4 ms·

> I'd see taxes more like calling in a debt. It costs money to live here, you have to pay for that. What do you mean costs money to live here? I already pay my

by snitko 13y ago

> I'd see taxes more like calling in a debt. It costs money to live here, you have to pay for that. What do you mean costs money to live here? I already pay my rent and utilities. When I walk or drive on public roads, it is only because it is a monopoly and I have no other choice. Do you think in the absence of government no one would build roads? Or schools? Or do you argue that it costs money to stay on a piece of land? Then maybe we should start taxing breathing the air as well. > There are plenty of companies that do bad jobs and are still running. Because there's a demand for that particular level of service, not because they force everyone to visit them and become their customers.

Kliment 13y ago
Except your friendly neighbourhood power or telecom monopoly.
- snitko 13y ago
  You see, I live in Russia. Historically, up until recently, the telecom was a very unregulated industry. Government just didn't care enough. So do you know what am I paying for a 100Mbps connection and unlimited traffic? $10/mo. Do you know what I'm paying for an unlimited 3G and calls? ~$10/mo. And this has been the case for many years. No monopoly here. Monopolies only emerge when governments and companies start making sweet love to each other.
  - galadriel 13y ago
    No monopoly in 3G? How do companies refrain from transmitting at each other's frequencies? No monopoly in telecom? How do they lay all the wire without permits and regulation? Or in good old days, can I dig up anywhere in Russia and lay wires directly to my customers?
    - snitko 13y ago
      You can't and it's precisely because government sets the rules where you can lay wires and which frequencies you can use. In Russia, this hasn't gone beyond that yet, that's why the prices are that low. In other countries, regulators are a lot less reluctant.
      - galadriel 13y ago
        So Telecom was very "unregulated" because you agree with all the regulations. That's some interesting play of words.
baddox 13y ago
The horrifying thing is a huge number of people do believe that without government there wouldn't be roads. Every libertarian or anarchist FAQ you find will have a response to the "but who will build the roads" question. Government has done an excellent job of convincing the vast majority of people of its indispensability.
- galadriel 13y ago
  It is a serious question. Until of now, no project of the scale of public works has been taken by any private cooperation anywhere in world. Although the incentive are clear (permanent cut on profit from all transportation), none of them have either the capital, the risk appetite or the power of taking land if so required. Extraordinary claims require proof from the party making the claim. How do libertarian and/or anarchist propose that intercontinental freeways be built and maintained at the same cost as they are done by the US government?
  - baddox 13y ago
    > Until of now, no project of the scale of public works has been taken by any private cooperation anywhere in world. I suspect one reason for that is that their primary competitor is government, which often has major advantages, like the legal authority to seize property right right of ways and virtually endless funds through taxation and debt. I don't think that any proposals would claim that all things created by government would exist in a stateless society. Remember, it's possible to not have things like intercontinental freeways but to instead have more economically efficient solutions. The road system in the US, for example, isn't some example of "pure economic good." Freeways require people in cities to subsidize people in rural areas. They also are a massive subsidy to the automobile industry, and a disaster for the rail industry. It's conceivable that a much different (and more efficient) organization of society could emerge without the government creating what it judges to be the "best" public works.
    - galadriel 13y ago
      The primary competitor, the government, has been set up by people explicitly to take benefit of the ultimate economy of scales, one where it is backed by the will and money of every single individual who believes in the Constitution which establishes and defines the role of the said government. These endless funds and the monopoly of force is given to it for explicit purposes of stepping in when the private group of individual are unable to get stuff done. The interstate do not arise in vacuum, nor are they product of mere transportation concerns. They are product of very reasonable concern of quickly transporting war equipment and connecting parts of countries to one another, so as to facilitate quick movement of goods and people, adding their value to GDP. The rail industry is thriving well, doing its job as low cost goods carrier. "It's conceivable" -- except no one has given good argument that thing which is so obvious has escaped human imagination for close to 10,000 years now, and all the places which are good approximation of said ideologies have people in utterly poor state.
p1esk 13y ago
I honestly cannot imagine how you can have even a small town function without a government of some sort, leave alone a whole country. To me, it's pretty obvious that when you have a large group of people trying to live geographically close together, someone has to set up the rules, and make sure those rules are followed. Otherwise, there will be conflicts, because people will have different opinions about how something should be done, and some people will try to enforce their worldview on others. Whoever will have the power to resolve such conflicts is the government. That will be their job, and people will have to pay them to do this job.
- snitko 13y ago
  What you don't see here is that if you have a government, it inevitably imposes the rules the majority agree with upon the minority who disagree. There is no way for the minority to do anything but wait until the next election and hope. So conflicts are not really resolved, but rather one side orders the other to shut up and do as they say. A true resolution would be when both sides agree on the price. An simple example would be this: I would like to throw a party on my lawn, but my neighbor disagrees. I really want that party though, cos it's my birthday, so I would go to my neighbor and try to convince him to let me have a party. I can see he wouldn't appreciate the noise so I would offer him something in exchange for his inconvenience: maybe I would let him use my bathtub for the next month, or maybe I would simply give him some money. If it wasn't just my one neighbor, but maybe 3 or 5 of them, I would have to convince them all and pay them all and that would make my party very expensive, so I would consider cancelling it. Now on a larger scale, imagine you'd have various law firms, each protecting their clients interests and bargaining on their behalf. So, for instance, clients of one firm wouldn't like gay people to marry, while clients of that other firm, obviously many of the are gay, would be in favor of it. Even if we suppose that those who oppose gay marriage are the majority, they still probably wouldn't be able to outbid the minority here. That's because when people are asked to pay to teach others how to live, it becomes painfully obvious most of them are not ready spend their money on it.
  - p1esk 13y ago
    Even your simple example of throwing a party breaks down in the real world. What do I do if my neighbor throws a loud party without asking my permission? Do I go and confront him? What if he tells me to f* off? Do you see where this leads to?

