Let's presume we're interfacing with public services here, just for shits and giggles. What happens when grandma Jean forgets to pay the bill one month? Does she lose access to those public services when she needs them most because her 911 is redirecting to a busy tone?
2. Proponents of government services always bring up cases where grandmas or disabled or poor people somehow suffer because they don't have enough money/physical abilities/brains to handle things. I agree those cases exists, but it very often is presented as if half of the society is in someway dysfunctional and requires government help (even if that's indeed the case, we should rightly see this situation as abnormal and fix it, not feed it). But the truth is, in a society there's indeed always a % of people who are dysfunctional. My guess is, it should be no more than 5-10%. Those people can be helped by voluntary donations and charities. Beyond that, we got people who made their choices in life (not buying insurance, eating unhealthy, drunk driving etc.). While I'm not necessarily claiming those people should not be helped when they need it, but the decision to help or not should lie with the body that actually does the job: that is, if a drunk uninsured driver is brought to a hospital, it is up to the charity that sponsors it and the hospital managers or doctors to decide whether to help him or not. By leaving this decision up to the government we simply incentivize all sorts of bad behaviors at the expense of people who have no intention of supporting it.
2. So, in your world, the guy who seemed to have alcohol on his breath can be left to die at a hospital. Sure. I think that's poor example, you'd be hard pressed to find doctors who would refuse to save a life in such a case. The reason I trot out grandma is because it is the poorest and weakest in our society that need protection the most, and your system would leave all that in the hands of some charity... hand-waving away all the issues that creates.
2. In my world what's most likely to happen is that this guy would be helped immediately, but the hospital stuff later will report the incident, the guy will lose his driving licence forever, will be unable to buy alcohol and will be required to pay to the hospital over time. I'm not gonna go into detail of how it is achieved without a government, but it's quite very possible and would even be enforced more effectively.
So, yes, my main point is: forced universal anything is bad and immoral. Everyone should know exactly how and where their money go and be free to decide what to do with their money. If I dislike how my charity works and if I dislike that it doesn't help drunk drivers, I switch to a different one which does. If everyone in a society agrees to pay for universal healthcare voluntarily without a threat of IRS or similar agency showing up if they don't pay, then I have no problem with it.
It's interesting how, when this particular viewpoint comes up, the hypothetical individual is always deeply irresponsible, borderline malicious. But the person making the argument never is.
> "Now, say I'm a Canadian citizen too: would you give me the same amount of respect and not require me to pay tax money for the things I have no intention of supporting and allow me to only pay to my insurance company?"
No, because this is a fundamental philosophical difference that runs to the core of who we are. I value the collective, and am willing to make sacrifices to my individual in order to advance the whole.
As a Canadian citizen myself, stay on your side of the border, please.
No, I may be the most irresponsible person in the world. The difference is, I'm not asking you or anyone else to pay for it.
> No, because this is a fundamental philosophical difference that runs to the core of who we are. I value the collective, and am willing to make sacrifices to my individual in order to advance the whole.
So would you then personally come to my house with a gun and demand money and escort me to jail if I politely refuse to pay, explaining my reasons? Will you do this, knowing my family is going to suffer? Will you look my kids in the eyes and say "Your daddy is a criminal because he refuses to pay for what I think is right".
> As a Canadian citizen myself, stay on your side of the border, please.
Please do not assume everyone here is from the US. I'm not talking about a specific country, I'm talking about a principle. US is socialist in many ways too.
Sure you are. The moment you're out of your financial depth you'll scream like a little girl and recant.
You presume that a private system yields some kind of low-cost alternative to single-payer systems. That's not the case, and it's so far from true in the US that it's laughable.
You are the one who needs to look into his kids eyes and explain why they can't have critically needed health care. It should start with "Daddy can't do math", and end with "and so my beliefs were more important than your well-being".
We don't throw people in jail or point guns at them, and frankly even if you weren't paying income tax you would be paying tons of sales tax that you can't avoid. Worst case scenario you'd be forced into bankruptcy, tax debt is dischargeable up here, unlike in the US.
