The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

When you parents tell you to go help them mow the lawn or similar, do you claim they stole your time from you by demanding that from you?

Your view that a state that uses taxation to fund the stuff that states do is basically stealing from its citizens makes as much sense to me as claiming my parents steal my time when they ask me to help them mow the lawn.

A state is a community of people. A large one, sure, but it's a community of people who live together. Living together means working together and helping each other out. A taxation system is a reasonably effective way of managing that on a large scale of millions of people in that community.
If you assert that taxation is stealing then the discussion ends right there, as my assertion is that every citizen of a nation is morally obliged to pay taxes.
Taxation is a necessity to fund the spending our community has to do stuff that benefits us all.
It is immoral not to pay back to the community that you live in.

So what you call stealing is what I call an obligation everyone has to pay back to the nation that fostered them.
If you grew up in an empty desert, alone, then your logic makes sense. But you probably did not.

I can't help but come back to the feeling that all you really want is a ruthless free-for-all everybody fight for themselves, everybody is your enemy.

Local governments having a lot of control has already been attempted in the US. At the very beginning. Many things simply didn't work with it. We hadn't even a solid currency within our nation. Travelling between states brought up exchange rates or even unacceptance of your States currency. It was a mess.

Without some form of large cooperation you just get a mess of confusion. Going from state to state as laws changed wildly.

I can say that the above photo isn't related to a tax return Context is key.

No, they were my parents. I did it out of respect for their wishes. I may have loathed it at the time, but I still respected them and did as they asked.

This analogy is incredibly naive. The government takes a portion of your income for taxes, only for me and mine to see little benefit in either the long or short term. Mowing the lawn benefits you and your parents immediately and in the long haul. Making you do it is a matter of discipline and responsibility, not violence and coercion.

A state is a collection of communities. We are NOT all one community. That's BS you just pulled out of your arse for this argument.

What, and me working my *** off at the nuclear plant isn't enough to pay back the community I live in? I get immediate benefits from working there - my duties keep the guys safe who keep the reactor safe which keeps you safe. Taxes? Outside of the tax return, I get literally nothing back from that outside of basic civil services. I'd pay for those voluntarily anyway, and I'd pay up for the military too. But Social Security? Welfare programs? Why the **** would I pay into those? If I want to give to charity, I'll give it to a small local charity or a food bank or something, where the money won't go to waste in oodles of bureaucracy.

No one here owes anyone anything. That is a basic difference between libertarians and the leeches: One believes we should take responsibility for our actions and leave our best mark on the world, while the other blames others and preaches the guilt of society. I am not guilty. I am free.

That's hyperbole. We just want government reduced to a bare minimum - civil services, military, voting infrastructure. That's it. No welfare. No safety nets. Teach personal responsibility in schools, encourage the dreamers, and educate the uneducated. It's not a free-for-all anarchy. It's called freedom.

Free to succeed. Free to fail. Life isn't a game. It's not a roller coaster ride. It's a test. if you fail the simple test, you lose. There's no comeback for laziness.

There is no way we'll ever even coming close to understanding each other.
Your views from my perspective are that of a savage and my views from your perspective or that of a leech and the disagreement starts at a purely moral level, which is completely arbitrary as moral is a concept humans have come up with by themselves.

At least we can both relate to that feeling.

Do your parents lock you up in jail if you don't obey? When you say no, do they physically assault you or use other forms of coercion to make you do it? If so, this is called child abuse. I sincerely hope we aren't using this as a model for how to structure a civilised society.

Democratic government is merely a reflection of the community and who holds the most power whether by money or by majority vote has tyranny over the views of the minority. There are no angels or aliens to govern us into our better selves.

Imagine you now live in a pro slavery community where the majority of people think slavery is moral. They get together and vote to institute a slave watch where they patrol for escaping slaves as a public good in the national interest. Now they force you, an anti-slavery advocate, to fund it or they draft you to serve time within the department. After all, every citizen is morally obligated to pay taxes aren't they?

Are you really trying to tell me that this is not a problem that stems from government as the solution you keep advocating for? You don't seem to understand that government is only good when it coincides with your own self interests. Maybe you want them to protect you, or you want them to build roads for you, and you are willing to pay the cost they impose. In these cases you would voluntarily be paying them for these services anyway so there isn't a need for the use of violence.

The problem is when you try and impose this on other people who may not necessarily hold the same views you do. Maybe someone doesn't value the roads as much as you because they like to use a bicycle instead, or maybe they walk, or work from home etc. You are forcing these people to subsidise the lifestyles of others who make heavy use of the roads.

