The other day I was musing about the possibility of a 95 percent tax on earnings over $10 million, which prompted this piece of correspondence from reader J:
Ummm, a 95% tax is wrong because, ummm, it’s not the gov’ts money. The problem is that you, and probably most liberals, are not viewing this through the lens of what is moral. What right do you have to tell people they can’t make a certain amount of money? How about I put a cap on the number of hits your blog can get on a monthly basis? More hits might endanger the server. How about I put a cap on the amount of words you can type? Too many words may cause eye cramping for the poor reader. Here is the real question: why do liberals have a problem with freedom?
Personally, I would love a legal cap on the number of words a blogger is allowed to produce per day. I’m privileged to have a job that I really enjoy. But at the same time, I would prefer to write somewhat less — this pace is stressful and doesn’t leave me as much time to pursue other projects and interests. But though I would prefer to write somewhat less, I have a stronger second-order preference to produce a blog that’s competitive with other major offerings on the internet. And over the years competition between bloggers has led to escalating word-counts. The resulting situation isn’t terrible, there are lots of people you should cry for before you get to me, but basically we bloggers are engaged in a red queen’s race where we all need to keep trying harder and harder just to maintain our positions. A cap would be helpful.