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The best argument for altruism (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

The individual person is being forced to pay taxes because they were born in a certain region of the world?

I'm actually not seeing what's weird about it. They are using and benefiting from the infrastructure that is paid for by those taxes, and pooling the resources this way allows the whole community you benefit in ways that can't be done otherwise. The extension of this is that if you are able to pitch in but don't then you're essentially "stealing" from the rest of the population.

I'm not well versed in the subtleties of a libertarian system; in a libertarian community, what's done with people who try to benefit from what others are doing without pitching in?

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm not well versed in the subtleties of a libertarian system

    That's because no such system has ever worked for more than a few months. In the few attempts that have occurred, there's no way to prevent tragedy of the commons type situations and everything quickly goes to shit. They either end up reinventing taxes or getting overrun with bears.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm having an "akshually" moment here. For what it's worth, the Tragedy of the Commons refers to over-exploitation of material resources that are held in common by a community, like public grazing land in Hardin's famous essay. That can't happen in a libertarian system, because there wouldn't be any commons; all of the land would be privately-owned.

    The closely-related concept that plagues libertarian systems is the Free-Rider Problem, which refers to people not paying the cost of a public good, which is defined as one that is non-excludable (can't stop people from using it), and non-rivalrous (use or benefit by one person doesn't prevent use or benefit to anybody else). A classic example of a public good is a lighthouse. Any ship can use a lighthouse, even those that don't help pay for its maintenance. The incentive is not to pay, so public goods are the things that every successful society has to re-invent taxes to pay for.

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