there would not be favoritism.

[bluestar]

Another very dangerous idea: God is dead.