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A truly prosperous country should give its citizens free energy and utilities, provide infrastructure and law/order, basic services etc without taxation. Inter

A truly prosperous country should give its citizens free energy and utilities, provide infrastructure and law/order, basic services etc without taxation. Interestingly, it has only been achieved by a handful of middle eastern countries because they have the natural resources to support its population. I think a close second is Singapore where no one is left behind. But I classify it as a very desirable benevolent dictatorship. So basically only dictatorships and monarchies can truly take care of its population. Looks like it’s a failure of democracy. Communism has proven to be a failure. A tax should be imposed on the resources from the commons and redistributed to everyone. Taxation of human beings/human capital/private property is perverse. That seems to be possible in monarchies and dictatorships. Where do we go from here?

ReadTheLicense 4y ago
Both monarchies and dictatorships also transfer huge amount of the wealth to the autocrats. So perhaps by giving the resources to someone to exploit?
- jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  Singapore seems to be not doing that for a benevolent dictatorship. Neither are the oil producer middle eastern countries. Every citizen get a check from the sovereign fund that invests it for future returns.
  - ReadTheLicense 4y ago
    That's one out of hundreds kingdoms and "democratic republics". I don't think it's possible to base a strategy on that, it seems to be an enormous outlier of extreme historical significance.
    - jelliclesfarm 4y ago
      Agree. It was just wool gathering/hypothetical
asldjajlfkj 4y ago
Recognize that energy and utilities have both real value and real costs and discard the initial assumption.
- jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  Energy should be free. Electricity..for example..is basically like traffic passing through a street. The real cost that is our electricity bill is for wages and pensions and buildings that house employees etc. Same with water. We have public utilities because we are no longer allowed to dig wells for potable water. The cost of most public services is really the wages of public sector employees and costs associated with these jobs. A thought experiment: It should be possible to provide public housing, free medical, education, utilities, basic city administration for a flat tax rate. Each city with a capped population can obtain superior standard of living by increasing taxes or reduce population if taxes aren’t sufficient.

ReadTheLicense 4y ago

Both monarchies and dictatorships also transfer huge amount of the wealth to the autocrats. So perhaps by giving the resources to someone to exploit?

jelliclesfarm 4y ago
Singapore seems to be not doing that for a benevolent dictatorship. Neither are the oil producer middle eastern countries. Every citizen get a check from the sovereign fund that invests it for future returns.
- ReadTheLicense 4y ago
  That's one out of hundreds kingdoms and "democratic republics". I don't think it's possible to base a strategy on that, it seems to be an enormous outlier of extreme historical significance.
  - jelliclesfarm 4y ago
    Agree. It was just wool gathering/hypothetical

asldjajlfkj 4y ago

Recognize that energy and utilities have both real value and real costs and discard the initial assumption.

jelliclesfarm 4y ago
Energy should be free. Electricity..for example..is basically like traffic passing through a street. The real cost that is our electricity bill is for wages and pensions and buildings that house employees etc. Same with water. We have public utilities because we are no longer allowed to dig wells for potable water. The cost of most public services is really the wages of public sector employees and costs associated with these jobs. A thought experiment: It should be possible to provide public housing, free medical, education, utilities, basic city administration for a flat tax rate. Each city with a capped population can obtain superior standard of living by increasing taxes or reduce population if taxes aren’t sufficient.