Negative income tax

Why don't we impliment this? it seems like the answer to so many problems, is it because the IRS is to afraid of fraud?

yep, and its anti-capitalism
I love the idea, maybe in the future

>>2
Its far more capitalistic then welfare or minimum wage, I dont think that point is valid. Unless of course you consider it should be added ontop of those two, but any introductory economic student can see the disasters that stem from that mix.

You could say poor people get less from the country than rich people and should get to pay very little in tax. You could increase the spending power of the poorest people in the country by 25% and see both a reduction in tax and a decrease in poverty as we can finally discard corrupt market-isolated welfare programs.

A much better idea is a maximum wage, or rather, a 100% wealth-tax when your wealth have reached a ammount where added wealth wont contribute to either consumption power or investmensts. This would make the people who have already made enough money to last them lifetimes to leave their jobs and let other people go up one step on the ladder.

All those ideas suck.

Negative income tax distorts prices and creates uneconomic consumption which creates uneconomic production which lowers the general standard of living.

Giving people money they didn't earn isn't going to solve their problem. Hell, most of the people that are poor are so because of their mindset. In many cases, if you increase their spending power by 25%, they'll buy 72" HD plasma screens from Rentacenter and get themselves in debt with it. I see this happen all the time where I live.

A maximum wage limits the profit incentive and will cause a CEO who makes slightly more than the limit let his company produce inefficiently and lower product quality, where without the maximum wage he would be motivated to keep the factory rolling smoothly, efficiently, and keep quality high. If the factory isn't making as much stuff, that's that much less stuff and that much shittier the stuff that the poor consumers are going to be getting.

All the measures presented so far in the thread would do nothing but damage to the standard of living, and the effect is always amplified on the poor.

>>6
You sir, is a fucking moron.
A CEO can not micromanage a transnational company in such a way to earn slightly less than maximum efficiency. Why? Because efficiency is set by the competion, and he has no control of how that will develop, meaning that a CEO that tries to earn slighly less than max will be beaten by a CEO who doesnt, without moar than 9000 in salary and benefits.

And, people being poor because of their mindset is a wonderful idea, but as this has been a paradigm of sorts since victorian times, reforms based on this notion has produced any significant or lasting results. Why? Poverty has nothing to do with sets of minds, only with lack of money, and money is contrary to popular belief not magically invented by people who have the very mental power.

And i recommend living as you learn, better yet, create a mindset as a entrepenour, then cut of both your legs and blind yourself and move to new dehli, and make the same argument when you own microsoft.

Did I say it had to be a trasnational? Did I say anything about the size of it at all? I don't think I did.

Efficiency is not set by the competition. Prices are. Efficiency is set by the business decisionmakers. Whether or not the business can sell for less and keep a profit determines whether that firm stays in business. Since profits will be capped, that will become less and less relevant as time goes on, leading to a decline in efficiency and quality.

You ever lived in a poor neighborhood? I've lived in a few dozen, and live in one now. I see the same ideas over and over. I've also lived in middle-class neighborhoods. I see very different ideas there. What reforms are you referring to?

Money is not wealth, wealth is not money. Wealth is created by allocating resources to where they're demanded, and this allocation is done by the people who have the very mental power. Poverty is not a lack of money, it's a lack of wealth. And wealth is created, not magically, but by people who have the mental power to recognize supplies and demands and methods to join to two.

>>8
You sir, are again a moron.
Size does matter, since the income cap is based on the diminishing increase in "consumption power or investmensts". Or do you think that a CEO of Kwiki Mart has a comparable salary as to the CEO of Dell?

As you said, profit determines whether the firm stays in business. But profit is determined by marketshares, and this is determined by the competition, is it not? Then, efficiency means making cheaper products than your competitors, and if you dont, you will be fucked. Profits are not capped, income, meaning the ammount of profit you can transfer to personal gain is capped.

