This really shows how unhelpful it is when economists say things like "Millennials will be fine as long as they work to 70". Addressing the symptom of a larger issue will only see the problem...
This really shows how unhelpful it is when economists say things like "Millennials will be fine as long as they work to 70". Addressing the symptom of a larger issue will only see the problem continue to grow.
What do they mean by "waking up to?" Millennials have already started to hit their 30s and weve been dealing with this since we were adults. The majority of the millennials I know are barely able...
What do they mean by "waking up to?" Millennials have already started to hit their 30s and weve been dealing with this since we were adults. The majority of the millennials I know are barely able to get by and have been struggling ever since 2008. I am fairly well off and I still have to live with multiple roommates so that I can live close enough to where jobs are without commuting for 2+ hours a day.
When my parents were my age they had a house, could support children, and had money saving up. I dont know a single other millennial who is living that lifestyle now who does not A: spend more than 3 hours total commuting or B: had parents rich enough to pay for all of college or give them a house
Well, that graph is a little misleading in some ways. For one thing, I don't see any mention of slaves. For a long time, slavery would bias that chart pretty strongly, since they owned no taxable...
Well, that graph is a little misleading in some ways. For one thing, I don't see any mention of slaves. For a long time, slavery would bias that chart pretty strongly, since they owned no taxable property, nor was any preparation ever made for their retirement / disability / etc. it's much easier to get away with rock bottom taxes when your citizens have slaves that provide services that today a government has to, at no cost, and lowers the tax rate vs population. Second off, to have taxes that low requires you to live in what we would consider today a third world country; early America had no public utilities, no serious shipping infrastructure beyond a few cobblestone roads in cities, no large research institutions or a sizeable permanent military (instead relying on volunteer militias), no public health care, virtually non-existent welfare, and an oversupply of extremely cheap labor (immigrants). The context that allowed that allowed the US to have such low rates isn't wouldn't be considered acceptable today by nearly anybody I think, not unless we're all willing to return to agrarian lifestyles, and even then, you couldn't support our current population and many of the locations they live in (Las Vegas for example). Lastly, since we're talking about population, you also need to take into account that as the population increases, the growth inevitably has to slow down as the maximum capacity of resources is reached. In turn, this means that each individual needs to give more to make up for fewer citizens paying for more retirees. Early America was founded largely by young immigrants, and with a very small previous population to support, each person could get away with paying very little.
The chart doesn't show any difference between north and south though. That's a good point too; local and state taxes vary significantly depending on where you live, which shakes this chart up...
If this was a significant factor in the chart, wouldn't this be shown in a disparity between the tax rates of the north and south?
The chart doesn't show any difference between north and south though. That's a good point too; local and state taxes vary significantly depending on where you live, which shakes this chart up quite a bit too. You implied there isn't a disparity between them; could you perhaps find another chart or source of data showing that? I have no idea what state taxes were like in old America, I'd be curious to see if you have a particular source in mind.
You see a bug, I see a feature. The "third world country" you describe also had no domestic panopticon watching our every move, or government institutions that exist to prohibit objectionable plant matter or grope travelers to protect the citizenry against cultures that our government has enraged against us through continual bombings that we also pay for.
I can understand your point just fine without the hyperbole... However, I challenge you this; if we were to follow your model, and the US today were to switch to your ideal society, how would you solve these four problems; how would you feed everyone? What standards of medical care would you expect to be able to provide, and how would you do so? How do you prevent a foreign invasion, possibly (but not exclusively) from potentially opportunistic Canadian / Mexican neighbors? And how do you keep inequality from becoming so great that your own citizens stage a revolution to overthrow you?
This depends on your definition of public; it is true there would be no entity robbing everyone to provide a bare minimum of services to everyone; but it would be quite possible for people to give help to their fellow man rather than attempt to force others to be charitable and funnel money/power through such a violent institution in the process.
Yeah, but if this worked, charity would already solve all of our problems, wouldn't it? Even with significantly more aid then I think you would intend to propose, there were many people, and still are some today, that become very sick or even die due to lack of ability to pay for medical care. Do you believe it's more right for that to happen then for citizens to be taxed for it?
