By this I am somewhat confused. Can you elaborate?
The amount MS contributes to law enforcement should not depend on the amount of profit it makes.
(In fact, it shouldn’t depend on anything other than MS’s judgment, IOW it should be completely voluntary, IOW it should be a donation rather than a tax.)
I saw people specifically point out things like Medicare and other forms of Individual Welfare. I had not noticed the same gripes about forms of Business welfare. In my experience this is quite often not mentioned.
The fact that they did not mention it explicitly does not mean that they were not complaining about it… They were complaining about taxes altogether, how you divorce this from “Business Welfare” is beyond me.
The amount MS contributes to law enforcement should not depend on the amount of profit it makes.
(In fact, it shouldn’t depend on anything other than MS’s judgment, IOW it should be completely voluntary, IOW it should be a donation rather than a tax.)
Thanks, RH.
Taxation of luxury items (cigarettes, marijuana [were it legal, as it should be], etc.) is also an acceptable form of voluntary taxation, IMO.
Taxation of luxury items (cigarettes, marijuana [were it legal, as it should be], etc.) is also an acceptable form of voluntary taxation, IMO.
Why? What justifies taxing “luxury” items and not regular items? Who decides what is “luxury” and what is not?
I’ve heard the term “contract enforcement fee” used before. Like 1% on all transactions. That would pay for protection under the law. So if someone defrauds you you can then use the police and court systems to prosecute them and it would be paid for with the 1% contract fee. That would be easy to implement in the modern era too. Credit card companies take 2-4% of every transaction a merchant does for a similar purpose and they are rich, rich.
Anyone else have good MORAL ideas on how to raise money to finance gov’t?
Why? What justifies taxing “luxury” items and not regular items? Who decides what is “luxury” and what is not?
By *luxury,* I mean items that are unessential to the survival, vocation, or education of a person or his/her dependants. If I give it some more thought, I may be able to come up with a more in-depth description of what my concept of *luxury item* entails.
Who decides? is a good question. I have no rational answer at this point.
I do wish to specify further that I do not mean a taxation of luxuries already in one’s posession. What I mean is something more akin to a sales tax…
In this way, there are still sufficient funds to support a military, police force, courts, and legislature, while still retaining an individuals right do choose how much he/she wishes to contribute.
I’ve heard the term “contract enforcement fee” used before. Like 1% on all transactions. That would pay for protection under the law. So if someone defrauds you you can then use the police and court systems to prosecute them and it would be paid for with the 1% contract fee. That would be easy to implement in the modern era too. Credit card companies take 2-4% of every transaction a merchant does for a similar purpose and they are rich, rich.
Anyone else have good MORAL ideas on how to raise money to finance gov’t?
Suppose a person does not have enough funds to pay for the transaction of arresting the intiator of a forceful action against him?
Inability to pay for a police force does not nullify an individual’s right to freedom from coercive force.
I do think you are on the right track to conceptualizing a tax system that is both pragmatic AND moral. A couple of things just need to be ironed out first.
Your suggestion amounts to having to pay extra for items you don’t “need.”
And your answer did not even attempt to provide justification for this.
Erik:
I like the “contract enforcement fee” so long as it is optional, i.e. if I choose not to pay it, than my contract is not enforcable by law.
I also like an optional sales tax, so one may simply tell the cashier “yes” when asked if one would like to pay it. This is a good way for someone to keep their donations to government in proportion with the amount of property the government is protecting.
One thing I have struggled to come up with is a way to collect money to support a military system. The best thing I can come up with is that big companies would most likely willingly give large donations to the military program because it would be in there best interest to keep this country safe. I don’t individuals with an average income freely donating to the military, although some might. However, more wealthy individuals would probable donate some. What do you guys think? Will this work or do you think the optional sales tax/contract free cover all needed costs? Any other ideas?
I like the “contract enforcement fee” so long as it is optional, i.e. if I choose not to pay it, than my contract is not enforcable by law.