I am poor and i live in a relative poor neighborhood. I dont see any ideas other than poor people trying to make the best of a desperate situation, and there is no such thing as saving you out of poverty. Im from a middleclass background, but i think the poor people that surrounds me now works harder if they are employed, and if they arent they really really want to be employed.
Reforms like the poorhouses, but also reforms like lowering welfair benefits and the like, tends to increase employed pop ,true, but also leads to the poor being poorer and forcing more into crime IMO.
Wealth is not created by allocation of resources, as this would be a truly magical event. No, wealth is created by work done by humans, and it is created by the ones who gets the lowest possible wages for the largest ammount of time spent. The lower the ratio, the greater the wealth. And this means that wealth is created by whitholding it from others, and if you call this fair  then i call you an elitist prick. And a moron to boot.

I didn't say size didn't matter. I'm silent on the size issue. I'm asking you why the hell you keep bringing up size.

Profit is not determined by marketshares. It's costs minus revenue. This is fucking basic shit. Profits would be capped because profits are income. If what you're advocating excepts business profits, then you're not gonna change very much with that. All the rich guys own very little. They just own corporations. They own their house through their corporation. They own their car, their investment, everything, through a corporation. If corporate profits aren't charged, you're not changing much.

You're not looking at ideas. You're looking at poor people being poor. There are ideas bigger than the ones you see that you refuse to see.

Government reforms are always destined to fail because that's just what government does. If they hadn't been dependant upon welfare in the first place, there wouldn't have been a problem with lowering welfare benefits.

Wealth is created by the allocation of resources. Resources are allocated by the work done by humans, not necessarily by wage labor. If I have a way to make water, in a place where nobody has water, I can allocate my water and make everyone less thirsty, which increases their wealth, and increase my money supply. I don't have to be a wage laborer to do this.

Wage labor is a worker allocating his resources of time, energy, and talents, to meet the demands of a capitalist pig. The capitalist pig, in turn, allocates those resources to the customer.

Wealth isn't created by witholding it from others, wealth is things like planes, cars, houses, electricity, and computers. These are not created by witholding it from others, dumbass.

You're also into that stupid objective labor theory of value. Get your head out of your ass.

Revenue minus costs*

Okay, but what determines revenue? Since revenues are determined by the ammount of products sold, and this is determined in competition with others, meaning that if your prices are higher than those of your competitors identical products, you will sell less or not at all, forcing you to lowering your prices --> revenues --> profits. So, competition determines profit, yes? Not exclusively though. So then, if you dont want to sell at exactly the same level as your competitor you have to be inventive and invent unique selling points and similar bullshit, and this bullshit will compete with the other guys bullshit, determining who stays and who goes.

As long as the money is invested in the company  and stays in the company, its not capped. Of course does extra regulations against loans of companyowned cars and houses and such be taken into account but that is not difficult, at least not for the tax agency here in sweden, as these benefits is counted as income here and taxed. Maybe the IRS not as efficient?

"Government reforms are always destined to fail because that's just what government does."
Nice. Its like religion, i like that with marketliberals. Even  huge succeses, as free healthcare or free education, is seen as failures just because of some marginal gain lost through inefficiency. Ever heard about marketfailures and tragedy of the anticommons? And which private company invented the internet, or the transistor, or the computer, or the satelite? Done in a free  market? Not bloody likely.

If they had owned their means of production, they wouldnt have been dependent on welfare. They dont, so they are. And if you have no welfare, you will have a lot of homeless people. But yes, also very low wages. And there have never been any country  AFAIK that has had no welfare system at all, so your assertion that poverty is coupled to welfare has no empirical foundation, or has it?

Wait, their wealth increases by them fulfilling their basic needs? So i am wealthier after i have spent money on a hamburger  than before i did that. What happens after i have eaten it? Is the wealth gone when ive done my duty in the privy or is the muscels also included in your wealth theory?