Your whole argument is based on the assumption that some specially ordained group of people have the absolute right to fruit of everyone's labor. The State is just another religion, but with much higher tithes than most.
I've never said that man, please don't put words into my mouth. But caring for the elderly is a basic tenet of almost every society, and has been all over the world, through nearly all of human history. If you refuse to tax or collect any money from your citizens in your country, how would you then ensure that old people are taken care of? Or if not, what should be done with them otherwise?
To get this straight, your advocating that we let people starve so that others aren't taxed? Beyond even that, we already produce more food than needed to feed everyone, but it's allocated based...
This is going to sound harsh, but that is an unrealistic goal. If you make "feed everyone" your goal and aim to accomplish it through force you're setting up for unchecked population growth.
To get this straight, your advocating that we let people starve so that others aren't taxed? Beyond even that, we already produce more food than needed to feed everyone, but it's allocated based on who can pay the most and not who needs it. We also have shown that as societies have advanced and birth control has come out that every modern nation has a birthrate below the replacement level. The only one I know of that bucks that trend is the US and that's because of the numbers of immigrants joining. The native population is below the replacement rate.
Much of what you stated about the government taking money for cause A and using it for cause B is true, but how would getting rid of the government solve these problems? You'll never get around the issue of some organization that is not run on libertarian values deciding to use force or outsized economic power to take things from you without having a large protective force, commonly known as a government
I need to preface this first, before responding to your arguments. I watched that video until 12:55 when the credits were playing to legitimately listen to your side. There was about 2 minutes of...
I need to preface this first, before responding to your arguments.
I watched that video until 12:55 when the credits were playing to legitimately listen to your side. There was about 2 minutes of content wrapped up in another 11 minutes of satire and someone who was entirely too self satisfied with how clever he was, to just lay out his argument. Please do not continue to link videos with that low a signal/noise ratio or I will not be able to spend the time to actually discuss the topic with you.
As to your argument and the argument made in the video, I don't see how this is a response. I am not under some delusion that the state is a noble protector who does no wrong. Every nation on Earth has had it borders forged in blood and violence. The state is routinely a bad actor against its own citizens. It is routinely violent and capricious. It routinely takes from people with no concern to it the affect on their lives.
What has happened is that over thousands of years of government, it has gotten better. We have moved on from everyone living under actual warlords and being slaves tied to the kingdom or land, to democracies that(while corrupt) give at least some say to the people. Throwing away all government will get us right back to stage 0 of what mankind was like. What you have linked here still doesn't deal with the fact that there are other groups of people who would hurt others and take their stuff. Hell we(assuming you are in the US) are one of the groups of people, we took a lot from the natives and mexico, and tried to take from Canada. In the past century we had WW2 where several states tried to take over the world and had American and Soviet Imperialism. In just the past decade we've had a religious movement try and take over the middle east, had Russia take both parts of Georgia and Ukraine, and have had China butting up against everyone in the south sea to demand territory which is only being held back because the US acts like its their territory first.
You are right, these are just effectively big gangs fighting each other, but these gangs will not just disappear if one country manages to agree to dissolve the government and go down a fully libertarian route.
Until you have a response to the fact that splitting everyone up into fully individual citizens that only work together with consent will immediately be bowled over by any largish group of people bound together and working towards the goal of taking your stuff, I cannot see how it would be feasible in the real world
I don't think that's an accurate characterization; after all, I'm not asking for an alternative for something "who would you replace the president with" or "how would you structure your tax...
My argument is "top down solutions/control are bad" and the most common response from Statists is effectively: "what would be your top down alternative?"