It's not good enough to invoke "national interest". That's literally been the rallying call for every single despot and fascist in recorded history. Nations are not humans, only humans are humans, and only human interests matter down to the individual. If national interest is not in your interest, what good is it? Are you telling me you are ok with the NSA reading everyone's email because it is in the interest of national security?

People have different values on their personal safety all the time. Some people prefer the enjoyment of smoking or alcohol more than the cost to their health. It is not up to you to institute a government that forces a certain arbitrary freedom/security tradeoff on everyone. We can try to educate people and change their minds about how they value certain actions, but if they are only harming themselves what right do we have to threaten them with jail? This is exactly what the christian conservative right does where they try to force people to comport to certain moral codes like no gay marriage, no drugs etc etc.

No, i already outlined in the previous post why one needs to differentiate between what is theoretically the most moral way to live and what is currently a realistically pragmatic solution. Just like i might say "a car that runs on renewable electricity is a great idea, how do i get there?". This is the question that no-one really has an answer for at this current moment in time.

A peaceful society where no one can aggress on another person is not a ruthless free for all. The question is how do we get there and in my mind it is certainly not by instituting that very same aggressive human tendency into the form of bigger and bigger government where people now have legal ways to exploit others.

It's really contradictory when people say they're so scared of economic monopolies and monopoly exploitation that they'll solve it by creating a monopoly on the use of force. As if the monopoly they just created is going to be magically immune from the very same forces that guide the monopoly they want to address. It's no surprise there has not been a single moral government in recorded history that has not eventually devolved into something unsavoury.

Obviously not. Because it progresses as you get older. Not doing chores < Not paying taxes. But there IS punishment that correlates. Never heard of the corner? Time out? Getting your things taken away? Not to mention a lot of parents do spank their kids or will drag them back to time out if they've ditched it etc... I can't believe you just asked that question lmao.

What? So you think spanking and beating up kids because they didn't follow your orders (like mowing the lawn) isn't child abuse? Just because "some parents do it". I guess murder is also ok because some people murder. /smh

Yea ok, let me just spank my kid with bamboo cane until he/she does what I want. Or maybe i'll coerce them by depriving them of their freedom in a timeout corner until they become compliant with my wishes. Because slavery is immoral, but slave child labour isn't if it's my child.

'lmao' back at yourself.




Violence is so lazy. Grow up. If your ideas are good, you don't need the initiation of violence to enforce them.

*And that talk you went on about local governments bottlenecking interstate trade and so on is just a rabbit hole. The solution to government is bigger government. And the solution to big government is even bigger government. We need a government to control our government and we need a government to control that one too. How do you think the US federal government was funded in the early days other than through a taxation on interstate commerce, which directly contradicts the function you purport them to have been necessary for? It's like a less bad thug taking over a really bad thug. Pragmatic, but not in any way a moral goal.

Local governments bottlenecking trade are not instruments of capitalism that need to be regulated as much as you would like to believe otherwise. If person A wants to trade with Person B across a state border, do you really think it is in their private self interests in anyway to try and Imagine if a private company was doing exactly what the local government was doing. They would have been found grossly liable in a court of law for the violation of private property rights.

Also, private enterprise is perfectly able to co-operate. How do you think something like a private energy grid is balanced? Surely everyone would have an incentive to pump it full of their own powerplant so that they can push all other suppliers out of the market? But then that would lead to a grid overload and the entire network would be unusable. No, what happens is the private owners of the grid make contracts with the suppliers of power to buy from them based on market price and then balance and transport that power to where there is an actual demand for it. Where there are property rights, the market is able to work it's magic and self organise into solutions you wouldn't have imagined at first. Use your brain to find solutions, not your fist.

They took my gameboy away. Dunno if it was about mowing the lawn, but that's one example of what they did that was a big deal to me when I was like... dunno young.
I wouldn't call that child abuse. I certainly misbehaved back then and that misbehavior had to have consequences. Parents sure do need to have some form of coercion to control their children. Sure beating them up is a no go, but if you don't even allow them to take away the gameboy you'll make the children to be anarchistic in the future.

Even in a state without taxes that would be a problematic situation. Yes my taxes would not be used to fund stuff I disagree with, but the stuff would still happen around me and I would at minimum live with the fact that many goods I buy around my place are made by slaves. And buying your goods from you is basically supporting you in what you do.
Not much better.
Living in a state that follows a completely different moral than your own is gonna be a problem. No matter what form of state it is.

Also you don't need to come up with fantasy situations for that argument. You may point at the "state" television of Germany. In my eyes they burn 8000000000€ a year for mostly **** and its written into the law that everyone has to pay them. That institution is such a horrible shitty thing that I can get soooo angry about.

