/You/ can never legitimize or de-legitimize the state, only its citizens in aggregate can. Which is why voting is so handy, you get to de-legitimize a state without all that nasty killing.
I don't understand grand visions of a world built entirely of nice people. Someone will always figure out that they can be top dog by being 10% more asshole than everyone else, and then you're back to the start- building a society around coercion and limiting assholes and useful shortcuts to revolution.
Public schools may not be the best, but you may have missed some important life lessons by skipping out.
So as a non-american I tell you that it is your goddam duty to get informed and vote.
You may not like to vote, but you have to. It's like watching a car crash about to happen and you have the ability to prevent it - sure it infringes on your personal freedom to mind you own business, but it's your duty to do something anyway.
But who want's freedom when you can have sausages? ;)
Geographic reasons for the capped and expensive internet. Long undersea cable to the US. Historically we have paid for traffic both to and from the US.
Government controlled? How? At least we can still play poker online or bet on the US elections. What restrictions do you mean?
> Which the government wants to add an extensive government firewall to.
Yep this would suck but it's not operating yet and can still be stopped.
> And logging/surveillance of which websites people visit.
Um no. You'd be thinking of the NSA there mate.
> But who want's freedom when you can have sausages? ;)
I'd welcome a legitimate comparison of the virtues of the Australian as opposed to the US system of democracy.
Democracy is not the right to do as one pleases, it's a way of running society. As such it's perfectly reasonable for a democratic society to decide that the privilege of citizenship comes with responsibilities, one of which being the requirement to vote. It's no different from deciding that stealing is illegal, if the populace disagrees they can make it an election issue and push the "non-compulsory voting" issue.
I think this is counterproductive. If people don't want to have their voice heard, then they should not be forced. Those who are willing/able/eager to vote, shall, and those who arent, have no excuse to bitch about the results.
My point is not that the above are always sound arguments for an individual to not vote, but that we should never be forced to do anything by our government. If I want to sit at home and not be part of the system, well thats my fucking right. And that right is paramount, in my opinion, to any 'right' society claims that I should be involved in it. What can I say, I'm a libertarian.
A failure to vote in this circumstance will simply hand the candidate a landslide, and a de facto approval to do whatever the hell he wants.
Whichever side I've argued on (and I've tried either) - generally everyone agrees that having the vast majority of the population vote is a good idea, and "works" on whatever level you want to define that.
Of course you have, so "living peacefully" in the country is about as OK as some guy I don't know "living peacefully" in my basement. Sure, he isn't hurting me, but that doesn't mean he isn't a thief. And while you try to call taxes theft, the idea that you would not pay taxes but still enjoy the services the government gives (no matter how hard you try, you can not escape present or past use), is definitely theft. The fact that you try to make yourself sound innocent by ensuring you won't kill anyone doing THEIR job is laughable. Is it ok to rob a bank as long as you do it peacefully?
I replied to this kind of thinking in another post in this comment thread, but I do not have a choice in the matter as to whose roads I use if I wish to go from place to another because they are monopolized by government. I would like it if the government did not have monopoly control over things, but I do not deny that they have control. It may be of some consolation to you that I pay and have paid taxes in the past. The government, in my mind, is simply "a gang of thieves writ large" as Murray Rothbard once said. They provide services but they can only do so by monopolizing the service they provide and _taking_ other peoples money to finance the administration of that service.
If you can rob a bank peacefully I would very much like to see that for the sake of argument.
So yes, you could avoid paying taxes, but at the expense of losing more than 30% of your revenue as the economy crumbled. I can understand the principle, but pragmatically what you want to do is a pipe dream and economically it will be WORSE for you monetarily. I understand standing on principle on the 1st amendment or torture or policy, but when we start talking dollars and cents, your ideas just don't hold water.
"They provide services but they can only do so by monopolizing the service they provide and _taking_ other peoples money to finance the administration of that service."
I just don't get this. How do you expect them to pay for services? And let's not forget that "the government" isn't some magic entity, it's made up of the citizens of the country itself. I'm pretty sure the US government employs more citizens than any other organization in the US.
I would say that many of the services and infrastructure the government typically provides are considered "natural monopolies". It doesn't make sense to have a bunch of parallel roads when you can have one. Same with water, electricity, etc. With the government providing a single "set" of infrastructure you may need X miles of road, pipe, power lines, or whatever, if you had 4 companies competing you would need 4 times as much, which would end up costing the end user 4 times more.