Capitalists own the means of production the rest of us are dependent upon to make our money. By working in these for our wages we survive. We have no other way of surviving than working there, or rather, we can invent something, but most inventors fails to make it, most patents are owned by large corps, we can be entertainers, but on every madonna or rocco siffredi there goes a thousand nameless failures, we can win the lottery, but if the odds would be good, it wouldnt be a lottery.
The capitalist does nothing but own. The worker does nothing but work. If the worker would get wealth, he would cease to be a worker. If there would be a chance for every worker to be a capitalist, there would not be any streetsweepers, or cars or houses or anything, since nobody would build them, or the machines that could build them. Therefore, for them to exist, workers must exist, and they can only exist if they lack wealth.

Im no economist but yeah, im in to the labor theory of value. Sounds right for a natural scientist like me.
 


 

 

Revenue is the amount of money you have coming in. Stop tying them to other things. It's not determined by the amount of products sold. It's the sum of the money you make by selling something. You're broadly overgeneralizing.

So if I have a renting company, and I buy like 20 houses, all that gets taxed, while I was using it to rent out to people?

Free healthcare is funded by theft. Free education is funded by theft. If you want to give people free shit, by all means, have at it, but if you're going to steal their money and then give them free shit, I don't care, you're stealing. These have not been successes for the simple reason that people did not voluntarily choose these things. If they had been voluntary supported, theft would not have been needed to pay for them, would it? Taxes must be deflected from higher-valued uses to lower-valued uses. If I wanted $400 a month to go to a school, I would give it $400 each month. I believe my $400 is better spent on something else that I'll actually use. When you deprive me of $400 each month, you tell me "No, you cannot get the thing that you really want, you must pay for this thing which you didn't want. This is good for you. We know what is best for everybody, we even know what you want better than you do, and we've determined that your $400 is best spent on a school."

Market failures are a really big joke for me. I love ragging on people that buy into that bullshit. Got any specific market failures you'd like to name, because I'll gladly show you why it's a total crock of shit, and a problem created by the government. Market failures and "public goods" and stuff like that. It comes from economists working with false assumptions.

The tragedy of the anticommons is predicated on the idea that you don't own anything. That "society" owns it, not any particular individual. And that's all a load of pure bullshit. You own your life, your liberty, and your property, with no responsibility to anyone else for those things.

They own means of production. They have hands, eyes, brains, feet, and free time. Those are means of production.

I never said there would be no poverty if there was no welfare handout. But I do believe that giving people free money keeps them in welfare by making the idea of getting a job to get off welfare extremely unattractive. As the pool of dependance increases in size (which it will do, by making becoming dependant attractive and independant unattractive, the welfare lists tend only toward growth).

Yes, you are wealthier after you buy a hamburger. Obviously you value the burger more than the $.99 you spent on it, otherwise you wouldn't have bought it, would you? What you do with the burger after that is irrelevant. Obviously, though, if we spend more of our money on durable goods than consumables, we'll have more stuff at the end of the day.

Capitalists own the means of production. Everyone owns the means of production. We are not dependant upon some obscure "capitalist class" who owns all the means of production for everything. You can go into business for yourself, there's money to be made in such silly jobs as going to garage sales and selling the stuff you buy there on eBay.

Ownership is absolute irresponsible control. If "own" is the act of exerting ownership, then owning is controlling. If the capitalist does nothing but control their resources, then who is not a capitalist? You own your body, and you, a worker, control your body, and sell the results of the actions your decisions create, which is normally called "labor".

There is a chance for every worker to be a capitalist. Every worker is a capitalist. The normal progression for someone that knows how to use money is to work for 20 years, then become a capitalist for 20 years, then retire. Worker and capitalist are not mutually exclusive, and even if they were, a person is not born capitalist to be purpetually capitalist nor worker to be purpetually worker.

You really have a lot of silly ideas. For workers to exist, they must lack wealth? Wow, you're absolutely nuts.

Whatever, you clearly does not get my point. You are completly right, competition does not exist, nor does it affect revenue or profit, thats just marxist propaganda. Your renting company exist in a own spacetime where you can set your prices with no care in the world, and you dont have to try to cut costs either, lalala.

