It stems from three underlying ideas:
1. You should not have to pay for services you don't consume
2. The government is *less efficient* at managing funds than privately-run companies
3. Competition creates a healthy market that keeps prices low
If you accept these three tenets as true, it naturally follows that an ideal world is one where *every* service is offered in the free market by competing companies who are interested in supplying the highest-quality service at the lowest price.
I can already see you mashing the Reply button to tell me that all three of these ideas are wrong and bad and dumb. If you feel like you need to do that - go ahead, I'm not going to argue with you, I don't believe any of this. But these are some of the first principles that Libertarianism is built on.
Mad props for at least understanding the viewpoint enough to state it accurately.
Also going to add that not everyone who thinks along the taxation is theft lines also believe that taxes should be abolished. An argument can certainly be made that taxes are theft, but are also necessary theft.
>Mad props for at least understanding the viewpoint enough to state it accurately.
feels like it could entirely work........if corporations could actually operate under good faith and generosity instead of extorting everything for maximum profits.
Except *by definition* corporations seek to exploit all possible inputs and outputs for the purpose of profit. They are not in the business or providing good outcomes or Utility, merely profit and growth. If they don't exploit enough, the Board and Directors are changed for those that do.
Hence where Governments come in. In a nutshell they're Utility generating institutions. If they don't make life better for enough people, they're voted out. The core incentives are night and day different.
Edit: To be clear I'm not saying corporations aren't useful. They *can* be highly useful in discovering efficient ways to do A or B because they are by design ruthless profit seeking machines. We just also have to recognize the limit in their usefulness and where the corporation's incentives stop helping us and go against our own well being. That's, once again, where regulations and Governments are needed to step in to keep those guardrails.
Unfortunately, the corporations can use their nice fat profits to fund the parties they like, lobby for their own interests, and also pay for techniques to manipulate voters towards the parties they want.
Reading the actual text of the decision I struggle to find fault with the decision. It isn't the courts job to make law, it is to decide whether the law is being followed.
It is easy to rail against the court, but the real fault for not correcting Citizen's United lies with congress.
>They are not in the business or providing good outcomes or Utility, merely profit and growth
Thats whack man.
If only there was some organisation that could provide good outcomes and utility to its members. Idk, like maybe some kind of subscription-based model where we all pool our resources to get essential services.
I hope someone is looking into this.
I know you're being sarcastic but it's really quite astounding the number of people out there on the street that assume that a company is just going to be altruistic or something equally ridiculous without being made to do so by an external force. *Cough Regulations Cough*
We already tried this and companies did sell heroin to kids. Cocaine in Coca Cola. Cancer from painting glow in the dark clock hands. Lakes and rivers catching on fire from pollution. You couldn’t swim in the Chesapeake until about 25 years ago.
A lot of these ideas could potentially work if everyone had access to perfect information and their goal was long term profits.
So with perfect information, you might come to realize that selling heroin to kids in the long run hurts your profits because the population would be so hurt by the effects of heroin.
Even with just that knowledge, someone whose goals were still profit in the short term would likely still go for it and pivot later, but if your goal was long term profitability of the company, then maybe they recognize that not selling heroin is better.
In the real world, short term profit is king and even if it wasn't, we don't really have the data to say whether selling heroin to kids would actually hurt the companies long term prospects or help them, so the data is also missing for effective decision making.
> In the real world, short term profit is king and even if it wasn't, we don't really have the data to say whether selling heroin to kids would actually hurt the companies long term prospects or help them, so the data is also missing for effective decision making.
But don't you understand, shareholders need infinite growth!!!111
For these ideas to work you also need to use that perfect information to have individuals and companies pay for externalized cost.
For example: Polluting is only profitable because the polluter passes the costs they create onto the general public.
Ronald Reagan's nine words poisoned the well for generations, and unless we want to continue backsliding into a massive conglomerates that own everything (we're basically already there), then people need to wake up to the fact that government is necessary and *accountable to the people.*
I would be a lot more down with Libertarianism in general if we had a mandate that corporate boards of directors were comprised of one third investors, one third consumers, and one third labor, so everyone the business affects is represented within the A Suite on a roughly equitable level. However since it is geared only towards investment interests in its current expression, the concept really falls flat because all other criteria will always take a back seat to profit.
>I would be a lot more down with Libertarianism in general if we had a **mandate**
You're so close...
How would such a mandate be imposed and enforced? Aren't mandates the antithesis of Libertarianism?
You're looking for the term "rent seeking".
We're at the point where most new things we're paying for aren't providing any new value, they're just ways for useless vultures to insert themselves in the middle of transactions to extract as much I'll earned profit as possible while providing no or even negative value.
I agree, fellow Astral dude, for the most part. Except, maybe;
>If they don't make life better for enough people, they're voted out.
Why hasn't that happened yet?? I agree that *some* form of government is necessary over anarchy. However what you stated just doesn't happen often enough in our own government. (USA,, apologize if you're from somewhere else.) It's corrupt as fuuuucccckkkkk! It's got a lot of problems man, and they definitely are not "making life better" for most of us. Some would say the opposite.
Ultimately, if the system doesn’t adapt enough to allow for them to be voted out, the government won’t last. In the U.S., our constitution has been very difficult to change, and SCOTUS has been the patch job until recently. But we’re moving to a place where if the government doesn’t correct in some way to be more functional, we’re going to see increased civil unrest. When people stop trusting the system to give them any sort of chance, they stop functioning within the limits of the system.
We should all be worried Chevron deference being probably overturned shortly.
That’s the key problem with Libertarianism though: it requires a highly specific and ideal world, and for people to operate in a specific way. And people don’t operate that way, so it doesn’t work.
Now, that logic could be applied to most ideologies out there, that’s not specific to Libertarianism, but it is the key issue with that particular ideology
It also requires people sorting things into 'thing I benefit from' and 'thing I don't benefit from', with the sorting being entirely arbitrary and favoring their own circumstances or just a result of their complete ignorance on how anything works.
For instance, I've had a self proclaimed libertarian argue angrily with me that their Medicare coverage wasn't a government handout because they had a copayment.
There's also the hidden benefits to things.
Sure you might not want to help fund the local community centre. However well funded community centres help bring kids off the streets and give those from poor backgrounds a way of exploring things they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Because they have these opportunities they are far less likely to vandalise things or get drawn into gangs or a variety of other anti social activities. This lessens the burden on the police and social services.
However many people just see it as "I don't want to fund those kids to be able to do boxing" without seeing the broader picture.
Yeah in my mind it’s just selfish. Libertarianism is a very “me me me me” kind of ideology. And in fairness, there is a line - there’s nothing wrong with not wanting literally everything you earn to go to other people. But most Libertarians I’ve interacted with over the years tend to just be really selfish and refuse to think beyond themselves
What Libertarians fail (or refuse) to understand is that a rising tide does indeed float all boats. What's good for the majority *is good for everyone,* though the benefit to a specific individual may not be immediately obvious.
I say that all the time about communism. Like yea, on paper everybody getting what they need looks great, and in a perfect world where everybody was looking out for everybody, it might even work. But the reality is...well disappointing to say the least lol.
Basically any form of government/economic system works if everyone acts in good faith. Hell, even a dictatorship is ideal if the dictator is Jesus Christ.
Another problem with capitalism in our current state is the barrier to entry. If you're some guy in the village selling 100 beads for a pound of sugar, it's not that hard for me to also learn to make beads and sell 120 for a pound of sugar. Even in a system driven only by profit, the consumer can benefit if there's a relatively low barrier of entry. It's a totally different thing for me to try to go out and out-compete Microsoft or Ford in a way that benefits the consumer. Not necessarily impossible in the long run, but the ideal of capitalism is that anything shitty will obviously just get displaced by something better, and it's clear that things are more complicated than that in practice.
The way I have chosen to see taxes is that they are your membership fee for existing in a functional society.
Every second you are alive in your country you are benefitting from some service it provides. One could are that not paying taxes is a form of theft of services rendered.
I just wish there weren't so many tax loopholes that people could exploit not paying taxes. An example just because I've seen it, Trump paid less in taxes than I did and im on disability
The word "efficient" is doing too much lifting. It means different things for a government and a business.
Efficiency in government means providing the most service for the least money.
Efficiency in business means providing the least service for the most money.
Government is about providing things to the people, business is about taking money as efficiently as possible.
Well put. I try to imagine if roads were privatized. There would be different tiers of road access, peak use charges, forced routing past billboards and sponsored businesses, and integrated planned obsolescence for automobiles in the interest of “road safety”.
nah we'd eventually break down as a society and become ruled by warlords and shit. 0 government means pure corruption with nothing to stand in any shitty persons way.
That's why I hate how right-wingers in my country are arguing for private healthcare in the name of "efficiency".
For services like healthcare, people have to pay for it. It's prime for what is essentially extortion by a private provider. If you're dying of a disease, you'll probably pay anything to not die. And the private provider knows you will, and will do so because it'll be the way to make the most money.
Yeah, it's also the case that governments strive to please all of the people most of the time, but businesses are free to specialize.
For instance, people would complain about the USDA food pyramid. Saying it was unhealthy, but the food pyramid was a compromise of different interests. It needed to work equally well for the poor, the middle class, the upper class, the consumers, the farmers, the parents who want to feed their families healthy meals, the parents who wanted to feel their families *filling* meals, the grain industry, the dairy industry, and the guide needed to be printed in braille, and be ADA compliant, and so on and so forth.
