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That's sort of how I feel about U.S. taxes in general. I paid somewhat lower taxes in the U.S. than Denmark, but it felt like I got a ton less service. Despite

• thecodeore 13y ago
  I would prefer to pay for services I use then to have the money stolen from me by force while people pretend it is moral because it is called "taxes"
  • rayiner 13y ago
    Taxes are what you pay to transform the act of killing and eating you into "murder" from what it really is: natural selection.
    • dalke 13y ago
      Ahh, yes, "nature red in tooth and claw" and all that. Social Darwinism went out of fashion about 60 years ago. In part because its philosophical underpinnings had little to do with Darwin or evolution. For example, an alternate view is that taxes are part of kin selection, in that those people who pay more taxes end up with a social system which is better at raising successful children who continue that culture and practice.
      • rayiner 13y ago
        Its not social Darwinism, which is a wholly distinct set of beliefs. Its actual Darwinism, or the recognition of the fact that in the state of nature killing is morally neutral and arguably virtuous (e.g. being an apex predator).
        • mistercow 13y ago
          In nature there is no "morally neutral" or "virtuous". Morality is a social construct. Advantageous? Yes. Virtuous? Nature stares at you, blinking.
          • rayiner 13y ago
            I agree with morality being a social construct. But to the extent that we project onto nature as humans, we find virtuous the efficient killers. We respect eagles and lions. And arguably engaging in the most advantageous behavior is virtuous in a way, in the broadest sense of the term.
        • dalke 13y ago
          Social Darwinism is a misreading of Darwinism to draw the conclusion you just stated, as applied to interactions within the human species. For example, "murder" is nearly always defined within the context of human-human interactions, but "apex predator" is usually thought of on the species level, as in "humans are apex predators" not "David Hasselhoff is an apex predator." It's disingenuous for you to change contexts like that. Darwin discussed the idea of kin selection, and how it applies to sterile honey bees. Why should a sterile bee support the group when it passes on (in modern terms) none of its own genes to its children? Under your thesis, why don't those bees take the 'virtuous' route and attack the other bees, eat the honey, and otherwise destroy the colony? What's in it for them to not do that? I am not so reductionist as to say that human actions can be mapped directly to kin selection, but I think it's an important factor. We also have cultural biases which have an influential effect. It's generally easier to have a civilization where you aren't worried all the time that people might murder you or your family, so energy that might otherwise go into protection and defense can be used for other things. If you disregard the reasons for why a killing might not good for an organism, then you disregard a vital understanding of Darwinism.
          • rayiner 13y ago
            No, social Darwinism is the misapplication of Darwinism to societies. But in not talking about interactions in the state of nature. And you're right, killing isn't always the most efficient way to go, buy when it is we don't call it murder, we call it advantageous behavior. And as humans, we project respect onto apex predators, who have adopted an evolutionary route of expensive killing, not honeybees.
  • alan_cx 13y ago
    Tax is paying for services you use, which is very moral.
    • Houshalter 13y ago
      That's not really true. You can avoid most if not all government services and still have to pay the same amount as everyone else. They also have a monopoly on most things. It's not like you can go to a competing service.
      • georgefox 13y ago
        Monopolies are really hard to avoid, which makes your statement seem a bit logically inconsistent. Combine that with the impossibility of avoiding services like military protection, the public education of your community members, the regulation and insurance of the financial markets your money flows through, plus a whole host of other things, and I have a very hard time believing your dream of avoiding government services is in any way attainable.
        • Houshalter 13y ago
          I wouldn't call any of those things services so much as arbitrary costs. The military is ridiculously larger than it would have to be to offer just defense, education is terrible and they way overspend, and the regulatory system is corrupt and does way more damage than it prevents. Not to mention alternatives for any of these things. Besides my point is even if a group of people went into the wilderness and declared independence, the government would still go after them and have power over them, even though they aren't consuming any government services at all.
          • georgefox 13y ago
            Are there any government services you see as valuable?
      • pavedwalden 13y ago
        I disagree that you can avoid using these services, because I don't think that things like public schools are a service only to their direct recipients. Even families that can afford private schools for their children benefit from living in a nation with a high literacy rate. I'm not a 'customer' of my city's social services, but I benefit from having fewer people bottom out and end up on the street.
