Also, consider that the price of everything you pay for is already inflated by taxes that the business pays: staff, fuel, corporate tax, etc. The government is probably eating %90 of societies production. Not to mention the stagnation of economic growth that results. IMAGINE the prosperity if this burden was lifted! How many problems that the government "solves" would be irrelevant in such a wealthy environment. It would be like The Jetsons!
Much of those taxes are spent on solving real problems to make commerce more efficient. E.g. taxes on fuel which are spent on building roads and taking care of them. How much production and trade would be left if they just closed the roads and cut the taxes on petrol? Taxes on fuel is an effective and just way of making the users of the roads pay for them. Taxes on air traffic are mostly spent on the terrorist organization TSA. This *is* wasteful and very harmful, and a good example of not to do it. Governments exists to make production and trade efficient, and countries that do this most effectively will prosper. This is obviously from the USA. An area where the the USA do extremely badly is healthcare. In most of Europe people enjoy free healthcare paid by the government, run by the government. In the USA healthcare is not free. It is a complicated system of insurances, government programs and private hospitals. Yet the U.S. government pays more per capita for healthcare than any other country in the world! This shows that taxes can be the most effective way of paying and getting done. Get rid of red tape and intermediates who take their cut, and it will turn out much cheaper for everyone. Reduced taxes _and_ no costly health insurance. And don't forget, even if 52% is eaten by taxes, 100% of the money will come out again. The government isn't collecting the money in a large treasure chest and keeping it. This was done by some kings in Europe back in the middle ages, to save up for the next war, but the practice got abolished. Nowadays wars are paid for using credit cards. To build a road they need building materials, machines and workers, who will again spend their money and contribute to economic growth. Services funded by theft are never going to be efficient, because there is no accountability to the market (competition), there is no profit/loss mechanism to determine if the market is being served efficiently. Yes, the government, in theory, steals our money for services we need (and allot we don't), but do a horrible job of providing that service. If it's such a good deal, then why is it mandatory? I want free choice in what transportation infrastructure I patronise. Healthcare, roads, whatever. I'll keep my %90 taxes and take my changes with the competitive market place, if you don't mind. As for your last point, sure, the money comes out again, but first it's paid to bureaucrats to shuffle papers and hassle productive businesses, paid to others for not working, paid to keep pot smokers in cages, paid to the military to blow up sand, build roads to nowhere, etc, etc, etc. This is misdirected energy which could have been used productively and we are all poorer for it. |
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It's humanity's ego. The cause of greed and coercion will always relate back to the ego. As more people become self-aware of their ego and how their actions directly affect their lives and people around them, more people will chose to act out of love rather than ego.
People only act malicious or greedy because they think it'll help them get somewhere in life. It's a big misconception that the best way to help yourself is to help yourself, when in reality, the best way to help yourself is to help others. More people are catching on and we will soon reach a point when humanity disbands ego, entirely.
+1 The state is indeed humanities ego: Identifying with the collective. "We", "I", same thing, different scale. The state loves to promote nationalism; the idea that you are the state/nation, the glory of the state is your glory. That's why the Olympics exists. " We one 26 gold medals!". |
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Because they consume 50% - 70% of your income? (...When you add them all together..)   Also, consider that the price of everything you pay for is already inflated by taxes that the business pays: staff, fuel, corporate tax, etc. The government is probably eating %90 of societies production. Not to mention the stagnation of economic growth that results. IMAGINE the prosperity if this burden was lifted! How many problems that the government "solves" would be irrelevant in such a wealthy environment. It would be like The Jetsons! Someone said the corporations were too greedy...? |
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Yep, better give a monopoly on violence to an institution called government to steal everyones money to pay for protection against scammers.
What about the scammers in parliament, to whom we have given all the guns?
Just because we don't have a state initiating force against peaceful citizens doesn't mean we can't have protection services and defend our property. non sequitur. Besides, is the state protecting you from these scammers now? no.
If that is the case where are the protection services that get your bitcoins back from scammers ? Yep, better give a monopoly on violence to an institution called government... |
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The problem with a fixed money supply:
When economy grows and generated more goods and services, the money are not enough to trade all the new goods, so the value of money increased, and that value increasing caused higher interest rate and hoarding, which further decrease the available money for transaction
But doesn't the increased value of savings increase demand? If my cash savings could buy 1 TV then later buys 10 TVs, I'm more inclined to buy a TV. And this will hit those with a debt very hard, they could not afford higher and higher interest due to the continuously rising value in money. And those who have a lot of saving are not willing to invest, since the return of just hoarding the money is much higher than investing those money and take business risk
But for the supply of goods to be increasing, which is the premise, business must be profitable/growing, but no one will risk investing because they won't profit? As a result, the economy growth will be stopped and turn to negative, the number of tradable goods and services will reduce, until they become so scarce that their value against money rise again
So it's a positive feedback loop. Eventually the value of money will be infinity. The number of goods will reduce because the number of goods are increasing. |
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Here's what I have been observing also:
1) CFLs are more expensive to manufacture than incandescents
2) CFLs are therefore considerable more expensive to buy than incandescents.