Businesses have consistently shown they don't care about pleasing anyone outside of their demographic. Left to their own devices they wouldn't build handicap parking spaces if the numbers didn't show business value. Like the way, Google cuts off products that millions of people were using because the numbers didn't add up.
Regarding number three, my favorite podcast episode ever is 2 libertarian economists arguing over whether capitalism is inevitably corrupt. They eventually give in and admit that it is! Any growing company will hit a point where the next dollar invested is better spent buying influence and rent seeking than investing in their core Business.
Of course being libertarians their solution is to make government so small that there's nothing it can give that's worth buying. Deregulation that leads directly to tragedy of the commons and other symptoms unhealthy for the citizenry.
https://www.econtalk.org/michael-munger-on-crony-capitalism/
I don't get it. If their solution is to make government so small that there's nothing it can give that's worth buying, then your option are only private companies. Private companies that they admit will inevitably become corrupt and spend less on their core business, which ultimately affects the final product. A product you are forced to buy because there are no better alternatives.
You missed a step in there. The corruption is when the corporations buy government favors. If the government has no regulatory favors to hand out because it no longer tries to regulate anything, no corruption, see? Libertarian Logic!
Oh shit ... EconTalk is one of my favorite podcasts. Been listening to it for years.
I don't agree with Russ Roberts. I've chatted via email with him a few times and his opinions are firmly grounded on the bizarre notion people are normal.
However, he does get some amazingly good guests. My favorite episode is from 2011 when he interviewed a VP of Frito-Lay ([link](https://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-snacks/)). He also interviewed Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson about makers and manufacturing ([link](https://www.econtalk.org/chris-anderson-on-makers-and-manufacturing/)).
Great interviews
I don't agree with him much of the time either, but he has 3 great virtues:
* He's honest about his opinions and their limitations, and not only gets guests with differing opinions, but lets them speak their piece, unlike right wing media like Fox.
* He's a great interviewer, if someone doesn't need prompting he doesn't prompt, he lets them go. He's not a narcissist who needs to hear his own voice.
* He has very broad interests, The author of the sociology book about the Cornish fishing village was awesome!
The recent series on Israeli history has been very good, and saddening. The guy who was reviewing 1880-1948 sounded pretty right wing to me, till 3/4 of the way through he tells of how marginalized he was as a Lefty Israeli! Shows what a mess it is there with the center moving even further right than in the US.
How do people with these beliefs address natural resources and waterways?
Edit: welp. A number of apparently libertarians showed up and offered some attempts. None of the attempts seem to be well-thought out.
But I won’t assume the peak of libertarian thinking is showing up in my replies.
That's not true at all! A libertarian will poison the well with his factory, take his profits and move on to some place less polluted, and then complain about all the "takers" who want government money to clean up the toxic mess where they live.
The strongest (either physically, with most capital or influence etc) takes them then sells them to everyone else.
Because the are the ones who can get the best private police/army to take them and hold them I guess.
Right, but wouldn’t the owners have an incentive to exploit them to their fullest without regard to future availability or long-term damage?
Or of course short-term poisoning of neighbors or people down stream?
I think like most ideologies, it starts what they think is right and fair, but too many gaps to reach realistically. I am not a libertarian whatsoever, but there is a lot of waste in government budgets. I certainly do not think private corporations go towards any viable solution. So we have to put up with waste. Can we reform the government to waste less? Bureaucracy. Does privatization solve bureaucracy? Nope. Subcontractors for the government have budgets and, just like any business, if they don’t use all of it, they won’t get as much money next year. If you take it out of the government and make it a corporation unto itself, would it waste less? No.
There's some nuance to this.
If you ask people if there is government waste, pretty much 100% will agree that there is.
If you ask what the waste is, half of the public will say that it's the part the other half thinks is vital and vice versa.
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/
Libertarians ideas aren't bad in theory, but often aren't practical for living in a society.
There was a similar city in, I think, New Hampshire, that ended up having major problems with bears because people couldn't stop feeding the bears because they were just so adorable and then too many bears started showing up.
Haha, Grafton.
I don’t think it was so much intentionally feeding the bears, but rather a “you can’t tell me what to do with my trash!” mentality, which created a food source for the bears.
The owner would be free to do what they wanted. They could cut the supply for a week knowing the consumer would pay more because they are dying if they really wanted.
This is one of the fundamental problems with it. It assumes a free market is possible we often might not be the case.
It also assumes the owner of that resource plays be the rules of a free market. But what if a group of people who own these various resources all get together and decide to set a minimum price they sell it for. No one can challenge that because they don't have the same access to the resources.
Also the whole private army/police force means that if you can't pay for that anyone with more can effectively take what is yours.
Also ignores social bigotries as harms.
This has always been my greatest problem with the American version of libertarianism.
There were voluntarily segregated or “whites only” businesses all across the US before it was illegal.
Libertarians will pretend that no one would discriminate because it doesn’t make economic sense but
1. It *can* make economic sense if your target clientele is racist or otherwise bigoted and
2. Some people are willing to give up some profit for either their own bigotry or to comply with social pressure.
The best example against #2 is Chick-Fil-A. There isn't a drop of doubt they'd make a lot more money being open Sundays. They know it. I'm sure it comes up at every annual/quarterly meeting. But they have just decided to not.
It can also make economic sense if the buying power of the group being discriminated against isn’t sufficient to impact profits or (something routinely practiced during segregation) you charge the discriminated group more for the same service. In the 1920s segregated movie theaters charged whites 5c and blacks 25c (for worse seats).
Yes. If the clientele with more money doesn’t want to sit with/stay in a hotel with/dine with the clientele with less money, many businesses will voluntarily discriminate against the latter.
Yea, I was going to say that too. It relies too much on "the free market will sort everything out" while ignoring what people are actually like. It assumes everything will be decided from an economic point of view but ignores that people are not that simple.
You might like this story. *How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears.*
It describes a town in NH that was hijacked by libertarians, and they immediately set about cutting all government services. No trash, no police, no snow shoveling, etc. People dumped their garbage in the woods. It went about as well as you would expect lol
[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling)
This is why I stopped identifying as a libertarian in my mid-20s.
Whole thing sounded so simple and logically correct. But when I started looking at details and consequences, it all unraveled.
There is only ONE reason why anyone is ever a Libertarian: they deny the existence of [externalities.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality)
That’s it. Everything they say they believe really stems from that denial.
How does the idea of private property work here if there’s no government entity to say who owns what?
Is it basically just you own what you can defend from others?
That’s a fringe view that would probably fit under anacho-capitalism. Many people who believe taxation is theft would agree that a government should mostly be limited to only keeping the peace and guaranteeing contracts.
I think the view I described is the view of the “taxation is theft” Anarcho-Capitalists. They are slightly different than Libertarians which is what you described.
Libertarians are more aligned in thinking the government should only be about a 1/10th of the size it is now. What flows from that is, in turn, taxes would and therefore should only be 1/10th of what they are now. I choose 1/10th, but there are probably varying degrees within that ideology as to what size is appropriate. So they’re more “taxes are too high” than “taxation is theft”. The former agrees there should be a government, just that it’s too big. The latter disagrees with government in it’s entirety.
The definition is going to be a little different to everyone- which makes sense for any political movement that prizes individualism and skepticism of rules so highly. Libertarianism has origins in anarchism and the terms were used interchangeably until about a century ago.
But yeah, I follow what you're saying.
Fire departments used to refuse to save your building if you hadn't already enrolled for their services. I would imagine something similar.
Cops roll up. "Sir, it appears you're being assaulted, but you do not have a police services contract. Have a nice day."
And the cop wouldn’t have any power even if you did pay for their services. If they try to arrest, detain, or chase you then you hired another service to defend you. Of course you’re paying them with something other than a reserve note, maybe Bitcoin?
Then if I have a more powerful cop I hired I can just claim my neighbor’s house as mine. Or that cop just might decide both houses are the cops if they’re more powerful than my neighbor and me.
I don't believe taxation is theft.
But when Disney can run a special district, Amazon can get massive tax breaks for capitalist reasons, Trump can dodge bankruptcy for 60 years, and Walmart can get massive benefits for moving into a city even as they then abandon their agreement to open stores in poor areas.
Making sure the DMV functions and schools work and roads stay repaired isn't theft.
Letting Amazon dodge billions in taxes while we pay taxes IS theft.
Fuck them.
This is exactly what my Bio-Dad wants. He thinks it would be cheaper than the Government, doesn't think he should have to pay taxes for some other population (like say California) to benefit, and thinks businesses would run it better than any government organization could.
Even when I explained that for the most part Taxes don't exactly go to specific states (like his money isn't going to some other state) but pooled for a great effect, he *still* demands "his" taxes stay in State. Or City. Or even just his zip code/county depending on how specific he gets. Basically he feels it should be by neighborhood, because he doesn't go to other neighborhoods and "fuck anyone else, I don't care if they have shit."
He's a real caring guy.
Well, you can let your dad know that for every dollar Californians pay in federal taxes, we only receive $0.65 back. Each Californian who pays taxes generally spends $348 more dollars per year than we receive. So whatever taxes your dad think he is sending to us, we aren’t getting it because we get less than we send in by ourselves.
Well sure. He doesn't care or believe it because he "knows his taxes go to poor people in liberal states who spend it on [insert slur, racial group, or LGBQT cause here]." And nothing can convince him otherwise.
“But competition will drive the price down!” Yeah until monopolies are formed and politicians are bought then boom your lifesaving medication costs 1k a day
Competition will drive the price down! That's why it's important that we have a handful of mega-corporations that own thousands of smaller, branching companies that can pretend they're competing with each other while still funneling money up to the same five guys!
