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My position is that people who think "taxes are theft" should have to face a world where the things those taxes pay for aren't available to them. I'm pretty su
by rosser 9y ago
My position is that people who think "taxes are theft" should have to face a world where the things those taxes pay for aren't available to them.
I'm pretty sure, with, as Einstein put it, "a probability approaching unity", that they would change their minds very quickly about whether those things are worth supporting.
It's a purely rhetorical position, of course; I do not actually advocate anyone suffer that experience — because it would be a thing they could only suffer.
EDIT: I'm reminded again of the rural, dues-based fire departments. You're free not to pay your dues. If your house catches fire and you haven't paid, the fire crew will come out, stop at your property line, keep the fire from spreading, and otherwise watch your shit burn. Libertarian paradise, or something...
- munk-a 9y agoMy apologies if my comment was abrasive, my objection, though, is that pandering to this libertarian slice of the populace ends up costing society more. On a small scale that dues-based fire department might work fine "Oh, it's at frank's house, yea... he'll be surprised" but when you reach a state or country level tracking any sort of voluntary pay-in programs gets complicated and a sane efficient state would find it cheaper to just save frank's house anyways, because the cost of tracking who is who is more expensive than occasionally paying out fraudulently. This is one of the good motivations for universal basic income, a lot of our social programs have grown to the point where their overhead is getting ridiculous but the solution isn't ending the program, it's cutting any inefficiencies we can find and simplifying the program in a fair manner to get more money to where it needs to go.