Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Reason we pay taxes and why we should
by
Betwrong
on 07/06/2018, 11:00:09 UTC
Taxation is theft. "But who will build the roads" argument is really old and dumb, people are not some stupid monkeys who can't figure out things if no one guides them, there's nothing that can not be done privately and through voluntary cooperation (which is the same as privately). Roads, military, science and so on - all of it can and is done privately around the world. Government is exactly why Bitcoin was invented - you can't trust people with power and believe that they will do as they've promised, and even well-meaning leaders do stupid mistakes that cost billions. Just like Bitcoin have decentralized economy, some day people will decentralize power to the point when every individual will be independent from others.

Although I agree that today's taxation is theft mostly, especially in non-democratic or in half-assed democratic countries, I don't think it's possible to build a society where every individual is independent from others. The thing is that the world is big enough to contain different kinds of people. And there are evil people from our point of view who are, at the same time, not evil but righteous from their perspective. Those people are able to sacrifice everything, freedom, amenities, well-being of their children and even their very lives for a "higher purpose". Their sole aim is war until victory or death. To confront them we need a strong country with a strong military and economy which takes a strong government to rule over. Otherwise a society of independent individuals, most of whom don't want to go to war (Who wants to go to war?) will be conquered and enslaved by those barbarians.

But this "strong government" shouldn't be only strong enough to protect itself from its own people while making wage slaves of them (what we can see nowadays mostly). The government should be absolutely transparent and open. Every citizen should have a right to check where their taxes are going. Thankfully that's not that hard to implement nowadays.