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My government spent the better part of two decades bombing children in the Middle East. Why should I support that if I can choose not to? Also, can you say I'm

My government spent the better part of two decades bombing children in the Middle East. Why should I support that if I can choose not to? Also, can you say I'm not being swindled if I'm spending nearly half my income on taxes?

varsketiz 5y ago
I'm sure your government was also doing other stuff, like providing schooling, roads and other infrastructure to you. You are freeriding at the expense of other fellow citizens, who pay taxes.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Taxation without representation causes wars. Tax evasion is civil disobedience.
  - varsketiz 5y ago
    Are you not able to vote?
  - pyrale 5y ago
    That's a very convenient way to exercise civil disobedience.
  - drummer 5y ago
    Taxation is robbery, extortion and slavery.
    - jrockway 5y ago
      I suppose your free kindergarten through grade 12 education, the water you drink from the municipal water system, the roads that were driven on to deliver a computer that can post to HN directly to your door, the DARPA project that became the Internet, etc. are "robbery, extortion, and slavery" as well. Now that we are all robbing, extorting, and enslaving each other... pay your damn taxes.
      - throwaway3699 5y ago
        None of that requires a 50% tax rate like you see in some places. I don't think you realise just how much is wasted. Go look at national debt figures, we could get the same things with half the tax. The infrastructure argument is moot, too. Just look at US infrastructure crumbling to bits.
        jrockway 5y ago
        I don't think crumbling infrastructure has a lot to do with government waste. It's mostly poor prioritization; using funds that should be set aside for maintenance to build new things instead. New projects capture the imagination, maintenance is something that magical fairies do while everyone is sleeping, or something. This is more of an intrinsic flaw of humanity than something that has an easy fix. Reality and the version in our minds don't align. Privatization isn't the answer: private companies let their infrastructure deteriorate to the point where it kills people all the time. We even rely on the government to prevent this, and get upset when they don't catch every case. Making the government go away, or underfunding it to the point where it's impotent, probably isn't the fix. There isn't really an easy answer to society's problems. If there was, we'd have already implemented it. Now we have to deal with the hard problems, and we probably have to do that as a collective. The problem is too large for one benevolent visionary to magically solve. Something that I think of one of HN's blindspots is the general inability to think past what one person can do alone. We sit in front of our computers and make stuff, then we go to work and make stuff that's almost the same, but it takes 10 people to do only 10% more. That's probably another intrinsic reality of the Universe -- to do a project twice as difficult takes maybe 10 times or 100 times as many resources. That's because communication scales poorly, like n! That's why every successful project management book tells you to cut scope; doing a harder project involves adding more resources, and adding more people to the project has dramatically diminishing returns. But the government can't cut scope, so they have to bear this communications cost. It looks like inefficiency, but it's more like an immutable law. Keep this in mind while you pontificate about how having a society is akin to robbery.
      - drummer 5y ago
        Stealing from people and using some of the money on them does not make stealing morally right. Same goes for extortion. It looks like you want to continue living off of crime.
- henvic 5y ago
  I bet you wouldn't say that of someone who achieved a lot in life but was also a serial killer. "Sure the guy murdered a lot of children with poison, but let's not forget he also was the best ice cream maker in the neighborhood."
  - varsketiz 5y ago
    Why wouldn't I say that? I might. Are you comparing taxes to murdering children with poison and roads you drive on and schooling that you get to ice-cream? That is a bit of an oversimplification, don't you think?
    - 8note 5y ago
      I wouldn't surprised if some of those children the Americans put in cages at the border died.

varsketiz 5y ago

I'm sure your government was also doing other stuff, like providing schooling, roads and other infrastructure to you. You are freeriding at the expense of other fellow citizens, who pay taxes.

throwaway3699 5y ago
Taxation without representation causes wars. Tax evasion is civil disobedience.
- varsketiz 5y ago
  Are you not able to vote?
- pyrale 5y ago
  That's a very convenient way to exercise civil disobedience.
- drummer 5y ago
  Taxation is robbery, extortion and slavery.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    I suppose your free kindergarten through grade 12 education, the water you drink from the municipal water system, the roads that were driven on to deliver a computer that can post to HN directly to your door, the DARPA project that became the Internet, etc. are "robbery, extortion, and slavery" as well. Now that we are all robbing, extorting, and enslaving each other... pay your damn taxes.
    - throwaway3699 5y ago
      None of that requires a 50% tax rate like you see in some places. I don't think you realise just how much is wasted. Go look at national debt figures, we could get the same things with half the tax. The infrastructure argument is moot, too. Just look at US infrastructure crumbling to bits.
      - jrockway 5y ago
        I don't think crumbling infrastructure has a lot to do with government waste. It's mostly poor prioritization; using funds that should be set aside for maintenance to build new things instead. New projects capture the imagination, maintenance is something that magical fairies do while everyone is sleeping, or something. This is more of an intrinsic flaw of humanity than something that has an easy fix. Reality and the version in our minds don't align. Privatization isn't the answer: private companies let their infrastructure deteriorate to the point where it kills people all the time. We even rely on the government to prevent this, and get upset when they don't catch every case. Making the government go away, or underfunding it to the point where it's impotent, probably isn't the fix. There isn't really an easy answer to society's problems. If there was, we'd have already implemented it. Now we have to deal with the hard problems, and we probably have to do that as a collective. The problem is too large for one benevolent visionary to magically solve. Something that I think of one of HN's blindspots is the general inability to think past what one person can do alone. We sit in front of our computers and make stuff, then we go to work and make stuff that's almost the same, but it takes 10 people to do only 10% more. That's probably another intrinsic reality of the Universe -- to do a project twice as difficult takes maybe 10 times or 100 times as many resources. That's because communication scales poorly, like n! That's why every successful project management book tells you to cut scope; doing a harder project involves adding more resources, and adding more people to the project has dramatically diminishing returns. But the government can't cut scope, so they have to bear this communications cost. It looks like inefficiency, but it's more like an immutable law. Keep this in mind while you pontificate about how having a society is akin to robbery.
    - drummer 5y ago
      Stealing from people and using some of the money on them does not make stealing morally right. Same goes for extortion. It looks like you want to continue living off of crime.
henvic 5y ago
I bet you wouldn't say that of someone who achieved a lot in life but was also a serial killer. "Sure the guy murdered a lot of children with poison, but let's not forget he also was the best ice cream maker in the neighborhood."
- varsketiz 5y ago
  Why wouldn't I say that? I might. Are you comparing taxes to murdering children with poison and roads you drive on and schooling that you get to ice-cream? That is a bit of an oversimplification, don't you think?
  - 8note 5y ago
    I wouldn't surprised if some of those children the Americans put in cages at the border died.