Obviously, even in a capitalistic political system, some taxes (or tariffs, etc.) would be necessary to fund a constitutional government.
Others have already pointed out that Rand explicitly advocated voluntary, non-coercive funding methods for government. I can’t help but note that, as is so often the case, sentences that start out “Obviously, X” should be taken as evidence that “X is not the case.”
What about on the local level? Take zoning, for instance. What if a slaughterhouse wanted to open up shop next to my house? Would not the noise, smell and activity be an infringement on my property rights and my right to pursue happiness?
The basic question here is whether the activity of the slaughterhouse objectively interferes with your own ability to use and enjoy your own property. If it does, then you have a basis for charging them with a rights violation. If it doesn’t, then what’s the problem?
Current zoning laws arbitrarily impose prior restraints on the uses to which property may be placed, without reference to whether those uses violate anybody’s individual rights. That’s what makes them problematic.
Or individuals and corporations that pollute the environment to the detriment of peoples’ health. Would not some reasonable level of regulation be acceptable if it could be scientifically proven that x level of a chemical is damaging to a person’s health, and thereby violating a person’s individual rights?
If you can trace specific harm back to a specific source, then that source is a rights violator and subject to prosecution. Also, some categories of activity may be so risky that engaging in them could be considered a rights violation even without actual harm, analogous to the way that waving a loaded gun around can be a rights violation even if nobody actually gets shot.
And I’ve heard the legal argument about taking polluters to court many times, but it doesn’t make practical sense. If there were no regulations, think of the massive amount of litigation that would arise from multiple landowners suing other landowners, and appeal after appeal that would delay any kind of legal decision for potentially years, all whilst the polluter continued to pollute.
Thoughts??
I think you need to take a step back and think about what “controls” actually are. In Rand’s view, the purpose of government is to protect the individual rights of its citizens from violation by physical force. All activities of the government must be directed towards that purpose. A “control” is simply a government policy of directing physical force against those who have neither initiated nor threatened the use of force themselves.
It is important to note that, although actions like murder, rape, theft and assault are the paradigm examples of physical force, the concept is significantly richer and wider than that. It can cover many of the sorts of things you mentioned, e.g. chemical pollution, as long as objective evidence exists connecting specific pollutors to harm done to specific individuals or property.
Whether the individuals harmed have to sue the pollutor directly or the government has the capability to use retaliatory force on their behalf is, in my view, a technical detail. I don’t have a problem with the idea that the government can, in some cases, sue the pollutors itself on behalf of the victims – as long as there is objective evidence to back up its claims that force is being initiated. And in the absence of such evidence, using government force would be an instance of arbitrary government power.
As for how long the resulting litigation could take – all things considered, I like the idea of the government having to take time to demonstrate clearly the legitimacy of its exercise of retaliatory force in complex cases. Governments initiating force against innocents have done orders of magnitude more harm over the years than private-sector actors. We have to bear that in mind when considering the appropriate safeguards that should be applied to government action.