Quote from: NotLambchop on January 07, 2015, 03:50:26 PM

Quote from: dinofelis on January 07, 2015, 03:29:34 PM

...what is the difference between 10 maffia thugs putting you in a cage unless you pay them, or 10 000 state-paid thugs doing the same (but carrying a police uniform or the robe of a judge instead of a leather jacket)...

None. That's why I'm going to come & live at your house, and won't pay you rent. Because there's no difference between charging rent and mafia thuggery either.
Please remodel & hire some good help before I move in--I wouldn't want to put up with substandard services.

You renting my house is a mutually free agreement. We both agree on that, or not. I didn't say I didn't want to pay for state (or other) services. I only want to be able to choose them. My house is mine. If you want to live there, and I agree that you live there, then we make a deal, and part of the deal is that you pay some rent.

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Living in a country is a package deal. Like renting a hotel room--you get charged for the pillow mints you didn't eat & the bed you haven't slept in.

The point is that "the country" is not the ownership of a state. If it is, then I'm the state in my house and my garden, and when I'm at home, the state around me has nothing to do with me, because I'm then the owner of my house, and not the state, and my front door is a state border.

However, I agree with you that using public services and infrastructure needs to be paid for.... on a voluntary basis ! If I want to USE a road, it is normal that I pay for it. However, if I don't want to use a road, I don't see why I should *be obliged* to pay for it. I might *choose* to step into a package deal that I pay for all roads, and that as such I also have the right to use them. Whether I do or not will depend:
- on the price I'm charged (there's for instance no reason why the same service should be more expensive to me than to someone earning less than me)
- on the quality of the roads.

If I don't have this choice, then of course the state will build a lot of useless roads at too high prices for too low quality to give my tax money to their friends the road building companies held by their brother in law. The only way to keep the ratio of quality, usefulness and efficiency in check with the spending is if there is the free choice to say no. If not, we get exactly what is happening in almost all states: budgets running out of hand, rising taxation until the economy is strangled and a lot of spending on very low efficiency, bad quality and very costly stuff.

I know this, because I work with state money. The more I waste, the more I spend, the better things go for me and my people. At no point, any form of efficiency is demanded. (on paper, yes, in reality, no). I've had collegues who couldn't stand this going to the private sector, where they discovered all of a sudden that every Euro spent must be won too.
Of course it is fun spending other people's money in truckloads. But exactly because I know how it goes with tax money, I'm aware of the hypocrisy of the system and I want to keep wasting it because it is much more fun than having to earn it (and pay all those bastards like me wasting it on taxes).

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Don't like the deal? Go to a different hotel, or sleep in the gutter. Give up your citizenship & GTFO like that petty criminal Ver (who is now whining that US won't give him an entry visa).

The state doesn't own the country. The state should ideally (haha) be a servant to the country. In reality, the state is a huge parasite of the country. The country doesn't get any better with all the wasting of tax money. The state does. That is, the state and his brother in law.