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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38026 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Why should I need to label how my money (or my businesses' money) is spent for the administrative state?

Because you want the tax benefits that flow from labeling it a certain way?

Like, if you want to pay taxes on all the revenue your company earns or all your personal income or whatever then you don't have to care about how your money is labelled. But the reason people label things as business expenses is because the government gives certain kinds of tax advantage for those expenditures. The government is, I think understandably, upset when people lie to them and claim expenditures were for things that give tax benefits when they actually were not.

Courts will have to focus on spirit of the law. Where people that don't violate a single law might still get prosecuted, because they so obviously violated the spirit. Or where people that broke a million tiny elements of the law get off completely free, because they weren't doing anything that actually violated the purpose of the laws.

I don't understand how you can possibly think a legal system that operated this way would be perceived as more just than the current system. "We're going to throw you in jail, not because you broke any law but because fuck you." "Yea, you broke a bunch of laws other people are in jail for, but we aren't gonna punish you because we like you." Very just!

"Yea, you broke a bunch of laws other people are in jail for, but we aren't gonna punish you because we like you."

This one is real. Selective prosecution is just a thing.

"We're going to throw you in jail, not because you broke any law but because fuck you." "Yea, you broke a bunch of laws other people are in jail for, but we aren't gonna punish you because we like you." Very just!

Are there not countries around the world that work somewhat like this, where the de facto law is much more informal than it would seem? I think there's some value in having a "Rule Zero"/"Because I Said So" clause in law, where a situation is sufficiently outside a system's reference class and it also demands swift and decisive action.

I am not sure there is any entity I (or people more generally) would (or ought) trust with that power, for what I think are pretty good reasons.

Like, if you want to pay taxes on all the revenue your company earns or all your personal income or whatever then you don't have to care about how your money is labelled. But the reason people label things as business expenses is because the government gives certain kinds of tax advantage for those expenditures. The government is, I think understandably, upset when people lie to them and claim expenditures were for things that give tax benefits when they actually were not.

Administrative state crap. I'd prefer it if they stop creating thousands of different laws that reward different micro categories of spending with tiny tax incentives. I don't doubt that whatever silly rule is violated has some reason for existing within the bureaucracy. I just don't care about the system in general. Burn it all down I say.

I don't understand how you can possibly think a legal system that operated this way would be perceived as more just than the current system. "We're going to throw you in jail, not because you broke any law but because fuck you." "Yea, you broke a bunch of laws other people are in jail for, but we aren't gonna punish you because we like you." Very just!

Because a sufficiently complex set of rules just eventually wraps back around to that outcome anyways. When everyone is violating the rules and the only thing that saves them is prosecutor discretion, then it's just some prosecutor deciding who they want to make guilty and innocent. Why not skip the step of having a super complex legal system that wastes a bunch of resources? And why not select the judges and prosecutors based entirely on their wisdom to make good judgements, rather than their ability to manipulate a stupidly complex legal system?

And why not select the judges and prosecutors based entirely on their wisdom to make good judgements, rather than their ability to manipulate a stupidly complex legal system?

How do you determine "wisdom to make good judgements" in advance? What if people disagree about what good judgements are?

That's why they are elected positions.

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