I don't think that's an accurate characterization; after all, I'm not asking for an alternative for something "who would you replace the president with" or "how would you structure your tax collection", but instead giving a basic problem that is fundamental to any society. After all, if you want change, you need to sell people on why your solution is superior to what's existing at the moment. using the food system as an example, I can see a few ways a libertarian might approach it; for example, you could encourage the economy to shift to an agrarian one for example, where you encourage everybody to grow their own food, and thereby make them independent . However, compared to our existing (stateist) solution, you then gain a large number of major disadvantages; you take a significant amount of people out the economy to do other things, you make people vulnerable to environmental famines from bad harvests (since it's not practical on a small scale to use the kinds of techniques that large scale farmers do to counter these), and you significantly restrict people's diets, since they could only eat what they can grow. Plus, there are no allowances here for people who can't grow their own food, whether it be from the climate they live in to being not physically capable. In my opinion, a societal idea that destroys the current economy as we know it, will leave many people hungry or force relocation, and takes away the security of knowing you will be able to eat, is a societal idea that's dead in the water, because no one will view it as an improvement over our current one, regardless of how much freedom it gives you.
I expect medical care to get much cheaper in the absence of existing regulation and regulatory capture, and for a return to voluntarily helping each other.
I don't think voluntarily helping each other is going to cure cancer. But you specifically mention existing regulation and regulatory capture; how do you believe, specifically, that complete privatization would lead to a decline in prices? What would be the incentive for a hospital not to keep charging current prices?
ociety has progressed a lot since then, and I think more people have separated the idea of morality and charity from the concept of religion. The absence of State welfare does not mean that all private charity would be religious; and IMO if your objection with private charity is that some people are not well served by it the solution is to attempt to serve those underserved yourself rather than resort to coercion and violence to achieve your goals.
That's the thing though, isn't it? My ability to counter that change is rather limited. I could, at most, only donate my extras after expenses. I don't have the capability or knowledge of how to help the many suffering people that exist today, and the countless more you create if you're taking away the support they currently. Furthermore, time and again through history, most people have shown that they're not willing to assist or give in charity to others; many ancient stories lament on this. I'd have thought you'd endorse religion here, since it's a voluntary approach to charity. But a religion will also only donate or give to causes it finds coincide with its own beliefs; an impartial state agency gives support to people based on objective criteria, such as need due to income or in the case of a documented disability.
hey, cool! That's my university! While this guy makes some extraordinary claims, I think that's an unfair statement. I'm not ready to believe the government of Denmark is a more violent organization then Mexican drug cartels.
I don't believe it is right to further empower a violent institution that controls society because it proposes to save some proportion of people from illness that might otherwise die.
Well, I guess this is where we reach a fundamental disagreement. When your ideology is asking people to die because it can't solve or prevent their problems that a current and successful one can, then I think your proposal has fundamentally failed. The ultimate goal of all human societies is to improve the quality of the human life after all.
Here again you assume that the ends justify the means. You assume that taxation is legitimate because it is used for things for things you view to be necessary.
Yes, I do. That's a very clear and neutral way to state it, and I appreciate that. To get on the same page, I view taxation as necessary, because it's the only way people will pay or provide for collective services. And without collective services like a military or a basic form of welfare, I do not think any society can be maintained or kept stable without violence or authoritarianism.
When you have governments collect taxes to help the sick, significant portions of that money are diverted to abhorrent things, when you assume that taxation is the only way to solve these problems, and that these problems are so important that they justify such theft; you further empower government beyond the scope of the original problem space.
But see, your approach doesn't even try to solve the problem space at all, it pretends it's already filled. In most of my situations, like how do you feed people, you say that ensuring everybody has access to food is flawed to begin with. Saying that people should control pandemics or build solar power plants on their own is impossible; it doesn't matter how free a person is, an average citizen is simply not practically capable of it. Very few problems resolve themselves.
You see sick people and you want to help them, the government says it can help and it's gonna take your money to do so. The government then takes some of the money you gave it to help sick people to bomb weddings in the middle east.
But in your approach, sick people don't get any help at all. How is that an improvement? Most people are not willing, and more importantly, not capable, of helping a sick person. How does an average citizen diagnose and treat Ménière's disease?
If you eliminate those centralized control structures; an invading force has to pacify each and every individual without taking advantage of the existing infrastructure of control.
