Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Reason we pay taxes and why we should
by
hatshepsut93
on 10/06/2018, 14:25:21 UTC

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.

Actually, government is the root of all wars, they start them to grab resources, dominate other governments, to tighten their control over population. Also those wicked people that you've described use government to support their wars. You are right that regular people don't want to go to war, and without governments wars would be less common and far smaller, there would be no world wars.
Also, military forces can be private, and people can voluntary pay for the protection that they offer. And since military budgets are usually around 1% in most countries, the prices would be very affordable, especially with market mechanisms.