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‘Bad and dangerous’: Argentina’s Trump on track to become president
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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If taxes are robbery then using public infrastructure like roads without paying taxes is also theft.
Taxes exist because public goods are actually good, and benefit everyone. The sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts. Your taxes pay for roads and public transit which are used to get people to work to create wealth for a community. It turns out the thing that makes humans great is community and banding together. Taxes are a formal way of doing that.
Now, we need equitable taxes, but that would involve taxing the rich proportionally. This is economically sound because wealth doesn’t trickle down and the mega wealthy are, well, mega wealthy because they hoard wealth. That money would be better spent creating better roads, better public transit, better education, or in short, a better community. The prospect of a better community only upsets those who are not members of the community, because their insane wealth puts them in a different class, and those who think defending that class will somehow get them privilege. The only privilege we need is a better community.
Taxes raise money for transfers to special interests and public employees. Why would you trust an oligarchy of politicians (the State) to decide which goods are useful "for a community" and which don't?
In contrast to private businesses that supply the goods that consumers voluntarily want to buy, public officials lack of the capacity to pick data as to what people truly demand, much less how to go about meeting those demands economically. They don't have direct feedback of what every individual in the community want; they don't pass the test of economic rationality.
If the Monopoly of Violence can't act economically, they have no other choice but respond to interest groups, so tax money will necessarily end up with narrow interest groups rather than the provision of "public goods"
The end does not justify the means. The mere existence of taxation is detrimental (and antithetical) to the very source of economic growth, that is, voluntary exchange.
Goods like education and roads, for example, are goods like any other: they can be supplied by markets and markets alone.
A better community will be formed if it's achieved by voluntary means. Moral obligation is not the same as legal obligation. How can individuals be virtuous? By letting them act freely.
Because we voted for them. We didn't vote for the board of directors of private companies. There's plenty of waste and corruption in private enterprise. It's not voluntary if they lie cheat and steal just like bad politicians.
The fraud of representative democracy. What about those who didn't vote them (the tyranny of the majority)? We, the common citizens, have really any power if our vote is secret?
The rights and obligations of a contractual act are generated by explicit consent of both members. This does not happen when we our vote is completely secret, without our names and surnames. Politicians are free to impose their monopolical powers, even if we don't choose them.
“Representative democracy is the illusion of universal participation in the use of institutional coercion."
Because we shouldn't. Except for the lobbyists, they are using their private property and their factors of production achieved by social-cooperation.
The only difference is that, in a free-market setting, they wouldn't have any monopolical privileges to mantain their economical power and reputation in the market, as their permanence is dependent of supply and demand.
You cant have a free market without a government enforcing anti monopoly laws.
A free market is not free at all if the government is stepping in any voluntary exchange.
The existence of "anti-monopoly" laws has caused more harm than good by protecting particular competitors, not competition. In fact, monopolies can only survive through government-grant privileges, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a free-market setting.
"A market society needs no antitrust policy at all; indeed, the state is the very source of the remaining monopolies we see in education, law, courts, and other areas."
This is just false. You dont understand economics at all if you dont understand how all free markets naturally devolve into monopolies. Yes, governments can also grant monopolies by force, but without antitrust laws literally every market becomes a monopoly.
I'm a "follower" of the Austrian School of Economics, although the idea that monopolies are government-grant privileges was first originated by the economists of the classical school (and they were right).
Predatory pricing cannot be sustained over the long haul, and not even this should be regretted since it benefits the consumers. Attempted cartel-type behavior typically collapses, and where it does not, it serves a market function.
The definition of a monopoly by the idea of "monopoly price" has no effective meaning in free-market setting, which are not snapshots in time but processes of change.
Okay, so you admit you have no idea how economics work. That's really cool you're part of an economics fanfic club though.
You're not even trying to counter-argue my argument.
Stop being so based.
1st-world leftists are going to downvote you.
I don't believe that demand is solely driven by voluntary consumer choice. On the contrary, demand is manufactured by misleading and manipulative advertising and marketing. It's driven by making cheap products that don't last and encouraging a throwaway culture. It's driven by planned obselesence.
Nor is buying essential items like food and utilities voluntary. People who live in food deserts don't have choice.
If the thing you want is not popular with the masses then the capitalists have no incentive to make it. Endless growth and all that...
Consumer products develop through experimentation. Consumer preferences also change and develop gradually through time. To meet them requires entrepreneurial judgment.
Aside from a few innate demands concerning hunger and temperature, consumer preferences emerge as a result of interaction between many individuals.
Each consumer regulates the consumer products he consumes by spending money. There is no good substitute for the market process concerning the development and dissemination of consumer goods.