Malodorous, please consider this a response to you as well.
The other homeowners are other people in the area who own homes. Contributions are voluntary. The fire department also hosts spaghetti dinners, raffles, and other special fund raising drives. I also neglected to mention that they service a few businesses in the area, and I wouldn’t be surprised that their contributions are greater. A couple of churches, too. I don’t know how the initial trucks were bought. (They’ve been around longer than I have.) But I did ask one of the guys once whether they would put out a fire for a family who hadn’t paid. His immediate response to me was, “Would you?” I said yes. He said, “Me too.” So, in that sense, yes I am paying for someone else’s protection, but I am doing so voluntarily.
Ravenman, it dawned on me that, just in case there might be a misunderstanding, I probably should qualify my response to you by saying that the 15% are not entitled to receive benefits — unless the 85% are feeling charitable toward them.
So the answer is to take away what little support they have? A metal-detection hell-hole of a school is better than no school. Getting whatever amount and kind of food someone else says they need is better than getting no food at all. The lowest priority and poorest quality health care availbile is better than no health care at all. A roach infested two-room paper-wall apartment with a no-show landlord is better than living on the street or an under a bridge.
Lets get some numbers. The median family income is 42,409. Average health care cost is 9,086. Down to 33,323. [cite](http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-03-16-healthcost_x.htm). Say this family has 2 children, the average tuition at private school is 3,116. Multiply that by 2 and we are down to 27091. [cite](http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-025.html) Lets say they have a 30 year mortgage on a house that cost 100,000. They are paying 10105 per year on that so that brings us down to 16986. [cite](http://www.loanstore.com/loans/mortgage_calculators/payment_calculator) They are thrifty when they buy food so it only costs them 7536. They are down to 9450. [cite](http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:3_WK-UOLIPgJ:www.usda.gov/cnpp/FoodPlans/Updates/foodjan04.pdf+average+cost+of+food+for+a+family&hl=en). Average utility is 1,500 down to 7950. [cite](http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/saving/efficiency/savingenergy.html). To retire at 70 and live for another 15 years at the same level you need to invest 2400 each year for 40 years. [I used this calculator](http://www.nscu.com/calculators/monthlyinvestment.asp) Down to 5550. The average used car is driven 13,500 miles per year. [link](http://www.safecarguide.com/gui/aff/expenses.htm) Lets give it 20 mpg and gas being 1.80 thats 1215 per year. Down to 4335. Using the current military budget and labor force that gives me 2514 per worker. So we are down to $1821. Out of that 1821 our family needs to pay for police, fire, roads, clothing, car insurance, the judicial system, garbage collection, border protection and all of lifes little incidental payments. In short there is no way that an average family in Libertaria will be able to pay for its basic needs.
Now is the average family better off in Libertaria than a more socialistic state like France? The obvious answer is no so why would we institute a Libertarian style government over a socialist one?
It doesn’t matter that I am not coerced by my fellow man I am coerced by the nature of being human. I don’t freely enter in a work arrangement. I have to enter a work arrangement or else I will die. The rich in Libertaria will use this to their advantage to drive down wages and make themselves rich. Look at Britain during the Industrial revolution. Workers worked 16 hour days 6 days a week until the government stepped in and forced the rich to treat the poor fairly. If it weren’t for the government we would still see torturous hours for a pittance.
I have shown that an average family can not afford children if we lived in Libertaria.
How exactly would a factory worker working 16 hour days for 6 days a week change their position? They don’t have enough money for an education shit they barely get enough money to survive. They don’t have any free time at all for 6 days a week and on the 7th day they are going to need to procure from the store the essentials of life.
People desire more than to just have their basic needs met. They want luxuries and are willing to work for them. All we are doing is eliminating the basic human needs so that the rich cannot exploit them for their own gain.
As has been noted, libertarianism, like socialism, often works very nicely for a sufficiently small number of well-intentioned people. It’s when you start trying to allocate costs and benefits among large populations that the free-rider problem gets serious, and you have to resort to government “coercion”.
