Topic: Why are people so eager to pay tax? - page 4. (Read 13657 times)

Paying tax sucks! Period !

I don't think anyone believes taxes (for services) will be gone. You are just free to choose who to pay your taxes to. If I don't drive on that road, I don't have to pay at the check point. People find the most efficient way to do things quickly.

I think a lot of people believe that if there was no government there would be no taxes. I have been to a lot of lawless places and that is not the case. You would pay tolls on roads at makeshift checkpoints. You would need to bribe smugglers to get basic goods, and pay protection money or face the terror of the militias. There is no free lunch.

And the police allowed it because they are state police. A private insurance company, with which I have a contract to protect my property, and which has to compensate me if they fail to protect my property, would never do such a thing. And in an anarchistic society, these insurance companies would flourish, and provide security much cheaper and more efficient than todays police, which is paid by the state with the funds the state robbed from its people (a.k.a. taxes), and is loyal only to the state.

A small number of people are willing to break natural law (i.e. rob, steal, murder, counterfeit money -> do all the things that in our statist society only the state is allowed to do!) - and these rulebreakers will be dealt with in any society, because there is a very high demand from all other people that these rulebraekers are dealt with. Most people don`t break natural law - because they are human, not because of threat of force!

Monopolies are alway expensive and inefficient. This is of cause also true for the monopoly of security, of decision making (justice) and of issuing money. Because states have had these monopolies for centuries, people are so brainwashed that they can`t imagine private entities fulfilling these functions - let alone fulfilling these functions much more efficient than states with monopolies. It`s funny that the same people mostly agree that state monopolies in areas where they are not used to them are bad - otherwise the East German Trabant and the Soviet Russian Mosqvich would have been the crown of automobile making of their time, for example. But they were not, they pretty much sucked ass - as does the state police forces and judicial and monetary systems of today.

Not a single $ in the US (federal tax) goes towards the US.  Look up the grace commission its all a big scam and intimidation.  Even their own forms for summons is conveniently missing information if you look it up says it only applies to federal employees!

But what you say isn't true.

They rioted because the police allowed it.  They saw that they could get stuff for free and went for it.  No bookshops were looted but several sports chains were specifically targeted.  Once the police made public that they would be defending property as well as lives, the riots faded away.  No-one has ever suggested there was a political motivation.  And if the police withdrew protection from property at 4pm today, shops would be looted by 5pm. 

So the answer to your question as to what shaped these people is simple; they are human.  When law and order breaks down, rape and looting are normal.  That's why war zones are terrible places for civilians even though killing civilians is not part of the military strategy of most armies.

I'm not implying there would not be security against violence in an anarchistic society.  I'm saying they're freaking out because they're upset with their own government, not because the "guns went away."  The guns are a band-aid, and only work when your society is disarmed.  Coincidentally, there happens to be a popular argument recently which the citizen should be disarmed, so they can be safe from themselves.  Except the government doesn't feel they belong in this pool.  If people had a proper defense against bullies, through their own means or through a business which specialized in security, we wouldn't be having this issue, and the riots against one's own government would not occur.  Instead, the business of security is monopolized by a single entity; whether the guns are there or not, this is the state in which we live in, and though we can keep everyone in a prison or free, it doesn't change how they feel.

You didn't answer my question, by the way.  So I'll present another, and I expect an answer to both: what shaped these people who want to rape and loot and pillage?

You would be quite incorrect there. I'm not from the US.

However, the American police state disease is infecting my country. We have the same kinds of draconian legislation as the US, and some worse. We even have Cyprus-like banking theft legislation that pre-dates the Cyprus theft.

My dislike isn't for the US. My dislike is for police states, tyrants, slavers, and thieves.

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
by Frederic Bastiat, 1848

Unfortunately this is true, every year my government receives more taxes, yet it is never enough. Strange isn't.


http://bastiat.org/en/government.html

All you now where taxes go, don't you?

London is a city of over 8 million.  Less than 2000 rioted.  But as a mob they burnt people out of their homes and beat up, in one case beat to death, anyone that didn't surrender their property immediately.

You keep saying "statism" as if an anarchic society would allow that 2000 to prey on the 8 million.  Can I suggest you read http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf and understand that anarchists would have a police function and in events like riots would have conscription to ensure safety.