Free healtcare is more efficient than private. Proof? Examine lifeexpectancies and healtcare systems. Is coupled. You owned. So who cares if its theft. Isnt all land stolen? Shouldnt all products made on that stolen land be returned as reperations? As long as it isnt, i dont respect your proprtyrights. So i dont care if taxes are theft, rather, i should be grateful for every thing i am allowed to keep. If i want my kid to go to a 400$ a month school (i dont know if that is expensive, free education and all that) but i cant afford it, thats my choice? Thats my kids choice? So i chose not to go to harvard, becoming worldfamous astronaut? Instead i chose to be a poor wining commie, stuck in a country with the highest taxed BNP in the free world? Yeah, sure.

Well, if you dont believe in market failures i guess theres no point trying to convince you otherwise. But just so im clear, an unregulated free market cannot fail, ever in any circumstance?
Then again, i have an example. If i remember correctly, ford or GM bought the public transport system in los angeles in the 30s and dismantled it (to sell more cars), los angeles having at the time the worlds largest transportation net. The cost today to rebuild it to that level is in the trillions, a clear destruction of capital. Market win?

Anticommons is very real. Know a professor who discovered that 20 years of work was meaningless because they had to have a patent for a standard method, and they company wouldnt give it, for a price that would make sellable medicine. So no new medicine, because of owning the use of a method. Not good for science, general health, development, whatever abstract right that is given to the patentholder.

Welfare tends to growth? Any examples for this, with different countries? Have not seen it in real life, dont question the logic behind it though. Got a tip for increasing the attractiveness of wageslavery though. Higher wages will make working as cleaner extremly attractive. Shouldt the most dangerous and demanding vocations have the highest wages? Like working in a chineese shofactory with no union and no safety?

I dont agree that you become wealthier for fulfilling needs you cannot choose not to fulfill. I mean, as diabetic, my insulin at certain times are worth more than a mountain of diamonds. That does not mean that i am rich when i buy it, just that i really need insulin.

In sweden there is a lack of jobs, or rather an excess of labor, partly because of the ongoing automation. For around 300000 un employed there is 20000 jobs. 280000 cant sell stuff on ebay, or invent shit, or sell water to thirsty people or whatever or win on lottery. A fraction of theese are not old enough to get pension enough to survive and to old to get hired. Another fraction has been unemployed for so long that their skills are completly outdated, yet they fear student loans since education is not a surefire way to get a job in a country with one of the worlds most educated workforce. There are others. Know how to use money is a skill. Not everybody is adept in it, many cant even ever learn it. So many cannot, by shear untalentness, never be able to reach your form of capitalisthood.

We are indeed dependent on a capitalist class. In sweden most people who have steady jobs work for big companies. These companies are owned by a couple of financial families, who have had wealth for a couple of generations. There has not come any new dynasties for a time, instead have they gotten fewer but richer, much richer. This is my reality. To survive (the hamburger and insulin) i need cash. I dont have any skills so my hands alone can create sellable products. I dont have enough credit in the bank to start a business for myself, besides, the marketplace is already filled by small businesses that collapses all the time (good for me, low prices on the burger). I cant plow the earth or raise my own cattle, since we were driven from the land in the days of yore. So what can i do? Work in the factory. Actually, thats if im lucky, because those unions are  great and the few people still working in any heavy labor gets  paid plenty. So what do i do? Well, i study with loans that will smart in the future, especially if i dont get hired, and i work in the healthcare (which in itself does not sell anything, instead my salary is paid by theft as u said, but i would not be employed if it wasnt, since the service i provide would prolly not be provided by the lowest bidder). If i could survive without working, i wouldnt work, or rather i would do whatever id fancy. If i could work in a factory i would do that. If i could have my own business and be a smart investor i would do that. And if i could win the lottery, id do that every single day. But its not the capitalist class fault, they have chosen this as little as i have. But they are dependent on labor, as cheap, talented, educated, young, wellbred, strong, as possible and i am dependent on whatever may fall from their table. 

Gah. This is getting long. Lemme try to make it short.

