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> Taxes create civilization and they power most of the things we love about society... roads, infrastructure, retirement, keeping the environment protected, kee

by ezekg 5y ago

> Taxes create civilization and they power most of the things we love about society... roads, infrastructure, retirement, keeping the environment protected, keeping food safe, keeping restaurants from giving us all rat poop, etc etc... If those things are important, citizens would fund these with or without government coercion through violence. Keeping food and restaurants safe is a function of a free market -- nobody would buy from a business that routinely tries to poison their patrons. These arguments are old and they don't hold up.

bwb 5y ago
Hah nah, that just isn't true, look at history at any point. By enforcing regulations to ensure clean restaurants and food, that market has grown so much bigger because people trust eating out by default.Don't overestimate the power of trust in growing a platform. If AirBNB poisoned you every 6th stay, how long would you use them? Sometimes I am stunned with how libertarian some of these comments are. Government is just us, and it is a amazing because it isn't free market. The free market only works when given strong bumer rails to stay between, otherwise it starts taking advantage of the system and causing environmental damage, damage to labor, etc... The free market can't do a lot of things. It can't provide high quality health care, it can't provide economic protections, it doesn't provide protections for labor, so many things.