This article has a fundamental flaw. It starts with the premise that some outrageous tax revenue level is necessary, and from that premise tries to analyze the fairness of the existing tax code.
There's one thing I would really like to understand. I've been mulling this over for a couple of months, and I'm coming to the conclusion that a vote in favor of ANY tax is immoral.
If I cast a vote for a tax, I am voting in favor of taking money from someone else, with the force of gunpoint and the threat of prison. How can that be moral?
Since coming to this conclusion, I have tried to find arguments, and they usually start with "well, we need to have a tax, or no one will pay." (Romney even said that in one of the debates.) But I can't find any proof to this statement, and I find lots of things that disprove it.
1) The United States was founded with a volunteer militia funded completely voluntarily. (And at the time, citizens had to pay tax to the enemy of the revolution, England.)
2) Numerous organizations ranging from charities, to huge churches that have survived several millenniums, to a complete country (Vatican City) are funded voluntarily, and do that quite successfully.
3) Free people freely give to causes that they believe in. And people believe in freedom. It would not be a hard sell.
The whole argument that we have to get more from the rich (or more from anyone, for that matter) is standing on this shaky ground - that somehow it's moral for "the majority" to steal from others through a diffuse system of voting, representatives, laws and organizations like the IRS. But it's you and me, stealing from other people, and using organizations like the IRS and the police force as our weapons. And that can't be right.
Honest question: Can someone convince me that it's not immoral to vote for a tax? Please don't down-vote me for asking a question, because I am honestly trying to understand. If you disagree, help persuade me.
Edit: I WANT to pay for freedom. I DON'T want to FORCE someone else to pay for freedom (which has an obvious contradiction).
> If I cast a vote for a tax, I am voting in favor
> of taking money from someone else, with the force
> of gunpoint and the threat of prison. How can that
> be moral?
How can you run a government without revenue of some sort?
You suggest donations, but I seriously do not believe that it would be possible to get enough money to run a government based entirely on that. Even with a 'trimming of the fat' in government, there would be too many people willing to try and 'game' the system.
(I guess it would possible to cut the required money even further by making government offices on a volunteer basis, but that would setup a bad set of incentives. It would only attract rich people that could afford to do something like that on a volunteer basis and/or people that are power-hunger/power-seeking.)
> 2) Numerous organizations ranging from charities, to
> huge churches that have survived several millenniums,
> to a complete country (Vatican City) are funded
> voluntarily, and do that quite successfully.
You're ignoring:
1) For several hundred years some of those religions were the official religions of several counties, and 'donations' were compulsory[1].
2) The Vatican is not completely funded voluntarily[2]:
The Holy See, which depends largely on investments for
its annual income, had income of about $326 million
and expenses of about $313 million.
There's also tourism, in addition to "Peter's Pence" (donations to the Holy See, Vatican's governing body). I tried looking for actual numbers, but didn't find anything in the little bit of looking that I did.
You keep using religion as an example for how to run a government on donations. Do you really think that the government should be modeled on religious power structure? Are we supposed to run a government fundraiser by promising salvation in the afterlife?
Also, with religion, I'm sure that it's possible for someone to be 'kicked out' of the religion for not paying dues. In the case of a sovereign country, where would you deport a US citizen to for conscientiously objecting to the collection of taxes?
The best example of voluntary contribution to a government is the founding of the US government itself. It was entirely voluntary, while taxes were being collected by the enemy. And yet somehow this was successful enough to overthrow the largest world power.
But the obvious objection to that is "times have changed". Religious institutions and other charities are simply modern examples.
Personally, I believe that the entire US government (in its present state and power structure) could be funded voluntarily. Not by promising salvation in the afterlife, but by marketing to the citizens that if you want to remain free, it's your civic duty to contribute (at some prescribed rate).