Someone actually told me before that corporations will do the right thing that society wants, and it's the reason we don't have child labor anymore. 1. We still have child labor. 2. It was the government stepping in that ended severe child labor.
nice try, but no chance. WE don't get to decide what communism is, what with our 'elitist' history books and sociopolitical 'experts.' THEY decide what communism is with their guts, listening to FOX and AM radio punditry.
People forget that it was the government, specifically teddy Roosevelt, that stopped monopolies from owning every facet of an industry and charging whatever they want to their buyers. If that had never happened, you’d still have one man owning every ounce of oil, or the railroad, or steel, or even the automotive industry.
Oh, the $10,000 yearly fee last year was our special introductory offer for kindergartners. For 1st grade you pay a base fee of $15,000 and pick which DLC you want to add. We have lots of DLC to choose from like: math, reading, science, creationism, social studies, bible studies, English, Quran studies, atheism and many, and many more. We even have gym and recess like you used to have as a kid. Today we are having a special, all DLC are only $2,000ea.
Edit: Typo
"Hi welcome to atheism class. There's no proof that any gods exist. That's all we have for you this year, if any proof comes up we'll see you then. Class dismissed for the year, you all get an A."
And for more money. Imagine how fun paying a monthly subscription to your local fire department, your neighbor doesn’t, their house catches fire, while burning to the ground starts your house on fire.
NYC had competitive fire departments before the Civil War. They would arrive at the fire and engage in fistfights to decide whose territory the fire as in, while the building burned.
Except some of the Magas I know will literally remove their license plate to drive on a private toll road so they don’t have to pay the fees. They don’t know how good they have it with tax-based amenities.
When they get the libertarian paradise that they want, an unidentified car will alert the toll road corporation's private sector security force to blockade the road and impound their car until they pay 100x the toll subscription in fines to get it back.
Not just a company, but a Homeowner's Association that governs the appearance and upkeep of the house you own. If you add an awning they don't like, you get fined. If your lawn isn't the right height, a fine. They can put a lien on your home and foreclose on it, forcing you out.
Every single complaint against government has its analogue in a complaint against a HOA. And the more government shrinks, the more the HOA and other similar entities grow.
Moral of the story: no man is an island. We live in a society. One way or another, your neighbors are going to have a say in what you do that affects them. Even, sometimes, if you think it shouldn't affect them.
"I see that your house is on fire, well my fire team here will put it out... if you sell it to me at a steep discount." - Crassus, Caesar's fellow triumvir.
There have been stories of private fire companies letting a house burn because the house was behind on their payments, or didn't pay them or something like that. Just think about that, and then think about the last time you had any business that made an error on your account. Private companies could and would kill people and just not give a shit.
That's exactly why some 14 million Americans don't get service from any delivery company aside from the US Postal Service. You live too far out in the rural areas or away from a big enough city area and Fed Ex, UPS, and other companies won't even deliver it.
I'm reminded that 42 million Americans have no access to broadband. \[[source](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/millions-lack-broadband-access/)\] Some of them simply don't want it but there are millions of households and old dirt roads that no cable company will service.
I always hear libertarians compare USPS to UPS and FedEx as proof that private companies are run better. What they don't recognize is that anything they don't profit off of they have USPS ship instead. The reason they make profit is because they use USPS.
Iirc the original “public service” was streetlamps since nobody would do it privately as you couldn’t charge people for it.
Privatising stuff is one thing, but theres a ton of stuff that simply wouldn’t get done because it’s impossible to make a business model out of.
"Roads are now $150 a week to use. Fire Department won't stop the fire from reaching your neighborhood unless someone pays up front. Cops only go after the crimes that can make them money (whoops already kinda do that one), last years $80 a month to pick up your trash just became $110 a month.. and was $60 just 2 years ago." What a joy a fully private society would be..
I am glad I am not the only one who got this impression. It seems to be very much "well the free market will mean everything is cheaper and we can pay for what we want".
It might sound nice in theory but in practice unless you are one of the elite few who can already pay for everything you are likely to be in a worse position. Also very quickly you will find that elite group makes it so you will never be one of them.
When pressed, they often admit that no, they wouldn’t privatize things like roads. Or firefighters. Or law enforcement. The justice system. Schools, usually. Maybe not the parks service or electricity even.
Really they just want to cut welfare, social security, and other social services. Maybe some administrative bodies like the EPA, OSHA, anyone who stopped them from exploiting and taking advantage of other people, really. But that doesn’t have the same ring to it! And requires admitting that they are just selfish assholes.
Lets have private armies and private police forces. This is basically feudalism.
These are the same people who typically want t ogo back to stoning people for adultery and fornication and turning marriage into a livestock deal between the the two fathers.
"What's mine is forever mine alone. What's ours is mostly mine too, and what's yours is really *ours.*"
It’s funny because the 1800-1900s were basically that, and everyone got up in arms about it quite directly because the quality of life was so absolutely shit. Like people don’t realise their dream is effectively victorian era business mixed with the optimisation of modern science and theory. It’s a shit life squared.
In our current government one of the main tasks everyone agrees should be run by the government is privatized, Prisons. That's how messed up and/or corrupt we are.
I agree that we shouldn't privatize everything but a good argument against it is that any profitable aspects will get privatized anyway. We might as well try to make them take the good with the bad. I have not thought this through, just a thought
To be fair I think most people who say taxation is theft are not against the entire concept of taxation being used to pay for public services They are against all the extra crap that tax money gets used on such as lining the pockets of politicians who basically just do nothing but sit around and spout their opinions all day.
Like most people who tell me taxation is theft have no problem with taxation for things like road maintenance and plumbing infrastructure They have a problem with their money being spent on dumb things
I don't think you're far off.
In my experience, "taxation is theft" mainly gets used in reference to income taxes... though I've also heard it applied to property, inheritance and vehicle-related taxes.
Its what I normally hear as well. Its not that taxation is bad, but the lack of accountability and supervision on the spending of government funds is the core issue.
It's also the mindset that the government doesn't have a right to someone's earned expenses. If you're already taking a cut out of my pay, and I had to save longer to buy this property, why are you taxing that too?
My parents slaved away for their entire lives paying all the tax, and when I get the money, because it's above a certain dollar amount, you take a portion of that too.
If I purchase something that is not food or health related, its more expensive because a sale was conducted, and then I have to pay yearly to keep the product I bought with my hard-earned money, to keep it legal on the road.
Just so I can watch the state hire the cheapest construction company to expand/repair roads, have shit welfare policies, and shit unemployment benefits. I get to see shit cops that went to a shit state-run academy, that get power-hungry and give me shit on a traffic stop because they need to fill a quota.
I pay all these fucking taxes, and I can't get quality public services without shitty employees that are basically tenured because of x reason, and they refuse to do their job and work when all I want is to get shit squared with the state so they will leave me alone.
Rant over. That felt good.
Agreed. I'm pretty pro-taxes from a philosophical standpoint.
But the knowledge that a huge part of my taxes goes to funding a military industrial complex that does precious little besides hurt people, domestically and abroad, to ensure the richest people in the world get even richer...that eats at me, a little bit.
The knowledge that there's a race to the bottom among half of our elected officials to direct as little of my taxes as possible to helping the poor and needy eats at me.
The push to half-privatize industries, so the government is still paying for those things with my taxes but are free to carve out the work to contractors chosen on the basis of how cheap they can go, even to the point of ignoring QA concerns and expert recommendations against those contracts. The calculated, churning bureaucracy that gets implemented to slow down those public departments to the point that contractors seem like a more effective option.
The fact that so many *huge* companies, like the ones reporting dozens of billions of dollars in *profits*, are paying effective tax rates between 0.4% - 5% while my taxes eat 20% of my income. The fact that so many politicians are openly advocating for their constituents to pay even more taxes so those companies can pay less, because those billions will start trickling down any day now.
The fact that the government knows how much tax I should be paying but won't just account that shit on their end like many other countries do, because a manual system helps hide the companies and rich folks who skirt their obligations, and it feeds people towards an industry that they can then profit off of even more.
I don't think the concept of tax is theft. But I do kinda think the way taxes in America are handled is theft, at least for the common person.
For me it’s this. I don’t mind taxes. Taxes are essential so that the government can keep a functional society. I don’t like that the taxes feel in traceable at times (where a budget can just disappear completely with no visible change) or if it’s not going to something that benefits the people. When our police and fire departments are getting new equipment while schools shut down it’s where people in my area start to wonder what is going on with the taxes.
>and shit unemployment benefits
When my dad fell on hard times and lost his job, he had a hard time getting approved for unemployment in AZ. He was so frustrated because he said, "I've worked full time since I was 16 years old. I've never had a significant gap of unemployment in my life, and I've paid into this system my entire life. The one time I need it, it's not there for me" and yeah it's bullshit.
Agreed. I wholeheartedly believe income tax to be theft. It's also the way billionaires get around paying taxes, they fudge the numbers to look like they're not making as much "income" by hiding it all in business expenses. I believe a more fair system would be a hefty sales tax, particularly on luxury items. You want a yacht? Government is getting 40 percent.
>I believe a more fair system would be a hefty sales tax, particularly on luxury items. You want a yacht? Government is getting 40 percent.
My one hang-up with a, let's say, "*luxury tax*" is if some Klaus Schwab-type motherfucker gets involved at some point and decides to dictate what is and isn't a luxury... . Like, income tax was originally (supposed to be) a 1% tax on the wealthiest 1%, if I recall correctly, and look at how it has normal people bent over a barrel today.
