Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

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I used to agree with you, then I read Falkvinge's proposal of a taxless state and it changed my mind. I'm now convinced that property tax (or more accurately, land tax) is the only justified tax, or more generally, that all taxes paid must be tied explicitly and characteristic to a service rendered, and that the only services a state should be allowed to render must be administration of a commons.

You cannot defend your land property from even a marginally better equipped aggressor who seeks to take it from you. You need a court system, or for a larger aggressor, an army, to do it for you. This means that de facto, the state with the armed men owns the land. Land tax is tantamount to a fee you pay to lease it. Also it can be framed as just payment for a service rendered, that is, the service of defending your property for you. Furthermore, any entity that "owns" land property and gets protection of his claim by a court or army that does not pay a land tax is free riding.

Income taxes are unjust. By the logic of the premise, land tax that pays for anything but defense of claim to the land is unjust. Wealth taxes are unjust, as are capital gains. Tarrifs that fund a navy to protect shipments on the high seas would be just, as would registration fees to bay for highway infrastructure. The core rules are, the state must only solve a tragedy of the commons, the tax that funds such an endeavor must derive directly from benefitting from that endeavor and it must only ever be used for that endeavor. With these axioms it is easy to deduce which taxes are just and which are not, they're all payment for services rendered for a service for which a state is the optimal organization to provide.

https://falkvinge.net/2017/03/01/a-simplified-taxless-state-...

So much of commerce is predicated on contracts, and courts/the government help enforce them. So it'd seem to me that income/wealth taxes, much like land taxes, are a just tax for the service the government offers in providing enforcement mechanisms.

Interesting take. What are your thoughts on government healthcare? Just or unjust. To what extent?

Well, how would you design a tax scheme to pay for it? Remember, a tax that doesn't directly derive from healthcare would be unjust according to these axioms. So it can't be an income tax, just as it would be unjust to pay for roads using an income tax. You tax everyone using the healthcare system and to the degree that they use it and pay for it that way.

Further, healthcare isn't a commons, so it is arguable that a state has no business interfering. Emergency facilities specifically are a commons, if the hippocratic oath is followed and all in need are helped. So some scheme where people pay for the maintenance of these facilities and services rendered in them based on how much they stand to benefit from them would be just. I don't know how you'd do that beyond sending them a bill. Maybe yearly renew on an access card, like vehicle registration, that isn't based on income but maybe could be based on medical history, or just flat rate for everyone. Taxing income, or wealth, to pay for blanket coverage including person to person contracts with specialists would be unjust, socializing something that isn't a commons would be unjust, but managing emergency facilities as a commons and funding them with some type of tax directly derived from their existence would be, because they are a commons and do suffer from tragedy of the commons.

Land ownership must be enforced by court of law, and that's true of all property. Yet land ownership is the easiest to maintain. While my neighbor might take my lawnmower and claim it as his own and the courts would have difficulty proving otherwise. Land is difficult to walk off with. Maintaining ownership is simply a matter of maintaining accurate and secure records.

No it's not. The records only mean something if a system exists to enforce those records. This is what we pay for, in the form of courts and armies. The record means nothing if it is not practically enforceable, and being able to enforce them comes with an ongoing cost, which the beneficiary, the land owner, has to pay for one way or another.

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