3) There is therefore a strong downward pressure on price for incandescents
4) Chinese knock out cheap, low quality incandescents
5) Cheap, low quality incandescents fail early, meaning that their claimed cost savings are not reached and their energy and resource TCO suck donkey parts compared to incandescents.
6) Statism does the fail thing once more.
7) Statism apologists scramble to make rationalizations. Cue:
This post makes no sense. perverse incentives created by the state result in sub optimal behavior of the market. |
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I have always seen coercion to be quite necessary. That's always been the opinion of the authoritarian. I just don't see voluntary cooperation as compatible with human nature. Perhaps because you perceive coercion as necessary? I'll ignore the circular argument you're presenting, and ask you this. Why do you think people would cooperate as a whole if left to their own devices? Why do you think a monopoly on force can instill virtue? People, for the most part, respect property of others and trade freely. In the pursuit of profit they provide others with goods and services that they need. People cooperate and trade peacefully every day for mutual benefit, do you not see this? If you have a job and buy things, you're "cooperating". All the state does is interfere with and restrict voluntary trade with violence. If humans can't cooperate, then how can a government work? It's not circular reasoning: You believe that coercion is necessary, therefore, to complement this belief you must also believe that cooperation is incompatible with human nature. He's saying the causality is backwards. So what of all the scammers, especially here? Yep, better give a monopoly on violence to an institution called government to steal everyones money to pay for protection against scammers. What about the scammers in parliament, to whom we have given all the guns? Just because we don't have a state initiating force against peaceful citizens doesn't mean we can't have protection services and defend our property. non sequitur. Besides, is the state protecting you from these scammers now? no. |
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Value is subjective, therefore there can be no intrinsic value. I value entropic loss, it entertains me.
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I have always seen coercion to be quite necessary. That's always been the opinion of the authoritarian. I just don't see voluntary cooperation as compatible with human nature. Perhaps because you perceive coercion as necessary? I'll ignore the circular argument you're presenting, and ask you this. Why do you think people would cooperate as a whole if left to their own devices? Why do you think a monopoly on force can instill virtue? People, for the most part, respect property of others and trade freely. In the pursuit of profit they provide others with goods and services that they need. People cooperate and trade peacefully every day for mutual benefit, do you not see this? If you have a job and buy things, you're "cooperating". All the state does is interfere with and restrict voluntary trade with violence. If humans can't cooperate, then how can a government work? It's not circular reasoning: You believe that coercion is necessary, therefore, to complement this belief you must also believe that cooperation is incompatible with human nature. He's saying the causality is backwards. |
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its more convenient to pay taxes [...]
So other people should be coerced, with threat of force, to pay for your convenience. Gotcha. wow, why would you support force on people? I'm not the one advocating taxes. saying its more convenient is not advocating taxes or force just pointing out i dont like force You don't like force, but it's more convenient, so... |
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We just need to think about taxes in a different way. Instead of something being forced upon everyone, make it something that one pays voluntarily, making it based on an honor system instead.
So the government will provide a good or service and we can pay for it if we want it. Sounds like Voluntaryism. |
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DMT is released in the brain. NDE is just a DMT trip.
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Taxation is theft.
We still should pay taxes to help ppl with limited abilities. If you see a person with limited abilities who is in need, just pull out a gun and point it at the 5 nearest fully abled people and demand the cash in their pockets. Then give that money the the limited ability person and send the fully able people on their way. problem = solved. |
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The "Zeitgeist movement" is nothing more than resurrected communist propaganda from the early 20th century except with computers.
It comes almost word-for-word from the propaganda that was floating around from the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. The proponents of central planning always promise a scientifically-managed utopian society where money isn't necessary.
It never works for reasons Mises described as the economic calculation problem. The addition of computers to the toolset of the central planners does not solve the problem, and the Zeitgeist people always handwave around the problem of what happens when the masses don't want to listen to the self-appointed elite that will be telling everybody how many resources they are allowed to utilize. There's only way to impose central planning on those who don't agree and we already know how that works out.
