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Your thoughts about why taxes are usually raised are opinionated and don't really offer anything of interest in terms of logical foundation. Your hypothesis tha

Your thoughts about why taxes are usually raised are opinionated and don't really offer anything of interest in terms of logical foundation. Your hypothesis that things that people want are already paid for of their own volition conveniently forgets the fact that running a country is not the core competency of the people paying the tax. Thus, they are almost guaranteed to not know what to pay for. They will also not pay for things they do not yet know they need. All of the competency arguments aside, this smacks of a "the free market will solve it" argument. These arguments are tiresome because the one example raised for the best evidence of this is the US, which is to all the rest of the world (and more than probably some of it's inhabitants) a policy tire fire.

roenxi 7y ago
> running a country is not the core competency of the people paying the tax People don't generally pay for things that are in their core competencies. A very common reason to pay someone else to do something is because the person with money doesn't know how to get the result they want. > the US, which is to all the rest of the world (and more than probably some of it's inhabitants) a policy tire fire. You might want to pass that on to the migrants of the world. Judging by total migration the United States are possibly most attractive destination available. Its migration intake isn't shabby when looked at as a rate either. That dumpster fire is a powerful attractor. And even then you've missed the argument. I didn't say taxes were a bad thing. I said that people often have very strong principled objections to what their taxes are used for.
- krageon 7y ago
  What I was responding to was: > taxes are usually raised to force people to support ideas that the individual taxpayers vehemently oppose This is wrong, because they are raised to support a country and most of that (hence the "usual" qualifier) is to support things people might not know they need. Your response to this is apparently that people do pay for things they don't know they need (or don't understand are necessary), but you fail to tell the reader why. Instead you reiterate that you are convinced they'll definitely pay for them.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    So people can't be trusted to know what they need personally, but when they vote they suddenly develop a keen understanding of which politicians can offer them the things they don't know they want? That point isn't reasonable. There can't be a division where people know what they want when they vote but not when they spend money. I suppose there could be in theory, but a system that encourages that that would generally be called 'corrupt government' and the actors involved 'lying politicians' where the people who get voted in do things that the individual voters vehemently oppose. Voting someone in to office is a broadly similar decision to going out and buying something. Individuals in their capacity as voters are not that different from individuals in their capacity as buyers.
    - krageon 7y ago
      I think it is much easier to recognise that someone else is better equipped to make certain domain-specific choices for you and also that they agree in broad strokes with how you think than it is to learn that entire domain and make the right funding choices. In my experience that is true for most people, but of course it might not be true for you! Thankfully we live in a world where what is good for most people is leading, and not just what is true for you.

roenxi 7y ago

> running a country is not the core competency of the people paying the tax People don't generally pay for things that are in their core competencies. A very common reason to pay someone else to do something is because the person with money doesn't know how to get the result they want. > the US, which is to all the rest of the world (and more than probably some of it's inhabitants) a policy tire fire. You might want to pass that on to the migrants of the world. Judging by total migration the United States are possibly most attractive destination available. Its migration intake isn't shabby when looked at as a rate either. That dumpster fire is a powerful attractor. And even then you've missed the argument. I didn't say taxes were a bad thing. I said that people often have very strong principled objections to what their taxes are used for.

krageon 7y ago
What I was responding to was: > taxes are usually raised to force people to support ideas that the individual taxpayers vehemently oppose This is wrong, because they are raised to support a country and most of that (hence the "usual" qualifier) is to support things people might not know they need. Your response to this is apparently that people do pay for things they don't know they need (or don't understand are necessary), but you fail to tell the reader why. Instead you reiterate that you are convinced they'll definitely pay for them.
- roenxi 7y ago
  So people can't be trusted to know what they need personally, but when they vote they suddenly develop a keen understanding of which politicians can offer them the things they don't know they want? That point isn't reasonable. There can't be a division where people know what they want when they vote but not when they spend money. I suppose there could be in theory, but a system that encourages that that would generally be called 'corrupt government' and the actors involved 'lying politicians' where the people who get voted in do things that the individual voters vehemently oppose. Voting someone in to office is a broadly similar decision to going out and buying something. Individuals in their capacity as voters are not that different from individuals in their capacity as buyers.
  - krageon 7y ago
    I think it is much easier to recognise that someone else is better equipped to make certain domain-specific choices for you and also that they agree in broad strokes with how you think than it is to learn that entire domain and make the right funding choices. In my experience that is true for most people, but of course it might not be true for you! Thankfully we live in a world where what is good for most people is leading, and not just what is true for you.