1. If it doesn't matter that taxation is theft, why don't I just steal all your shit? It doesn't make it right just because the government is doing it.

2. Land ownership isn't theft. It was unowned, and someone took ownership of it. Man had no inherent right of birth to a portion of the earth, so taking ownership of it was theft from nobody, and if you can't say who specifically was stolen from, you can't say that any theft occured in the first place.

3. The Free Market isn't perfect. It doesn't know absolutely everything. However, the knowledge of a few regulating and economy-directing bureaucrats is far more imperfect than the market's knowledge for the simple reason that one person making decisions for millions can't possibly know as much as those millions individually making decisions for themselves.

4. Your anticommons example sucks because patents aren't a free market phenomenon, they're a government-created one. The free market is voluntary exchange and private property. If there is involuntary exchange, it's not free, if there isn't private property, there's no market. Your example involves involuntary exchange, thus is not free market. The involuntary exchange is when the government threatens to imprison or fine patent violators. Since the "offender" can't opt-out of the interaction, it's involuntary and not a free-market occurance.

5. Being diabetic makes you more consumptive of insulin, that just means you have to produce more stuff and exchange it for insulin to maintain the same standard of living as everyone else.

6. Sucks for Sweden. Try repealing socialism and see what your economy does.

7. No individual is dependant upon a capitalists. All individuals can independantly break free from the capitalists if they really want to. They either don't, or they think they're best off not doing so. That doesn't ean they're dependant, it just means they think the arrangement is better than all alternatives.

8. If you don't have skills, blame the schools. There's a lot of USEFUL stuff they could have thought you when you were in the gym. Blame the bureaucrats. My school taught me nothing useful after the 5th grade that I wouldn't have learned myself without their help, and it taught me a lot of shit I certainly did not need to know. That's what happens when you let some faceless bureaucrat set the curriculum. They make stupid decisions and somebody somewhere loses out.

My idea (go ahead and tell me if it sucks):

1.  No tax on corporate income.
2.  Massive tax on personal income above $1 mil.

The idea is to reduce operating costs.  These savings will create an increase in wage earnings, income tax from which the lost corporate tax will be made back.  Real wages will relatively increase and corporations will be more competetive on the global market.

1. I disagree. I dont steal your shit because there are laws against it, i will go to prison i do. I i wouldnt, your shit would  be on my lawn in two seconds. Right and wrong does not fly whitout  laws and prisons, for most people i guess.

2.America was unowned? Come on, that just silly. The people who lived there, everywhere didnt have the papers in english stating their ownership, but in their own sense they owned it. Wasnt manhattan bought? How did they do that if it wasnt seen as owned?

3. Examples?

4. And if there would be government protected patents, what then? They would not be invented by insurance companies and what not? And function in exactly the same way?

5. So you really mean that being a diabetic makes me wealthier. Funny. Im unlucky then that i have all extremeties and am not a complete veggie, because that would have made a gazillionaire?

6. Well, 3 months ago the mean growth in the EU was 2.5% while it was 5% in Sweden. Seems to work compared to the rest...

7. Yeah, and slaves chose slavery, otherwise they would have ran or revolted. Come on.

8. I have a lot of skills. I speak very good english, compared to other nationalities. But in sweden everybody speaks good english. Faceless bureaucrats are too succesful. Does not help. Even if it would, is this your medicine for everyone? "Just use your skills and choose wealth and you will recieve." And what happens if everybody did that? Would everybody be millionaries? 50/50? 10/90? Or as it already is, 1/99?

 

>>16
You have a mildly well analysed criteria, but your 2 policies are blunt approximations. They are stabs in the dark and do not appear to be directly defined from your criteria. They are more like your desired effects rather than a straight forward low-bureaucracy fair balanced tax system that fits snuggly into the market economy which would bring about such effects.

