> I need to correct a misconception. Under the VC system the > average and well-off DO pay for essential services.
Sorry, I badly mis-read that. So, it is food stamps without limit for those who need them, applied automatically by cc. I kind of like it but still wonder about: 1. A horrendously large cc bureaucracy. 2. Thieves/lawyers/entrepreneurs (the categories greatly overlapping, probably) finding ways to milk the system for their own gain. For example, organizing poor people to buy more food than they need with virtual credits, and buying the extra food from them with real credits, if that is possible under the system, or by providing them with luxuries. The food thus bought is then sold at a price lower than its original price, but still making a profit for the thieves. The profit came from the government-supplied food, ie the taxpayer-supplied food, and went into luxuries for the poor, and more luxuries for the thieves. It does not encourage the poor to work harder, since that particular job is so easy to do. That is a half-baked example and might not be workable for the thieves, or might be easily foiled by the system, though at the price of snooping into the lives of the poor that are involved. >Practically speaking such a system might help ensure the over-all >quality of "food stamps". Keep in mind the fact that if rich and >powerful receive the exact same food stamps that the less >advantage receive they are more likely to make sure that the food >stamps they receive AVAIL themselves to the best quality for which >society can supply everyone with. IOW, while the rich might >benefit, so would the less advantaged. Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see that happening: the rich will buy the best health care, not the basic care available to the less-rich - same as now; the rich will buy the best housing, not the basic version, etc. - They will be just as disconnected from the hoi polloi as they are today. I read somewhere a suggestion that people be allowed to have an income no more than x times that of the average income. Maybe that could be worked into your VC system to occur automatically and would keep the rich a bit more connected to the rest of us. One thing that strikes me about the chiropractic example is that it seems more people would become chiropractors (or doctors or perform any service) because their possible base of patients would expand to people who nowadays can not afford such services. But somebody has to pay for the services of the chiropractor, and the necessities that are bought. If it isn't the poor person, it must be the taxpayers. If the economy is efficient - if products are made at a low cost, then they can be virtually bought by the poorer people and impose a lower burden on the taxpayers than they would if the products were more expensive to make.
