[eloff]

As a software engineer, I feel all money should be digital and the IRS should be replaced with an algorithm. Fairer and more efficient for all. As a human living in a fallible state, I don't ever want the government to have that kind of power and visibility into my private life.

[Svip]

You put a lot of trust in the people developing that algorithm. Do you get to vote for an algorithm replacement every four years?

[eloff]

You vote for the legislators who hire the bureaucrats who define the algorithm that the engineers implement. Which is not much different from how it works now except there's a more manual process involving human judgement at various levels. You don't vote for the auditor working in the IRS.

[scarejunba]

The algorithm exists. Just because it’s not machine-executable doesn’t make it not an algorithm.

[pgeorgi]

It's exercised by humans though, with gives _some_ accountability.

Try asking a computer in court what it was thinking when it ran the algorithm.

[scarejunba]

Why? The algo should obviously be public so if you went to court you'd question the algo or its impl, not the computer. After all, you only want restitution and correction of the issue, not punishment.

[tastroder]

> The algo should obviously be public

Given that, at least in the US, people had to regularly sue corporations that defend the secrecy of their fancy algorithms^W^W Excel sheets as trade secrets... that's not as obvious as you might think.

[eloff]

Which is completely unrelated to public entities.

[mNovak]

What I've come to realize over the past couple years (as my taxes got considerably more complex) is that what's lost with the 'autonomous IRS' is essentially the ability to self-declare your expenditures based on their purpose (albeit with the risk of being audited). The algorithm, which in my interpretation of the suggestion just reads in all your transactional data, would be burdened with some very complex interpretation of supporting documentation. Unless of course it's very simple (e.g. flat tax)

[eloff]

Yeah you'd want a simpler tax system, one that could be done with an algorithm and a list of transactions. But that would be a win anyway. A book on the current tax system is about three times the size as a book on all of the laws of physics.

[ur-whale]

You statement is a walking contradiction. You want to get rid of cash, yet you want yo replace the IRS by an algorithm? How is that not giving all the power to the government?

[eloff]

That's the point. In an ideal world I want digital money and algorithmic taxes. In the real world where you can't trust your government it would be a mistake.