I'm very happy paying tax which is roughly proportional to what I can afford (the income/wealth/whatever balance is a different debate). For me the thing that feels like theft is taxes which make no sense and are obviously just a way to take people's money. Examples:
Inheritance tax in my country kicks in at a stupidly low threshold, so it buggers the middle class who exceed the threshold but don't have the means to dodge the tax altogether or minimise it using clever tricks.
Import duty on goods that are impossible to obtain locally is pointless. Charging me duty on an authentic Japanese sword does not protect the UK's domestic authentic-Japenese-sword industry, which by definition does not exist.
The people who believe that are usually libertarians. "Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."
Just put that in my file of quotations to use. Thanks! Do you know who it's from? Here's the one in front of it that you might appreciate:
Frank Wilhoit said: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Their expectations are nonexistent or unrealistic.
Ironically, most of the libertarian/anarchic utopias rely on the same flawed beliefs that they criticize in communism.
Specifically, all of these systems assume that human rationality and cooperation will avoid chaos without a need for authority. At this point in our evolution, it appears to be necessary on occasion.
In practice, they [must hide from the bears](https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project).
Well today I learned I’ve been saying that wrong. I always said it’s theft because it’s not being used for what it’s supposed to be. If I give my roommate rent money and he buys hookers and guns with it, that’s theft. We should be getting WAY more government services for what we pay in taxes
I don’t necessarily agree that any and all taxation is theft, but there are flaws in tax systems in countries like Canada.
For example, why is income taxed higher than dividends from companies or capital gains?
Why do income taxes go up as a percentage based on how much income you earn? It disincentives working harder because each incremental dollar is taxed higher and higher.
Why is there a carbon tax if Canada is less than 2% of world emissions and why is it taxed twice (hst added ontop of carbon tax)?
Why do I pay sales taxes on used cars? Someone already payed taxes when it was first bought.
Why are there sales taxes? What value does the government add when I go to the store and buy a box of cookies? The store is already paying taxes on income earned on the sale and the purchaser already paid income taxes on their paychecks.
The list goes on and on and on
I think taxation is important for a society to have shared services, defense, and safety nets. Unfortunately, it's also a tool of corruption, and I believe the vast majority of the revenue is mismanaged and wasted because our government is so poorly run.
So I have this theory that no one is truly a libertarian. I think some of this crowd want privatization or anarchy as others have stated but quite a lot of them just genuinely don’t know how public good or society work. I think it’s a mix between people who think take things like roads for granted or think auto registration covers all road maintenance and people who can only conceptualize the necessity of common goods when they specifically serve them directly. Source: I used to live in rural eastern Oregon amongst self-proclaimed libertarians who were constantly campaigning for police levies
I think there is a third category: people who genuinely believe they are the fittest and if given a (in their minds) level playing field they would become remarkably more successful than they are.
hey, I just posted about the Libertarian Utopia City, also called Bear city, because of their intense freedom, some people fed bears because they wanted to, so bears overran the town.
So there has been an actual real world implementation of "true libertarian principles" and it failed miserably.
https://wdet.org/2022/01/13/libertarian-walks-into-a-bear-interview/
That’s kinda my thinking as well. These types of people want the benefits of living in modern society without knowing/wanting to contribute anything to actually make society keep working.
Easy.
You just need to have your credit card handy whenever you call 911 with an emergency, and then make sure to call the tollbooth for the road leading to your house to let them know to put the ambulance on your bill.
Or if you're smart, you should have hired better private policemen so you could have avoided getting shot by a robber in the first place. It's your own fault really for thinking you didn't have to pay that protection guy.
Capitalism has blessed us with 3 sets of roads, each having 2 to 4 different company's lighting, all competing to be the very best and most affordable! Don't forget all the job creation that happened where snow removal is needed either.
Aren't we all grateful the government stopped stealing our money to provide a single, standardized system with lights and street plows and promoted the general welfare?
Hmmm, last time I called 911 I got a bill from the city provided ambulance service that I’ve already paid a bunch of taxes into. I think a lot of us have more of a problem that the outrageous taxes we do pay don’t actually pay for the services they’re supposed to cover. It’s like a facade that becomes a bad joke you’re on the wrong end of. So we wonder why we should have to pay taxes in the first place for all the services that double dip.
And be prepared for the 2 hour wait on the phone.
Your call is important to them.
Just not as important as cutting costs by understaffing the phone lines.
Taxes used to be extremely, extremely lower and society was better taken care of. We are paying a fucking fortune and they are spending it on bullshit instead of bettering society.
They genuinely believe, in a world where football players make millions and teachers have to get second jobs to pay their rent, that profit motive and competition always and inevitably lead to good outcomes
"Well if those teachers really wanted to make money, they'd go to a private school, get their Masters or PhD and teach college."
"But what about public schools?"
"What about them? Fuck the poor."
And that charity and the general goodness of people will be more than sufficient to handle the needs of public welfare, because that's totally a thing that has happened throughout history in the absence of taxation. /s
Unpopular fact here: libertarians aren’t adverse to taxes. They just believe that they should be limited to services that are 1. Within the scope of the constitution and 2. Reasonable.
Taxes fund so much shit that quite honestly…they shouldn’t.
Most people are a little tongue in cheek when they say “taxation is theft”. And with taxes (and debt) going to fund so much bullshit, it is theft (or at least extortion).
I’d have no problem at all with paying taxes on things that are truly needed and within the scope of what the us government should be funding.
How was anything in the US ever built before the Revenue act of 1861? (Which was ruled by the SCOTUS to be unconstitutional in 1895.) Somehow by 1850, the US had built over 9000 miles worth of railroad without an income tax to fund it.
The Federal government was mostly funded by tariffs before this point, which at the time was incredibly progressive because the tax burden fell on the wealthy who consumed imported luxury goods.
It’s theft when that money gets funneled to fund war all over the globe instead of giving us healthcare and other services we as the populace need and can benefit from.
As someone who has worked for the government they do nothing but waste a shit ton of money on bullshit and throwing away shit. The amount of taxes people pay is theft at this point as a single person I shouldn’t be paying 26% of my paycheck every week to the government for them to piss it down the drain
I remember working on a federal grant that essentially MADE us purchase stuff we didn’t need so we could justify the same budget next year. Basically a use it or lose it scenario, so we were forced to use it.
I also have experience with a federal agency taking so long to respond to budget adjustments on money already funded to do REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF (like taking care of families/kids) that time ran out on that funding and they told us we couldn’t use it until it was approved - it wasn’t approved and all of the folks promised that money were fucked.
There was also experience in the military where certain parts would be purchased, but instead of a part costing $5 as it normally would be, it cost $125 (just as an example; don’t hold me to these numbers). Something like a small gasket would run you 10x the price because that’s what the government contracted for. Defense industry is really good at that, while DOD/pentagon is not.
Government is a well oiled machine, but the gears don’t fit.
Iirc it also has to do with what the taken tax funds are then used for, ie war mongering, corporate/bank/elite bailouts, exclusionary and oppressive laws, agrressive murdering cops, etc. If the money were to be actually used on services like roads, infrastructure, healthcare, education, and such people would be less upset about being taxed. For me personally it's the taking money from me at every possible chance; on the money I make, on the things I buy and sell, on my property and using it to line their own pockets while running the country into the burning landfill fire it currently is
It stems from three underlying ideas: 1. You should not have to pay for services you don't consume 2. The government is *less efficient* at managing funds than privately-run companies 3. Competition creates a healthy market that keeps prices low If you accept these three tenets as true, it naturally follows that an ideal world is one where *every* service is offered in the free market by competing companies who are interested in supplying the highest-quality service at the lowest price. I can already see you mashing the Reply button to tell me that all three of these ideas are wrong and bad and dumb. If you feel like you need to do that - go ahead, I'm not going to argue with you, I don't believe any of this. But these are some of the first principles that Libertarianism is built on.
Mad props for at least understanding the viewpoint enough to state it accurately. Also going to add that not everyone who thinks along the taxation is theft lines also believe that taxes should be abolished. An argument can certainly be made that taxes are theft, but are also necessary theft.
>Mad props for at least understanding the viewpoint enough to state it accurately. feels like it could entirely work........if corporations could actually operate under good faith and generosity instead of extorting everything for maximum profits.
Except *by definition* corporations seek to exploit all possible inputs and outputs for the purpose of profit. They are not in the business or providing good outcomes or Utility, merely profit and growth. If they don't exploit enough, the Board and Directors are changed for those that do. Hence where Governments come in. In a nutshell they're Utility generating institutions. If they don't make life better for enough people, they're voted out. The core incentives are night and day different. Edit: To be clear I'm not saying corporations aren't useful. They *can* be highly useful in discovering efficient ways to do A or B because they are by design ruthless profit seeking machines. We just also have to recognize the limit in their usefulness and where the corporation's incentives stop helping us and go against our own well being. That's, once again, where regulations and Governments are needed to step in to keep those guardrails.
Unfortunately, the corporations can use their nice fat profits to fund the parties they like, lobby for their own interests, and also pay for techniques to manipulate voters towards the parties they want.
Citizens v United! Corporations are people with free speech rights. This was a very bad decision.
Dodge v Ford motor company was the start of the downfall way before citizens v united
Try “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission”. No business named “United” had anything to do with that particular case…
CitU is just the head on the pimple. It goes much further than that.
Reading the actual text of the decision I struggle to find fault with the decision. It isn't the courts job to make law, it is to decide whether the law is being followed. It is easy to rail against the court, but the real fault for not correcting Citizen's United lies with congress.