It's doesn't matter because there will be infinite resources.  |
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The free market is a myth. You can't point to something that doesn't exist and say it's working fine, or would work if the state weren't involved.
Why not. We can't have trade without a violent institution getting a cut? I think we can trade perfectly fine without being robbed and controlled. Seems pretty obvious to me. There can be no market without the state involved at some level. Even in the bitcoin economy now we see the rise of the bitcoin foundation, a political, legal and corporate government entity.
The bitcoin foundation is not a government entity. They neither taxes me or regulates me under threat of violence. It is purely voluntary. When you have money, you have a state, and therefore there is no free market.
Interesting. Money implies state. Could you justify that statement? |
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What I think is missing is the central point of the whole RBE argument: we need to find a way to live sustainably on the planet in a peaceful, non coercive manner. The free market clearly fails in such regards, as do the socialists regimes, so there is a need for different system. We're trying to figure out the best way to do it with an open discussion, that's all.
The free market is, by definition, non-coercive. That's what the "free" part is about. Again, you TVP guys are blaming the problems with state coercion on the voluntary trade. Big mistake. |
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Progress occurs in spite of the monetary system, not because of it. Trade secrets, patents, copyright and a corrupt legislative and legal system work to inhibit the free flow of ideas, cooperation and faster progress. We are stuck with medieval institutions and methodologies that have been around for centuries despite our enormous advancements in productivity and capability. Servicing the profit motive is no way to make things better for people. If we each understood that the individual does better when all of society does better, then personal profit would not be rewarded as much as it is now.
You highlight symptoms of the state and conflate this with money. We can get rid of patents, legislation, etc and keep money. This is a massive non-sequitur. Servicing profit DOES make things better for people. If a business make a profit through voluntary trade, it is allocating resources efficiently and providing a desired service to society. It's actually an excellent way to "make things better". Prices allocate resources according to subjective values. You want people to register their values with an algorithm and have resources allocated deterministically from that data. Don't you recognise that this is exactly what is happening in the market place right now? The market and the aggregate of all voluntary trade IS the algorithm you aspire to (yet never seem to be able to disclose). You constantly highlight problems associated with involuntary trade imposed by the state and then blame these problems on voluntary trade. |
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Just the naive idealism, it seems.
2) Their hope that finance-based market forces can establish a new social equilibrium for the foundations of a civilised society. They don't seem to realise that a new equilibrium for things like education and healthcare could take decades to develop. Unless existing foundations are carefully maintained in the meantime, a whole generation of people could be compromised with severe, possibly dangerous gaps in their upbringing and/or health.
Decades? why would it take so long? I think that once you remove the burdens of the state (which are enormous), we will have such services provided with higher quality and lower cost quickly filling the void. They will take time to mature, but will be superior, even in their infancy. You don't seem to realise the inherent inefficiency in a violence based system, which is not accountable to the consumer. I don't accept the premise that we have an equilibrium now. |
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The problem with this attitude is that it rejects the moral argument that is central to libertarianism: Using violence to get what you want is wrong. As soon as you allow for a state, you're saying "violence is wrong except when the state does it". First, I don't think that moral argument works. If I eat a banana, is that using violence to get what I want? Well, yes if it's your banana. But no, not if it's a mine. So that argument translates into an absolutist argument for defense of property rights. Now, I actually agree with the absolutist argument for defense of property rights. The problem is, it just doesn't apply to the world we currently live in. It puts you straight into the transition problem. Who has morally clear title to "my house"? Well, right now, nobody, and it's not clear how anyone could get it. I don't see how this invalidates the moral argument. Once people accept the moral argument, the transition is just a matter of implementation. From the Libertarian perspective, after you make this compromise, your fighting the wrong battle. You've gone from a philosophical revolution (war of ideas) to a plain old revolution (fighting the state directly, since you have condoned it's existence and rejected NAP). There's no compromise involved. I still fully intend to condemn the state when it does wrong. And while I accept that concepts behind NAP, it makes a lousy rallying cry because it's a dishonest version of "property rights are absolute". I don't see what you mean by it being "dishonest"? The moral argument is extremely effective. Whatever pragmatic argument someone wants to make for violence, all you have to do is point out the violence. Most people reject violence, but don't make the connection between the state and violence. "We need a social safety net for the disadvantaged". You want to point a gun at me and force me to give money to poor people? Ultimately they are forced to admit that they advocate violence or that charity should be voluntary. |
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People do not like libertarianism because I can't use the state to enforce my environmental policy through violent coercion.
That's why don't like libertarianism! better? |
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