I'd leave out this part.
edit: or to be clear, I'd be as likely to say that as I would be to say to the children of a burglar, "I'm arresting your father because he wanted you to have nice things."
Here's how Canadians (and I'm one of them) think about health care: Some of us do crazy, unhealthy stuff, and some don't. We all have the same healthcare. Be free, do your thing. Live your life the way you want to. It costs way too much to have different healthcare for different people.
Some of you "land of the free" people really don't get it.
Being free to leave your job, and free to live your life that way you want to (without actuarial oversight) are pretty important.
Those are way more important to me than the last nth percent of optimization I might be able to do on my own personal wallet by taking on all the idiocy of privatized, customized health care.
As a counterpoint, I refer you to all the other counties in the US where receiving this vital service isn't contingent on your bills being paid. I can see these people losing their home to a fire because they failed to acquire home insurance, but I can't see how moral people would stand by and let a house burn to the ground over an unpaid bill.
On the other hand, in this case they had already deployed, and it would have been nicer if there had been SOME price that they had thought of as the "fee" for service to non-subscribers. 5k, 10k, etc: better than losing the house. Once you advertise something like that, though, people will stop subscribing, and decide to gamble that they won't have a catastrophe. The price has to either be high enough to discourage that, or high enough that the fire department can cover its operating costs by servicing X fires per year.
Many rural U.S. counties have no standing fire fighters. Fires are fought by volunteers, often using donated equipment. There is nothing immoral about a town offering enhanced fire service to subscribers outside the town.
Similar arrangements are also common between ambulance companies and subscribers. Old people with a fixed income consider it a great deal to pay $50 a year or so for discounted service.
Well, you could live on a boat in international waters, or renounce the use of all forms of currency and live on pure barter, however you seem to be asking for a state that cannot raise revenue.
There are some of them around the world, but you might want to hire a small military detail if you want to live there, as funnily enough they have a few security issues.
Your argument is that it is unethical for someone to use force to compel someone to do something against there will, right? Well, that works great as long as everyone shares your ethical views. Unfortunately, not everyone does, and there are people in this world who would happily kill you and take all your property if they could. It doesn't even have to be all that many people - if just 0.1% of the population believes "might makes right" and you come in contact with >1000 people, you're probably dead.
The reason we have the state is so that we can realize certain economies of scale in protection. We entrust a monopoly on the use of physical force to the state; in return (in lawful democratic regimes), it agrees to use that force only when just. That way we can trust that we can go about our business without being randomly killed by a dude on the street, because they know that they are in for a world of hurt if they kill someone. There have been times (eg. the Wild Wild West in America, or post-Gorbachev looting & unrest in the Soviet Union) where the state has not had that monopoly on force, and it usually ends up being very difficult to conduct business during those times.
A state is just a name for people accomplishing certain things on their own; its not actually a real thing with independent existence.
Next you will probably tell me: but how can you compare taxation to slavery? Well, both are done by human beings to other humans against their will because the majority implicitly agrees. In both cases, if a person resists, he is punished. Tell me, how is it moral? The only difference is the degree to which the freedom is restricted and fruits of labour are confiscated. If you believe a person made his money in a dishonest way, it is justified that this person is tried and convicted. However, if you agree a person made his money honestly, by benefiting other people and creating value, what moral right on earth do you have to take any of his earned money for any purpose? He didn't rob anyone, he created value, out of nothing. Not you, not any other person has any moral right to confiscate any part of it.
If you want to create an alternative economic system that requires no physical territory or external inputs to enable it to run and therefore can exist without taxation, then feel free.
But let's say I agree. I'm gonna switch to Bitcoin and start my own country. Problem is, no one's gonna let me occupy a territory I choose even though it may not be used at all (!) by a government or any of the citizens. The moment I start building my house in the woods, someone's gonna notice and send people in suits to evict me. What's the justification for that? No one uses the land anyway! Why is some government more entitled to it than I am?
As for entitlement to territory, the only entitlement to territory that really counts is the ability to keep hold of it. If you want an anarchist utopia, you may have problems keeping it for any length of time unless you are fairly inaccessible or fairly martial.
This isn't particularly fair, admittedly.