Wait a minute

Commentaries on life, liberty, and everything in between.

Filed under: Government

Wait a minute – Occupying what?

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It seems as if everyone has an opinion about the different occupy-movements that currently are active, mainly in the United States. We have all seen the TV/Radio/Newspaper coverage of the occupy encampment where people are charring theirs signs and chancing all kinds of protect slogans averse to what they see as the biggest crises in modern time. The first demand of any protest movement will always be, too be heard. That the rest of society is listening to their demands, and taking them serious. And yes we, I say we since I am not a member of the Occupy-movement, are listening, but what where there demands?

The one complaint we hear repeatedly especially from ‘experts’ interviewed by the mass media, are that the occupy-movement doesn’t have any demands, or at least any demands that the current system can comprehend. I would normally not Concord with Slavoj Zizek, but he did make a really important point in a speech he gave to the Occupy-movement in New York at the 10Th of October this year. His point where that the occupy-movement could not formulate their grievances about the current system, in a way the same system would understand. As Zizek argues: their grievance is about the system itself, and should not be considered as a desire to just adjust a part of the system.

So I reality the reason that the occupy-movement will not lead to anything is caused by in the occupy-movement we have a group of people that tries to articulate their discontent with a system, in a language that is determent by the same system that they are discontent about. In the end, if the occupy-movement shall succeed and shape history as they so clearly desire they would have to do one of two things:
  1. Create a new language/system that will encompass their desires and shape the curse of human history to a new horizon.
     
  2. Agree to a lesser Utopian goal and identify a comment adjustment to the current system that will satisfy their immediate complaints.

But is the occupy-movement able to either? I would argue that since the occupy-movement as it is right now is a collection of different individuals is only connected by their discontent with the current situation they will no be able neither options. Therefor I believe that the occupy-movement will be remembered as a movement that complained a lot, but nobody really understood them.

 

Wait a minute – who is to blame?

Bubble-bobble

When something “unfair” happens, it is human nature to not only find reason in what can seem absurd but also to be able to blame someone for the unfairness. After the lasts bust everyone have been looking for the reason to why the bobble busted, beside the obvious one, namely that it is what bobbles does. Some blames the politicians for not being good enough in regulating the financial markets. Others blame the financial markets for wanting to make a “too big” of a profit. Some even blames the wealthy for … well still being wealthy. Everyone is looking for someone to blame, someone other than themselves.

So to satisfy this thirst for placing the blame the Danish government announced yesterday that they have tasked some experts to examine the financial crisis and tell everyone who we should blame for everything going so badly. Was it the high salaries that the banking managers amassed? Or is there something wrong with the business model of the financial institutions? Or even better can we make new regulation that will ensure that we never will see another bust again?

Let me be the first to predict what the panels of experts will conclude. Yes we are all to blame, you and I, everyone that interacted in the market where all a part of the naive belief that the house prices never will go down. We all conjectured that tomorrow always will be better than yesterday and therefor we don’t need to contemplate ahead. There are no more rainy days so why did we need to save up for them? But in reality they rainy days did come; the house prices did go down. Not because we didn’t have enough regulation, or because banking managers got an extra million in salary. Yes we are all to blame, but we will never accept that, so in the end we shall blame someone, and create more regulation in a naive attempt to keep the bobbles form bursting.

But, the bobbles will burst, because it is what bobbles do.

 

Wait a minute - What is wrong with taxes?

Taxes
Every country has its own story about its tax system.  But, what is common for most tax systems would be the evolution that these systems go though. In this post, I shall provide a quick and dirty overview of how any given tax system will evolve and hopefully provide a different perspective on the modern tax system. Before I start I would just like to point out that I shall not pass moral judgement on either the tax systems or the government - Sorry ;)

In the beginning
To start with most governments implements a tax system, in order for them to pay for a series of common goods as; for example, services like defence, roads and judicial institutions.  The principle here is that since everyone has access to the benefits of those systems should everyone pay, through the tax system, to maintaining these systems. This is the basic construction of government and therefore also the basic construction of any taxes system.

The raise of fairness
With the raise of the socialistic movement came also the focus on “fairness”. Now, the tax system should not only pay for the common goods in society, but also be the bases of some people’s idea of a fair society. Meaning that taxes would be used to redistribute wealth in society. Already, here are the tax systems subject to lengthy debates of both moral and legal character. But in the end this is the way the tax systems are being used in most industrial countries. The government now has the role of being the great equalizer.  

We are the norms
Within the last couple of years, we have seen the la evolution version of the tax system. Now, the tax system is no more the means for the government to pay for the common goods nor is it the great equalizer, today taxes are increasingly being used to create incentive that forces the public to adopt the ruling conceptual idea of what is the norm. Or ratter what is the ruling idea of ‘the good living’. We see this when products that have been determined to be bad for human life, either physical or psychical. This means that the tax system is now being used to enforce a democratically idea of ‘the good living’. 

What is next?
It is imposable to predict how the tax system will be used in the future. But, one thing is clear it will become increasingly difficult for the individual to not only control his or her own life, but also to determine what Aristotle called the Golden middle. 

 
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