Comment on "Yeah, but what if we used AI?"
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months agoI thought that was a rhetorical question so I answered to what I thought was the spirit of it: An example of a functional system voluntarily supported by the community.
To answare your unrhetorical question: No. I can’t think of a tax free civilization, but if I asked you 150 years ago to give me an example of a functional civilization where men and women had equal rights and people weren’t discriminated against based on their race or sexual orientation or of functional space faring civilization you probably couldn’t give me an example either. Just because something hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it can’t or that we shouldn’t try to make it.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
The problem is supporting the projects you like is a bit different when it’s something like… Building a bridge vs adding some code to a git repo lol
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Why, if the bridge will be beneficial to the community why wouldn’t it set up a donation goal to build it? If enough people want it i.e. the percived value of it is greater than the percived value of money they’re donating it will succeed, if not, it will fail because the community voted with their wallets that it wasn’t worth it and they would rather put their money somewhere else.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What if it’s a poor community that can’t afford to pay for the bridge? Fuck them, no bridge for them? Their fault for being poor?
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Exactly this, even in Foss we see a similar issue wherein large corporations can use the programs but provide no return value to the project itself.
Taxes are supposed to be a way to get rich people and corporations to pay their fair share, unfortunately in the US at least, regulatory capture, lobbying and propaganda has made it so that the scales are so extremely tipped in the rich and Corp favor that it’s in no way a fair system at present.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Then they would have to count on external investment or aid or collect money over a longer period. That is no different than the current system, richer countries, states, neighborhoods have better infrastructure. The difference is that the collected money stays in the community and goes towards what the community wants and needs instead of what the politicians think it needs and filling their pockets in the process.