>>15
>>17
1: The government is required primarily to preserve justice. It is secondarily needed to fulfil the needs of voters. Tax used to preserve justice is needed absolutely, by definition it cannot be theft since it is needed to prevent crime, however unequal taxation can be considerred corrupt. Tax used for welfare, free education etc.. can be considerred "theft", however it is within the voter's liberty to do so and liberty is a major element of preserving justice since if you force someone into a hopeless situation it will result in violence as history proves irrefutably. There is no choice in the matter.
2: Land ownership isn't theft.
3: The assumption that the free market should be replaced due to the fact that it is no perfect is absurd since nothing is perfect. The free market's main flaws are that it requires justice to prevent corruption and liberty to allow the free flow of information. The free market's minor flaws are that corruption can never be completely eradicated and the free flow of information never reaches the point where all people are omnipotent and never make mistakes.
>>17, I'm not sure what >>15 was directing this point at, but this point outlines the nature of empiricism in discussions of economics. Not all factors can be taken into account, but this doesn't mean you can ignore them in favour of your ideal whilst blowing them out of proportion for the idea that you oppose. It is illogical.

4: Patents are required to preserve justice. If someone declares some information they generated to be a possession, then by law the theft of that information is a criminal act. If you spent several uears working on a book, then the friend who helped you judge the value of the book, stole the disk it was saved on and published it himself if your friend goes unpunished it will very likely result in violence no matter what the deterant.
5: It is immoral for someone with diabetes not to pay for their own insulin, but it is also immoral to let someone die even though you can prevent it easily. Morality issues are decided by voters when they decide to vote in a government that spends some tax on free health-care for the poor. Parents with the gene that causes diabetes who want their children to have diabetes by passing their genes onto them are guilty of grievous bodily damage with malice against their child.
6: Socialists in Sweden are aware that the only ideas they have that are "acceptable" is heavy regulation over the economy and various state services. As soon as voters realise they don't need a socialist to maintain these services if they want, socialism will diminish.
"Well, 3 months ago the mean growth in the EU was 2.5% while it was 5% in Sweden."
The EU contains many ex-socialist countries that still struggle with corruption, poor education and low development. Do yourself a favour and leave bullshitty unlinked statistics up your ass where you found them.
7: Democracies have listenned to literally 10000s of journalists and academics discussing the economy for decades and come to the conclusion that capitalism is the best policy for the majority of the economy, especially where there are a large number of competing firms involved. In order for new economic systems to gain popularity they must have a rational basis otherwise no-one will take them seriously.
If slaves exist under a system of government, then that government is no democracy.
8: State run education is a failure.
We might not all be millionaires, but we certainly would have an economy that does it's best to generate happiness throughout the entire population.

>>19
2. All land has changed hands through other than legitame means at some point in time. Is this not so?
3. Well, if its not perfect, maybe we can discuss the alternatives? Or rather, what do we actually demand of a economic system?
4. So yes or no on anticommons? Does it exist?
5. You missed the point. Is a person who gets insulin, which they value very high, wealthy just because of that?
6. http://www.nutek.se/sb/d/207 (sorry its in swedish but the graph shows growth in percent between 1994-2005, for the EU, sweden and the US, its not the figures i said, but i wasnt talking about a 11 year mean value either)
7. So are the majority of peoples dependent on capitalists?
8. Staterun education is a failure? Examples? Quite a general accusation to make without even a examples from different countries IMO. Well, at least you accept the fact that all cannot go to the moon, irregardles of their choises.

>>20
Stop stating the obvious. I refuse to cover every single detail conceivable.

2: Of course if someone stole land it is theft.
3: Of course we can discuss alternatives and minor improvements.
4: Only if the patent holders don't make a deal, in which case they would be intentionally refusing cash for the use of their patent so it is unlikely they would refuse.
5: Insulin's value is determinned by the free market.
6: As you can see I was right, the US has higher growth than Sweden, presumably developped nations in the EU like the UK match or do better than Sweden whilst undevelopped nations like Poland do worse and drag the EU's total mean growth rate down.
7: The majority of people are capitalists. When you buy an orange you are being a capitalist.
8: I wasn't taught about multi-culturalism instead of important things like how to drive.

