Sometimes, it is good to think about our governance structures as if we were explaining them to an alien: it goes a long way towards exposing our blind spots.
I am still convinced that coercive taxation ought not play part in any modern government….
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Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
October 15, 2012 at 19:51
If you believe that government has a purpose and has some legitimate functions and you believe that all taxation should be voluntary at the same time, what happens when there is a dilemma? When the government needs to spend X to fulfill its vital functions, but it only gets X – Y in tax revenue.
Xanthippa says:
Exactly!
It would be a means of forcing the government to be accountable 100% of the time, not just speak pretty lies during the election cycle.
A government would only be able to afford to spend the money that people would permit it to have.
Just as people do not avoid paying the voluntary tip of 15% to servers, provided the service is good, so I expect people would be willing to pay a percentage of their spending as a tip to the government, provided the service is good.
Just like servers can effectively budget for their expenses from their tips, so would governments be able to budget effectively for expenses coming in from voluntary taxes.
If the government began performing poorly, they would loose revenue. This would reduce the government’s ability to meddle in things, which would really be a positive thing, would it not?
October 15, 2012 at 22:19
First, respect where respect is due as you are not the garden-variety blogger who would strawman and label me as pro-big government simply for suggesting that SOME mandatory taxes should exist.
But i will have to question your reasoning on this one.
The example of paying 15% to a restaurant server is far from tantamount to operating a tax system, especially since politics is much more acrimonious than serving sandwiches. Often times government decisions ARE unpopular, even its necessary vital ones. And if you look at the majority of people, I doubt you would want government’s existence based on majority’s will.
If the country is at war (of self-defense and necessity), if the people suddenly decide to not like the government, the country would be defeated easily due to lack of funds to raise a military. And this applies to the police. Let’s say government is having an unpopular month. Now rapists and murderers can do whatever they want because the government had to lay off a significant part of the police force. And let’s not get started on the court system.
Stability makes good government. And if the whole country is getting protection, EVERYBODY’s got to pay their share. It doesn’t matter if you hate the government.
I just think it’s wrong that the people who donate are at risk of not having the full extent of services they paid for and the freeloaders who decide “oh, i want to live here and pay nothing” can actually get services to them at no cost.
Looking into this further, I think the idea of abolishing mandatory taxes and expecting a functional government is more silly than I had originally thought.
Xanthippa says:
Please, consider the pre-requisites for a govenrment mandated and enforced taxation…
In order to accomplish this, the government must be given extraordinarily intrusive powers to monitor each and every citizen’s income, each and every busines’s income – for the sole purposes of forced taxation.
Giving this kind of power to a government is, in my never-humble-opinion, a much greater evil than that of voluntary-only taxation.
Please, do think about the greater implications of ‘enforced taxation’ – the powers of monitoring necessary for this scheme alone are just so wrong, they tip the scale of ‘evil’ against permitting any government that scope of power!
October 16, 2012 at 00:10
What is inherently wrong with the government knowing the income of peoples and businesses? Nothing to my knowledge.
Why have a government at all if it cannot effectively govern? And will not, once people lose confidence in its lack of stability and therefore invest even less money into it. Governments are made for stability and order and without the bones and teeth to upkeep the stability and order, you might as well argue for anarchy.
Tragedy of commons all but ensures people won’t pay once they realize whether they pay or not, it will have no consequence for them. This is why voting is pointless. This is why sexually transmitted diseases are spread. This is why pollution would happen without laws against it. It’s life.
Sometimes people have to be forced to be decent and sensible. Not a problem for me, since I don’t acknowledge any moral system as effective (which sees contradictions as benign and inevitable), but a logistical nightmare for those who subscribe to deontology.
Xanthippa says:
You said: “Sometimes people have to be forced to be decent and sensible.”
That way, tyranny lies!
That is exactly what ‘moral police’ do in Sharia-compliant countries!
Think it through…
October 16, 2012 at 01:18
Xanthippa:
I’m with you!
However, Derek has a point: some predictability in public finance is necessary.
As a way of achieving that predictability without giving the government too much power, I suggest that the government should firstly be stripped of the power to tax, except with prior approval obtained by public vote for specific amounts to be spent on specific things over a fixed number of years, and secondly it should be stripped of the power to borrow money under any circumstances.
In addition to this, I think it is vital to sharply circumscribe the role of government, to keep it from sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. I would accomplish this by inserting a clause into the constitution to the effect that the only legitimate purpose of government is to equally protect the equal rights of all individuals, and all duties of government shall be carried out to the extent required by and within the limits set by its only legitimate purpose.