Since arriving at this new way of looking at taxes, my attitude at the ballot box will be something like this: When asked "Do you approve an 'x-mil' tax levy for the Department of Disability?", the question is NOT asking me "Are you personally willing to support the Department of Disability for Y-dollars?" (which I wholeheartedly support), but rather "Are you willing to hire enforcers to enforce the extraction of payment from someone who may not agree or may not be able to support the Department of Disability? The enforcers may harass, bind, and imprison those that do not support it. And you are hiring these enforcers." Because that is REALLY the question being asked.
At that point, I need to make a moral decision. Is the tax so important that I am willing to vote to imprison someone who doesn't support it?
On the other hand, I am perfectly willing to "sign up" on the spot, for automatic deductions for myself to support the Department of Disability. But that isn't an option. And it should be.
In order to "phase in" widespread voluntary "tax", each organization would need to facilitate easy acceptance of direct payments (just like charities do), and our leadership would need to "market" to the people that contribution is the right thing to do (just as Obama, Bush, and Clinton did in soliciting donations for Haiti).
Pretty simple, really. You'd know pretty quickly whether it was viable.
Honestly, tax is the "lazy man's" way to raise revenue. "Let's just vote it in... then we don't have to justify it further."
I would cringe if my contributions to Wikipedia were mandatory. Yet Wikipedia is always able to raise the funds necessary to continue on their mission. But if they started preaching eternal damnation if you didn't contribute, I bet the contribution spigot would run dry.
Maybe I'm just not seeing the path there. If we were to completely implement this system with a twitch of the nose, then I think the government would collapse. There would be too many people willing to 'play chicken' with whether or not the fire department will put their house out if they don't opt-in to the fire department donations. Why? Because you don't want 1 house fire to cause more.
Just letting someone die (not rescue them from the burning house) or letting their house burn down would not sit well with others.
social pressure can be incredibly effective, especially when you can make people feel like the world is empty without the impact the "inside group" you think you belong to is making.
they make people think their only choice is remain "accepted" or be cast out among filth. mormons are good at it, but the catholic church perfected it centuries before, and it isn't limited to christianity or even to religion. heck, political parties do it, too-- no law making you join a party.
In the Mormon Church, tithing is required to attend services, and especially to use church facilities for major life events (i.e., weddings or baptisms). Effectively, tithing is a tax levied by the Mormon Church on Mormons.
You said two different things: that tithing is payment for facilities, and then that tithing is a tax.
Mormons - all people - have the free choice to pay or not pay the Mormon church. And they do quite well.
I would have no issue with a government that said "If you want to use our services, you need to pay. If you want to use roads that we build, you need to pay." And then people could freely choose.
I have an issue with demanding that someone else pay for their so-called "freedom".
It's not required, always, to pay tithing to attend the standard sunday services in the LDS faith. But if you wanted to get help from your bishop, who has the ability to grant about $5000 USD to anyone of his choosing (I think per month), he will most certainly note if you are contributing to the church if you ask for help paying utility or medical bills, which is not uncommon. Mormons that wish to be married or sealed in the Temple will also be scrutinized of their contributions.
Like you noted, when relating it to Government tax, if you decide to never pay taxes again, you wouldn't get thrown in jail or forced to leave, but you wouldn't get to enjoy the simple things in life, like roads, police, ambulances or the fire department.
You could probably live a life like Henry David Thoreau, but it probably wouldn't be very comfortable.
> I would have no issue with a government that said
> "If you want to use our services, you need to pay.
> If you want to use roads that we build, you need
> to pay." And then people could freely choose.
Just by living in the country you are accessing the benefits of those things though.
Have you considered that stable currency is a service performed by the government? Feel free to accumulate wealth, just don't use government backed currency.
First, I am not saying that I don't value government services. I am saying that as someone who believes that people should be free, it's disingenuous of me to force someone else to pay for freedom, through the threat of guns. (I am completely willing to pay my "fair share" and more.)
Second, if the government provides a valuable service, people should and would WANT to pay for it. So there's no need for me to FORCE someone to pay for it.
Third, you named a great DISservice. Currency "stably" heading to zero [1] is really not a valuable service.
