4 ms·

In fairness to the "libertarian crowd", the smart ones usually do grok negative externalities, and come up with grandiose (if naive) schemes for internalizing t

In fairness to the "libertarian crowd", the smart ones usually do grok negative externalities, and come up with grandiose (if naive) schemes for internalizing them. The likely result most of the time is a community that spends 20 hours out of every day in various town hall meetings, byzantine tax and fee schedules, an enforcement arm that would have to rival the Stasi in order to actually work, and of course the whole thing is very susceptible to corruption. But they do know what negative externalities are, at least.

microcolonel 11y ago
How exactly would the libertarian crowd get "byzantine" tax? Avoiding taxation in general seems like one of the major components of the idea.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  By calling them "fees" or "voluntary contributions" or similar. Taxes are only bad if a government extracts them at gunpoint. If a non-governmental force extracts them at... well, the gun is still there, I suppose, but hidden behind a layer of "If you don't pay, we sue, and if you don't pay after the lawsuit, the guns come out"... they're morally A-OK.
- deciplex 11y ago
  I only call it a "tax" as a shorthand, libertarians would not call it that. Rather they devise a system where, for example in the case of air pollution, there is no such thing as a public good, and instead of regulation and fines, potential air polluters would need to enter into a contract with the owners of the air in order to secure the right to pollute the air. And it pretty much goes downhill from there. It's one of those things that might sometimes work okay on paper, but the trouble is that you can't actually try it out in practice due to the difficulty of assembling into a coherent community, a critical mass of people with the correct sort of deranged insanity to want to try it in the first place.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  The solutions always involves either some kind of enforcing organization (ie - a government) or a hand wavy 'the market will provide' appeal to fervor.

microcolonel 11y ago

How exactly would the libertarian crowd get "byzantine" tax? Avoiding taxation in general seems like one of the major components of the idea.

cbd1984 11y ago
By calling them "fees" or "voluntary contributions" or similar. Taxes are only bad if a government extracts them at gunpoint. If a non-governmental force extracts them at... well, the gun is still there, I suppose, but hidden behind a layer of "If you don't pay, we sue, and if you don't pay after the lawsuit, the guns come out"... they're morally A-OK.
deciplex 11y ago
I only call it a "tax" as a shorthand, libertarians would not call it that. Rather they devise a system where, for example in the case of air pollution, there is no such thing as a public good, and instead of regulation and fines, potential air polluters would need to enter into a contract with the owners of the air in order to secure the right to pollute the air. And it pretty much goes downhill from there. It's one of those things that might sometimes work okay on paper, but the trouble is that you can't actually try it out in practice due to the difficulty of assembling into a coherent community, a critical mass of people with the correct sort of deranged insanity to want to try it in the first place.
WalterSear 11y ago
The solutions always involves either some kind of enforcing organization (ie - a government) or a hand wavy 'the market will provide' appeal to fervor.