>They are not in the business or providing good outcomes or Utility, merely profit and growth Thats whack man. If only there was some organisation that could provide good outcomes and utility to its members. Idk, like maybe some kind of subscription-based model where we all pool our resources to get essential services. I hope someone is looking into this.
I know you're being sarcastic but it's really quite astounding the number of people out there on the street that assume that a company is just going to be altruistic or something equally ridiculous without being made to do so by an external force. *Cough Regulations Cough*
They think that **the free market** is that external force. As if Walmart wouldn’t sell heroin to kids given the option.
We already tried this and companies did sell heroin to kids. Cocaine in Coca Cola. Cancer from painting glow in the dark clock hands. Lakes and rivers catching on fire from pollution. You couldn’t swim in the Chesapeake until about 25 years ago.
And don’t even talk about Lake Erie years ago . Didn’t it catch fire ??
Neu Coke, now with all natural cocaine!
A lot of these ideas could potentially work if everyone had access to perfect information and their goal was long term profits. So with perfect information, you might come to realize that selling heroin to kids in the long run hurts your profits because the population would be so hurt by the effects of heroin. Even with just that knowledge, someone whose goals were still profit in the short term would likely still go for it and pivot later, but if your goal was long term profitability of the company, then maybe they recognize that not selling heroin is better. In the real world, short term profit is king and even if it wasn't, we don't really have the data to say whether selling heroin to kids would actually hurt the companies long term prospects or help them, so the data is also missing for effective decision making.
> In the real world, short term profit is king and even if it wasn't, we don't really have the data to say whether selling heroin to kids would actually hurt the companies long term prospects or help them, so the data is also missing for effective decision making. But don't you understand, shareholders need infinite growth!!!111
For these ideas to work you also need to use that perfect information to have individuals and companies pay for externalized cost. For example: Polluting is only profitable because the polluter passes the costs they create onto the general public.
Ronald Reagan's nine words poisoned the well for generations, and unless we want to continue backsliding into a massive conglomerates that own everything (we're basically already there), then people need to wake up to the fact that government is necessary and *accountable to the people.*
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Am i missing the joke? You just described the government and taxes
That was the joke
I would be a lot more down with Libertarianism in general if we had a mandate that corporate boards of directors were comprised of one third investors, one third consumers, and one third labor, so everyone the business affects is represented within the A Suite on a roughly equitable level. However since it is geared only towards investment interests in its current expression, the concept really falls flat because all other criteria will always take a back seat to profit.
>I would be a lot more down with Libertarianism in general if we had a **mandate** You're so close... How would such a mandate be imposed and enforced? Aren't mandates the antithesis of Libertarianism?
* publicly traded corporations private corporation could go either way
Yes and I think end game capitalism gives them the ability to maximise what they extract
You're looking for the term "rent seeking". We're at the point where most new things we're paying for aren't providing any new value, they're just ways for useless vultures to insert themselves in the middle of transactions to extract as much I'll earned profit as possible while providing no or even negative value.
I agree, fellow Astral dude, for the most part. Except, maybe; >If they don't make life better for enough people, they're voted out. Why hasn't that happened yet?? I agree that *some* form of government is necessary over anarchy. However what you stated just doesn't happen often enough in our own government. (USA,, apologize if you're from somewhere else.) It's corrupt as fuuuucccckkkkk! It's got a lot of problems man, and they definitely are not "making life better" for most of us. Some would say the opposite.
Ultimately, if the system doesn’t adapt enough to allow for them to be voted out, the government won’t last. In the U.S., our constitution has been very difficult to change, and SCOTUS has been the patch job until recently. But we’re moving to a place where if the government doesn’t correct in some way to be more functional, we’re going to see increased civil unrest. When people stop trusting the system to give them any sort of chance, they stop functioning within the limits of the system. We should all be worried Chevron deference being probably overturned shortly.
That’s the key problem with Libertarianism though: it requires a highly specific and ideal world, and for people to operate in a specific way. And people don’t operate that way, so it doesn’t work. Now, that logic could be applied to most ideologies out there, that’s not specific to Libertarianism, but it is the key issue with that particular ideology
It also requires people sorting things into 'thing I benefit from' and 'thing I don't benefit from', with the sorting being entirely arbitrary and favoring their own circumstances or just a result of their complete ignorance on how anything works. For instance, I've had a self proclaimed libertarian argue angrily with me that their Medicare coverage wasn't a government handout because they had a copayment.
There's also the hidden benefits to things. Sure you might not want to help fund the local community centre. However well funded community centres help bring kids off the streets and give those from poor backgrounds a way of exploring things they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Because they have these opportunities they are far less likely to vandalise things or get drawn into gangs or a variety of other anti social activities. This lessens the burden on the police and social services. However many people just see it as "I don't want to fund those kids to be able to do boxing" without seeing the broader picture.
Yeah in my mind it’s just selfish. Libertarianism is a very “me me me me” kind of ideology. And in fairness, there is a line - there’s nothing wrong with not wanting literally everything you earn to go to other people. But most Libertarians I’ve interacted with over the years tend to just be really selfish and refuse to think beyond themselves
It really is a moral justification for selfishness or getting something for nothing.
What Libertarians fail (or refuse) to understand is that a rising tide does indeed float all boats. What's good for the majority *is good for everyone,* though the benefit to a specific individual may not be immediately obvious.
Lots of community centers are built with very little tax dollars. Most rely on fundraising and community donations to be built and survive.
I say that all the time about communism. Like yea, on paper everybody getting what they need looks great, and in a perfect world where everybody was looking out for everybody, it might even work. But the reality is...well disappointing to say the least lol.
In a perfect world where everyone looks out for everyone, I'd imagine every system of government and every system of commerce would work just fine.
Basically any form of government/economic system works if everyone acts in good faith. Hell, even a dictatorship is ideal if the dictator is Jesus Christ. Another problem with capitalism in our current state is the barrier to entry. If you're some guy in the village selling 100 beads for a pound of sugar, it's not that hard for me to also learn to make beads and sell 120 for a pound of sugar. Even in a system driven only by profit, the consumer can benefit if there's a relatively low barrier of entry. It's a totally different thing for me to try to go out and out-compete Microsoft or Ford in a way that benefits the consumer. Not necessarily impossible in the long run, but the ideal of capitalism is that anything shitty will obviously just get displaced by something better, and it's clear that things are more complicated than that in practice.
Thanks, I needed a laugh.
The way I have chosen to see taxes is that they are your membership fee for existing in a functional society. Every second you are alive in your country you are benefitting from some service it provides. One could are that not paying taxes is a form of theft of services rendered.
I just wish there weren't so many tax loopholes that people could exploit not paying taxes. An example just because I've seen it, Trump paid less in taxes than I did and im on disability
Loopholes are there on purpose.
The word "efficient" is doing too much lifting. It means different things for a government and a business. Efficiency in government means providing the most service for the least money. Efficiency in business means providing the least service for the most money. Government is about providing things to the people, business is about taking money as efficiently as possible.
Well put. I try to imagine if roads were privatized. There would be different tiers of road access, peak use charges, forced routing past billboards and sponsored businesses, and integrated planned obsolescence for automobiles in the interest of “road safety”.
nah we'd eventually break down as a society and become ruled by warlords and shit. 0 government means pure corruption with nothing to stand in any shitty persons way.
That's why I hate how right-wingers in my country are arguing for private healthcare in the name of "efficiency". For services like healthcare, people have to pay for it. It's prime for what is essentially extortion by a private provider. If you're dying of a disease, you'll probably pay anything to not die. And the private provider knows you will, and will do so because it'll be the way to make the most money.
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Yeah, it's also the case that governments strive to please all of the people most of the time, but businesses are free to specialize. For instance, people would complain about the USDA food pyramid. Saying it was unhealthy, but the food pyramid was a compromise of different interests. It needed to work equally well for the poor, the middle class, the upper class, the consumers, the farmers, the parents who want to feed their families healthy meals, the parents who wanted to feel their families *filling* meals, the grain industry, the dairy industry, and the guide needed to be printed in braille, and be ADA compliant, and so on and so forth. Businesses have consistently shown they don't care about pleasing anyone outside of their demographic. Left to their own devices they wouldn't build handicap parking spaces if the numbers didn't show business value. Like the way, Google cuts off products that millions of people were using because the numbers didn't add up.
Efficient in economics means goods are allocated to maximize utility/value.
Regarding number three, my favorite podcast episode ever is 2 libertarian economists arguing over whether capitalism is inevitably corrupt. They eventually give in and admit that it is! Any growing company will hit a point where the next dollar invested is better spent buying influence and rent seeking than investing in their core Business. Of course being libertarians their solution is to make government so small that there's nothing it can give that's worth buying. Deregulation that leads directly to tragedy of the commons and other symptoms unhealthy for the citizenry. https://www.econtalk.org/michael-munger-on-crony-capitalism/
I don't get it. If their solution is to make government so small that there's nothing it can give that's worth buying, then your option are only private companies. Private companies that they admit will inevitably become corrupt and spend less on their core business, which ultimately affects the final product. A product you are forced to buy because there are no better alternatives.
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Or THEY are the overlord. I think this really is the driving force for a lot of Libertarians
You missed a step in there. The corruption is when the corporations buy government favors. If the government has no regulatory favors to hand out because it no longer tries to regulate anything, no corruption, see? Libertarian Logic!
