The behavior of other primates suggests that copulating in private is associated with sexual exclusivity. Easier to keep rivals away if you cover up your women and copulate in private.
Your rules for achieving a balanced budget through a proportional cut is very attractive as it gets around "the sabotage theory of bureaucracy", in which a voluntary cut will be made in the most politically sensitive area. The current TSA withholding of funds is a wonderful political, not a bureaucratic, example of that.
I do wonder whether chaos would not break out, though. Every department knows the proportionality rule. So it's best to request an absurd budget allocation. All do this, and there's a bigger proportional cut, of course. But the absurdest request gets cut least.
1. During budgeting, each legislator stack ranks line items by their personal priority. These should be public.
2. Collate those into a single priority list (e.g., recursive Condorcet). Debt service is pinned at the top.
3. Set the budget cap equal to the average of the previous year's revenue & spending. This would be balanced on average without too extreme of year-over-year swings, and prevents spending tax revenue that's projected by not realized.
4. Fund each line item in order until it would exceed the amount from step 3 (skipping over too big ones in favor of lower-ranked-but-small-enough).
“There are obviously practical complications, since some expenditures, such as many salaries and pensions, are set by contract; that is why the reduction is by department and not by individual item of expenditure. I do not know if it is workable, whether it would make the politics around budgeting work better worse; I have never been involved in running a city. I like it as a simple and elegant alternative to how things are done now.”
I am quite surprised you don’t mention the obvious gaming problem: each department has an incentive to propose a budget far beyond their needs. Yet there is no reason to believe that each department will game the system identically, or that the “worst” departments won’t do more gaming. And it places the unelected department head as the ones effectively “deciding” how money is allocated (via their gaming) rather than the elected politicians.
It also leaves departments with a higher percentage of their budgets in salaries more vulnerable than other departments.
…which of course will lead all departments to add in non-employee expenses so they have room to cut. Etc., etc.
I don't assume that a department gets allocated what they ask for — they don't now. There is some political process in Congress or the city council based on how important decision makers think things are and how much political support they have.
> Selling services is legal — unless they are sexual services.
Isn't this entirely a very recent trend ? like in last 100 years ? The Islamic holy place of Meccah allegedly had legal brothels until 1925 or so as per the internet. (Given this example because Islam and Saudi are both generally more conservative and put more social restrictions than anything else).
> Eating in public, playing tennis in public, fighting in public, all legal. Making love in public not.
A closed lid conceals a king's ransom. No one has any problem if it is revealed that they suck at playing Tennis or do not play tennis at all or if someone is exceptionally good at playing tennis. In case of love making some people might not be getting any opportunities, or might suck at it or some might be so good at it that it might evoke jealousy and create enemies. So, everyone probably sees the benefits of pretending that under the lid there is king's ransom.
A small matter: A balanced budget rule should be over a period of time, not necessarily on Keynesian grounds, but on consumption smoothing grounds.
I like the consumption smoothing grounds.
If one likes the Keynesian grounds, one could mandate a balanced consumption budget, but an investment budget that could be imbalanced. I believe the investment part is efficient. But it can be played: What's investment?
Maybe it doesn't matter. Too much debt, and the price level rises to extinguish the debt! Long intuited, recently formalized. Chaos on the way, though.
Substack has a lot of bugs which I can't imagine being features gone awry. Just now, it says "4 Comments" while only showing three, and that's after a reload. Does anyone know of any place to lodge feedback? Last time I used a Substack for that, it had a notice that it was not monitored, and most comments were several years old.
Defecating in public is possibly even more a taboo than sex. I have been rickrolled into seeing Two Girls And A Cup once, and that is once too often. Rickroll into porn is annoying, but also funny in most cases.
****
One of my many previous ideas for budgetary reform was that everything would work as now, with several changes:
1. The Congressional departmental budgets are maximums.
2. When people pay their taxes, they allocate it per Congressional budgets. If department revenue exceeds the budget cap, the excess is returned to voters. If it is less than the budget cap, too bad, so sad; fire employees, sell assets, whatever it takes to cut spending because there is no more revenue.
3. No inter-budget transfers. National parks can't transfer their excess to the welfare department.
I suspect most people would try to allocate semi-seriously, but the National Parks Service would still have a huge excess every year.
Could be worse, tubgirl lol. We are showing our age. My kids have heard of 2G1C at least, on the other hand they are completely lost and confused on goatse.cx.
I think my references (Tubgirl and Goatse.cx) where uniquely Gen X "memes" for lack of a better word, though they weren't called that back then ofc, back in the days of IRC (Internet Relay Chat for my favorite comment who always complains I don't spell common generational acronyms) and GeoCities :) ... i.e. the same generation that associates "gore sites" with the Stile Project, Rotten, Ogrish, and Bonsai Kitten as opposed to whatever the current holders of those titles are, Telegram and social media groups? i.e. Static websites are soooo Gen X- :)
The behavior of other primates suggests that copulating in private is associated with sexual exclusivity. Easier to keep rivals away if you cover up your women and copulate in private.