But in fact, the government doesn't have a complete monopoly on roads, since there are privately owned toll roads, which you have to pay to drive on. Would you prefer all roads were privately owned, and the owners could then charge arbitrarily high tolls?
And mail bombs to people.
You won't be consuming any of our tax-funded services, and you won't be contributing to our economy or paying taxes (assuming no property tax?)
Beyond that, the people inside these borders have decided this is how we want things to work, and (as I mentioned) if you don't like it you're free to give up your citizenship and move somewhere else.
Not that I think it's terribly relevant...
If you feel oppressed by the US democratic system, you could always apply for asylum in a country that you think better runs according to your values...
To your final point, though, I find this talk of emigration strange. Many people ask me this question and I concede that it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility for me. However, am I not petitioning for the same thing a voting population is? The difference I see is that I do not want to affect change through the apparatus of the state because I find it illegitimate. Instead I will try to affect change through non-violent means. I'll speak with you and try to convince you that non-violence is the way toward a peaceful and sustainable society. I will not use the barrel of a gun personally or by proxy(the police) to tell you or anyone else what to do. I will not get together with my friends to vote on what you must and mustn't do.
Be peaceful.
The value provided by the government is merely the sum of all taxes paid - overhead/waste/corruption. Some people (the rich) get less back than they put in, some (the poor) get back more than they put in. So anyone who is sufficiently rich (1) has probably already repaid any debt they owed to society, and can legitimately secede.
(1) I ignore for the moment people who got rich from rent seeking, e.g. defense contractors, trial lawyers or members of public sector unions.
The problem with going whole-hog anarchism is that on any significant scale (even a couple hundred people) peer-to-peer trust breaks down and anything that steps in to make processes more streamlined and reliable or introduces organizational structure becomes functionally equivalent to a government. We rely to such a huge extent on specialization of labor and trust of abstractions that such freedom doesn't scale if one expects modern amenities.
Her death could actually happen a variety of ways but I only wanted to go off the example you mentioned. If you need further clarification I mention this topic and how it relates to voting here http://is.gd/3WIh
I don't want to go to jail. What is the alternative to spending years in jail? Paying 30% of my income? It is better than prison, but we ought to call this act of aggression what it really is--theft. Tax is simply a euphemism for theft, in my mind. And not to derail the topic you mentioned, but I would ask you to consider what good taxes have ever done besides making powerful people more powerful and financing wars where we justify the killing of innocents for some elusive greater good.
Thanks for your question.
Although if you want to save 30% on taxes, and let thousands of innocent people who do not have as much money as you die at the doors of a hospital they can't afford - you can definitely keep the righteous tone you have going without one hint of irony.
Taxes are a necessary evil, the only question is to what extend we should tax ourselves.
He is also unable to comprehend how the fabric of society functions. We all necessarily give up our freedom of total choice in exchange for the opportunity to live peaceably amongst one another. This is the fundamentals of democracy - that decisions are made jointly, and that whatever the decisions may be, people will abide by them (or challenge them in a structured, organized way).
I don't think that most people who view taxes as theft would view them that way if we were using our available resources and technology to allow them to accomplish what taxes should be accomplishing anyhow - whatever the people want them to.
At the moment taxes accomplish whatever the state, city, and federal governments want them to, with the people only having a (at best) second-hand say in what happens through a system of representative voting that has historically had a high rate of greedy, power-hungry liars being on the receiving end of the votes.
My ideal politics fall much closer to anarchism than not, but I don't think that taxes are always theft. However, at the moment I don't think that it's much of an error to compare the two.
“Taxes are necessary evil”… I conceive the idea that this is like 1+1=3
If you're not a citizen they'll deport you and you can be on your merry way finding another country that will let you do what you want.
You could always give up your citizenship...
More to the point, though, I want these services, but I think it is wrong to take money from people to finance these services. If you and I both agree that roads, food and drug testing, transportation, etc. are worth paying for then let us get together and pay for them ourselves. However, we ought not take money from people who don't want these services simply because we do. Voting specifically obscures this moral dilemma because it is rule of a majority over the minority. Democracy _seems_ good, but it can only serve to justify theft, as it does today. If 51% of people agree that stealing from Tom and Dick to benefit Harry is okay then magically it is okay? Take care of the means and the end will take care of itself. Don't steal or aggress against your neighbor either individually or en masse. Be peaceful.