Well, for starters, where did you even get the concept of "money" from? That's not "yours"; you didn't invent it. Someone else gave it to you. It essentially came from the same place that gave us taxes.
The premise that "taking money from someone else" is inherently immoral is trying to assume an impossible ideal that each person is an autonomous being, and that our lives aren't inextricably interwined with everything around us (or at least that's as much as I can gather from your reasoning). Would you also agree that a police officer arresting a citizen is immoral under any circumstances?
Now I don't necessarily disagree with your notion that taxes are unnecessary (or at least some taxes). I'm sure that it's possible for the government to be at least an order of magnitude more efficient. One somewhat surprising thing I learned (from Ron Paul) is that the income tax didn't even exist until the 20th century. So it's far from clear that it's even necessary.
But I would not start with the assumption that money is a inalienable right. And I don't really understand your alternative. Who is going to beg others to fund things like roads and sewers and subways and food inspection? Fund-raising costs money.
Also, there are a few things that are most efficiently done by a government monolopy -- i.e. it's not practical to have 5 competing subway systems in NYC.
So anyway, I think you're trying to come down too conclusively on one side, whereas the answer is probably more mundane and in between.
(Also, I think you are being slightly dramatic in that in all likelihood no will point a gun at you if you don't pay your taxes. More likely you will get a bunch of letters from IRS over many years.)
> One somewhat surprising thing I learned (from Ron Paul) is that the income tax didn't even exist until the 20th century.
Before the 20th century, the majority of Americans lived in rural areas working on small farms. Industrialization dramatically increased the level of division of labor in the society, and of course as you increase the degree of social inter-dependence, it's no surprise that your organization overhead increases, super-linearly.
If we were talking about any system other than the political system, the proposition that bigger, more complicated systems have exponentially-increasing amounts of organizational overhead would be completely uncontroversial. It's a phenomenon that us engineers see in systems constantly. Yet, when we see it in the political system, we assume something is wrong.
When I work on a small farm, and you work on a small farm, we don't need an EPA. When we live in a city and your factory dumps poisons into our shared river and makes my kids sick, we do. When we work on small farms, we don't need an SEC. When we work in the city and our savings consist of securities rather than silos full of grain, we do. When we make all our own clothes we don't need a Consumer Products Safety Commission, when we grow our own food we don't need an FDA, when we work for ourselves on our own farms we don't need an NLRB or an EEOC. When we ride horses to work we don't need an FAA. When we don't depend critically on Middle Eastern oil we don't need a very big Army. When people die naturally of old age at 45 we don't need Social Security. When small, stable, farming communities take care of their poor we don't need Medicaid.
Well, I know people like Wesley Snipes didn't just get a letter and report to jail. I am quite certain that someone showed up at his door, with a gun, and hauled him away. Maybe the gun wasn't pointed at him, but I'm sure it would have been, if he resisted.
(Note, I'm no advocate of tax cheats. I'm just saying that the end penalty is not "a bunch of letters from the IRS", it's a guy, or a team of people, showing up at your door with guns.)
Edit: OK maybe Snipes wasn't the best example, since he surrendered. But I bet he would have been hauled off, had he not surrendered.
I think your idea that people will pay for something they believe in really only works out in fantasy land, not the real world.
In fact, your sentiment is the exact case study that shows how horribly this would fail. You are saying that a vote in favor of any tax is immoral - therefore promoting a "more for me" attitude. Just imagine if everyone thought like that. Your utopia will quickly crumble.
I think fantastic cases in point are Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.
These are massive corporations making billions in profit, and paying less tax than you and I do. Sure, they could pay more if they wanted to, but are they?
Why not? Because they (or the shareholders) have a "more for me" attitude.
(On a side note, I can't believe Google are doing that and still get away with their "Don't be Evil" line. Everyday Google use simple public services (Police, Fire, road, courts, judges) and don't pay for it. That looks evil to me.)
I cited several examples where this works in the "real world" and not fantasy land. You cited zero.
