Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hcrvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!hcrvax!chrisr From: chrisr@hcrvax.UUCP (Chris Retterath) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: Governments don't create wealth, eh? Message-ID: <980@hcrvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Aug-84 19:23:59 EDT Article-I.D.: hcrvax.980 Posted: Tue Aug 14 19:23:59 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 15-Aug-84 02:12:40 EDT References: <2032@utcsstat.UUCP> <1046@dciem.UUCP> <4212@utzoo.UUCP> <5034@utcsrgv.UUCP> Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto Lines: 78 In reply to Dave Sherman's reply to Henry Spencer: Taxation IS legalized theft, if you think about it a little, as Henry Spencer obviously has. It is theft backed up with violence, an issue I want to raise here. The important distinction between a market transaction and a government transaction is that the latter is always applied under a threat of violence, wereas the former is only entered under mutual aggreement and benefit. Proof: do not pay your taxes this year. You will be threatened with fines and/or prison. If you persist, you will be fined; if you refuse to pay you will be sent to prison and be forcibly denied physical freedom. Other parties who owe you money may be ordered to hand over that money to the government. On the other hand, no one can FORCE you to pay for things you do not want in a free market. Think about that when next you pick over the sale items in your local supermarket. If you think about the services which you indirectly receive for your tax dollars, you will realize that they are of very poor value. I have sometimes wondered about the value of a "free" education, when illiteracy and truancy are discussed. If a parent was to pay up-front costs for his/her childrens education, I doubt very much whether that parent would condone truancy, and I am sure that much more attention would be paid to the childs progress. I believe that this whole issue of seperate versus public school funding would go away, if only a voucher system was set up so that a child could be placed in any school, public or private, and only the SUCCESSFUL schools were allowed to be open. If you do not beleive that every dollar you earn is yours, then why would you want to work? There is no inducement to work harder unless the effort is rewarded in some way. In a trade union or work guild you work to get "seniority", a meaningless measure of value. Can you really imagine a guild worker working extra hard for NO reward? Given this argument, it is not hard to see that the more that is taxed away, the greater the disencentive to work, or, conversely, the greater the incentive to hide those earnings. I collect a "baby bonus" that is effectively taxed back to the government -- there is obviously little value to this "benefit" to me because I keep very little of it after tax, and on the other hand there is a large cost for the government to pay the salaries of the staff running the baby bonus program, and purchase the equipment used to run off and mail those monthly cheques. And yet this is one of those fine universal social programs that I am supposed to be so happy for, and that politicians tell us all citizens want! To do, as Dave suggests, and work within the system is of course an exercise in futility. How many people do you have to convince? Thousands of Canadians would have to agree to this change. What would it cost to make this effort? It would not be cheap. If you did this and had the offending legislation struck down, how long would it be before another "for the greater good of all" politician re-enacted similiar laws. No, you may as well save your energy and time and enjoy what you have now, instead of tilting at windmills! Dave says: ~| Theft? Only if you feel that you really earned every dollar you're ~| paid. Didn't you get some help from government in the form of ~| education? In the form of government support to the university ~| which pays your salary to support its research? Put yourself on ~| a desert island, with no taxes, and you wouldn't have your job. No man is an island and this argument is specious. Place a goodly number on a desert island with some natural resources, and watch the desert flower! I think the point that Henry raised in his earlier article about the power of money organized in a bank without any government involvment is well worth refining: -- Groups of people can come together to get large projects completed on a collective basis, without the "benefit" of a government. There are many examples. Shopping malls. The CN tower. Apartment complexes. Factories. Oil refineries. Visit one some day. -- Chris Retterath {decvax,utcsrgv,utzoo}!hcr!hcrvax!chrisr