People are looting, pillaging and killing because the guns went away.  Not because their God was dying, not because their state was collapsing or their worlds were crumbling apart--meh, same things.  Couldn't be because something pissed an entire society off.  Couldn't be that the riot would've happened with or without the guns, and that controlling the riot with guns is an artificial way to quell any argument and is just a bandaid when nobody can or is willing to solve the reason why the riot happened to begin with.  No, that couldn't be right...

So quick question:  If the police went away, would you, not talking about anyone but yourself, revert into an animal and kill the next guy you saw?  Usually the answer is, "No, I wouldn't, but what's to stop someone else?"  Which implies everyone's stupid and barbaric and untrustworthy with any form of weapon (except the person being asked, of course, which is how statism was invented to begin with.)

The guy was not able to hold off the people outside? What kind of guns did he have?

I understand that many people are aggressive and many people would murder if they wernt supervised by men with guns. My point was never to say that this was not the case.

In London in 2011, the police withdrew protection from property while dealing with a riot.  Within an hour, looters were burning people out of their homes and within a day a man was beaten to death.  Same happened in Dublin, Ireland in 1916 and in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003. 

Take away the man with the gun and people immediately start looting and soon will start killing.  The man with the gun is exactly why they don't loot, pillage and kill. 

what tripe. 99.9% of your life is organized without authoritarianism. Do you brush your teeth because there is a man behind you with a gun? Do bridge builders build bridges because there is a man behind them with a gun? Is the man with the gun even the reason why you refrain from committing murder? Stateism is not "the mystical force that allows society to be organized". It is a man with a gun telling you to give him your the products of your labor "or else". Please try not to confuse these 2 things, they are so very different.

If you want to understand what society is on a micro level, observe your own behavior. Observe the social rituals that allow you to cooperate with other people, with out any threats of violence being involved. Observe how you almost certainly play only a very small role in the creation of something greater, through spontaneous order, not because you and all your co-workers are threatening each other. This is what society is, statism is just that 0.1% of your life that is not spontaneous and voluntary. It is when the police man pulls you over because the sticker on your car is the wrong color, or the building inspector puts a red sticker on your house which indicates that the state is willing to murder you, if it comes down to it, for entering your own house.

I did, but it's not terribly useful. It's mainly a term used for fascists. Merely the fact that one can appreciate the wealth that organized societies make possible does not make one a statist in this sense.


The greater part of these numbers are caused by large upheavals where society and state is pretty much thrown over, and new dictators tries to base their power on quellling dissent on a large scale. That is the work of a weak state, revolutionary militias and the like, not of a well established state. You could not call any of these states welfare societies. If you look at the violence rates when these states are established, you will find that it is lower than in areas with very weak or non-existing states. Dictatorships are awful is many ways, but they tend to have a way with crime and petty violence.

Do not try to pretend I said a large state is always stronger and more secure, I did no such thing. I pointed out that there is a correlation, and it is the opposite of what you alluded to. Societies are complex beasts are there is no single factor that decides these things. Before we can decide on how to decide the amount of violence in a society, we can't even begin to untangle the different factors involved. But that does not mean there is not correlation.

It is true the superpowers of the 20th century has been responsible for much suffering, and most of the smaller ones are actually wars by proxy, such as the massacres of Cambodia which started out as a proxy war to Vietnam. But none of these compare to established states and welfare states, where the rates of violence and suffering is much, much lower.

There is a world outside the US borders.  You are confusing your dislike for your own country with a general argument against states.  Most countries tick along happily and have none of your drama.

Look up "statism". An excellent resource to help understand it is the "Nolan Chart".

But no, it's not resistance to change.


Don't tell me that.

Tell the near 80 million Chinese that were murdered by their "stronger state".

Or you could tell it to the 60 or 70 million Russians murdered by the strength of the Soviet state.

Or you could praise the strength of the Khmer Rouge for their incredible strength as they wiped out millions of Cambodians.

Then there's the United States of America. The strongest state in the world, and responsible for countless millions dying. 3 million people in Vietnam. Millions more in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's kind of hard to put the numbers on how many people are murdered inside the US by that strong state. It's pretty much every week that some cop murders someone in cold blood, but they never seem to face justice. Human experimentation in the US? Squalene? Syphilis experiments on civilians? etc. etc.

There are countless more examples.

Please tell me more about how strong states make the world "less violent".