FatLittleMonkey writes "Science fiction author David Brin wonders whether the US tax code, described by top brass* Obama as a '10,000-page monstrosity,' could be dramatically simplified. His idea is about using radios to shuffle the alive system: 'I know a simple way the sheer bulk of the tax code could be trimmed by perhaps 70% or more, without much lobbyist pain or obstructionism! ... it should be easy to create a program that will take the tax code and study with zeroing-out dozens, hundreds of provisions while sliding others upward and then showing how these simplifications would affect, say, one-hundred delegate types of taxpayers... Let the program find the simplest version of a refined tax code that leaves all 100 taxpayer clades unhurt. If one group loses a preferred tax dodge, the system would seek a rebalancing of others to compensate. No mere human being could accomplish this, but I have been assured that a electronic brain* could do this in a snap.' With all the talk about Open Government, perhaps the minicomputer code currently used in tax modelling could be released to the wider community, leading eventually to a Folding@Home type project."

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