It’s also easier to tolerate free riders in situations where their actual cost is fairly low. It’s probably comparatively easy for Lib’s volunteer firefighters to resolve to put out fires even for non-contributors, because it’s not likely to happen very often. (And that, of course, is partly due to the fact that the good old “coercive” state government has already imposed building construction codes with fire safety regulations and so forth.) If fires were a more common occurrence, free riders on the fire department would be more of a burden.
Oh, I forgot to explain my actual answer to the OP. As per the comment above, no, you cannot have an effective country-sized government without mandatory taxation. You’ll get either too much poverty, or too many free riders.
This is just asinine. You know why people don’t take anarchists, libertarians, communists, fruitarians, etc. seriously? Because there’s apparently no difference in their eyes between a functioning capitalist/socialist society with some inequities and the worst fascist state. Corruption exists. You’ll get no argument from me…but assuming your system will have none is a pipe dream.
Thing is, if you’re the only society out there not interested in forming and/or maintaining a massive nation-state, I guarantee that you’re on someone’s list for annexation. Even the smallest successful states have a good understanding (perhaps even better than large states) of their borders, the sovereignty therein, and the means to keep everyone else out. Without this understanding, they are at the mercy of anyone that covets their resources. And even the meanest country has something to covet.
I’m going to dip my toe in the water here. This is my first time posting in Great Debates, so please be nice – inexperienced debator here, and y’all intimidate me
Having read a great deal of the writings of Ayn Rand, I really like a lot of what she had to say. She was vehemently oppsed to taxation (or extortion, as she called it), and said the only things the government should have a hand in are the military, the police, and the courts. Everything else, including municipal services, education, etc., could be funded through other means (don’t ask me what – I haven’t read that yet ).
I’m just going by memory here 'cause I don’t have a reference handy, but she said that the government could get its revenue almost exclusively from premiums in the credit industry. Any sort of credit or loan type of transaction is essentially a contract; if the creditor wants the contract enforceable by law, which of course he would, then he charges a premium, on top of the amount of the loan, that would go to the government. If the “creditee” doesn’t want to pay the premium, then he doesn’t get the loan. It’s still voluntary, and the credit industry is so huge that revenue generated in this way would be plenty to fund a goverment that sticks to its proper function.
I’m not knowledgeable enough in these matters to judge whether this would be feasible, and I haven’t yet read anything by Rand that goes into great detail about it. Rand fans don’t appear to be popular on these boards, but I’m genuinely interested in hearing any flaws in her philosophy I might have missed.
I’d like to offer that this may have less to do with government-brokered services then it does city vs. rural. Unless you have multiple garbage services to choose from there is still no competitive pressure on your garbage collector to provide better/cheaper service.
Not if your child is shot, beaten, mugged, raped, hooked on drugs, or joins a gang, it isn’t.
When I needed food, I had to get it from the Crisis Assistance Ministry. I did not qualify for food stamps because I was a young white male who, in the government’s opinion, was capable of working and sustaining sufficient employment to afford food. Clinical depression, at that time, was not a recognized excuse for not working.
I’m not so sure it is. There isn’t much that can kill you faster than an incompetent quack with a needle and a knife.
Not if the roaches bite you, or if you get in the crossfire between two neighbors fighting over cocaine, or if you become overwhelmed by noxious gases and odors from every manner of filthy source. That’s actually why some people choose streets and bridges.
Or in the United States either, by your numbers.