Why would you not have to pacify everyone in a country with a government? Nothing is stopping you from continuing to fight just because your enemy seizes the capital, at worst, you're in the same situation as your society is; a bunch of loosely connected rebels without central organization. But your society can't independently research and develop sophisticated weapons if everyone is trying to take care of their farms.
Again that's a feature, not a bug. If a private individual hoards enough property they become indistinguishable from a State and it is the duty of the people to rise up against it.
The state effectively subsidizes the ability of the wealthy to hoard wealth. People are inherently jealous creatures; without the State, billionaires would be responsible for the maintenance of their own security and not be able to rely on the conditioned social norms enforced by the State.
Ah, so now you're talking about duty hmm? In a society where the goal is to have absolute freedom for each individual, how can you have a duty, or expectation, of anybody? People can't be obligated or required to do such a thing, and many will decide that such a fight isn't worth it. On that note, as you're striving for a non-violent society, I find it rather ironic that your solution to someone gaining too much wealth is an uprising. I'd argue that's a much more violent way to seize their property then taxation...?
I just want to end this by saying, I appreciate that we can have this conversation, and that you're staying civil. This is the kind of discussion that imo Tilde was founded to encourage, and I at least am interested and learning a lot. So thanks :D and I couldn't answer every single one of your points because this is really long as is, if you think I overlooked something important, feel free to point out and say so.
So, try as I might, I can't wrap my head around that kind of philosophy. It's an interesting thought experiment but as soon as I try and envision how it would play out in the real world it all...
So, try as I might, I can't wrap my head around that kind of philosophy. It's an interesting thought experiment but as soon as I try and envision how it would play out in the real world it all falls apart.
But I want to try and understand where people like yourself are coming from.
I have 8 hours of driving this weekend, could you recommend an audio book by a prominent anarcho-capitalist/voluntarist. Something to give me a gist of how you folks in general think that kind of system would work?
You really like that specific graphic :) I'd add that in addition to the government reducing taxation we need to REALLY look hard at how much wealth has been captured by the 1% and find out some...
You really like that specific graphic :)
I'd add that in addition to the government reducing taxation we need to REALLY look hard at how much wealth has been captured by the 1% and find out some way to get that back to the folks doing the work. Do you have any ideas about how we can do that?
In the 70s a shift in corporate mindset occurred wherein "shareholders come first" became the mantra. Instead of shareholders getting a slice of the pie (dividends) proportional to R&D, employee...
In the 70s a shift in corporate mindset occurred wherein "shareholders come first" became the mantra. Instead of shareholders getting a slice of the pie (dividends) proportional to R&D, employee wage increases, etc., they began to get a larger and larger share of the profits. In this way, wealth is moved from the hands of the middle class (employee wages don't increase) and into the hands of the wealthy shareholders (dividends go up.)
It doesn't have to be this way. Instead of giving the lion's share of profits to the shareholders, more money should be given to the employees for wage increases. Greed has overpowered a system that is generally a good thing: public corporations who have to answer to shareholders are under pressure to perform well and make good choices. In this way we can hold corporations accountable for their actions and encourage good behavior.
However, when it gets this out of whack those benefits start to dwindle and all we get is a system set up to increase wealth inequality.
That may be true but at least where I live I really like it. We have wonderful parks and a great rec center. Cool festivals, a great library, all sorts of activities for kids. It's truly...
That may be true but at least where I live I really like it. We have wonderful parks and a great rec center. Cool festivals, a great library, all sorts of activities for kids. It's truly wonderful. Please keep in ind that we voted these things in place, so it's not as if it's some malicious tax grab by the local government.
Yeah, I don't really worry about much in life, but this kind of thing scares me. I just don't know where I will get the money I need for life expenses I know are coming. I make enough for me to...