I NEVER advocated not paying taxes - I pay my taxes as I am forced to do, and I do it "honestly". So your second paragraph is simply inaccurate. I would also give to an organization, if there was one (maybe there is), IN ADDITION to paying my taxes, that promoted the establishment of such a system of FREE choice in government. I also give to charities. Each of these points disproves your second paragraph where you claim that this is just a "more for me" attitude.
Your point that corporations not paying tax somehow disproves my point is a red herring. Corporations are structured with charters which dictate objectives, which are often to maximize shareholder value. I am talking about people, humans, not corporations. People give to causes that they believe in, and people believe in freedom.
So I appreciate the reply, but you really didn't say anything to persuade me. You just went back to the "it wouldn't work" argument, without shooting down the MANY examples where it DOES work.
I am not trying to start a rally to get people to quit paying their taxes.
I am trying to ask the question as to whether voting for a tax is moral. I have come to the conclusion that it is not, and am asking for some reasons why that might be an incorrect conclusion.
I believe in freedom and supporting freedom financially. If I had a choice of paying my taxes, or paying 10% more to an organization that supported a system of government with no taxes, I would choose the latter. But I am not aware of any such choice, so I naturally pay my taxes, which is the closest thing that there is.
Let me say that again: I WANT to pay for freedom. I DON'T want to FORCE someone else to pay for freedom (which has an obvious contradiction).
But why stop at taxes then? The same argument can be applied to say, theft. I don't want to steal, but I would not force anyone from stealing.
And before you bring in the obvious thing that stealing harms people, so does not paying taxes. Not paying taxes means that people take from society without giving back their fair share. Not paying taxes means million of kids sleeping hungry for no fault of their own but being born in to wrong parent. It means crime running rampant, as there is no police to stop criminals. If someone can come up with a society where everyone can pursue happiness without having to pay taxes, I am all ears.
As for now, not only is it moral for you to pay tax, but it is also moral for you to "force" people to pay their fare share, if you want to maximize utility and happiness in society.
Not paying taxes harms people??? That's pretty funny.
Yeah, it harms the person not paying taxes.
Your false assumption is that people (as a whole) wouldn't pay an equivalent amount, or more, to charitable organizations or government, if they were not compelled to pay taxes. It's very closed-minded. I'm actually somewhat shocked at the responses on HN, because this crowd usually doesn't jump to unproven conclusions.
> Not paying taxes means that people take from society without giving back their fair share. [citation needed]
> Not paying taxes means million of kids sleeping hungry for no fault of their own but being born in to wrong parent. [citation needed]
> It means crime running rampant, as there is no police to stop criminals. [citation needed]
You, too, are making the leap that compulsory taxes are the only way to raise money for services. It's already been demonstrated numerous times, every day, that voluntary contributions can fund every one of these services. Not only that, but it can be done more efficiently than through a tax system.
Point by point: first addressing People who don't pay taxes don't pay their fair share. It seems to me that someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett (who happen to be the EXTREME, so should be great examples to PROVE your case), actually pay FAR MORE than their "fair share" (whatever that is - apparently you have some sort of formula), by donating vast amounts of wealth to charity (to keep kids from sleeping hungry).
People cite Romney as an example of someone "not paying his fair share", yet he gave far more to charity than most people.
Great use of the "Think of the Children" argument, by the way. Suckers everywhere would fall for it. But the fact remains that charitable organizations, through VOLUNTARY contributions do tremendous work in the US and around the world. Filtering charity through government bureaucracy and waste, in an effort to "help the children" is nonsense. People WANT to live in a society free from starving children, which is why charity does as well as it does. Imagine how much MORE it could do, if we weren't FORCED to pay the government.
People also want to live in crime-free environments, and people with the most to lose may have extra incentive to do so. So much so that private security forces are funded all the time voluntarily.
