this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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Anyone who hates the concept of taxes should be barred from voting. Clearly, you're too stupid to be allowed to participate.
I don't hate the concept of taxes. I hate the concept of my taxes not actually going back into the community I live in and instead being used to line pockets and blow up middle eastern people.
That's fair, as long as you realize that some of it DOES actually go back to your community.
Then let's only pay the portion that does go to the community or necessary public services
Well you can't just support your community. There's a whole nation of communities. And you'll need some sort of military to prevent others from coming and exploiting you.
I’ll take that deal, but only if I’m also relieved from paying taxes.
You can be relieved of taxes as long as you're barred from using anything paid for with taxes. No FDA regulations for you!
[starts manufacturing affordable insulin]
[starts to stretch insulin with paint thinner]
every day it seems like people forget what things like the FDA are for, but hey, the snake oil salesmen love this state of affairs
If I need testing for someone else's insulin, I can get that for cheaper than the regulatory capture insulin. They don't work for us.
ah yes, use the totally legit bio-med test service down the road, due to the FTC not being a thing they can totally and without any repercussions just lie to you because they have a deal with the person selling you the insulin.
Then again, you have been hoodwinked into some "regulatory capture" bullshit, in reality, insulin is so expensive in the USA because no one has the capital wants to sell it cheap, it's a risk for minimal rewards, the demand is literally your life, so the cost can be as high as anyone wants it.
as for the whole "but the free market" and "supply/demand", do you think the people setting these prices don't know what the prisoner's dilemma is?
There is just so much going on here.
Are we discussing a situation in which only the FDA is gone, or complete anarchy?
Do you believe that regulatory capture is bullshit?
People knowing about a prisoner's dilemma doesn't make it go away.
the premise was no government services paid for by taxes, and without taxes there are no government anything.
regulatory capture is commonly trodden out by people as an example of big government bad, when it doesn't happen as often as these people like to pretend it does (take, for example, your misconception that the FDA is the cause of high insulin prices), not the fact that it is just a failure to deal with corruption.
that's the fun part tho, both parties knowing about the prisoner's dilemma DOES make it go away, as the most successful models, over a longer set of games, tend to be Tit-for-Tat models
So then there's no patents either, right? Literally anyone can start manufacturing their own insulin or biosimilars.
There are already drug testing services for darknet markets. They don't know who sent you the drugs in the first place.
The tit for tat with forgiveness models you're thinking of are for two parties, not dozens or more.
tit-for-tat works in a larger setting as well, in fact it works better because you can ostracize and punish.
you know, like WHAT IS LITERALLY HAPPENING AS WE SPEAK!? do you think greed-flation just happened out of nowhere?
but no, like every libertarian, you propose the destruction of regulation because you promise yourself that somehow people will be better off if they need to waste their lives on crap. "you didn't put weeks of research into the three bio-med testing labs to ensure they wouldn't lie about the insulin, I guess you should die now, lol", and you know how I can tell you're an American? BECAUSE LITERALLY NO NE ELSE HAS THIS ISSUE. yes, this issue is entirely an American thing because you're the main drivers of the deregulation and reactionary enforcement that has lead to insulin costing you $500 for a 2-week supply, and your reaction is to make the US into more of a banana republic by destroying the goverment even more.
I didn't know that! Do you have a source?
PT has a number of good articles but this one seems to convey it rather well
Cornell even has a description of it having naturally evolved as the preferable strategy in their description
These appear to be regarding typical 2 player prisoner's dilemmas. What I'm curious about is if there's an academic literature about this for larger groups, where they ostracize and punish.
Because if it works for them, then it can work for us... We could build unions where we signal to each other the same way, without need for central leadership.
Hey sorry to keep bugging you but where did you first hear the "greedflation" concept? If you've got a source for either (since it's pretty much the same thing) I am legit interested.
Many more tax dollars are poured into the military industrial complex than actual regulation.
Works for me! As long as Amazon will still deliver to my address, you can find me homesteading at my Uncle Ted cabin sending virtual mailbombs to fiat currency enthusiasts. Don't come visit without an appointment though or you'll be leaving in a box.
They won't, those roads are maintained by taxes and the internet infrastructure is subsidized.
There goes my dream of being self sufficient. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
I hope you’re happy.
The FBI has more guns than you lol
I didn't do anything wrong though. No vote, no taxes, no use of publicly funded infrastructure, that was the deal. Amazon is a private company, they do pay taxes, so they can use the roads on my behalf.
Are you an anarchist?
Well, I'm certainly not a fan of big government if that's what you mean.
That's the fun thing though, taxes pay for the legal system that protects you from both the state and other people. So you don't get that either. Anyone including the FBI can roll up and smoke your ass and there's nothing you can do about it.
And I dunno what a virtual mailbomb is, but it sounds like something the FBI would care enough to stop.
It's just a funny word I made up for inconvenient free speech. Because it is my experience that right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) words at the right time can literally make a person blow up LOL
Ah well. It will be difficult to talk to anyone, because the internet, postal service, and telecommunications are all subsidized by taxes.
Well, if you’re gonna be like that I don’t want to talk to you anyways.
Taxation is only necessary in a country with a heavily privatized and widely stratified property distribution. The whole purpose of the tax system is to redistribute money between groups, by way of state spending. But if you don't have these enormous strata to begin with, you don't need crazy high tax rates to handle the rebalancing.
Cuba and Laos has a very modest 20% top tax rate. Vietnam has the same top rate as the US, at 35%. North Korea doesn't have any income tax at all. It's countries like China and Japan and Germany (top rate 45% with a 20% cap gains rate) and the US (top rate 37% with a 15% cap gains rate) that need these higher brackets, because they've got these bloated upper classes.
I could easily argue that taxation is just another kind of rent, and states are just another kind of landlord, in a country where the working class has no legal claim to any of the property it occupies. And that an ideal society would have many more free-at-point-of-service public utilities, such that cash (and the taxing thereof) had a diminished purpose.
In a country where you're compelled to chase a wage in order to have any kind of legal right to exist, the taxation of working-class wages really is awful and nobody should be punished for saying so. I'm all on board with eliminating taxation for anyone earning below the living wage. And I might go further, arguing for the abolition of private taxpaying businesses that depriving people of survival necessities.
That includes you.
Perfect example of what people mean when they talk about liberals versus progressives.
You'd hardly be the first guy who thinks only landlords deserve a vote.