Your rules for achieving a balanced budget through a proportional cut is very attractive as it gets around "the sabotage theory of bureaucracy", in which a voluntary cut will be made in the most politically sensitive area. The current TSA withholding of funds is a wonderful political, not a bureaucratic, example of that.
I do wonder whether chaos would not break out, though. Every department knows the proportionality rule. So it's best to request an absurd budget allocation. All do this, and there's a bigger proportional cut, of course. But the absurdest request gets cut least.
I don't assume that the San Jose City Council or the US Congress bases the allocation on what departments ask for. They don't now.
My pet idea about budgetary reform:
1. During budgeting, each legislator stack ranks line items by their personal priority. These should be public.
2. Collate those into a single priority list (e.g., recursive Condorcet). Debt service is pinned at the top.
3. Set the budget cap equal to the average of the previous year's revenue & spending. This would be balanced on average without too extreme of year-over-year swings, and prevents spending tax revenue that's projected by not realized.
4. Fund each line item in order until it would exceed the amount from step 3 (skipping over too big ones in favor of lower-ranked-but-small-enough).
“There are obviously practical complications, since some expenditures, such as many salaries and pensions, are set by contract; that is why the reduction is by department and not by individual item of expenditure. I do not know if it is workable, whether it would make the politics around budgeting work better worse; I have never been involved in running a city. I like it as a simple and elegant alternative to how things are done now.”
I am quite surprised you don’t mention the obvious gaming problem: each department has an incentive to propose a budget far beyond their needs. Yet there is no reason to believe that each department will game the system identically, or that the “worst” departments won’t do more gaming. And it places the unelected department head as the ones effectively “deciding” how money is allocated (via their gaming) rather than the elected politicians.
It also leaves departments with a higher percentage of their budgets in salaries more vulnerable than other departments.
…which of course will lead all departments to add in non-employee expenses so they have room to cut. Etc., etc.
I don't assume that a department gets allocated what they ask for — they don't now. There is some political process in Congress or the city council based on how important decision makers think things are and how much political support they have.
Yes. I don't see an equilibrium without collusion. Which is what political parties are for. That's why I suggested chaos.
> Selling services is legal — unless they are sexual services.
Isn't this entirely a very recent trend ? like in last 100 years ? The Islamic holy place of Meccah allegedly had legal brothels until 1925 or so as per the internet. (Given this example because Islam and Saudi are both generally more conservative and put more social restrictions than anything else).
> Eating in public, playing tennis in public, fighting in public, all legal. Making love in public not.
A closed lid conceals a king's ransom. No one has any problem if it is revealed that they suck at playing Tennis or do not play tennis at all or if someone is exceptionally good at playing tennis. In case of love making some people might not be getting any opportunities, or might suck at it or some might be so good at it that it might evoke jealousy and create enemies. So, everyone probably sees the benefits of pretending that under the lid there is king's ransom.
A small matter: A balanced budget rule should be over a period of time, not necessarily on Keynesian grounds, but on consumption smoothing grounds.
I like the consumption smoothing grounds.
If one likes the Keynesian grounds, one could mandate a balanced consumption budget, but an investment budget that could be imbalanced. I believe the investment part is efficient. But it can be played: What's investment?
Maybe it doesn't matter. Too much debt, and the price level rises to extinguish the debt! Long intuited, recently formalized. Chaos on the way, though.
Substack has a lot of bugs which I can't imagine being features gone awry. Just now, it says "4 Comments" while only showing three, and that's after a reload. Does anyone know of any place to lodge feedback? Last time I used a Substack for that, it had a notice that it was not monitored, and most comments were several years old.
Defecating in public is possibly even more a taboo than sex. I have been rickrolled into seeing Two Girls And A Cup once, and that is once too often. Rickroll into porn is annoying, but also funny in most cases.
****
One of my many previous ideas for budgetary reform was that everything would work as now, with several changes:
1. The Congressional departmental budgets are maximums.
2. When people pay their taxes, they allocate it per Congressional budgets. If department revenue exceeds the budget cap, the excess is returned to voters. If it is less than the budget cap, too bad, so sad; fire employees, sell assets, whatever it takes to cut spending because there is no more revenue.
3. No inter-budget transfers. National parks can't transfer their excess to the welfare department.
I suspect most people would try to allocate semi-seriously, but the National Parks Service would still have a huge excess every year.
Could be worse, tubgirl lol. We are showing our age. My kids have heard of 2G1C at least, on the other hand they are completely lost and confused on goatse.cx.
I had never heard of either. My age.
I think my references (Tubgirl and Goatse.cx) where uniquely Gen X "memes" for lack of a better word, though they weren't called that back then ofc, back in the days of IRC (Internet Relay Chat for my favorite comment who always complains I don't spell common generational acronyms) and GeoCities :) ... i.e. the same generation that associates "gore sites" with the Stile Project, Rotten, Ogrish, and Bonsai Kitten as opposed to whatever the current holders of those titles are, Telegram and social media groups? i.e. Static websites are soooo Gen X- :)