I haven't read an argument yet that has convinced me that I can decide what someone's "fair share" is, and force them to pay it based on MY arbitrary decision. I DO have a sense of what is reasonable for me to pay, and I do believe in generosity. But I'd rather give because it's the right thing to do, not give because someone made me. But I still willingly pay my taxes "honestly". I just don't think it's right that I dictate how much someone else pays.
As I have shown, the argument really can't be extended to theft. Freedom does not extend to harming others. "My freedom to swing my fist stops at your nose", or whatever that saying is.
Not paying taxes does not inherently harm anyone except the non-taxpayer, who goes to jail. There are plenty of other ways to "pay your fair share" as you say, without being forcibly compelled to do so.
It's obvious you need to go and live in some third world countries for a while. Spend 6 months in each of Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador then try and tell me this stuff. Watch what actually happens when people don't pay tax and do (pretty much) whatever they please.
You will never look at the world the same way again, I guarantee it.
It's almost impossible to make major decisions without being unfair to some people. Ask any manager.
Voting requires the voter to make decisions, hard decisions. Even decisions about other people's money. Sometimes the status quo is unbearable and something has to be done. Where exactly is the unfairness in taxing wealthier people at the same percentage as middle class and others? I'm pro capitalism, but the argument that capital gains taxes need to be lower than income is a separate argument. There are probably great reasons for capital gains taxes to be much lower than income, but fairness isn't one of those reasons.
1. Volunteerism doesn't scale.
2. Charity doesn't support everything. I've done non-profit fundraising and rich people like to give money to put their names on buildings a lot more than they like to fund operating expenses in local charities.
3. People like roads and bridges and such, but a lot of services require people and salaries and it's much harder to raise money for things like that.
It's not immoral to vote for taxes. People vote for taxes that they pay and they vote for taxes that they'll never pay, but when individuals in the government don't act, the responsibility to do the difficult lies with the voters.
People thought something as complicated as an Operating System couldn't be written by volunteers also, because volunteerism doesn't scale.
> Where exactly is the unfairness in taxing wealthier people at the same percentage as middle class and others?
I have no issue with cutting the middle class tax. The false premise in the article leads people to the false conclusion that the only solution is to raise the tax on the wealthy.
If taxes weren't mandatory, I wouldn't pay them. Most people I know wouldn't either.
Then suddenly things like road systems, hospitals, schools, police, water systems, sewer systems, and courts would no longer be able to run.
Do you honestly believe that you could run a major developed country on donations? The Vatican doesn't count because it has a population of 800 and is run by the church.
>Then suddenly things like road systems, hospitals, schools, police, water systems, sewer systems, and courts would no longer be able to run.
Exactly. And people would no longer be using Facebook. Citizens who personally benefit the most from this great society are, similarly, the most indebted to it.
While certainly morally just, this is beside the point: It is imperative that such a society continues to exist so that the _next_ Zuckerberg/Jobs/Gates has the opportunity to advance our species further.
> This article has a fundamental flaw. It starts with the premise that some outrageous tax revenue level is necessary, and from that premise tries to analyze the fairness of the existing tax code.
> Honest question: Can someone convince me that it's not immoral to vote for a tax? Please don't down-vote me for asking a question, because I am honestly trying to understand. If you disagree, help persuade me.
Taxation is only "immoral" if you believe in radical individualistic libertarianism. That is not the only tenable view of the world (and I'd argue it's not even a tenable view of the world).
Alternatively:
1) Human beings are inherently social, communal creatures.
2) Division of labor requires social organization.
3) Without division of labor, you can't create wealth.
4) Government is created by groups of humans to implement social organization and facilitate division of labor.
5) Fine-grained division of labor yields a huge surplus (i.e. the total production of society using socially-organized division of labor is far higher than the aggregate production of a group of unorganized individuals).
6) The proceeds of that surplus, which exist but-for the institution of social organization, don't morally have to be distributed in any specific way.
7) The rules underlying the social organization are there for utilitarian reasons, and taxation is just another rule that should be justified on utilitarian reasons.