I also like an optional sales tax, so one may simply tell the cashier “yes” when asked if one would like to pay it. This is a good way for someone to keep their donations to government in proportion with the amount of property the government is protecting.
I like both of these as well, but one question arrises:
Does a person who chooses not to pay the tax, also give up the protection offered by government agencies paid for by the tax?
Are those who pay more tax entitled to more protection? If so, similar questions to those you brought up earlier apply, RH. How does one attach a specific monetary value to protection from force, and who sets the standard for determining how much protection is provided per dollar of tax paid?
My idea of the contract fee is this. The fee would be optional and equality under the law the same for both transactions. The legitimacy of the purchase with the 1% would be a lot easier to prove than the one that was done without it. Of course you can hire lawyers etc. to write up contracts on your own but the 1% gov’t would be cheaper I would think than a lawyer.
National defense is a tough one and I don’t have time to address it right now anyway. Maybe tomorrow. :lol:
My idea of the contract fee is this. The fee would be optional and equality under the law the same for both transactions. The legitimacy of the purchase with the 1% would be a lot easier to prove than the one that was done without it. Of course you can hire lawyers etc. to write up contracts on your own but the 1% gov’t would be cheaper I would think than a lawyer.
So than, if this is your contract fee, where are your contracts coming from… is the government writing them for you?
I believe the version of this Rand argued for went more like this: Upon any contractual agreement, a certian percentage of the value of the contract may be paid to the government. If this is done, than that contract is to be legaly binding, as opposed to being merely a personal agreement. The courts, then, would not have anything to do with any contracts for which this amount is not paid on.
“So than, if this is your contract fee, where are your contracts coming from… is the government writing them for you?”
There are numerous ways to achieve this but with todays technology it would be very easy. All you would have to do is submit your contract to the government website along with a fee and it will be on file ( sort of like a patent or copywrite which would also be fee based ). People buy things over the internet all the time with no signatures or anything and its all legally binding because they signed up for the card to begin with. When you register to do contracts online you could sign up front and then get a password etc to protect from fraud.
If the contract was disputed it would be very easy to pull it back up in court this way. Of course you can hire your own lawyers etc but it would probably be easier and less expensive to just pay the fee and do it online.
Regardless of details I think this would be a moral way to finance a good part of “legit” gov’t.
All you would have to do is submit your contract to the government website along with a fee and it will be on file ( sort of like a patent or copywrite which would also be fee based ).
You are missing the point of my question…
Under your system, the primary (only?) reason to register your contracts is to prevent having to hire lawers to write them, but your system still requires that one hire lawers to write contracts. Seems like my (Rand’s?) system is a little easier…
Well its practically the same I just fleshed out some details which may or may not work. Its Rands idea to begin with anyway, corrupted by my lagging memory cells. I never claimed to have come up with the concept on my own. We had bantered about financing gov’t over on the Capmag forum and taxes always make me try to think of a better way.
I just watched an ex-IRS agent talk for an hour on C-SPAN’s booknotes program. I felt simultaneous pity and loathing for the poor slob (but mostly loathing).
He’s written a book subtitled “Confessions of a Tax Collector”, and though I’m not going to buy it because I would hate to give him any money, it sounds like it’s full of enlightening insights.
He was 28 when he first took the job, after having failed at all other careers he attempted (gasp! big surprise). He was a self-described “artsy-type”, who wouldn’t have known a balance sheet if he’d seen one. He admitted to knowing next to nothing about the history/origins of the 16th Amendment (another big surprise). He said he just did his job without questioning things because he didn’t want to lose it.
He admitted that he grew to like the job because of the power and control, which made him feel competent. His mentor/boss once told him the IRS gave them “H-Bombs to take out molehills”. His boss also taught him that it was not his job to help people, it was his job to “feed the beast”, pointing to an image of the U.S. Treasury as he said so. He was advised to “leave work at the office”, otherwise he would go insane (an implicit nod of acknowledgement there to the unconscionable nature of their work).
