Quote from: Ekaros on January 12, 2014, 08:45:36 AM

Quote from: Carlton Banks on January 12, 2014, 02:28:11 AM

Quote from: hilariousandco on January 11, 2014, 10:41:55 PM

And if you are willing to pay for these services then you just essentially want to call taxes by something else or the government by something else. And what do you suggest as an alternative plan? Tell me how you would make this work? Why do people assume that just passing on the responsibility to someone else will solve all the problems as long as these people do not call themselves politicians or the government?

The plan is to pass the responsibility onto me. And you. Everyone.

First we get a money system that doesn't rip us off all day until we die (bitcoin, CHECK)

Then we've got more time on our hands to organise locally. We take a stake in our communities by making the decisions ourselves, not voting for someone who does that for us.

We organise all the local services we need ourselves. Contract a company to collect waste (like your local government do now). Contract a company to maintain the local roads. Contract a company to look after water and sewage. Get all people in the area to pay into a fund to get it done (easier when the value of money is no longer evaporating into bankers pockets on a daily basis). Use a bitcoin wallet with multi-signature, where it only gets spent when a minimum number of people will sign it off.

Choose staff for the local schools, police and hospitals yourself. Even if you're only choosing the managerial staff, at least then you've got more oversight and more input than you do now.

And all the people that are doing all this organising will get to know each other. They'll get to know strengths and weaknesses, biases and Huh

. Then you'll know what's going on in your community, and where all the money went. You have no hope of anything like that from your local government now. And even the local government people get paid a tidy salary, this is such a waste when the only reason to have them there is that the sconomic system is tilted to keep everyone else too busy with their own day job.

And think about that, these people are professionals, literally dedicated to looking after running local amenities, and this is the best they can do? On their more than decent salaries? Come on. I think we (literally, WE) can do better.

Wouldn't that be just another form of government with direct democracy? And would everyone really have the time to go in-depth to all forms of services they need? And isn't getting people to pay in fund still taxation?

It is that. I'm trying to demonstrate that what we do right now isn't so rigid. And what system we could change to if we went self-governing tomorrow.

But it's perfectly possible for people to break out of that system, if they can look after their own services. If they can go 100% independent, then why would the rest of the locality care? Local government now doesn't want to become irrelevant, the politicians lose their jobs if so. But the people contributing to running their own community would take it as a sign that the day would come when they could forget their new (unpaid) role. So, I'm trying to illustrate a transition period, because it's no good telling people who can't get past the current system on an imaginitive level that we'll all become 100% self determined straight away, it's just too unrealistic no matter the scenario.