Topic: 9-9-9 (Read 4700 times)

Savings is what fuels investments and economic growth.
Nothing against consumption, but it just doesn't create economic growth.
An increase in consumption is the consequence of economic growth, not its cause.

I disagree.

If you slow spending, you slow the entire economy, which means fewer jobs, fewer companies, and lower GDP/economic activity.  What happens if you slow savings?  People don't have as much to retire on?  Possibly more debt?

It is less bad to slow spending than savings. Sales taxes cause less damage than income taxes, if done on the same level.

Well, I certainly agree with you that sales taxes are a bad idea!  It just slows spending, which is not what we need...

Just so I'm less confused, are you talking about "is" or "ought"?

I am including sales taxes, such as the federal sales tax proposed by Cain. I didn't mean to imply that anyone would sell the bike, just that it would be a means of increasing future wealth.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.594593

Huh?

If you view the bicycle as an investment to buy and resell later, then the poor man can claim a capital gain or loss on sale.  If he claims a loss, he would pay no taxes on it, and could potentially offset prior or future income with said loss.

Otherwise, a poor man pays no taxes on the purchase of a bicycle (except sales taxes in some states, but talk to the state governments about that).

If you're talking about the money that was used to purchase the bicycle, well, think about it.  The poor man would have received money from a job he worked, paying taxes on it (or maybe not if he had enough deductions).  The rich man would have received money from prior investments, which he did pay capital gains taxes on.

So what's your point?  How are you correct in what you said?

I'm about to disappear for a few days - I'll leave you to ponder what happens when the private security firms are in conflict?  Its either permanent civil war or by a process of elimination a super powerful one emerges.  Anarchy or dictatorship - both are less pleasant than having heavily regulated policemen that do as they are told.

You would be correct. There is no perfect justice or government because there are no perfect people. This is true, except to say that I would like to think that competition amongst competing private security firms might do a better job than those with monopoly-on-force contracts because they must meet the needs of those with whom they contract or else lose business.

Forced monopolies don't have to compete and so rarely consider improving. I suppose mob justice might arise, but even those organizations risk constant push-back by individuals and other security firms who consider such tactics unjust. Maybe it will all dissolve into a big civil war. Hard to say. We'll never know unless we try. Just a thought.

Sorry but if a more popular way of paying for public services than taxation comes along, its going to happen.  There is no ethical issue here - once you decide to spend money it has to be raised and the method is whatever the electorate will tolerate.

That's an appeal to popularity, it doesn't resolve ethical problems. Not to say it proves you wrong, but it doesn't prove you right.

You'll find it very hard to get elected on a platform of spending money that is raised by robbing trains.

I don't disagree that taxation is a way of raising the money.

But so is a Great Train Robbery.

Fred - that argument is not new.  Humans are flawed and human institutions are flawed as well.  That's just the way things are.  You say to throw institutions that work well away in the hope that perfect institutions will emerge in their place.  I say that since we humans are flawed, whatever emerges will be less than perfect and therefore its better to work with what we have an try to improve it.

I would like to believe my NAP fantasy has at least a sporting chance of greater justice and personal liberty, than the established force monopoly of government, which has already miserably failed in so many ways.

Another quote from Lysander Spooner to slake your insatiable "stately" beast:

"In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of
consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without
his consent having even been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government
that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and
forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments.

He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He
sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving
himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds
himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a
master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative
than these two.

In self-defense, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has
been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because,
to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not
to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing.

Neither in contests with the ballot—which is a mere substitute for a bullet—because, as
his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the
contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own
natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of
numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had
been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defense offered, he, as a
matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him."

The NAP is a fantasy.  Things like eminent domain are needed.  Courts are needed.  Pretending that a fairy land is possible doesn't get you anywhere in a world where real people have real problems.

It isn't my goal, just a logical outcome. Just getting cute. Nothing personal.

This shouldn't be the goal of any discussion.

Those who vote in opposition to the theory of non-initiation of force (NAP) are resorting to violence. Being outvoted in my case means that society, via the ruling class, is voting to use violence against me. Who resorted to violence first? Should I not be able to defend myself in the same manner (violence for violence)?

See how the vote does nothing to protect the weak from the strong, or the minority from the majority when preventing violence? A vote seems so trivially superficial and meaningless in the end -to say nothing of it's non-binding nature- when it comes to me protecting what's mine.

You're smarter than this Hawker. You know it, and I know you know it. Convert. Admit you're wrong, it doesn't hurt that bad. Trust me, I had to do it, it was pretty refreshing oddly enough. Nobody's perfect. I promise to not even say I told you so. We're all pseudo-anonymous here anyway.

The key thing is where sovereignty ultimately lies. I really like how the EU does it, for example, and wish my home (USA) was more like the EU in that respect. Its power is limited because membership remains optional.