By 2034, Social Security won’t be able to pay out full benefits
Yeah, I don't really worry about much in life, but this kind of thing scares me. I just don't know where I will get the money I need for life expenses I know are coming. I make enough for me to live on, but I don't make enough to put away any substantial amount for retirement. I put away 5% and I get matched 5%. But ideally I should be putting away 15%. If I got married and had a kid or two it'd be a little rough. Plus I know I'll have to support my dad at some point. I have no idea where I am going to raise the money for so many things. I have a mortgage on a 15 year note, and it is totally doable. But anything added on top of that would probably hurt me pretty bad. Especially if I got married. And I am young too, so I need liquid money. Which means I can't really afford to dump a ton into a retirement account I can't touch for 40 years. And as a single adult, I pay a lot in taxes. I don't get any breaks for anything. A lot of the stuff I use in my community, I pay for out of pocket too. It is very very grim. I'll never actually save up anything substantial because I make just enough to save for big life expenses. Then when those hit, I start over.
Social Security isn't welfare by any stretch of the imagination. Everyone that pays into SS is eligible for benefits, whereas for things like TANF (commonly called welfare) only the poor are...
Social Security isn't welfare by any stretch of the imagination. Everyone that pays into SS is eligible for benefits, whereas for things like TANF (commonly called welfare) only the poor are eligible for benefits. Please don't conflate the two as it's disingenuous and doesn't add to the conversation IMO.
EDIT: I said SNAP and meant TANF. Changed to TANF.
What does welfare mean to you? To me it's any sort of government-provided assistance, which Social Security would fall under. Is this different than what most people mean when saying "welfare"? I...
What does welfare mean to you? To me it's any sort of government-provided assistance, which Social Security would fall under. Is this different than what most people mean when saying "welfare"?
I agree that it's quiet vague though, I usually prefer to discuss specific programs.
I'd argue that your term "government-provided assistance" wouldn't include Social Security as I'm getting back (mostly) what I paid in. It''s government run insurance - we need it because people...
I'd argue that your term "government-provided assistance" wouldn't include Social Security as I'm getting back (mostly) what I paid in. It''s government run insurance - we need it because people are terrible and don't save and then have no money in old age.
In my earlier statement, I said SNAP, but I should have said TANF (and I'll edit my comment to fix it). That's what "welfare" means to me and how it's commonly used. I think you may have been looking for the term "entitlement programs" which is often used to mean a number of programs including SS. I'd argue that is also disingenuous since you wouldn't refer to your life insurance benefits as "an entitlement" but that's been the rhetoric for some time now.
What is really affecting Millennial's is wage stagnation vs productivity.
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
This really shows how unhelpful it is when economists say things like "Millennials will be fine as long as they work to 70". Addressing the symptom of a larger issue will only see the problem continue to grow.
What do they mean by "waking up to?" Millennials have already started to hit their 30s and weve been dealing with this since we were adults. The majority of the millennials I know are barely able to get by and have been struggling ever since 2008. I am fairly well off and I still have to live with multiple roommates so that I can live close enough to where jobs are without commuting for 2+ hours a day.
When my parents were my age they had a house, could support children, and had money saving up. I dont know a single other millennial who is living that lifestyle now who does not A: spend more than 3 hours total commuting or B: had parents rich enough to pay for all of college or give them a house
Well, that graph is a little misleading in some ways. For one thing, I don't see any mention of slaves. For a long time, slavery would bias that chart pretty strongly, since they owned no taxable property, nor was any preparation ever made for their retirement / disability / etc. it's much easier to get away with rock bottom taxes when your citizens have slaves that provide services that today a government has to, at no cost, and lowers the tax rate vs population. Second off, to have taxes that low requires you to live in what we would consider today a third world country; early America had no public utilities, no serious shipping infrastructure beyond a few cobblestone roads in cities, no large research institutions or a sizeable permanent military (instead relying on volunteer militias), no public health care, virtually non-existent welfare, and an oversupply of extremely cheap labor (immigrants). The context that allowed that allowed the US to have such low rates isn't wouldn't be considered acceptable today by nearly anybody I think, not unless we're all willing to return to agrarian lifestyles, and even then, you couldn't support our current population and many of the locations they live in (Las Vegas for example). Lastly, since we're talking about population, you also need to take into account that as the population increases, the growth inevitably has to slow down as the maximum capacity of resources is reached. In turn, this means that each individual needs to give more to make up for fewer citizens paying for more retirees. Early America was founded largely by young immigrants, and with a very small previous population to support, each person could get away with paying very little.
