5 ms·
The fact is that the government, like a bandit, says to a person: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that t
by phpisthebest 3y ago
The fact is that the government, like a bandit, says to a person: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.
The government does not, indeed, waylay a person in a lonely place, spring upon them from the road side, and, holding a pistol to their head, proceed to rifle their pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
The bandit takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes people’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
--Lysander Spooner
- sofixa 3y ago(on libertrarians) House cats. They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appeciate or understand. -- John Spaulding
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoCats are quite capable of subsisting on squirrels and birds. But if you put cat food on a plate, they do what's easier. The question is, does "free" stuff justify its true cost? How many people would willingly pay the amount they currently pay to Raytheon or upper middle class retirees with plenty of savings, if they actually had a choice?
- Retric 3y agoSpending isn’t just individual choices it’s a tradeoff. I can guarantee you want a lot of government spending that I would be happy to cut. If I argue for canceling all weather satellite funding you can bet many would object and so it goes. I personally think the CIA, NSA etc are a waste of funds let’s slash funding by 90% and see what happens. But that doesn’t mean everyone else agrees with what I think is worth funding.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoBut that's kind of the point, isn't it? If all the people who want GPS didn't have to pay for bridges they don't want (and war machines and corporate welfare) then they'd have enough money to pay for GPS even if they were the only ones paying, and vice versa. You can still have GPS and bridges because they each have a set of people who value them at more than their cost. Whereas if the only people who want corn subsidies are the people receiving them and not the people paying for them, you wouldn't have them anymore.
- Retric 3y agoIt’s a more complicated problem because if you get rid of say prisons and the police you don’t get groups of individuals privately funding such things. It’s a free rider problem where as can be demonstrated around the world the only known solution is collective taxation. If you want GPS and are happy to pay for it then why should I pay if I can get it for free without paying? With GPS the idea of encrypting the data might work, but that doesn’t work for say vaccination were public safety results from individual choices.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoGovernments don't actually solve the free rider problem though. Taxpayers in the US pay for GPS and then everybody gets it all over the world; why should they pay anything when they can get it for free? The same goes for vaccine research and things like that; once it exists everybody gets it even if only one country was to pay for it. But it still works because people can see that they're better off funding something that benefits them even if it also benefits someone who didn't pay, and so it is whether it's a government or not. Now, sometimes a government might be more efficient at these things. Having people pay for GPS might be one way to get it, but then you have to collect money from everyone, which has administrative costs, and people who can't afford it can't use it even though there is no incremental cost in providing it to them. But when you weigh that against the colossal amount of waste and violence governments commit in the process, the math doesn't look good. And you can get the same level of efficiency from a nonprofit that provides the service for free to the public, if the public wants it enough to donate to it. Which people would have more money to do if they weren't paying taxes to fund the maintenance of empty government buildings etc.