>>21
First, please read the whole thread, fool, then make comments relevant to the discussion.

6. Maybe, easy to have hypothesises when you dont back them up. In any case, sweden has a higher human development index than the US (look that up for yourself), meaning that while our GNP growth is not as grand as the US, all our kids gets free healthcare, education etc, which for all except the crimanally insane, is a cost worth paying.
7. Yeah, real useful definition of capitalist, "person buying stuff=capitalist". And how relevant.
8. While we have to pay our driving lisence ourselves and do it on our free time, in school we are allowed to learn about evolution. But i agree, US staterun schools are failures, but then again, your state is highly inefficient. You really should change.

>>22
6: And this is all because Sweden is "socialist" in the broadest possible definition of the word?
7: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer. What do you want? An essay?
8: I agree.

>>23
6. Well, yes (and the defention is not as broad as you would think). Or do you have another theory?
7. Well, i would lke something constructive. But ill rephrase so you can understand. Are almost everybody dependent on those who own and control the means of production, or are almost everybody free to choose not to work without them dying of starvation and exposure?

>>19
i'm so sick and tired of hearing this "omg taxes are stealing" from you people. Unless taxes are arbitrarily collected, they're not "stealing". You live in a country where you have to pay taxes because the laws, decided by the government, elected by the population, thus representing YOU! even if you didn't vote for the president, say so. thus you agree, but living in said country, to pay taxes.

>>25

in all fairness as a budding 20 year old in canada i never really had much of a choice, as an individual.
you see, my parents immigrated to canada and i grew up here and through years of saturation and assimilation i became accustomed to this system of living.

however, if as an individual you were to give me a choice- to live in a society with a truly free market and a society like the one set up here in canada, i would tell you id rather live in a free market society. no matter how much i vote for whatever party which i believe would be best in facilitating this kind of change, i will never really get it. so i come to the conclusion that it just wasnt meant to be, here- i come to the conclusion that voting simply legitimatizes a system of government which i dont approve of.

you would be correct in saying that you're sick and tired of hearing people say 'some forms of taxation are akin to theft'- only if those people truly and clearly consented to taxation. but have we? for people who have arrived at the conclusion that the current state of affairs for voting and representation are so dubiously flawed that we don't believe in it and even stop voting entirely- taxes *really are* arbitrarily collected.

and your right in your implication that it's akin to whining, some people really just say these things because they can't do anything but bitch and grope about how bad the state of affairs are. for some people.

for others it's really more like a struggle to clear up misunderstandings and inform people who would not have been aware of what our views are towards this. the hope is that once the misunderstandings are cleared away, we could both come to the same conclusions and then work together towards building a better system.

by the way- even if i didnt vote for my government, that means that the elected politicians represent ME? come on, that is seriously flawed. i never voted, by they represent me? by what, force? because that's what it amounts to: "either vote for someone (in a flawed system, who wont win or achieve our objectives anyways,) and don't complain, or abstain and don't complain anyways."

right? fuck it. id rather hear people bitch and whine than shut their mouths because of some cleverly designed scam.

>>25
"Unless taxes are arbitrarily collected, they're not "stealing"."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberty
1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.

>>26
If i were in your shoes i would stop using the stuff the taxes had financed. Bridges, roads, health care, the internet, electric power and whatever, you get the point. Or i would move to a country whith zero taxation.

>>28
well, in short, fuck them. and fuck you too.

we dont owe nations anything, they owe their entire existence to us- the people theyve fooled. so fuck them, and fuck you too.

by the same token i could say that if i were you i would stop using any government funded (read: taxpayer funded) project that existed before you reached the age of majority and started having to pay your taxes. doesn't make much sense, does it?

mind you, i actually pay my taxes- and i pay them fair and square. doesn't mean i have to approve of it, doesn't mean i can't work in a civil manner to change it. doesn't mean i have to listen to your dissent suppressing bullshit either.