The chart doesn't show any difference between north and south though. That's a good point too; local and state taxes vary significantly depending on where you live, which shakes this chart up quite a bit too. You implied there isn't a disparity between them; could you perhaps find another chart or source of data showing that? I have no idea what state taxes were like in old America, I'd be curious to see if you have a particular source in mind.
I can understand your point just fine without the hyperbole... However, I challenge you this; if we were to follow your model, and the US today were to switch to your ideal society, how would you solve these four problems; how would you feed everyone? What standards of medical care would you expect to be able to provide, and how would you do so? How do you prevent a foreign invasion, possibly (but not exclusively) from potentially opportunistic Canadian / Mexican neighbors? And how do you keep inequality from becoming so great that your own citizens stage a revolution to overthrow you?
Yeah, but if this worked, charity would already solve all of our problems, wouldn't it? Even with significantly more aid then I think you would intend to propose, there were many people, and still are some today, that become very sick or even die due to lack of ability to pay for medical care. Do you believe it's more right for that to happen then for citizens to be taxed for it?
I've never said that man, please don't put words into my mouth. But caring for the elderly is a basic tenet of almost every society, and has been all over the world, through nearly all of human history. If you refuse to tax or collect any money from your citizens in your country, how would you then ensure that old people are taken care of? Or if not, what should be done with them otherwise?
To get this straight, your advocating that we let people starve so that others aren't taxed? Beyond even that, we already produce more food than needed to feed everyone, but it's allocated based on who can pay the most and not who needs it. We also have shown that as societies have advanced and birth control has come out that every modern nation has a birthrate below the replacement level. The only one I know of that bucks that trend is the US and that's because of the numbers of immigrants joining. The native population is below the replacement rate.
Much of what you stated about the government taking money for cause A and using it for cause B is true, but how would getting rid of the government solve these problems? You'll never get around the issue of some organization that is not run on libertarian values deciding to use force or outsized economic power to take things from you without having a large protective force, commonly known as a government
I need to preface this first, before responding to your arguments.
I watched that video until 12:55 when the credits were playing to legitimately listen to your side. There was about 2 minutes of content wrapped up in another 11 minutes of satire and someone who was entirely too self satisfied with how clever he was, to just lay out his argument. Please do not continue to link videos with that low a signal/noise ratio or I will not be able to spend the time to actually discuss the topic with you.
As to your argument and the argument made in the video, I don't see how this is a response. I am not under some delusion that the state is a noble protector who does no wrong. Every nation on Earth has had it borders forged in blood and violence. The state is routinely a bad actor against its own citizens. It is routinely violent and capricious. It routinely takes from people with no concern to it the affect on their lives.
What has happened is that over thousands of years of government, it has gotten better. We have moved on from everyone living under actual warlords and being slaves tied to the kingdom or land, to democracies that(while corrupt) give at least some say to the people. Throwing away all government will get us right back to stage 0 of what mankind was like. What you have linked here still doesn't deal with the fact that there are other groups of people who would hurt others and take their stuff. Hell we(assuming you are in the US) are one of the groups of people, we took a lot from the natives and mexico, and tried to take from Canada. In the past century we had WW2 where several states tried to take over the world and had American and Soviet Imperialism. In just the past decade we've had a religious movement try and take over the middle east, had Russia take both parts of Georgia and Ukraine, and have had China butting up against everyone in the south sea to demand territory which is only being held back because the US acts like its their territory first.
You are right, these are just effectively big gangs fighting each other, but these gangs will not just disappear if one country manages to agree to dissolve the government and go down a fully libertarian route.