But that's still no reason to completely reject the system of a state that is based on taxes. Everything has downsides. Not to mention that that shitty television thing isn't even a "tax", they phrase it as something clearly "not tax", but .... freely translated "fee". For legal reasons, because we actually have laws that prevent taxes from being used in such an ugly fashion. So they and their supporters in politics and jurisdiction got really really creative to work around it and get what they want.

I would never spank a kid- I don't agree with it and feel it doesn't really make the same impact as taking privileges away does. However I think there's an obvious threshold of when physical punishment gets abusive. Everything is so black and white to you.

And who even mentioned a cane? You're jumping all over the place with assumptions so why not join in the fun. Do you really not believe in punishment that isn't physical as well? So no punishment what-so-ever? If that's the case then I'm sure you believe murderers should run free, bank thiefs are fine and dandy. Oh and of course the big government who steals your money through taxes are totally fine too aye? Running yourself into a corner is fun. Every time you speak you run further into the idea of anarchy. A system which very obviously doesn't work.

It's interesting those who state they get 'no benefit' from their taxes... I can only speak for the UK but the direct benefits I personally get from taxes are:

- refuse and recycling collection
- fire services (gladly never needed this but essential never the less)
- ambulance service (been needed a few times over the years in my family, another essential)
- general healthcare
- street cleaners (OK less critical however I personally feel it's a worthwhile investment)
- swimming pools and other public leisure facilities
- libraries
- the road network (both new construction and maintenance)
- the rail network (the operating companies are private, however the actual network itself is run by the state)
- the drainage system

I'm sure there are more I can't think of right now. There's a lot to be said for having large scale services centrally funded. Having visited many other countries without these things you start to realise just how good the UK systems are....

Elodea, would you rather that you needed to directly pay the fire department for their services of preventing your property from burning to the ground?

And with this comes one of the biggest advantages of socially funded things like this. The fire department has no bias. Imagine if the owner of a privatized fire department didn't like you. But said department had the monopoly in your specific city. You're fucked.

Nah it'll be even worse for you if whoever owns the street in front of your house doesn't like you.

I am sure he will be able to work out a deal that you will agree to in the end, a clear win for both sides. You get to leave your house again and the owner of the street gets every $ you can possibly give and maybe some more.
You agreed to that deal, so it seems you value your ability to leave your house more than all your money. Everybody wins! So much wealth is created!

</sarcasm>

Civic services and military protection from invasion are all we need government for. They should run the fire departments where they can, the police stations, the inner city public transport. Etc.

But that's it. No more.

No bias?
Have you ever participated in city government? EVERYONE has bias.

If they can run fire departments, why can't they run healthcare? How is that any different?

Tried to cut this down as much as i could, but it ended up expanding instead. Apologies, and congratulations if you manage to get all the way through this ugly monstrosity.

To clear it up, the role of government within libertarianism stems from a recognition that they are a monopoly on force. Therefore, whatever is a justified use of force falls within government and whatever isn't falls outside government. Fire departments are not a function of force like a military or judiciary system are. So yes, i would advocate and pay directly for private fire departments in the knowledge that my money is actually going to them and that I am paying an accurate price for the value that they bring to the table (market price discovery). Just because I oppose taxes doesn't mean I oppose the services they fund or the public employees that provide it. The problem is solely in the method.

Even in the absence of a fire service i essentially do this anyway. It's called home insurance. It may even be cheaper for them and I if there was some attached private fire department service. They have to payout less because there would be less damage and therefore I would pay a lower cost of insurance. All of this is just a maths question of tradeoffs, costs and benefits, and how they effect free decision making. If fire departments add no value to the equation e.g. they charge $1 million a year and never put out any fires, neither I nor my home insurer will want to involve them. Also, just to note - bargaining power can always be collectivised into larger insurance pools. Same deal was happening back in the day with worker health insurance pools that bid the price of health services down really low in places like the UK. Ofcourse the health industry responded with governmental regulation like licences and quotas to restrict supply etc. in order to get prices back up though.

Anyway, there isn't any of this squabbling over prices while my house burns down and the fire department making money flipping my house because I have a pre-existing contract. I pay them a monthly fee for them to respond in a timely fashion and put out the fire. If they breach their contractual duties, I will seek damages in a court of law.

Freedom is having a choice and being responsible for it. It's about being a sovereign human being and that isn't possible if your choices don't bear on you in proportionate consequence. I either pay today for a contract and secure my future, or i can forgo the cost today and pay a lumpsum in the future if something bad happens. If I go to a casino and gamble away some money, should i get to socialise the loss but keep all the gains? If not, why should i be able to socialise the loss when i gamble with my life? Don't you think that creates a rather strong incentive to gamble with my life where I might not otherwise? That's why I find it hypocritical when someone complains about wall street socialising losses and keeping gains but turns around and supports the same thing in other matters.