He eventually learned that he had to treat the more pathetic of his victims differently than he normally would “as a human being”. An implicit acknowledgement there of the inhuman nature of the work. To his slight credit, he did seem to be explicitly aware, after having worked there for 12 years, that the sense of efficacy and competence he achieved through this work was due mostly to the fact that he had the power of gov’t force backing him up. Kind of hard to feel ineffective when you have H-bombs to take out molehills, eh?
He said the IRS categorizes delinquent tax-payers into three categories: will pay, can’t pay, and won’t pay. He referred to the last as the “red meat” of his job. Isn’t that pleasant.
Get this: he said he had “the time of his life” taking on tax protestors, those who openly refuse to pay, and who challenge the gov’t to “come get it”. Why did he have no pangs of conscience where these folks were concerned? Because when dealing with them, he felt he had the “moral high-ground”. (!!!) One time he said he actually felt a “rush of adrenaline” when seizing a man’s $20,000 cherry-red corvette.
He actually compared the IRS to The Sopranos, but quickly added, “Not that the IRS is the mob or anything”, he just meant the way it’s such a close-knit “family” type of unit, a closed culture. Well, except for how even “your own co-workers will stab you in the back”. Actually, sounds more and more like the Sopranos the more he reveals.
And the crowning tidbit of insight: his mentor/boss once explained to him the “secret of the job” - “Figure out what they love and what they fear, and either take what they love or exploit what they fear.” Disgusting.
The only good news revealed in this interview was that (according to this guy, and how could you trust him?) ever since the something-or-other Act of 1998 was passed, seizures of any type have gone down dramatically, and there are now only 3000 tax-collectors for the entire nation (those are the ones who actually confront people and work out payments, seize things, etc.).
The pity I feel for him is due to the fact that he is a “typical” man. He has never learned how to look at reality objectively, in a comprehensive, principled manner, and so is incapable/unwilling to explicitly recognize the contradictions in his thoughts and actions (which lead to his anxiety and unpleasant emotions). It was interesting how, throughout his interview, he mixed in observations about himself and his job. At the end, he explained the book as an attempt to sort out the experience, to see what it had meant and what he had learned from it. He said he started out “wide-eyed and naive”, and ended up “numb”, after a middle stage of “cold, hard, and cynical”. When he got numb, he figured that was the time to get out. And that is precisely what such “work” will do to a person - numb their consciousness.
And when I think that incomplete children like that are given such power to influence the lives of so many of us, I shudder with revulsion and anger. It’s so wrong.
Wow. That is disturbing…but not at all surprising. :lol:
Why must lawyers write contracts? I think it fair to assume that if we’re discussing a coercion-less society in regard to taxation, the society is also coercion-less in regard to Bar Associations; ie, they don’t exist.
I have another idea for voluntary taxes. Set a fee on patent applications, and let the applicant set how long he wants his patent to remain in effect. Then set the fee to an exponent-function of that length of time. For example, if the applicant wanted a ten-year patent, he would pay $10,000; twenty-year patent, $100,000; thirty-year patent, $1,000,000.
(Note: that system should not apply to contract fees.)
feldblum, your system requires that one should have to pay in order to have a right to one’s own inventions. Patents and copyrights should be no more than documentation of proof of who invented something, their cost should be no more than what it costs to file that documentation in a safe place.
And, while lawers would not have to be the ones to write the contracts, if no one with legal knowledge reviewed them, the signers would be risking that the contract is not in complience with the law.
RichardHalley , Rand advocated a time-limit to patents. I proposed here extension of that idea. Perhaps the first ten years’ price of a patent will be the filing cost; after that, to extend the patent, the exponent-function would kick in.
I don’t dispute the “seek advice and technical wordings from those who have legal knowledge” part of common sense; only, I dispute that part of the legal code.