  • rwl 13y ago
    OK, you're trolling here, and if I could downvote you for it, I would; but since I can't, let me try to raise the level of discussion: > I would prefer to pay for services I use I invite you, sometime, to think about which services you really use, and try to figure out how much it would cost to purchase each of them if you were doing so on your own. Don't forget: police protection, fire protection, military protection, paved roads, functioning traffic signals and signs, groomed parks, trash collection (some places), up to sixteen years of education, enforcement of workplace safety standards, financial protection if you become suddenly disabled, a legal system in which to resolve disputes. I don't know what your specific situation is, but just about everyone benefits from those government services in the U.S., and you personally may benefit from many others. I'm guessing that purchasing the first three alone, as an individual on a private market, would probably outrun the total you pay in taxes. You could lower the individual costs to you of a lot of these by finding a bunch of other people who also need these services, and pooling your money to buy them together. That's just how democratic government begins. > have the money stolen from me by force This is a dishonest characterization of the authority of a democratic government to levy taxes. Yes, if you don't pay taxes you owe, someone might come and take your property, and those people might have weapons or threaten you with imprisonment. But that is a measure of last resort, which will surely only be taken if you fail to respond to a long line of more reasonable measures. It does a great injustice to people who actually live under oppressive regimes to compare the collection of taxes under a democratic government to the kind of arbitrary, might-makes-right authority those people are subject to. Furthermore, by characterizing taxes as 'stolen' money, you are implying that you somehow have an absolute or natural right to have it. Why do you think that? No matter what you do for work, the amount of money you take home is not the product of your exclusive efforts. It also depends on the protections you get just by living in a society that provides some of the services I listed above. You would take home a lot less if, for example, you couldn't rely on the police and legal system to prevent armed bandits from plundering your place of business whenever they please. You'd also probably be a lot less productive if you had to worry about such things on a daily basis. There's a lot standing behind 'your' money that isn't yours, by any reasonable measure. > while people pretend it is moral because it is called "taxes". A democratic government's authority to levy taxes does not derive from the name, nor from the force that it can, in extreme cases, use to collect them. Like the government's other kinds of authority, it derives (most people think) from the consent of the governed. Behind that phrase are some important and difficult questions, to be sure. But you are not helping to answer them by characterizing taxes as 'stolen' and 'immoral'.
  • lmm 13y ago
    No-one's doing any pretending. Your morality may differ from other people's, but that doesn't mean theirs is insincere.
• bobbydavid 13y ago
  Have you seen that d3 visualization of the US federal budget? It's pretty interesting. Social security, Defense, and Medicare make up the lion's share of spending. you probably don't use these (except defense, arguably indirectly, but I suspect your politics would disagree with the budget size)
  • mcv 13y ago
    He's probably using social security and medicare more than defense. The chance that he gets sick or unemployed is probably a lot larger than the chance that the US gets attacked or significantly threatened. Knowing that you're covered in case anything goes wrong is enough to make the taxes worth it.
    • rayiner 13y ago
      That's kind of a misleading comparison. The chances of the US getting attacked or threatened are low because we have tremendous war capability. For examples of the opposite, see Tibet, Palestine, etc, or all the countries that were colonized by the Europeans, or the countries whose natural resources are being extracted on questionably favorable terms by companies like Shell. Every American benefits from the fact that we can dictate terms in nearly any interaction with other countries. It's a huge aspect of our political dynamic that most Americans take for granted, because they have no experience with a country where the democratic will has to be tempered by considerations of how military superiors will respond.
      • mjn 13y ago
        It's true that the U.S. and Tibet are on opposite sides of that spectrum, but there are a number of countries whose military spending as a percentage of GDP is between 1/4 and 1/2 as high as it is in the US, but who nonetheless defend themselves credibly. Examples: France, Turkey, Italy, Australia, Canada. I can buy that some proportion of military spending is therefore for protection, but the actual amount of military spending seems considerably higher than the amount needed to keep the U.S. from being colonized.