There are no God-given rights. "Rights" and "property" make no sense at all without society imposing, by the threat of force, certain rules on certain people for the greater good. "Theft" is different from "taxation" because the former is not sanctioned by society, for utilitarian reasons, while the latter is sanctioned, again for utilitarian reasons.
Zuckerberg and Elison wouldn't be rich but for the existence of government. They'd be at the bottom of the pecking order, physically weak nerds that would be enslaved or killed by the physically strong. Indeed, "billionaires" on their scale would not exist without government--a society without an effective government can't create that kind of wealth! When society institutes a set of rules to create a net benefit from the combined productivity of a large number of people, why is it "immoral" for society to then decide how those proceeds are distributed?
Maybe I am misreading what you are saying, but I didn't say taxation was immoral. I said it's immoral for me to vote to impose a tax on someone else.
There's nothing inherently immoral about taxation, and certainly if I wanted to vote to impose a tax on myself, that wouldn't be immoral.
You make some interesting points, but it's exactly the "sanctioning by society" that I am questioning. Actually, what you may mean by "society" is "the majority". If everyone in a society agreed to something, then fine, you are not forcing someone to do something. But if not, then it's not "sanctioned by society", but rather sanctioned by a subset of society.
The US Constitution was written to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
> Maybe I am misreading what you are saying, but I didn't say taxation was immoral. I said it's immoral for me to vote to impose a tax on someone else.
The distinctions you're making only make sense in the context of radical individual libertarianism. "We" are imposing a tax on "our" members as a condition for belonging to "our" community. If I vote for a millionaire tax, and strike it rich tomorrow, I'm subject to the tax too.
> If everyone in a society agreed to something, then fine, you are not forcing someone to do something. But if not, then it's not "sanctioned by society", but rather sanctioned by a subset of society.
Again, that's a pointless distinction. Society inherently operates through collective action, and collective action is inherently majoritarian. Organized society only exists because the majority forces the physically strong to respect arbitrary concepts like "property rights" and the "right to life." Society does this for the greater good, but make no mistake that there are a lot of people who are worse-off under this system (Zuckerberg isn't one of them--think the big burly moving guy who occupies a very different place in our society than he would in the state of nature).
> The US Constitution was written to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
No, it was not. The Constitution put in some safeguards to protect individuals from the majority, but most of those protections aren't even in the main text but rather in the Amendments. Article I of the Constitution is an elaborate exercise in defining the metes and bounds of majoritarian rule through a Congress elected directly or indirectly by the majority. Most of the founders were not radical individualistic libertarians, but rather people who believed strongly in the rule of law and the institution of government (the Constitution was a reaction to the Articles of Confederation which was deemed too weak of a government!). It was framed by people who regularly invoked the language of the collective (the first words are "We the People"), and were from a legal tradition where absolute sovereignty was vested in the government.
Your argument that there's no such thing as "rights" and that they are arbitrary concepts is false.
Yes, they are protected by the government by force and it's possible for someone to violate your rights.
This does not mean the rights are arbitrary. The right to life is a fundamental good agreed upon by pretty much every culture and civilization in the world. No one sanctions arbitrary killing.
You are starting to move into the world of moral relativism which is a false moral philosophy.
Even the utilitarian philosophy relies on some fundamental ideas about what is good and should be promoted.
Look at animal society for an idea of what "rights" are natural. Now, that does not mean that different sets of rules aren't more or less useful than others. But that doesn't make them any less arbitrary. You can pick parameters that optimize the lift of a wing, but that doesn't make those parameters "natural" or "god-given." Whatever "truth" exists in those parameters is defined entirely by the desired outcome.
"Right to life" and "right to property" are socially useful fictions, encoding rules that optimize in some way desired social outcomes. They are useful only to the extent that they further those outcomes. The metes and bounds of those rights are defined socially. We might argue, internally, that some configuration of those rights would lead to outcomes that we as a society think are desirable, or that some configuration is incompatible with other configurations, but whether they are morally "right" or "wrong" is a socially constructed fact.
