When you understand the immorality of taxes, there’s nothing immoral about getting your money back from a government that took it while repudiating the taxes.
But I don't think taxes are in and of themselves immoral.
A human being is a social animal, and each gets a lot of value from the people around us.
These are nice to have:
- clean streets
- police
- non-corrupt judges
- a stable legal framework
- living among educated people
- fire department that just shows up
- not getting bombed and invaded by a foreign army
- much more
These are "true expenses" in that if you didn't pay for them... you'd eventually pay the price for them when you're the victim of crime, fire, or exposure to the illiterate.
If you lived in Galt's Gulch or some gated community in an anarchic society, you'd pay a regular fee for these services, like voluntary taxes.
Taxes are infamously as inevitable as death because the expenses it's meant to pay for are also inevitable. We might as well set up a system.
Government waste is held up as an example of immorality, and some/most governments certainly should be leaner, but some waste & inertia would happen in any large organization, public or private. The only other time a government could be straight-up immoral is if it's persecuting innocent citizens or foreigners for no reason. Thinking through the implementation details of Galt's Gulch makes me think taxes aren't so bad after all.
What makes taxes immoral? People want their government to provide certain services. Those need to be paid for. What services should be funded depends on who you ask. It's interesting how the Nordic people are fine with paying more for strong social safety nets. They see it as an investment in society.
"In her later years"....well, yeah! I will structure my finances that way too. I get money stolen from me yearly by force for "SS TAX", and i surely plan to get every cent back out of it that i can. I will not get even 10% back, but that is better than 0
Did you ever use the streets in front of your house? Ever went to a public park? Ever relied on police to protect your property? Ever needed the help of public health services? Firefighters?
It's funny that you get money stole from you (while you certainly use a ton on infrastructure society provides), but never once considered leaving it behind and go live as a hunter gatherer in some remote place.
> I think it benefits society to fund academic research.
see how you mentally group all these things under one umbrella. No I don’t think sociology research is on the same standing as physics research and I also don’t think all physics research is equal.
Based on the reports coming from Doge I think there are a lot of bad studies funded in the name of science or academic research.
Is this supposed to be a humorous comment, or are you seriously using the reports coming from doge in an argument, as if they were honest reports?
I realise that this comment might come off as antagonistic, and I apologise. But since I guffawed when I read it, as I interpreted it as the former, I'm now curious to find out if I'm correct.
You misunderstood me, I think. I'm not calling doges actions fake, but the reports about how much money they saved. And I call into question the pretense that the projects they defunded were all complete wastes of money, as the head of that department is known to be a habitual liar.
Regardless of money saved the content of the material is a sampling of the kind of research we are funding - grouped under well intentioned labels like “science” or “academic research”.
I use them daily, in not being some poor serf, by not risking famine every year, and not living in a land beleaguered by war.
Those things are sort of like having competent IT security. If they are doing everything right, they will seem like they aren't doing anything at all, but when they are gone all of a destruction and doom is always just a day away.
What kind of consent? On an individual basis? Because the assholes won't pay putting more burden on those who do while the assholes use the further power/capital disparity to corrupt society in their favor. Governmentally we have many times, every time a new government is formed, and there is always the option of the people tearing it all down when it stops doing what it is suppose to when all the other alternatives are made impossible.
Also every society that concentrates power into a larger government through taxation will inevitably invade and destroy or subjugate those who decided they wanted the smallest bare minimum of community support and collective services that leaves them vulnerable.
We're not talking about communities, we're talking about modern countries. Most people aren't willing to pay out of pocket for anything that doesn't benefit them directly, which is why the reason most people give to charity is that its tax deductible. A few might give out of the kindness of their heart or some sense of civic duty, but not enough.
I agree that the primary function of taxation is to fund things that have serious free rider problems otherwise.
But part of the problem is the lack of community structure and expectation that we can centrally fund and manage problems. There are whole communities in the US that lived for generations on civic duty and kindness of heart.
>There are whole communities in the US that lived for generations on civic duty and kindness of heart.
But not entirely. Living in the US means they take advantage of the American capitalist system and infrastructure to some degree, which means they benefit from taxation. And obviously they pay their taxes otherwise the men with guns would have shown up.
And again, the free rider problem is intractable at scale. You can't simply build "community structure" and expect everyone to buy in. If that were possible, we wouldn't need laws at all, we could just expect everyone to play nice. And the fact that most people play nice by default doesn't imply laws aren't necessary.
And we can centrally fund and manage problems. That does work. Look at the numerous public work projects in the US like Hoover Dam, NASA, interstate highways, modern agriculture, the internet. None of that happens if all you can depend on is kindness of heart.
All good things come from God and God’s greatness shines of all the earth, and anything that ever happens is because of God, but for you it’s the State.
Just because a good thing exists does not mean I’m indebted to it. The city may build a really nice park on the other side of town. That doesn’t mean I’m being subsidized or dependent.
The people of Maine did not benefit from the Hoover Dam.
> You can't simply build "community structure" and expect everyone to buy in.
You’re right that we can’t magically recreate communities that were destroyed, but this is actually the default human behavior. Small community cooperate together for common good.
> If that were possible, we wouldn't need laws at all
This doesn’t follow. People’s short term behavior may not align with their long term values.
Crime/sin is traditionally when your passions get the best of you.
The reason we pay for ICMBs is to prevent warmongers like Putin from invading countries which would be bad for the whole global economy. So you get advantage from ICMBs all the time indirectly.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/