I'm with you, taxes are bad. In some ways, I agree with you that we should be able to earmark our dollars for things we 'prefer', but unfortunately that system will never work out.
I also agree that taxes are theft from the government. Unfortunately, the government has a need to steal from you. But its important to look at it like this. I've always maintained that TAX DAY should be 1 day before VOTING DAY. Anyone else notice how they are 6 months apart? This is by design. I believe in small, local government, which is a less extreme view than you are expounding above.
Unfortunately, some Federal/State taxes ARE necessary for a functioning society. We MUST have a military in some form. We MUST pay some government workers to regulate trade and commerce between states and other countries. We MUST have basic amenities that are built out at the cost of the populace as a whole, together, through taxes (Read: Water).
Everything else, however, is up for debate.
Remember -- as Winston Churchill once put: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.."
Order in economy tends to come about more quickly and more judiciously when government is not involved. Corporations though they may finance or have interests in a warfare state are only allowed to exercise power through the fictitious legitimacy of the state. If Joe's Diner went to war with Bob's Diner we quickly see the cost of war. They are both out of business because war is expensive. Not to mention ordinary folks would not say to themselves, "Well Joe over here is fighting for my rights! Support The Troops (of Joe's Diner)!" This, of course, is ridiculous.
So this is why we need taxes? Warfare or welfare. I would rather be peaceful and sleep at night. I would rather trade with my neighbors than impoverish them through blockades, embargoes, or whatever else the government can only do through force of arms.
I notice you are very strident about what taxes must be used for, but my whole point on taxes is that if we MUST have these things then let us do them voluntarily through cooperative efforts. If you and I both want an organization to achieve goal X let us get together and achieve that goal. If someone doesn't want to help us out then let's try to convince them we're right not through force of arms(taxation), but through discussion and friendship. Be peaceful.
I think you might do well to study Winston Churchill's policies during and leading up to World War II. He and FDR both colluded to embolden western government to become more interventionist and war-like. I have heard that quote before, but I would challenge you, seriously, to consider a world without government. Start small with a family, then a city, then a region, then a continent. At what point does government intervention by force of arms against peaceful non-compliers become okay? I only ask that you answer that question for yourself.
And to characterize taxes as stealing is utterly ridiculous. If you don't pay taxes should the police not protect your house? Are you saying that taxes should be volunteering? Maybe you should brush up on economics, but it is clear that there are somethings government has to do. Why would I volunteer to pay for the roads or the schools or the military if I don't have to and someone else will? And no person could really avoid using the services of the government.
I didn’t know “The Law That Never Was” was a conspiracy, I thought it was a factual record of what the state’s recorded and what the GSA and government recorded. Perhaps the term of conspiracy is a better label? or you are using a loaded word, to mark an area of taboo. After pushing towards a 100 years of tax/need brainwashing, I don’t know what the affect would be if the 16th was to pass today, I think it would never have passed in 1800, though:-) to say it is moot is like saying because the people would not approve the constitution today, using that document of freedom is moot as well, we should disregard it. I do not believe that would be wise. The more I think about how the rule of law is not being obeyed, in all its forms, the more I think stealing might be better than legal plunder…. I like your case though, thanks for reply
The court stated: "Benson has failed to point to evidence that would create a genuinely disputed fact regarding whether the Sixteenth Amendment was properly ratified or whether United States Citizens are legally obligated to pay federal taxes. Also, as is indicated above, Benson is precluded in this action from taking the position that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified."[20] The court stated that "the undisputed evidence shows that Benson had actual knowledge that the information in the Reliance Defense Package was false or fraudulent."[21] The court also stated: "Benson falsely tells customers that if they purchase and use his products they will be shielded from criminal prosecution for violating the internal revenue laws. Purchasers of the 'Reliance Defense Package' receive a letter signed by Benson that falsely represents that the purchaser can rely on Benson's research to conclude that the Sixteenth Amendment was not ratified, and that the purchaser is thereby not required to file federal income tax returns or pay federal income or social security taxes to the United States."[22] The court ruled that "Benson's position has no merit and he has used his fraudulent tax advice to deceive other citizens and profit from it" in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 6700.[23]
And honestly, you don't think that a bunch of rich people would have tried to overturn the income tax back when it was 70%? I'm in the upper tax bracket. If I didn't have to pay it or I could donate to a fund for people who wanted to overturn it, I would in a heart beat.