I'd only look to animals for ideas of where rights come from if I saw no distinction between the humans and animals.
There is evidence that suggests humans are born with moral intuition. There is a natural aversion to killing others (that can be overcome by conditioning) which suggests there is at least one natural law. There is also research suggesting that human babies have a sense for fair play and justice. I'll have to cite this at some point; I believe I read it a Malcom Gladwell book.
You also still haven't explained how society decides what is desirable and what is not. If you keep asking why, it will eventually lead to a natural right or fundamental good.
Aversion doesn't necessarily have to reflect an underlying natural law. In the case of killing, indiscriminate attempts to kill would threaten personal fitness, because there is a good chance the attacker could be killed in turn. This risk becomes more prevalent as tribes and societies develop to increase the fitness of their members. Indiscriminate killing within ones tribe would threaten group fitness, and so a viable groups members would need to kill the indiscriminate killer to increase chances of their own survival. Groups that do not act in this way suffer a big fitness penalty, and would not last very long.
Fit humans will not kill others of their tribe, but one merely has to look at the vast history of warfare to realize that there is no similar aversion or restriction on killing outside of one's tribe.
You can leave the community with the property you entered with: your own body. Why should you be allowed to leave the community with the property you acquired in and under the protection of the community, without following the community's rules?
Zuckerberg can leave the U.S. every bit of property that is truly "his", that he didn't earn but-for the highly-organized society that created the wealth that is his "property."
I doubt people would donate enough to support a modern military, but maybe we could get by with a smaller one (personally, I wouldn't count on it). Overall, it would at least take a pretty radical change in our culture, which has gotten used to receiving from the government.
I would definitely like to see people having more direct control over which projects their money goes to, though, like earmarking some of your (already mandatory in my scenario) money for street repairs near your house. Projects people care about get funded. Bridges to nowhere... less so.
What in your view is the threshold for government action? Is it only to prevent violence, or similar violations of person and property?
> What in your view is the threshold for government action? Is it only to prevent violence, or similar violations of person and property?
My views are evolving, which is why I asked the question in this forum, which I consider to be pretty sharp and left-leaning. I think government could extend beyond what you suggest. Public works projects are not out of the question. Establishment of just laws seems reasonable. Protecting the country from the tyranny of other nations seems necessary.
I think the US Constitution is a good place to start, to determine the threshold.
I actually have little doubt that we could raise enough money through donations to support a modern military. The people who have a great deal of wealth have reason to protect the system; many have a strong desire to make a difference.
There's one thing I would really like to understand. I've been mulling this over for a couple of months, and I'm coming to the conclusion that a vote in favor of ANY tax is immoral.
If I cast a vote for a tax, I am voting in favor of taking money from someone else, with the force of gunpoint and the threat of prison. How can that be moral?
Since coming to this conclusion, I have tried to find arguments, and they usually start with "well, we need to have a tax, or no one will pay." (Romney even said that in one of the debates.) But I can't find any proof to this statement, and I find lots of things that disprove it.
1) The United States was founded with a volunteer militia funded completely voluntarily. (And at the time, citizens had to pay tax to the enemy of the revolution, England.)
2) Numerous organizations ranging from charities, to huge churches that have survived several millenniums, to a complete country (Vatican City) are funded voluntarily, and do that quite successfully.
3) Free people freely give to causes that they believe in. And people believe in freedom. It would not be a hard sell.
The whole argument that we have to get more from the rich (or more from anyone, for that matter) is standing on this shaky ground - that somehow it's moral for "the majority" to steal from others through a diffuse system of voting, representatives, laws and organizations like the IRS. But it's you and me, stealing from other people, and using organizations like the IRS and the police force as our weapons. And that can't be right.
Honest question: Can someone convince me that it's not immoral to vote for a tax? Please don't down-vote me for asking a question, because I am honestly trying to understand. If you disagree, help persuade me.
Edit: I WANT to pay for freedom. I DON'T want to FORCE someone else to pay for freedom (which has an obvious contradiction).