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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Depends on your world view. I give ~40% of my income to a decrepit government where I have no say how it’s spent. My city pays $25,000 USD per public school student and the results have not only been atrocious for decades but are declining year after year. Government jobs require college credentials… colleges whose accreditation are approved by the government, in some circular fashion of reciprocal approval. Our medical system is in shambles. I really don’t know how to convince people that the government has ruined society if they can’t see it themselves - the solution for statists is always to steal money from actually productive people like myself.

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Did you consider that perhaps having students from less wealthy and educated families enroll would cause "declining results"? The best way to ensure perfect scores is to exclude underperforming kids from families where parents didn't go to university and/or have to choose between soap and bread at the supermarket instead of educating their child.

I'm still genuinely amused every time I see a Westerner living in a democratic country claim their government is dysfunctional, lying, stealing and bad. First, compared to what country? Second, can't you elect a different government? If enough people agree with you they would vote for it, and if not enough agree then perhaps you are in a minority. If unlike many people on this planet you have a mechanism for peaceful replacement of power it seems strange to call for a revolution.

Have you considered that your market-rate could be 66% up (166*0.6=100) because everybody in your market has to pay 40% and wants to have a certain living standard? Or the other way round: how much will your income fall if taxes would be abolished?

If you want to see change, link up with other productive people. It takes one to get one. Those 40% are kind of a global standard. Instead of fighting big government, why not help to make it productive?

Philosophically the government is the one holding the gun. I want it as tiny and efficient as possible with the minimum number of guns pointed at its citizens. There is no way you can give politicians, nor any human, the exclusive right to giant amounts of money and not expect them to be corrupted. If you didn’t earn the money and you aren’t responsible for keeping the productive enterprises working then you simply don’t care and will never understand. It’s always about stealing more money to feed the ever hungry Leviathan.

And believe me I am linked up with other productive people all dedicated to reducing the size and scope of the immoral and unsalvageable corrupt state.

I see you are frustrated you can’t convince others that government is the root of all problems. Have you considered that you might be wrong?

Serious problems require serious efforts to understand and solve. Calling people names like “statists”, you sound like a toddler following some ideological talking points. Use the Internet and library to expand your perspective. Grow up.

Statist is a term for someone who thinks the state can solve society’s problems. There is never a solution that doesn’t involve the government and never a situation where giving more taxes (and it’s always the rich who must pay - never the masses!) is the wrong answer.

In my view an increasing number of people are agreeing with me. You won’t see it in the mainstream media because they are also statists whose worldview is wrong and intolerant. You are witnessing them scream and cry and whine that democracy is failing, the climate is failing and the world is ending, basically the apocalypse is upon us and you need to be scared and afraid 24/7. Whereas the people I know don’t give a shit and don’t believe those lies. It’s like an alternate planet where hyper-online people actually think the world is ending and all the normal people stopped believing those lies.

How much have you travelled? From my experiences there are plenty of nations/states that make higher taxation work for the people.

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So... are there any countries in the world that are not socialist by your definition? Maybe China? It has, perhaps, lower taxes and better public schools.

Developed countries were created over centuries. They have a giant amount of legacy cruft and baggage that may have made sense in an older world but no longer does. They have no reason nor incentive to reform themselves and its workers are mindless drones that never think if their work has any value because the institution lacks the market test.

China is an authoritarian godless dictatorship that will put a bullet in your head if you disagree with the dictator. This is the antithesis of freedom and the free will given to each of us.

The existence of overwhelmed workers who don't have any energy (or desire) to think outside of their daily routine is a shared characteristic of all economic regimes in sufficiently large countries. It's not due to "socialism in the US" or capitalism somewhere else. Lowering taxes or improving public school system won't solve that completely. And, just to note, Catholicism doesn't encourage freethinking either.

Catholicism has no issue with science as any scientific fact was established by god and therefore is fine. You may be thinking about Baptists or similar groups with literal interpretations of the bible. The church really doesn't have any mandates other than the Nicene Creed and no one has to agree with everything the Vatican mandates, our priest and deacon both disagree with certain elements of the official doctrine. God gave humans free will and therefore the capacity to sin. You are allowed to think anything you want, there is no mandate.

I appreciate your explanation!

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