Quote from: blogospheroid on June 23, 2011, 05:08:20 AM

This idea is primarily directed at statists, not anarchists.

Imagine a society that is populated by people who have more or less converged on a standard of value, whether that be Bitcoin, Bitcoin 2.0, or gold.

This is a large society which is much greater than the dunbar number, where our ancestors typically had a feel for the politics of the whole thing.

Monarchy is insane in this era, no one knows enough about this complex society to take decisions.
Direct democracy is generally a pain since most voters are not informed.
Democracy is also subject to the chance that a majority may want to tax others to pay themselves.

Since some unpopular ideas need to be enforced and the enforcers need money to survive, taxes of some kind are still being collected. So, how might this be sustained in the long run?

The idea is simple -to establish a negative feedback loop wrt taxes in a democracy, allocate power on the basis of tax collected.

The taxpayers oligarchy idea is this - The main deliberative body in terms of laws has votes allocated on basis of tax collected. If there is corporate tax, the corporate gets votes. If there are individual taxes, the individuals get the votes. If there is foreign aid, the foreign ambassador gets the votes.

The cool part comes in when a group seeks to reduce taxes on itself - It automatically lowers its political power in the next assembly. If someone seeks to tax another group, they can't do that without increasing the power of the others they seek to tax.

So, if you're a statist and are more or less reconciled to the rule of powerful people, how do you like this idea? Critique(s) invited.

I'm an anarchist...and I really like this idea.