I think it is a silly arguement to have. If it were up to me, all the taxes would be income taxes and everything else would be 0. No capital gains, no estate, no tariffs, no corporate. Make the American people feel exactly what these programs cost - becuase right now they pay all the other taxes indirectly and they don't know it. Make people feel what a big government really means on their pocket and then you will see how many more people are screaming for libertarian policies. But saying "we shouldn't pay any tax" and "i wish I could succeed from the government" which I know is a common libertarian ideal, is just so impractical as to be a detriment to the cause.
Anyway, it is very easy to avoid income tax in the US -- don't have any income. Last time I checked, you don't forfeit any services, either.
Maybe you know something I don't, but I don't think they impose the death penalty for not paying taxes.
In any case, paying taxes and not voting seems to be an ineffective strategy. What's your end game?
Also the post I linked to in my first comment explains why any illegitimate power must resort to murder to assert its power over others.
i feel like i am explaining the same arguments over and over to people that believe the must be mastered or complete chaos will ensue. i think all libertarians feel this way talking to people.
for me, freedom is a dream worth dieing for. I just have not figured out what will lead to freedom.
Real estate and import taxes are the two that could be considered 'direct' taxes. Paying 7.5% or 10% of the value of your home at sale time is DEFINITELY a direct tax, its just highly delayed. This tax is based on the idea that most valuable property in the caymans is not owned by locals or is owned by very wealthy people. But everyone pays it...
Corporate taxes are indirect, but if you arent living off your own personal wealth, you are paying for those taxes through the products you buy from those companies or the lower wages you receive from those companies if you work there.
Aside from all of that -- it is foolish to assume that this would work in other countries that are not very small, exotic, and dependent (at least in some part) upon tourism/foreigners. In some sense, you could say that the taxes are paid by foreigners more than locals. Thats all fine and good for Caymans, but again, that would never work in the US, Europe, etc where populations are large compared to the number of visitors/foreigners.
Find me a country with a population of 50 Million that does anything like this, and I'll move there. :)
1 - Imported by wealthy residents who live there because of the exotic locale. 2 - Imported by tourism. 3 - Imported by the banking industry.
This would never work in a country that isn't a tax shelter from other nations, or a country that has actual, tangible, real industrial production.
Why?
Of course you can create a near utopia without taxation for your own people if you are able to import fabulously rich residents by the boatload and taxing them instead. This is obviously not an option that is sustainable on a large scale , nor do most countries have the exotic climate to support it.
In short, you need to tax somebody. In the Caymans these happen to be rich foreigners on holiday (or in some sort of semi-permanent residence)... in other countries clearly the taxes have to come from somebody else.
“This would never work in a country that isn't a tax shelter from other nations,” but isn’t Manhattan N.Y. U.S. also a tax haven to foreigners, other then U.S. citizens? And doesn’t the Cayman Islands support competition among, within and between taxing districts of the world, for which they attract wealth? Maybe it’s the competition among governments that makes it work in Cayman, giving money owners a better deal then they get else where.
“Somebody”, yes… if direct then apportioned. Tax somebody with competition, perhaps maybe best.
This is not entirely true. There was an income tax that was put into place for a number of years around the civil war, but was later abolished. Im not certain on the exact years, though.
Either way, taxes still abounded back then, they just werent compulsory. But they were if you were alive, eating, and tried to move around society. In other words, if you lived in BFE and had a farm, you probably didnt pay anything -- but if you lived in the city, you almost had to when buying tea, other food items, paying for stamps, other imported items.
The debate about whether we should have income tax or not is somewhat moot outside of armed rebellion. Its here to stay. The point that is more important is that it should be uniform, easy to follow, and LOW. I should not pay 50% of my efforts to the government. 5%, ok, 10% maybe, but 50%? no. The amount is what makes the income tax so unbearable, not that it exists at all.
Brian
There were taxes prior to the income tax, they were just different taxes. A flat rate sales tax and no income tax would still be tax - it would just be easier to avoid.
By OECD standards, we are the largest tax haven in the world. The United States, for example, source: https://www.reason.com/news/show/34248.html
the power to avoid, adds to freedom, not suggest with 19,000 pages of tax code though....