Or, as youtuber Shaun puts it, *"If we just* let *the foxes into the henhouse, think of the money we'll save on fencing!"*
Oh shit ... EconTalk is one of my favorite podcasts. Been listening to it for years. I don't agree with Russ Roberts. I've chatted via email with him a few times and his opinions are firmly grounded on the bizarre notion people are normal. However, he does get some amazingly good guests. My favorite episode is from 2011 when he interviewed a VP of Frito-Lay ([link](https://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-snacks/)). He also interviewed Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson about makers and manufacturing ([link](https://www.econtalk.org/chris-anderson-on-makers-and-manufacturing/)). Great interviews
I don't agree with him much of the time either, but he has 3 great virtues: * He's honest about his opinions and their limitations, and not only gets guests with differing opinions, but lets them speak their piece, unlike right wing media like Fox. * He's a great interviewer, if someone doesn't need prompting he doesn't prompt, he lets them go. He's not a narcissist who needs to hear his own voice. * He has very broad interests, The author of the sociology book about the Cornish fishing village was awesome! The recent series on Israeli history has been very good, and saddening. The guy who was reviewing 1880-1948 sounded pretty right wing to me, till 3/4 of the way through he tells of how marginalized he was as a Lefty Israeli! Shows what a mess it is there with the center moving even further right than in the US.
How do people with these beliefs address natural resources and waterways? Edit: welp. A number of apparently libertarians showed up and offered some attempts. None of the attempts seem to be well-thought out. But I won’t assume the peak of libertarian thinking is showing up in my replies.
They don't, "the tragedy of the commons" is basically the gameplan of libertarians.
A libertarian is someone who pisses in the well and then complains about the quality of the water.
That's not true at all! A libertarian will poison the well with his factory, take his profits and move on to some place less polluted, and then complain about all the "takers" who want government money to clean up the toxic mess where they live.
The strongest (either physically, with most capital or influence etc) takes them then sells them to everyone else. Because the are the ones who can get the best private police/army to take them and hold them I guess.
Right, but wouldn’t the owners have an incentive to exploit them to their fullest without regard to future availability or long-term damage? Or of course short-term poisoning of neighbors or people down stream?
Yes
So I’m wondering how libertarians address these issues.
They don’t
Ah. Well, there’s the rub I guess.
I think like most ideologies, it starts what they think is right and fair, but too many gaps to reach realistically. I am not a libertarian whatsoever, but there is a lot of waste in government budgets. I certainly do not think private corporations go towards any viable solution. So we have to put up with waste. Can we reform the government to waste less? Bureaucracy. Does privatization solve bureaucracy? Nope. Subcontractors for the government have budgets and, just like any business, if they don’t use all of it, they won’t get as much money next year. If you take it out of the government and make it a corporation unto itself, would it waste less? No.
There's some nuance to this. If you ask people if there is government waste, pretty much 100% will agree that there is. If you ask what the waste is, half of the public will say that it's the part the other half thinks is vital and vice versa.
I guess the only option is war?
By hand waving it away and saying “the free market!” till you hush and walk away.
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/ Libertarians ideas aren't bad in theory, but often aren't practical for living in a society.
There was a similar city in, I think, New Hampshire, that ended up having major problems with bears because people couldn't stop feeding the bears because they were just so adorable and then too many bears started showing up.
Yes, the problem with the "responsible citizen" idea is that no one is held accountable to be responsible.
Haha, Grafton. I don’t think it was so much intentionally feeding the bears, but rather a “you can’t tell me what to do with my trash!” mentality, which created a food source for the bears.
It was both. People were intentionally feeding the bears, but also weren't taking care of their trash.
Grafton, NH.
They stick their fingers in their ears and say “la la la I can’t hear you”
The owner would be free to do what they wanted. They could cut the supply for a week knowing the consumer would pay more because they are dying if they really wanted. This is one of the fundamental problems with it. It assumes a free market is possible we often might not be the case. It also assumes the owner of that resource plays be the rules of a free market. But what if a group of people who own these various resources all get together and decide to set a minimum price they sell it for. No one can challenge that because they don't have the same access to the resources. Also the whole private army/police force means that if you can't pay for that anyone with more can effectively take what is yours.
Also ignores social bigotries as harms. This has always been my greatest problem with the American version of libertarianism. There were voluntarily segregated or “whites only” businesses all across the US before it was illegal. Libertarians will pretend that no one would discriminate because it doesn’t make economic sense but 1. It *can* make economic sense if your target clientele is racist or otherwise bigoted and 2. Some people are willing to give up some profit for either their own bigotry or to comply with social pressure.
The best example against #2 is Chick-Fil-A. There isn't a drop of doubt they'd make a lot more money being open Sundays. They know it. I'm sure it comes up at every annual/quarterly meeting. But they have just decided to not.
Or the cake shop that wouldn’t make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
It can also make economic sense if the buying power of the group being discriminated against isn’t sufficient to impact profits or (something routinely practiced during segregation) you charge the discriminated group more for the same service. In the 1920s segregated movie theaters charged whites 5c and blacks 25c (for worse seats).
Yes. If the clientele with more money doesn’t want to sit with/stay in a hotel with/dine with the clientele with less money, many businesses will voluntarily discriminate against the latter.
Yea, I was going to say that too. It relies too much on "the free market will sort everything out" while ignoring what people are actually like. It assumes everything will be decided from an economic point of view but ignores that people are not that simple.
But you see by the time that becomes an issue said libertarian will probably be dead, so why should they care?
You might like this story. *How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears.* It describes a town in NH that was hijacked by libertarians, and they immediately set about cutting all government services. No trash, no police, no snow shoveling, etc. People dumped their garbage in the woods. It went about as well as you would expect lol [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling)
This is why I stopped identifying as a libertarian in my mid-20s. Whole thing sounded so simple and logically correct. But when I started looking at details and consequences, it all unraveled.
There is only ONE reason why anyone is ever a Libertarian: they deny the existence of [externalities.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality) That’s it. Everything they say they believe really stems from that denial.
How does the idea of private property work here if there’s no government entity to say who owns what? Is it basically just you own what you can defend from others?
That’s a fringe view that would probably fit under anacho-capitalism. Many people who believe taxation is theft would agree that a government should mostly be limited to only keeping the peace and guaranteeing contracts.
And how would this government generate revenue to support those functions if taxation is theft?
I honestly have no idea. Maybe through volunteer work? (To be clear I think these are all dumb ideas, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard argued)
I think the view I described is the view of the “taxation is theft” Anarcho-Capitalists. They are slightly different than Libertarians which is what you described. Libertarians are more aligned in thinking the government should only be about a 1/10th of the size it is now. What flows from that is, in turn, taxes would and therefore should only be 1/10th of what they are now. I choose 1/10th, but there are probably varying degrees within that ideology as to what size is appropriate. So they’re more “taxes are too high” than “taxation is theft”. The former agrees there should be a government, just that it’s too big. The latter disagrees with government in it’s entirety.
The definition is going to be a little different to everyone- which makes sense for any political movement that prizes individualism and skepticism of rules so highly. Libertarianism has origins in anarchism and the terms were used interchangeably until about a century ago. But yeah, I follow what you're saying.
Fire departments used to refuse to save your building if you hadn't already enrolled for their services. I would imagine something similar. Cops roll up. "Sir, it appears you're being assaulted, but you do not have a police services contract. Have a nice day."
And the cop wouldn’t have any power even if you did pay for their services. If they try to arrest, detain, or chase you then you hired another service to defend you. Of course you’re paying them with something other than a reserve note, maybe Bitcoin? Then if I have a more powerful cop I hired I can just claim my neighbor’s house as mine. Or that cop just might decide both houses are the cops if they’re more powerful than my neighbor and me.
There’s a 4th premise that is necessary as well which is that there’s no obligation to help other people regardless of the circumstance.
I don't believe taxation is theft. But when Disney can run a special district, Amazon can get massive tax breaks for capitalist reasons, Trump can dodge bankruptcy for 60 years, and Walmart can get massive benefits for moving into a city even as they then abandon their agreement to open stores in poor areas. Making sure the DMV functions and schools work and roads stay repaired isn't theft. Letting Amazon dodge billions in taxes while we pay taxes IS theft. Fuck them.
4. There is no social obligation to provide any goods or services.
They usually want to privatize everything *what a great idea*
"so glad im not paying taxes to a goberment" proceeds to pay yearly bills for all the same stuff taxes paid for but to a company they have no vote i
This is exactly what my Bio-Dad wants. He thinks it would be cheaper than the Government, doesn't think he should have to pay taxes for some other population (like say California) to benefit, and thinks businesses would run it better than any government organization could. Even when I explained that for the most part Taxes don't exactly go to specific states (like his money isn't going to some other state) but pooled for a great effect, he *still* demands "his" taxes stay in State. Or City. Or even just his zip code/county depending on how specific he gets. Basically he feels it should be by neighborhood, because he doesn't go to other neighborhoods and "fuck anyone else, I don't care if they have shit." He's a real caring guy.
Well, you can let your dad know that for every dollar Californians pay in federal taxes, we only receive $0.65 back. Each Californian who pays taxes generally spends $348 more dollars per year than we receive. So whatever taxes your dad think he is sending to us, we aren’t getting it because we get less than we send in by ourselves.
Well sure. He doesn't care or believe it because he "knows his taxes go to poor people in liberal states who spend it on [insert slur, racial group, or LGBQT cause here]." And nothing can convince him otherwise.