by snitko 13y ago

Kliment 13y ago

Except your friendly neighbourhood power or telecom monopoly.

snitko 13y ago
You see, I live in Russia. Historically, up until recently, the telecom was a very unregulated industry. Government just didn't care enough. So do you know what am I paying for a 100Mbps connection and unlimited traffic? $10/mo. Do you know what I'm paying for an unlimited 3G and calls? ~$10/mo. And this has been the case for many years. No monopoly here. Monopolies only emerge when governments and companies start making sweet love to each other.
- galadriel 13y ago
  No monopoly in 3G? How do companies refrain from transmitting at each other's frequencies? No monopoly in telecom? How do they lay all the wire without permits and regulation? Or in good old days, can I dig up anywhere in Russia and lay wires directly to my customers?
  - snitko 13y ago
    You can't and it's precisely because government sets the rules where you can lay wires and which frequencies you can use. In Russia, this hasn't gone beyond that yet, that's why the prices are that low. In other countries, regulators are a lot less reluctant.
    - galadriel 13y ago
      So Telecom was very "unregulated" because you agree with all the regulations. That's some interesting play of words.

baddox 13y ago

The horrifying thing is a huge number of people do believe that without government there wouldn't be roads. Every libertarian or anarchist FAQ you find will have a response to the "but who will build the roads" question. Government has done an excellent job of convincing the vast majority of people of its indispensability.

galadriel 13y ago
It is a serious question. Until of now, no project of the scale of public works has been taken by any private cooperation anywhere in world. Although the incentive are clear (permanent cut on profit from all transportation), none of them have either the capital, the risk appetite or the power of taking land if so required. Extraordinary claims require proof from the party making the claim. How do libertarian and/or anarchist propose that intercontinental freeways be built and maintained at the same cost as they are done by the US government?
- baddox 13y ago
  > Until of now, no project of the scale of public works has been taken by any private cooperation anywhere in world. I suspect one reason for that is that their primary competitor is government, which often has major advantages, like the legal authority to seize property right right of ways and virtually endless funds through taxation and debt. I don't think that any proposals would claim that all things created by government would exist in a stateless society. Remember, it's possible to not have things like intercontinental freeways but to instead have more economically efficient solutions. The road system in the US, for example, isn't some example of "pure economic good." Freeways require people in cities to subsidize people in rural areas. They also are a massive subsidy to the automobile industry, and a disaster for the rail industry. It's conceivable that a much different (and more efficient) organization of society could emerge without the government creating what it judges to be the "best" public works.
  - galadriel 13y ago
    The primary competitor, the government, has been set up by people explicitly to take benefit of the ultimate economy of scales, one where it is backed by the will and money of every single individual who believes in the Constitution which establishes and defines the role of the said government. These endless funds and the monopoly of force is given to it for explicit purposes of stepping in when the private group of individual are unable to get stuff done. The interstate do not arise in vacuum, nor are they product of mere transportation concerns. They are product of very reasonable concern of quickly transporting war equipment and connecting parts of countries to one another, so as to facilitate quick movement of goods and people, adding their value to GDP. The rail industry is thriving well, doing its job as low cost goods carrier. "It's conceivable" -- except no one has given good argument that thing which is so obvious has escaped human imagination for close to 10,000 years now, and all the places which are good approximation of said ideologies have people in utterly poor state.

p1esk 13y ago

I honestly cannot imagine how you can have even a small town function without a government of some sort, leave alone a whole country. To me, it's pretty obvious that when you have a large group of people trying to live geographically close together, someone has to set up the rules, and make sure those rules are followed. Otherwise, there will be conflicts, because people will have different opinions about how something should be done, and some people will try to enforce their worldview on others. Whoever will have the power to resolve such conflicts is the government. That will be their job, and people will have to pay them to do this job.

snitko 13y ago
What you don't see here is that if you have a government, it inevitably imposes the rules the majority agree with upon the minority who disagree. There is no way for the minority to do anything but wait until the next election and hope. So conflicts are not really resolved, but rather one side orders the other to shut up and do as they say. A true resolution would be when both sides agree on the price. An simple example would be this: I would like to throw a party on my lawn, but my neighbor disagrees. I really want that party though, cos it's my birthday, so I would go to my neighbor and try to convince him to let me have a party. I can see he wouldn't appreciate the noise so I would offer him something in exchange for his inconvenience: maybe I would let him use my bathtub for the next month, or maybe I would simply give him some money. If it wasn't just my one neighbor, but maybe 3 or 5 of them, I would have to convince them all and pay them all and that would make my party very expensive, so I would consider cancelling it. Now on a larger scale, imagine you'd have various law firms, each protecting their clients interests and bargaining on their behalf. So, for instance, clients of one firm wouldn't like gay people to marry, while clients of that other firm, obviously many of the are gay, would be in favor of it. Even if we suppose that those who oppose gay marriage are the majority, they still probably wouldn't be able to outbid the minority here. That's because when people are asked to pay to teach others how to live, it becomes painfully obvious most of them are not ready spend their money on it.
- p1esk 13y ago
  Even your simple example of throwing a party breaks down in the real world. What do I do if my neighbor throws a loud party without asking my permission? Do I go and confront him? What if he tells me to f* off? Do you see where this leads to?