This clause would define what the constitution means when it states that the purpose of law in Canada shall be for “peace, order and good government.” And control over the public revenue stream would allow us to rectify the real problem. Namely, that this is no longer the purpose for which laws are passed in Canada. Nowadays, laws are passed for the purpose of implementing a program of social engineering, and this program furthers the cultural Marxist agenda.
What we must do is downsize the government and get it out of the business of social engineering entirely. And to accomplish this, we must cut off its discretionary funds by curtailing its power to tax and eliminating its power to borrow. The result will be
“frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1801
On the subject of public debt, I can do no better than to draw from the same source:
“If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses. And the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers. … And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on ’til the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automations of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. … And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1816
Xanthippa says:
Two main points to be made: one on the predictability of finances and the other on the language of ‘equal rights’.
First, to the predictability of finances: a lot of people work on commission or from tips. Yet, they have financial predictability. Perhaps not as much as fixed salary individuals do, but certainly, they can be functional on what amounts to ‘voluntary taxation’ by their customers.
The inevitable increase in volatility of finances will be more than offset by the growth eliminating government bureaucracy would generate.
It is inherrently destructive to the govertnance structure for governments to be able to monitor their citizen’s finances.
If 100% voluntary taxes would be simply too volatile to be workable (a proposition the veracity of which I am unconvinced of), I could be persuaded that governments may have the jurisdiction to levy import/export taxes on goods and persons traveling into and out of their jurisdiction.
Point number two: the language of ‘equal human rights’ for everyone is highly problematic. As President Klaus had said – and I am paraphrasing here – the more ‘civil liberties’ are replaced by ‘human rights’ the greater the oppression of the ruling elites will become.
Remember, we now have a ‘human right’ to be ‘equally fed and clothed and housed without a social stigma’, whether we work or not….
I agree with your sentiment, just the language you have used has already been corrupted by the cultural Marxists.
October 17, 2012 at 19:07
Code, while I respect you being more practical on matters, I would prefer an indirect democracy (a republic) over a direct democracy (mob rule).
Xan:
Nothing personal, by the way. I still have massive amounts of respect for you, but when I debate, I don’t mince words and It’s not personal.
Still, I don’t see how the example of a waiter receiving tips can reconcile with the concept of government as a whole. If you seriously believe this and put serious emphasis on this point, I can go through the differences, one by one.
Tariffs are okay, but alone won’t provide nearly enough revenue (even at borderline protectionist levels) to sustain the three constitutional needs of government: police, army (for defensive purposes) and court/law. Still, you associate your proposed revenue system with human rights, when no human rights exist under a system that could collapse into anarchy at any time. In anarchy, or half-anarchy which would result with your tax system, gangs can govern the country (even if they aren’t called or recognized as governments).
And if his language is cultural Marxist, then your language can easily fit into the vernacular of anarchy.
Xan says:
OK – I have to qualify my answer – since Sunday, I have been in the grips of a migrane, and under a lot of prescription medication to modulate it. Thus, my answer is not nuanced or very sophisticated…
Still…
Giving governments the power to oversee all the financial records of every citizen is putting the government in a position of power over the citizen, not the citizen over the government. That is a very significant difference whose implications on governance must be considered to the fullest, but, which, in my diminished mental capacity, I am not particularly competent to express. Please, do the research because right now, I just cannot formulate proper thoughts.
Please, consider the difference in governance structures required for a society where the government is accountable to the citizens vs. one where the citizens (through their complete financial records) are accountable to the government….
You get a completely different paradigm of how society ought to function…
October 17, 2012 at 22:44
Xanthippa:
I completely agree that “it is inherently destructive to the governance structure for governments to be able to monitor their citizen’s finances.”
That’s why I proposed that taxation should be limited to specific amounts to be spent on specific things over a fixed time period, and only with prior approval obtained by public vote.
By defining taxes in terms of amounts, rather than fractions of income, all justification for monitoring people’s private affairs evaporates. The only question is whether you voted for a particular measure or not. If you did, then you are obligated to pay some fixed amount per year for a fixed number of years. If not enough people vote for it to raise the required amount of money, then the measure is not implemented and no one pays for it.
This also avoids the tragedy of the commons, because government functions cease as soon as the public ceases to pay for them, and everyone is fully aware of this, so they will pay to maintain those parts of the commons that they really care about. On the flip side, public programs cannot expand unchecked, because people will get to a point of refusing to pay for it.