>>28
All of those things are private goods that free markets can provide...and easily

>>29
I am pro paying taxes, im pro raising taxes. I am also pro that citizens should use the public goods the state provides which are tax funded of course. And i am also convinced most activities are more efficiently run under statecontrol than under private control, but i guess thiss is controversial for somebody living in an inefficient state. With efficiency i mean service quality per capita per monetary unit, meaning that a efficient health care system is one that saves a lot of people, like the one in sweden or cuba.

>>30
Examples of private invented internets?

>>31
one thing we can both agree on is that we are pro governments that are run efficiently in that they serve their people well. we just have different ways of perceiving how this can be done.

so why not deliberate while putting mandates to get things done? lets say me and you were co-founders of a political party, even though we are at the ends of the so-called spectrum- lets pretend we're pals and in our daily lives we get along great. ultimately for me and you the important goal is that we erect a society thats worth living in, a society which lets people be free and yet protects them from dangers that have been ever-present (starvation, disease, the elements and whatnot) and dangers which are really just the result of our own mis-interaction (e.g. crime).

how can we make this work? for a landmass that houses some three hundred million people, no less!

and dont say "well ok we create a system where (_insert socialist policies here_) make everybody happy"

what should we do?

im going to say you should make the first suggestion, and anybody who wants to hop in and say something obviously this is what this board is here for- but if you ask me the very first practical and rational thing we could do is create working examples of societies under different policies and see which one would be best suited to our goals- thats not an easy thing to do because that would require living breathing human beings who may or may not want to consent to living in the kind of society we want to test.

but i digress, what do you have to say?

>>32
CAN provide

>>27
Well then I suppose all government is an infringement upon your liberty and thats not okay.

Don't be a fucking douche, taxes are a necessity and they are collected arbitrary, I don't think bringing up the dangers of anarchy for justification of some government infringement on your liberty, douche.

>>26
Maybe you should fucking leave Canada then, since you abstain from voting, you are choosing for the curent system to perpetuate, and you bitch about how the taxes are "Arbitrarily collected".  A gigantic pussy is you.  No wonder nothing good comes from Canada, it's full of douchebags like yourself.

What you are doing is fucking complaining, you aren't "clearing up misunderstandings or informing people" you self-appointed shithead, while you don't vote you complain about the maladies of representative government, so what would you rather have? Some non-existant free-market utopia where everyone is as "intelligent", "sophisticated" and a self appointed expert like yourself?

Shame that libertarianism is peopled with revolting individiuals such as yourself, it really ruins the good parts of the system.

Hey guys this is >>34
here, I just wanted to let you all know that I extracted the moldy wooden stake out of my anus, and I'm sorry for spreading my whiny vagooblood all over this thread.

>>35
Oops, my bad, I meant>>32.

Or perhaps I meant>>33.

>>34
lol since i abstain from voting im choosing for the current system to perpetuate? o noes! politics paradox.

the reason i dont vote is because i refuse to believe that voicing my opinion on what representative i believe will best serve my interests is going to make any difference in what policies get enacted in government.

i refuse to believe that solely my opinion is all that counts, and i refuse to lie to myself that it is simply voters who have the real say in government. it is not. it is interest groups, it is large business conglomorates, it is private collectives and it is definately not the common subjects of the government.

voting, my friend, is a little thing designed to comfort people so that they believe they can make a difference. a voter is a retarded carpenter given a hammer to nail down a plank of wood- and every time he strikes the hammer, someone moves that plank of wood so that he misses- and the voter, being as retarded as he is, assumes that there must be something wrong with the hammer.

>>38
not to sound like your mother, but if everybody thought like you, we'd live in something which was not at all a democrazy, meaning that we'd most likely be at the will of some, hopefully benevolent dictator.

gj

>>39
sshhh
We don't want stupid people to vote.

>>39
>democrazy

>>41
lol, tis the truth, but crazy in a good way

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Fuck democracy. I swear people, just leave each other the fuck alone.

Tyranny is like a pedo and 10 lolis trapped on a desert island.

>>44
Liberty is like a pedo and 10 lolis with machineguns trapped on a desert island.