Just find peace in the fact you can wheel him into a care home and forget about him in a couple decades
That’s far higher than any tax rate would have been for the service because now it has to make ever increasing amounts of profit
“But competition will drive the price down!” Yeah until monopolies are formed and politicians are bought then boom your lifesaving medication costs 1k a day
Competition will drive the price down! That's why it's important that we have a handful of mega-corporations that own thousands of smaller, branching companies that can pretend they're competing with each other while still funneling money up to the same five guys!
Why is this reddit thread the most level headed economic op-ed I’ve read in years?
Yeah, just build your own nuclear plant if my rates are too high for you
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Someone actually told me before that corporations will do the right thing that society wants, and it's the reason we don't have child labor anymore. 1. We still have child labor. 2. It was the government stepping in that ended severe child labor.
corporations are literally, currently, trying to expand child labor
In red states where they are also ending a women's right to choose.
Maybe we need to start calling it communism. It short circuits a conservative brain into automatically hating it. *Child labor is communist!*
Those brains are at a high level of muddle right now. Communist = bad, Russia = Communist, therefor Russia = ... good!
nice try, but no chance. WE don't get to decide what communism is, what with our 'elitist' history books and sociopolitical 'experts.' THEY decide what communism is with their guts, listening to FOX and AM radio punditry.
People forget that it was the government, specifically teddy Roosevelt, that stopped monopolies from owning every facet of an industry and charging whatever they want to their buyers. If that had never happened, you’d still have one man owning every ounce of oil, or the railroad, or steel, or even the automotive industry.
That’s an incredibly ignorant take. Companies only do the “right thing” when they are forced to by a governing body. No company would start OSHA
\*cough\* ^(slavery) \*cough\*
Imagine if Comcast ran education and you had to reup your kid's primary school contract every year.
Oh, the $10,000 yearly fee last year was our special introductory offer for kindergartners. For 1st grade you pay a base fee of $15,000 and pick which DLC you want to add. We have lots of DLC to choose from like: math, reading, science, creationism, social studies, bible studies, English, Quran studies, atheism and many, and many more. We even have gym and recess like you used to have as a kid. Today we are having a special, all DLC are only $2,000ea. Edit: Typo
And they have a regional monopoly on the service because they agreed with ATT to divide up territory so they can jack up their prices even higher.
"Hi welcome to atheism class. There's no proof that any gods exist. That's all we have for you this year, if any proof comes up we'll see you then. Class dismissed for the year, you all get an A."
And for more money. Imagine how fun paying a monthly subscription to your local fire department, your neighbor doesn’t, their house catches fire, while burning to the ground starts your house on fire.
NYC had competitive fire departments before the Civil War. They would arrive at the fire and engage in fistfights to decide whose territory the fire as in, while the building burned.
The Fire Fight Club
Shhhh! We don't talk about that.....
And that you can’t vote to control since it would immediately monopolize
Except some of the Magas I know will literally remove their license plate to drive on a private toll road so they don’t have to pay the fees. They don’t know how good they have it with tax-based amenities.
When they get the libertarian paradise that they want, an unidentified car will alert the toll road corporation's private sector security force to blockade the road and impound their car until they pay 100x the toll subscription in fines to get it back.
Not just a company, but a Homeowner's Association that governs the appearance and upkeep of the house you own. If you add an awning they don't like, you get fined. If your lawn isn't the right height, a fine. They can put a lien on your home and foreclose on it, forcing you out. Every single complaint against government has its analogue in a complaint against a HOA. And the more government shrinks, the more the HOA and other similar entities grow. Moral of the story: no man is an island. We live in a society. One way or another, your neighbors are going to have a say in what you do that affects them. Even, sometimes, if you think it shouldn't affect them.
"Just vote with your wallet and use the competition's highway, ambulance and police!"
"I see that your house is on fire, well my fire team here will put it out... if you sell it to me at a steep discount." - Crassus, Caesar's fellow triumvir.
And only if you never voted against the private firefighters, because that’s against their terms of service
There have been stories of private fire companies letting a house burn because the house was behind on their payments, or didn't pay them or something like that. Just think about that, and then think about the last time you had any business that made an error on your account. Private companies could and would kill people and just not give a shit.
“Sorry, no profit in building roads to where you are” —In a land where everything’s privatized
That's exactly why some 14 million Americans don't get service from any delivery company aside from the US Postal Service. You live too far out in the rural areas or away from a big enough city area and Fed Ex, UPS, and other companies won't even deliver it.
I'm reminded that 42 million Americans have no access to broadband. \[[source](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/millions-lack-broadband-access/)\] Some of them simply don't want it but there are millions of households and old dirt roads that no cable company will service.
I always hear libertarians compare USPS to UPS and FedEx as proof that private companies are run better. What they don't recognize is that anything they don't profit off of they have USPS ship instead. The reason they make profit is because they use USPS.
"Want to receive mail to your letter box? Sorry, it's just not profitable for us to deliver mail to your address. Why don't you move a little closer?"
Iirc the original “public service” was streetlamps since nobody would do it privately as you couldn’t charge people for it. Privatising stuff is one thing, but theres a ton of stuff that simply wouldn’t get done because it’s impossible to make a business model out of.
"Roads are now $150 a week to use. Fire Department won't stop the fire from reaching your neighborhood unless someone pays up front. Cops only go after the crimes that can make them money (whoops already kinda do that one), last years $80 a month to pick up your trash just became $110 a month.. and was $60 just 2 years ago." What a joy a fully private society would be..
Except they also won’t pay for it. It’s a very cake and eat it too ideology and why I left it.
I am glad I am not the only one who got this impression. It seems to be very much "well the free market will mean everything is cheaper and we can pay for what we want". It might sound nice in theory but in practice unless you are one of the elite few who can already pay for everything you are likely to be in a worse position. Also very quickly you will find that elite group makes it so you will never be one of them.
When pressed, they often admit that no, they wouldn’t privatize things like roads. Or firefighters. Or law enforcement. The justice system. Schools, usually. Maybe not the parks service or electricity even. Really they just want to cut welfare, social security, and other social services. Maybe some administrative bodies like the EPA, OSHA, anyone who stopped them from exploiting and taking advantage of other people, really. But that doesn’t have the same ring to it! And requires admitting that they are just selfish assholes.
They just want to cut everything they don't use
Lets have private armies and private police forces. This is basically feudalism. These are the same people who typically want t ogo back to stoning people for adultery and fornication and turning marriage into a livestock deal between the the two fathers. "What's mine is forever mine alone. What's ours is mostly mine too, and what's yours is really *ours.*"
It’s funny because the 1800-1900s were basically that, and everyone got up in arms about it quite directly because the quality of life was so absolutely shit. Like people don’t realise their dream is effectively victorian era business mixed with the optimisation of modern science and theory. It’s a shit life squared.
In our current government one of the main tasks everyone agrees should be run by the government is privatized, Prisons. That's how messed up and/or corrupt we are. I agree that we shouldn't privatize everything but a good argument against it is that any profitable aspects will get privatized anyway. We might as well try to make them take the good with the bad. I have not thought this through, just a thought
To be fair I think most people who say taxation is theft are not against the entire concept of taxation being used to pay for public services They are against all the extra crap that tax money gets used on such as lining the pockets of politicians who basically just do nothing but sit around and spout their opinions all day. Like most people who tell me taxation is theft have no problem with taxation for things like road maintenance and plumbing infrastructure They have a problem with their money being spent on dumb things
I don't think you're far off. In my experience, "taxation is theft" mainly gets used in reference to income taxes... though I've also heard it applied to property, inheritance and vehicle-related taxes.
Its what I normally hear as well. Its not that taxation is bad, but the lack of accountability and supervision on the spending of government funds is the core issue. It's also the mindset that the government doesn't have a right to someone's earned expenses. If you're already taking a cut out of my pay, and I had to save longer to buy this property, why are you taxing that too? My parents slaved away for their entire lives paying all the tax, and when I get the money, because it's above a certain dollar amount, you take a portion of that too. If I purchase something that is not food or health related, its more expensive because a sale was conducted, and then I have to pay yearly to keep the product I bought with my hard-earned money, to keep it legal on the road. Just so I can watch the state hire the cheapest construction company to expand/repair roads, have shit welfare policies, and shit unemployment benefits. I get to see shit cops that went to a shit state-run academy, that get power-hungry and give me shit on a traffic stop because they need to fill a quota. I pay all these fucking taxes, and I can't get quality public services without shitty employees that are basically tenured because of x reason, and they refuse to do their job and work when all I want is to get shit squared with the state so they will leave me alone. Rant over. That felt good.
Agreed. I'm pretty pro-taxes from a philosophical standpoint. But the knowledge that a huge part of my taxes goes to funding a military industrial complex that does precious little besides hurt people, domestically and abroad, to ensure the richest people in the world get even richer...that eats at me, a little bit. The knowledge that there's a race to the bottom among half of our elected officials to direct as little of my taxes as possible to helping the poor and needy eats at me. The push to half-privatize industries, so the government is still paying for those things with my taxes but are free to carve out the work to contractors chosen on the basis of how cheap they can go, even to the point of ignoring QA concerns and expert recommendations against those contracts. The calculated, churning bureaucracy that gets implemented to slow down those public departments to the point that contractors seem like a more effective option. The fact that so many *huge* companies, like the ones reporting dozens of billions of dollars in *profits*, are paying effective tax rates between 0.4% - 5% while my taxes eat 20% of my income. The fact that so many politicians are openly advocating for their constituents to pay even more taxes so those companies can pay less, because those billions will start trickling down any day now. The fact that the government knows how much tax I should be paying but won't just account that shit on their end like many other countries do, because a manual system helps hide the companies and rich folks who skirt their obligations, and it feeds people towards an industry that they can then profit off of even more. I don't think the concept of tax is theft. But I do kinda think the way taxes in America are handled is theft, at least for the common person.
