Can Economics Explain Human Sacrifice?

[Xerographica]

Are you saying government is God?

Anything you sacrifice to is a god. A sacrifice is simply a cost. The goal should always be that the benefit be greater than the cost. But because values are subjective...it has to be up to each individual to decide for themselves whether the expected benefit will be greater than the cost. Which is why taxpayers should choose which government organizations they make their sacrifices to. Whichever government organizations fail to offer benefits greater than the costs...will be destroyed. This will free up resources for more benevolent gods. And this is how we make progress. Therefore...freedom is simply religious tolerance.

[Henry Rogue]

Anything you sacrifice to is a god. A sacrifice is simply a cost. The goal should always be that the benefit be greater than the cost. But because values are subjective...it has to be up to each individual to decide for themselves whether the expected benefit will be greater than the cost. Which is why taxpayers should choose which government organizations they make their sacrifices to. Whichever government organizations fail to offer benefits greater than the costs...will be destroyed. This will free up resources for more benevolent gods. And this is how we make progress. Therefore...freedom is simply religious tolerance.

And the IRS is my mandated church. So much for the separation of church and state.

[Sola_Fide]

Are you saying government is God?

That's what it sounds like to me.

[oyarde]

So if Govt thinks it is God, can you broker a deal with them where I sacrifice a cow for them and they leave me alone forever ??

[idiom]

I wish I could make 1000 people give me 200 bucks for spouting 3 hours of BS

With hard work, dedication and just believing in yourself, one day YOU could!

[Xerographica]

And the IRS is my mandated church. So much for the separation of church and state.

The IRS isn't the problem...it's merely a symptom. The problem...the root we need to strike at...is people's lack of understanding regarding the value of religious tolerance. But if you understood the value of religious tolerance...then you'd understand the positive consequences of allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes.

If people could choose which government organizations they sacrificed their taxes to...would they sacrifice their taxes to the IRS? If many people would choose to sacrifice their money to a "violent" god...if they would derive value from doing so...then they would find value in doing so even if there wasn't a state.

If few people would sacrifice their taxes to the IRS...then we, as a society, would debate whether the IRS truly constituted a "public" good. How many taxpayers would have to give their taxes to the IRS for it to constitute a "public" good? One taxpayer? One hundred taxpayers? One thousand taxpayers? One hundred thousand?

[Xerographica]

So if Govt thinks it is God, can you broker a deal with them where I sacrifice a cow for them and they leave me alone forever ??

The problem isn't the govt. It's the people who believe in the govt. But more specifically...it's the people who believe in 538 congresspeople. What's wrong with believing in 538 congresspeople? The problem is that all our individual valuations matter. Markets work because our choices, our spending decisions, influence how society's resources are used. Allowing 538 congresspeople to spend our taxes prevents our priorities from determining whether more or less funds are spent on defense.

So if you want to sacrifice a cow...then sacrifice it to learning the economic arguments that support giving taxpayers the freedom to choose which government organizations they make their sacrifices to.

[rpwi]

Just because values are subjective doesn't mean that human sacrifice is economically sound. Human sacrifice, when it isn't voluntary, is nothing more than a command economy.

But economics isn't really a study of philosophy/ethics/politics...it is the study of why people allocate resources.

I mean aliens could conquer earth and they could enslave the human race and force us to mine natural resources for them. The aliens could sell the more productive humans to each other (perhaps some humans were better at iron mining...others better at zinc mining).

The aliens could then hurtle these resources into the sun to appease their gods.

Economics doesn't concern itself with what is owned or how ownership brings happiness...just why that exchanges take place. Ethics are important, but are a separate school of thought.

[Xerographica]

I mean aliens could conquer earth and they could enslave the human race and force us to mine natural resources for them. The aliens could sell the more productive humans to each other (perhaps some humans were better at iron mining...others better at zinc mining).

Aliens would never conquer the earth and enslave us. This would violate my rule. Xero's rule states that, by the time the inhabitants of a planet have developed to the point they can visit other inhabited planets, the causality between development and freedom would be obvious to them. Here's my blog entry on the topic...Taking vs Trading.

For example...would China's development be helped or hindered if they enslaved us? Well...they would sure have access to a ton of valuable resources. But progress doesn't depend on merely having resources. Just because you have a tree doesn't mean that you'll know of each and every possible use for it. Even if you know of a certain way that the tree might be used...it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be capable of realizing the use that you had in mind.

So if China just "took" all our resources...then they would see it as one step forward. But what's more important to grasp is that they wouldn't be able to see all the new and innovative ways that we might have used our resources if our freedom hadn't been taken away from us. Therefore, the seen would be the one step forward as a result of the greater amount of resources...but the unseen would be the ten steps forward that they would have taken as a result of American innovation.

This is a two way street though. When Mao enslaved China for decades...he didn't just screw the Chinese people...he screwed the entire world by preventing the Chinese people from coming up with new and innovative ways of using their limited resources. Who knows how many additional steps the world would have taken if the Chinese people had been free. Who knows how many valuable services/goods we would be using right now if it hadn't been for Mao.

If an alien civilization visited our planet tomorrow...then they would clearly understand that they could take one step forward by taking all our resources. But more importantly...they would also clearly understand that merely taking our resources would cost them the ten steps forward that they would have taken by trading with us.

Right now we take people's taxes. This means that we take one step forward. People clearly see the bridges, roads, public schools and national defense. But what they don't see are the ten steps forward that we would take if we gave taxpayers the freedom to shop for themselves in the public sector.

Saying that freedom is "morally" or "ethically" right does absolutely nothing to help people see the unseen. To help people see the unseen...to ensure that our freedom is really protected...we have to help people understand the economics.

• Demonstrated preference
• Opportunity cost
• Decentralized knowledge
• Rational ignorance
• Heterogeneous activity

So start a blog, and figure out how you can use your words to help people understand the economics. The more people who do this...the more unique perspectives we'll have applied to the problem of how we can use words in such a way that they help people understand economics. If you hit on an innovative and effective way of helping people understand economics...then I'll use your same method...until somebody else comes up with a more effective way. This is how we make progress.