The tax burden on the family in your scenario is best case $5,649 or worst case $7,344, putting them in the hole -$5,523, using the best case. (Cite.) Now, I haven’t included their social security taxes, which are 6.2%, for $2,629, or their medicare taxes, which are 1.45%, for $615. (Cite.) So now their total is up to $8,767. I also haven’t included their state tax, which is hard to figure, because it all depends on where they live. But in eighteen states, the state tax threshold is far below the poverty line for a two-parent family of four. (Cite.) So, picking a state at random (in this case, Oregon from four years ago), the state taxes on your family, after all exemptions, deductions, and credits, would be $2,095. (Cite.) That brings their total tax burden up to $10,862. Sales taxes are even harder to figure, but the national average of all sales taxes, including state, county, and city is 8.53%. (Cite.) That translates to a sales tax burden, assuming they have no savings and aren’t in debt by more than they make, of $3,617, bringing their total up to $14,479. I also haven’t included property taxes, estate taxes, death taxes, inheritance taxes, gift taxes, telecommunications taxes, capital gains taxes, building permit licences, liquor taxes, luxury taxes, excise taxes (other than telecommunications), septic permit taxes, cigarette taxes, gasoline taxes, hunting licenses, drivers licenses, dog and cat licenses, marriage licenses, recreational vehicle taxes, hunting licenses, local income taxes, toll booths, bridges, and tunnels, well permit fees, watercraft registrations, exotic pet licenses, utilities taxes, or trailer registrations. How much these could come to is anybody’s guess, so I’ll just pick Boston as a high property tax state to try to simulate some sort of average for that whole jumble. If your hypothetical family had a $403,000 home in Boston (the average value there), it would pay $4,886. (Cite.) This brings their tax burden up to $19,365. That means that, out of their earnings of $42,409, government leaves them with $23,044. After your hypothetical family pays their hypothetical mortgage, they have $12,139 remaining. Their hypothetical health care brings them down to $3,853. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave them enough to buy their hypothetical food, which you estimated at $7,536. (Cite.)
(Incidentally, you should take another look at your Cato cite. Cato is a libertarian think tank, and it says very unflattering things about public schools.)
We who? We who live off others or we who make our own way? The difference between us, other than merely the philosophy that we hold, is that you wish to impose yours on me, and I do not wish to impose mine on you. Join with like-minded socialists, if that is your wish, and squeeze the blood out of the wealthiest among you to finance the poorest until all the wealth is gone. That is your business. All I ask from you as that you afford me the same basic freedom to choose how I wish to be governed.
That may be true for you; however, many people know how to farm, or want to be entrepreneurs, or have marketable skills and talents. Why should they have to subsidize you just because your dreams are so limited and bland?
Just for the record, it was actually the owner of a factory, Sir Robert Peal, who persuaded Parliament to pass the world’s first worker protection legislation. It wasn’t the goodness of politicians who, after all, didn’t even provide for enforcement of the act, but the insistence of private citizens that made that change. And that has been true in general throughout the history of the capitalist West, all the way up to civil rights where government reacted to private citizens taking to the streets to march and even give their lives to effect change. It is not the case that government has been the noble knight that stepped in to lead the charge for reform. The people have forced it to do so.
Actually, you’ve shown that it cannot afford even to eat, if it lived in the US.
You cannot conclude with your premise. I reject that there would necessarily be 16 hour work days and all that crap. Industrial tycoons and the lords of business have always relied on their partnerships with government politicians to craft legislation that allows them to take maximum advantage of the population. In a coercive system, it will always be that way. It is not the case that your governors are saints, sitting at their desks, looking fondly at photographs of your family while trying to figure out how best to improve your lives. They are wheelers and dealers, having lunches with men of influence and power to determine how best to increase their own wealth.
No, you are not. You are trapping them in a multi-generational hopelessness of dependency on The State. You have reduced them, not lifted them, to the level of squalor. And you’ve put upon their backs onerous laws that ensure they will rise no higher without exceptional luck or circumstance.
If fires were more common, there would probably be a lot fewer free riders as well. I only mention this because you can’t consider a situation like this statically-- ie, you can’t change one variable and assume all other variables stay the same.
I’ve always thought the problem with libertarianism is not the free riders-- they tend to suffer for their non-participation, unlike in socialism where they make out well. The “problem” is that people don’t want absolute freedom if it means they can’t lay claim to other people’s property if they feel they need to. I put “problem” in quotes, because that seems to be a fundamental part of human nature, and I’ve never been able to accept the idea that a system is good, it’s just people who are bad. The system needs to serve the people, and if that system requires a change in human nature, then the system is no good. Many people will say they want to be completely in charge of their own destiny, but as soon they encounter some difficulty, they want the rest of society to be forced to help them overcome it.