Until you have a response to the fact that splitting everyone up into fully individual citizens that only work together with consent will immediately be bowled over by any largish group of people bound together and working towards the goal of taking your stuff, I cannot see how it would be feasible in the real world
I don't think that's an accurate characterization; after all, I'm not asking for an alternative for something "who would you replace the president with" or "how would you structure your tax collection", but instead giving a basic problem that is fundamental to any society. After all, if you want change, you need to sell people on why your solution is superior to what's existing at the moment. using the food system as an example, I can see a few ways a libertarian might approach it; for example, you could encourage the economy to shift to an agrarian one for example, where you encourage everybody to grow their own food, and thereby make them independent . However, compared to our existing (stateist) solution, you then gain a large number of major disadvantages; you take a significant amount of people out the economy to do other things, you make people vulnerable to environmental famines from bad harvests (since it's not practical on a small scale to use the kinds of techniques that large scale farmers do to counter these), and you significantly restrict people's diets, since they could only eat what they can grow. Plus, there are no allowances here for people who can't grow their own food, whether it be from the climate they live in to being not physically capable. In my opinion, a societal idea that destroys the current economy as we know it, will leave many people hungry or force relocation, and takes away the security of knowing you will be able to eat, is a societal idea that's dead in the water, because no one will view it as an improvement over our current one, regardless of how much freedom it gives you.
I don't think voluntarily helping each other is going to cure cancer. But you specifically mention existing regulation and regulatory capture; how do you believe, specifically, that complete privatization would lead to a decline in prices? What would be the incentive for a hospital not to keep charging current prices?
That's the thing though, isn't it? My ability to counter that change is rather limited. I could, at most, only donate my extras after expenses. I don't have the capability or knowledge of how to help the many suffering people that exist today, and the countless more you create if you're taking away the support they currently. Furthermore, time and again through history, most people have shown that they're not willing to assist or give in charity to others; many ancient stories lament on this. I'd have thought you'd endorse religion here, since it's a voluntary approach to charity. But a religion will also only donate or give to causes it finds coincide with its own beliefs; an impartial state agency gives support to people based on objective criteria, such as need due to income or in the case of a documented disability.
hey, cool! That's my university! While this guy makes some extraordinary claims, I think that's an unfair statement. I'm not ready to believe the government of Denmark is a more violent organization then Mexican drug cartels.
Well, I guess this is where we reach a fundamental disagreement. When your ideology is asking people to die because it can't solve or prevent their problems that a current and successful one can, then I think your proposal has fundamentally failed. The ultimate goal of all human societies is to improve the quality of the human life after all.
Yes, I do. That's a very clear and neutral way to state it, and I appreciate that. To get on the same page, I view taxation as necessary, because it's the only way people will pay or provide for collective services. And without collective services like a military or a basic form of welfare, I do not think any society can be maintained or kept stable without violence or authoritarianism.
But see, your approach doesn't even try to solve the problem space at all, it pretends it's already filled. In most of my situations, like how do you feed people, you say that ensuring everybody has access to food is flawed to begin with. Saying that people should control pandemics or build solar power plants on their own is impossible; it doesn't matter how free a person is, an average citizen is simply not practically capable of it. Very few problems resolve themselves.
But in your approach, sick people don't get any help at all. How is that an improvement? Most people are not willing, and more importantly, not capable, of helping a sick person. How does an average citizen diagnose and treat Ménière's disease?
Why would you not have to pacify everyone in a country with a government? Nothing is stopping you from continuing to fight just because your enemy seizes the capital, at worst, you're in the same situation as your society is; a bunch of loosely connected rebels without central organization. But your society can't independently research and develop sophisticated weapons if everyone is trying to take care of their farms.
Ah, so now you're talking about duty hmm? In a society where the goal is to have absolute freedom for each individual, how can you have a duty, or expectation, of anybody? People can't be obligated or required to do such a thing, and many will decide that such a fight isn't worth it. On that note, as you're striving for a non-violent society, I find it rather ironic that your solution to someone gaining too much wealth is an uprising. I'd argue that's a much more violent way to seize their property then taxation...?
I just want to end this by saying, I appreciate that we can have this conversation, and that you're staying civil. This is the kind of discussion that imo Tilde was founded to encourage, and I at least am interested and learning a lot. So thanks :D and I couldn't answer every single one of your points because this is really long as is, if you think I overlooked something important, feel free to point out and say so.
Go1fish, would I be correct in assuming you self identify as some kind of anarchist?