Imagine if i live in a neighbourhood of pyromaniacs who are constantly lighting big fires in unsafe ways on their property. I am the only sane person who takes precautions against risks on my property. Should i be forced to pay high taxes for a public firefighting service that I disproportionately benefit from because of the irresponsible behaviour of other members of society?

Offtopic but relevant, there's a reason why the ACA is failing horrendously and why insurance companies are withdrawing from the market despite everyone being compulsorily coerced into getting coverage and premiums/deductibles skyrocketing. Can you imagine that? If you fined everyone $x every year if they didn't buy from a fastfood chain, the only person who stands to benefit is the fast food industry. What's even more funny is some people are just paying the fine, which doesn't benefit them in any way whatsoever when it comes to their health outcomes. Insert Thanks Obama meme here.

Kinda the same deal in Australian health insurance as well due to governmental interference. A lot of us are on private health insurance not because of it's own benefits and costs, but because we can pay for the shittiest, lowest private cover possible in order to escape the medicare levy tax. Basically an ACA fine but paid to private owners (lol).

I was also reading recently about the history of how the US government initiated the entire trend of ballooning health benefits in work contracts as people simply tried to avoid paying high taxes by shifting compensation into health insurance. It was always a curiosity for me why you guys were the only place that ever heavily integrated an employer pays system. And if something is tax free, people tend to be willing to throw more money at it to the disadvantage of people paying out of post-tax moneys. Even a socialised single payer system is cleaner than the overall one you guys have in place right now (not to say it's the best way, only that it's better in several areas than your current circumstance).

/long post over

But you can only get insurance at the price you do because there is a public fire service, banking system law and order etc etc.
You keep trying to benefit from only the parts of the system you like, when in fact you benefit from more on them.
For example school, why should you help pay fro them when you don;t have children, well educating people befits you due to people being educated so that they can work for the insurance company, etc etc.
And besides lets just say your taxes pay for the services you want, like national defense etc, and the services you don't use come from other peoples taxes. I think your very likely to still be getting good value compared to paying everything privately.

Ok interesting points, couple of things in response,

Public fire service has nothing to do with a private service. There isn't a public grocery that allows private groceries to run. Also I never meant to imply I was for free loading (using someone else's goods and services without paying). If you want the protection of government, then you must pay for it. If you don't want it, then i don't think it's entirely right for me to force you to pay for something you don't want. Irregardless of whether i think you made a stupid decision or not. Just like I don't force people to only eat banana flavoured icecream just because I can't see the sense in any other flavour.

Also, if the land you occupy becomes safer as an externality of the people surrounding you voluntarily paying for their own security, that isn't something you are obligated to pay for because you haven't agreed to be bound by any contract. When the people around you stop paying for security and your land becomes less safe, you have no right to claim back that security from anyone. It would be like if you lived next to a biscuit factory and every day you woke up to the beautiful smell of fresh biscuits. The biscuit factory can't one day demand you pay for the privilege of smelling their biscuit aromas.

I benefit from an insurance person when I buy insurance from the insurance person. I give him money, he agrees with me to enter into some kind of insurance contract. This is how people pay for the benefit of other people's skills. I don't give the money to government and somehow hope it reaches the insurance person. Nor do i give the money to some random actuary student totally irrelevant to the transaction between me and the insurance person.

Also, education isn't necessarily what matters - value matters. An average blue collar construction worker or the guy who drives the garbage trucks provides me with more value than a phd professor in gender studies.
Feminist Glaciology

Public grant for $400k

If i pay for something I intend to use, the simplest way I can think of to explain this revolves around the idea of monopoly. I'm sure you don't like monopolies in the private sector. Well, government services happen to also be monopolies, and they are able to back them up with the use of force in some kind of statutory law. That's the simplest way to put it without going into free market theory in detail, which i'm happy to do if you want.

If i pay for something I never intend to use, that is not good value for my money. If i pay $100 or even $1 for a swimming membership but never go swimming, that is not a good use of my money.

And when it comes to cross subsidisation as is often the case with government taxation as bundle deals, it's even worse. Imagine a world where person A pays for person B and vice versa. It is in A's interest to spend as much as he can without thought about how much he can afford, and likewise for person B. In the end we spend way more than we can afford and we finance this by printing money and selling treasury notes to other countries, binding our consumption and debts on the income of our unborn children.