Personally, I’ve always look at libertarianism as a direction to move towards rather than a specific goal that we should try to achieve. As much as I’d like our system to be much closer to a libertarian one, I’d be more than willing to reverse course when movement in that direction leads to a breakdown in civil society.
There are three to choose from. We also have some of the best cable rates, service, and features in the nation because there are two companies in ferocious competition.
Well said, and I agree 100%. That’s why the LP doesn’t have any significant support from America’s wealthiest businesses. CEOs like haven’t partners in Washington to secure for them their welfare and special privileges. I do understand that Libertarian magistrates would be as corruptible as anyone else, and that just like the American experiment, the Libertarian experiment could end up biting the dust. But of course, that doesn’t mean that I should just shut up and never make anyone aware that a possible alternative is out there.
And they get the water from the municipal water fairy, at whose house we keep the fire engines. The municipal fire elves keep the engines running and full of gas. They also sew and manufacture the all fire equipment needed for for fighting fires out of fairy and pixy dust. In their spare time, the homeowners spend three to four hours a week in training to fight fires from the head fire elf who lives with the municipal water fairy on a sprawling firefighting complex in fairyland.
My problem with her philosophy as a whole is her first premise: existence exists. It is a remarkable contradiction that she was a vehement anti-existentialist. She hated Kant for no good reason, basically deriving her distate for him from nothing more than the title of one of his books. She despised libertarians, calling us “hippies of the right”, and accusing us of stealing bits of her philosophy — which is absurd, since libertarianism is directly derivable from sources as old and varied as Lao Tzu and Aristotle. All that said, I do like her philosophy in a form that I have modified for myself personally. Naturally, I am the very devil to her disciples. But oh well…
I want to throw a spanner into the works of this and offer yet another alternative. I have not the time right now to expound on it, but will try to do so later (although that may end up being tomorrow).
Simply put - anarchism. Which would be, roughly, libertarianism without the ownership of property of the means of production. All decisions taken by consensus (obviously you need communities of a manageable size for this - the nation-state disappears). I see it that where people own land or the means of production a hierarchy is established (based on wealth) that does not allow freedom and equality.
I realize that this may not be a particularly popular view around here, but it is one I hold to. And it is growing.
Liberal I had a nice long post typed up to respond to you but then I thought why bother. You did not address any of my points.
(1) A family in Libertaria can not afford its basic needs. How would this be addressed in Libertaria and why would an average person want to live in Libertaria over a more socialist state.
Your Repsonse: You can’t afford your basic needs in the U.S. either.
That sure as shit didn’t answer any of my questions.
(2) A person does not freely enter in a work agreement becuase they are forced by the necessities of life to work.
Your Response: Why should we subsidize your bland dreams?
You either completely ignored my point and decided to answer with the standard Libertarian response.
(3) The horrible factory conditions required government intervention to end them becuase the factory owners wouldn’t
Your Response: It was a factory owner that convinced parliment and then you went off onto something about coersion.
Again you failed to address my point. Why would conditions have changed in Liberteria since the government would not have intervened?
(4) People will still work if their basic needs are met becuase they desire luxuries.
Your Response: I am condeming them to dependency on the state
Huh? People do not have to be dependent on the state if they do not wish to be.
Be up front ** Liberal ** are you planning on addressing my questions or shall I no longer waste my time?
Therein lies your problem. The communities could not be much larger than a town and have it still work. There is no way a community that small could protect itself from its neighbors or for that matter compete economically with their neighbors.
Addressing the OP, there is no fundamental reason why a government couldn’t exist without taxes. Even without nationalized natural resources to exploit, contributions for government expenditures ***could ***be made voluntary. Of course, you’d have a much smaller government than you see in most countries, but I still expect that in a country like the US, most working people would make voluntary contributions to the government as long as they thought those contributions were being used responsibly.
).