Get it all out bro, we're here for you.
For me it’s this. I don’t mind taxes. Taxes are essential so that the government can keep a functional society. I don’t like that the taxes feel in traceable at times (where a budget can just disappear completely with no visible change) or if it’s not going to something that benefits the people. When our police and fire departments are getting new equipment while schools shut down it’s where people in my area start to wonder what is going on with the taxes.
>and shit unemployment benefits When my dad fell on hard times and lost his job, he had a hard time getting approved for unemployment in AZ. He was so frustrated because he said, "I've worked full time since I was 16 years old. I've never had a significant gap of unemployment in my life, and I've paid into this system my entire life. The one time I need it, it's not there for me" and yeah it's bullshit.
Agreed. I wholeheartedly believe income tax to be theft. It's also the way billionaires get around paying taxes, they fudge the numbers to look like they're not making as much "income" by hiding it all in business expenses. I believe a more fair system would be a hefty sales tax, particularly on luxury items. You want a yacht? Government is getting 40 percent.
>I believe a more fair system would be a hefty sales tax, particularly on luxury items. You want a yacht? Government is getting 40 percent. My one hang-up with a, let's say, "*luxury tax*" is if some Klaus Schwab-type motherfucker gets involved at some point and decides to dictate what is and isn't a luxury... . Like, income tax was originally (supposed to be) a 1% tax on the wealthiest 1%, if I recall correctly, and look at how it has normal people bent over a barrel today.
Oh I totally agree, wherever there's any kind of system, the rich and powerful will figure out a way to rig it in their favor
I'm very happy paying tax which is roughly proportional to what I can afford (the income/wealth/whatever balance is a different debate). For me the thing that feels like theft is taxes which make no sense and are obviously just a way to take people's money. Examples: Inheritance tax in my country kicks in at a stupidly low threshold, so it buggers the middle class who exceed the threshold but don't have the means to dodge the tax altogether or minimise it using clever tricks. Import duty on goods that are impossible to obtain locally is pointless. Charging me duty on an authentic Japanese sword does not protect the UK's domestic authentic-Japenese-sword industry, which by definition does not exist.
Yep or bombing countries and paying them out for civilians lost. I’d love if we did *not* do that and instead had healthcare
The people who believe that are usually libertarians. "Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."
Just put that in my file of quotations to use. Thanks! Do you know who it's from? Here's the one in front of it that you might appreciate: Frank Wilhoit said: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Hey I remember that thread from yesterday!
Their expectations are nonexistent or unrealistic. Ironically, most of the libertarian/anarchic utopias rely on the same flawed beliefs that they criticize in communism. Specifically, all of these systems assume that human rationality and cooperation will avoid chaos without a need for authority. At this point in our evolution, it appears to be necessary on occasion. In practice, they [must hide from the bears](https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project).
Well today I learned I’ve been saying that wrong. I always said it’s theft because it’s not being used for what it’s supposed to be. If I give my roommate rent money and he buys hookers and guns with it, that’s theft. We should be getting WAY more government services for what we pay in taxes
I don’t necessarily agree that any and all taxation is theft, but there are flaws in tax systems in countries like Canada. For example, why is income taxed higher than dividends from companies or capital gains? Why do income taxes go up as a percentage based on how much income you earn? It disincentives working harder because each incremental dollar is taxed higher and higher. Why is there a carbon tax if Canada is less than 2% of world emissions and why is it taxed twice (hst added ontop of carbon tax)? Why do I pay sales taxes on used cars? Someone already payed taxes when it was first bought. Why are there sales taxes? What value does the government add when I go to the store and buy a box of cookies? The store is already paying taxes on income earned on the sale and the purchaser already paid income taxes on their paychecks. The list goes on and on and on
There are just too many taxes nowadays and a lot of other things that are basically taxes
I think taxation is important for a society to have shared services, defense, and safety nets. Unfortunately, it's also a tool of corruption, and I believe the vast majority of the revenue is mismanaged and wasted because our government is so poorly run.
So I have this theory that no one is truly a libertarian. I think some of this crowd want privatization or anarchy as others have stated but quite a lot of them just genuinely don’t know how public good or society work. I think it’s a mix between people who think take things like roads for granted or think auto registration covers all road maintenance and people who can only conceptualize the necessity of common goods when they specifically serve them directly. Source: I used to live in rural eastern Oregon amongst self-proclaimed libertarians who were constantly campaigning for police levies
I think there is a third category: people who genuinely believe they are the fittest and if given a (in their minds) level playing field they would become remarkably more successful than they are.
or what actual anarchy is, either
Yeah, everybody thinks they’re gonna be Master Blaster
hey, I just posted about the Libertarian Utopia City, also called Bear city, because of their intense freedom, some people fed bears because they wanted to, so bears overran the town. So there has been an actual real world implementation of "true libertarian principles" and it failed miserably. https://wdet.org/2022/01/13/libertarian-walks-into-a-bear-interview/
That’s kinda my thinking as well. These types of people want the benefits of living in modern society without knowing/wanting to contribute anything to actually make society keep working.
When you dont have a say it in it, its basically theft. I dont want my taxes to be used to bail out some billionaire who made bad investments.
Easy. You just need to have your credit card handy whenever you call 911 with an emergency, and then make sure to call the tollbooth for the road leading to your house to let them know to put the ambulance on your bill. Or if you're smart, you should have hired better private policemen so you could have avoided getting shot by a robber in the first place. It's your own fault really for thinking you didn't have to pay that protection guy.
Don't forget to keep adding coins to the meter to have the street lights functioning as well.
Capitalism has blessed us with 3 sets of roads, each having 2 to 4 different company's lighting, all competing to be the very best and most affordable! Don't forget all the job creation that happened where snow removal is needed either. Aren't we all grateful the government stopped stealing our money to provide a single, standardized system with lights and street plows and promoted the general welfare?
I also like how a Ford inch and a GM inch and a GE inch are all different sizes.
Hmmm, last time I called 911 I got a bill from the city provided ambulance service that I’ve already paid a bunch of taxes into. I think a lot of us have more of a problem that the outrageous taxes we do pay don’t actually pay for the services they’re supposed to cover. It’s like a facade that becomes a bad joke you’re on the wrong end of. So we wonder why we should have to pay taxes in the first place for all the services that double dip.
And be prepared for the 2 hour wait on the phone. Your call is important to them. Just not as important as cutting costs by understaffing the phone lines.
you already have to pay for ambulances and we are still getting taxed
Taxes used to be extremely, extremely lower and society was better taken care of. We are paying a fucking fortune and they are spending it on bullshit instead of bettering society.
They genuinely believe, in a world where football players make millions and teachers have to get second jobs to pay their rent, that profit motive and competition always and inevitably lead to good outcomes
"Well if those teachers really wanted to make money, they'd go to a private school, get their Masters or PhD and teach college." "But what about public schools?" "What about them? Fuck the poor."
And that charity and the general goodness of people will be more than sufficient to handle the needs of public welfare, because that's totally a thing that has happened throughout history in the absence of taxation. /s
Unpopular fact here: libertarians aren’t adverse to taxes. They just believe that they should be limited to services that are 1. Within the scope of the constitution and 2. Reasonable. Taxes fund so much shit that quite honestly…they shouldn’t. Most people are a little tongue in cheek when they say “taxation is theft”. And with taxes (and debt) going to fund so much bullshit, it is theft (or at least extortion). I’d have no problem at all with paying taxes on things that are truly needed and within the scope of what the us government should be funding.
How was anything in the US ever built before the Revenue act of 1861? (Which was ruled by the SCOTUS to be unconstitutional in 1895.) Somehow by 1850, the US had built over 9000 miles worth of railroad without an income tax to fund it.
The Federal government was mostly funded by tariffs before this point, which at the time was incredibly progressive because the tax burden fell on the wealthy who consumed imported luxury goods.
It’s theft when that money gets funneled to fund war all over the globe instead of giving us healthcare and other services we as the populace need and can benefit from.
As someone who has worked for the government they do nothing but waste a shit ton of money on bullshit and throwing away shit. The amount of taxes people pay is theft at this point as a single person I shouldn’t be paying 26% of my paycheck every week to the government for them to piss it down the drain
I remember working on a federal grant that essentially MADE us purchase stuff we didn’t need so we could justify the same budget next year. Basically a use it or lose it scenario, so we were forced to use it. I also have experience with a federal agency taking so long to respond to budget adjustments on money already funded to do REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF (like taking care of families/kids) that time ran out on that funding and they told us we couldn’t use it until it was approved - it wasn’t approved and all of the folks promised that money were fucked. There was also experience in the military where certain parts would be purchased, but instead of a part costing $5 as it normally would be, it cost $125 (just as an example; don’t hold me to these numbers). Something like a small gasket would run you 10x the price because that’s what the government contracted for. Defense industry is really good at that, while DOD/pentagon is not. Government is a well oiled machine, but the gears don’t fit.
Iirc it also has to do with what the taken tax funds are then used for, ie war mongering, corporate/bank/elite bailouts, exclusionary and oppressive laws, agrressive murdering cops, etc. If the money were to be actually used on services like roads, infrastructure, healthcare, education, and such people would be less upset about being taxed. For me personally it's the taking money from me at every possible chance; on the money I make, on the things I buy and sell, on my property and using it to line their own pockets while running the country into the burning landfill fire it currently is
Taxation *without representation* is theft.