You’re right about the cultural Marxists. One of their favourite tricks is to distort the meaning of words until the language itself resists any attempt to argue against their agenda. Just as they have debased the meaning of “marriage” and “progress”, they have debased the meaning of “rights.” So let me recall the correct definition of an inalienable individual right, unsullied by cultural Marxism.
inalienable individual right: a personal freedom, entitlement, or immunity, so fundamental to human nature it cannot justly be taken away or given up.
With this definition in hand, it is easy to see that there is no such thing as a ‘right to be equally fed and clothed and housed without a social stigma.’ To see this, one simply asks: at whose expense? One sees immediately that this so-called right cannot be had without infringing someone else’s right to the fruits of his own labours. Therefore, it is not a right at all.
The true list of inalienable individual rights is easily derived from human nature and the symmetry principle that such rights must be invariant under permutations of individuals.
Thus, the inalienable individual rights are life, liberty, property, privacy, self-defence and self-expression.
This list of rights is necessary and sufficient. No more is needed, and no less is enough.
Many secondary rights follow from these primary ones, and some of them are only slightly less fundamental. For example, the right of each person to the fruits of his own labours follows directly from the rights to life, liberty, and property. The right to bear arms follows from the fact that the right to self-defence is vacuous without the means to exercise it. And so on.
So, when I say that the only legitimate role of government is to equally protect the equal rights of all individuals, I mean their inalienable individual rights. Once again, these are life, liberty, property, privacy, self-defence and self-expression.
Xanthippa says:
100% agreed!
October 18, 2012 at 00:43
Derek:
What is inherently wrong with the government knowing the income of peoples and businesses?
A great deal is wrong with it!
But it’s worse than that, because they know much more than just your income. They know every last detail of how much you earned, from where, and how much you spent, on what. They know these things because they set taxes so exorbitantly high that you are forced to “voluntarily” disclose your private affairs to them, just to so you can claw back enough of your own money (!) to save yourself from bankruptcy. And what you don’t disclose voluntarily, they demand from your bank and your creditors.
And before you claim that if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t mind having your affairs known in minute detail, answer me this: how would you like to do business with me, if you were forced to disclose all your financial affairs to me (not to mention a continuous record of your physical location and a complete record of all your voice and text communications), while I kept mine to myself?
Aha. I didn’t think so. Yet you are perfectly willing to deal with the government on those terms. Even though my power to harm you under those circumstances is vanishingly small compared to the government’s. This is cognitive dissonance on steroids.
Why have a government at all if it cannot effectively govern?
I guess that depends on what you mean by governing effectively.
Obviously, your idea of governing effectively is much, much more invasive (and therefore, necessarily, oppressive) than any reasonable, self-reliant citizen would ever stand for. This is made clear by your claim that governments are made for stability and order. Therein lies the root of the problem. What was Mussolini famously praised for? Oh, right, he made the trains run on time. He established stability and order. But at what terrible price for the Italian people? Governments can only impose stability and order at the price of freedom.
The citizen should look to the government to defend his rights, as a last resort, when he is too weak to do so himself. And very little else. Anyone who asks much more than that of government is begging to be enslaved. And the government is more than happy to oblige.
Please refer to my second to last post above, specifically Thomas Jefferson’s idea of the sum of good government, and his thoughts about the consequences of the runaway public debt that always results when we ask too much of government.
Sometimes people have to be forced to be decent and sensible?
Really? Really?
Derek, no one may ever be forced to be decent and sensible!
There is only one thing which a person may rightfully be forced to do, and that is to refrain from infringing the rights of others.
This idea of yours, that “morality is dynamic varies from one individual to the next,” leads you very quickly into awkward and unconscionable stances. Like laying the groundwork for the arguments which are always used to justify tyranny and oppression. OOPS!
Nothing could underscore this more strongly than your claim that “no human rights exist under a system that could collapse into anarchy at any time.” This is exactly backwards, because it presumes that individuals derive their rights from the state and have no rights other than those granted by the state.
The truth is that state has no rights other than those delegated to it by the people, and every person has inalienable rights simply by virtue of existing.
“A right is not what someone gives you, it’s what no one can take away from you.”
— Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General, 1967-1969
Please refer to my previous post for further thoughts about rights and how my usage of the term differs from that of the cultural Marxist apparatchiks.
Also, please refer to my post here, and subsequent posts, for a discussion of the relationship between intrinsic universal morality and inalienable individual rights.
And please think about how your basic stance on the ultimate foundations of morality provides the plutocratic globalist collective with the apparent moral grounds to deprive you of your property, your rights, your freedom, and even your life.