So, try as I might, I can't wrap my head around that kind of philosophy. It's an interesting thought experiment but as soon as I try and envision how it would play out in the real world it all falls apart.
But I want to try and understand where people like yourself are coming from.
I have 8 hours of driving this weekend, could you recommend an audio book by a prominent anarcho-capitalist/voluntarist. Something to give me a gist of how you folks in general think that kind of system would work?
You really like that specific graphic :)
I'd add that in addition to the government reducing taxation we need to REALLY look hard at how much wealth has been captured by the 1% and find out some way to get that back to the folks doing the work. Do you have any ideas about how we can do that?
In the 70s a shift in corporate mindset occurred wherein "shareholders come first" became the mantra. Instead of shareholders getting a slice of the pie (dividends) proportional to R&D, employee wage increases, etc., they began to get a larger and larger share of the profits. In this way, wealth is moved from the hands of the middle class (employee wages don't increase) and into the hands of the wealthy shareholders (dividends go up.)
It doesn't have to be this way. Instead of giving the lion's share of profits to the shareholders, more money should be given to the employees for wage increases. Greed has overpowered a system that is generally a good thing: public corporations who have to answer to shareholders are under pressure to perform well and make good choices. In this way we can hold corporations accountable for their actions and encourage good behavior.
However, when it gets this out of whack those benefits start to dwindle and all we get is a system set up to increase wealth inequality.
Remove the maximum taxable earnings cap for social security.
Huh so the federal has stayed at an even 18-20% since 1945? Am I reading that right?
While state and local have ballooned to 11%?
why do you suppose the state and local have increased so much?
That may be true but at least where I live I really like it. We have wonderful parks and a great rec center. Cool festivals, a great library, all sorts of activities for kids. It's truly wonderful. Please keep in ind that we voted these things in place, so it's not as if it's some malicious tax grab by the local government.
Well right but that's what democracy is at it's core.
Yeah, I don't really worry about much in life, but this kind of thing scares me. I just don't know where I will get the money I need for life expenses I know are coming. I make enough for me to live on, but I don't make enough to put away any substantial amount for retirement. I put away 5% and I get matched 5%. But ideally I should be putting away 15%. If I got married and had a kid or two it'd be a little rough. Plus I know I'll have to support my dad at some point. I have no idea where I am going to raise the money for so many things. I have a mortgage on a 15 year note, and it is totally doable. But anything added on top of that would probably hurt me pretty bad. Especially if I got married. And I am young too, so I need liquid money. Which means I can't really afford to dump a ton into a retirement account I can't touch for 40 years. And as a single adult, I pay a lot in taxes. I don't get any breaks for anything. A lot of the stuff I use in my community, I pay for out of pocket too. It is very very grim. I'll never actually save up anything substantial because I make just enough to save for big life expenses. Then when those hit, I start over.
This is why welfare is not a solution and expanding the welfare state is ultimately harmful, it's just a bandage for a deeper structural issue.
Social Security isn't welfare by any stretch of the imagination. Everyone that pays into SS is eligible for benefits, whereas for things like TANF (commonly called welfare) only the poor are eligible for benefits. Please don't conflate the two as it's disingenuous and doesn't add to the conversation IMO.
EDIT: I said SNAP and meant TANF. Changed to TANF.
What does welfare mean to you? To me it's any sort of government-provided assistance, which Social Security would fall under. Is this different than what most people mean when saying "welfare"?
I agree that it's quiet vague though, I usually prefer to discuss specific programs.
I'd argue that your term "government-provided assistance" wouldn't include Social Security as I'm getting back (mostly) what I paid in. It''s government run insurance - we need it because people are terrible and don't save and then have no money in old age.
In my earlier statement, I said SNAP, but I should have said TANF (and I'll edit my comment to fix it). That's what "welfare" means to me and how it's commonly used. I think you may have been looking for the term "entitlement programs" which is often used to mean a number of programs including SS. I'd argue that is also disingenuous since you wouldn't refer to your life insurance benefits as "an entitlement" but that's been the rhetoric for some time now.
I agree.