Your problem then is not that taxation exists, but how to make government expenditures follow some reasoned approach that actually benefits everyone's "welfare and pursuit of happiness". Simply giving money away to "crack whores" is not a wise investment, something different is required, and I tend to agree that US government has been spectacularly foolish with its "social" expenditures. Like for example spending on the idiotic "war on some drugs" and private prison network, instead on things such as education and common-sense social safety such as single-payer medical care, or promotion of small, community oriented business. But then again the US government is rather special in its apparent inability to manage anything that does not involve using 500lb explosives... and even there with rather mixed results. No other industrialized country appears to have this degree of competence problems in such basic areas...
The Constitution is not an outline. It is a legal code.
Which only covers the absolute basics and leaves the rest to the elected representatives... see also under "general outline".
It is the Supreme Law of the Land and all laws that are contrary to the Supreme Law are null-and-void. Furthermore the Constitution clearly specifies: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Which, of course, leads to never ending arguments as to what is and what is not "contrary" or "delegated". Enter the Supreme Court and its interpretations. Because, naturally, the Constitution, being just a general outline is wide open to various interpretations.
The Congress is not supposed to be exercising powers not particularly enumerated. The Congress is not supposed to hold virtually ALL the power, as you seem to suppose, because that is contrary to the principles of the men who crafted the document. Powers are supposed to be divided-up between the People, the States, and the U.S.
Except, of course, one of its enumerated powers is to make laws. And right back you are to the previous point of arguing what is and what is not "allowed" in these laws. And various interpretations of thereof.
All of which is besides the point because the Constitution does not forbid taxation. If it did, it would be a self-destructive document as it would demand that any government that follows it immediately dissolves upon its creation due to the lack of funds.
If Canadian healthcare is so great, why did comedian Tom Green have to wait 9 months to get his testicular cancer removed?
Because he did not. He lives in California, long ways from Canadian medical care of his old country, and is rich enough to pay all expenses out of his pocket. And like many celebrities, he gets to be "Canadian" only for the purpose of lunatic rants against us. Otherwise he is just another denizen of Hollywood. His cancer was diagnosed and treated where he lives: the USA. Canadian medical system had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Needless to say, the "9 months" is also a complete fabrication. Quote Green: "The weird part is how quickly all of this has happened. In three months, I found out I had cancer, I got rid of the cancer, and now, I'm recovering from cancer". He was diagnosed at and the procedure was performed at the USC.
Ultimately what he decided to do was go to the United States where he was taken care of the same week.
Again more bullshit. He lives in the USA, and is probably ineligible for the Canadian medical care which requires at least 6 months continuous residence in one province (which is probably where the "9 months" nonsense comes from).
Many, many canadians find themselves in the same boat. Government healthcare works about as well the the government DMV - i.e. poor, disorganized, slow, and controlled by politicians not customers.
Yes, that is why the support for the single-payer system is on the ticket of all Canadian political parties, including the Conservatives, because they know in no uncertain terms that their votes would go down to single digits if they dropped it....
You can rant an rave, but the global statistics show the truth quite clearly. USA is behind Slovenia in infant mortality for example...
Also it's a myth that the U.S. does not have universal healthcare. Anyone who needs it can get Medicare and Medicaid assistance directly from the Congress, while still maintaining the benefits of a competitive, innovative marketplace.
That has been working out so great that over 60% Americans now want single-payer...
Furthermore people who advocate killing-off private businesses and having a healthcare monopoly, make about as much sense as advocating we should kill-off Apples, Amigas, Linux, and just have everything run by Microsoft. Monopoly == bad. Multiple providers is better.
Only if there is an actual marketplace possible in this area. It is so with computers and other gizmos, it is not with medical insurance. That is what has been demonstrated over and over by practical experience. That is so because the insurance companies can successfully obfuscate the particulars of their "offers" and the results are not detectable to their victims until it is far too late. And there is no apparent way to solve this problem. That is why in many places insurance companies (not just medical kind) have the same standing as loan sharks, i.e. societal parasites. Meaningful competition is not possible if there is no way to make individual transactions adhere to the "free market" principles. Which is also incidentally why medial care is not part of the marketplace.
Human rights philosophy decides and that philosophy, which is almost 400 years old, clearly shows that taking money out of one person(s) wallet and giving it to another so he can get a free car, is a
violation of rights. It's theft of labor (aka partial slavery).
Yea, human rights were based on the idea of tax-free "societies"... oh give me a break. No one is buying your crap. And no government is giving away cars. The taxation, being an entrance fee for any democratic (and other) society is wholly voluntary. You can leave the deal any time. No one is holding you back. Your cherished "human rights" are just an air-plane ticket away. Somalia awaits you!
The philosophy continues that such an action is acceptable if the money is shared equally (i.e. a common road system that benefits all), and if the People have given their consent (ratification of the national contract)
Which is, of course, total bullshit as a Navy would defend coast lines and an Army would put up defences inland, each having a different impact on different parts of population... roads are built only in some places and not others, thus benefiting unequally different parts of the nation and on and on and on...
You should learn more about your idols. Her pen name was Ayn Rand.
If I've never heard of her, it's doubtful the Libertarians have either.
Which is on par with standard "libertarian" level of education in history, i.e. next to none. But then again, that is pretty much a pre-requisite to being a "libertarian"....
Really? "A government powerful enough to provide everything you need, is also powerful enough to Take everything you have."
Which of course no one is advocating, other then perhaps some die hard Statist-Communists, and they are getting rarer then hen's teeth these days.
It appears they were well-acquainted with modern ideas like socialism and rejected them soundly as being a poor idea.
Non sequitur. None of them were opposed to taxation. There is a loooong way from providing some absolutely rudimentary societal benefits for those in dire need to "providing everything [everyone] needs".
It's a human rights violation to take money from one person(s) and give it to another, so the second person can buy himself a new house or car. It's theft of labor.
Back to your "car" and "house" straw-men? Also as to the "human rights violation", I keep pointing out that the deal is voluntary. You can move to any place which does not "violate" your cherished "right" to hoard all your money, in any way. Say, Somalia. Trust me, you will not be missed.
In contrast buying 85-year-old Bob a new heart (or house) (or car) doesn't benefit me at all. It just turns me into a partial-slave with Bob as my master. I labor, not for my own enrichment, but for his enrichment so my money can buy Bob more stuff.
I already pointed out that a) no government issues cars or free houses to anyone, and so you can stop with the straw-men, b) medical care has wide-ranging positive social effects, far more so then a navy and the Post Office combined. The point is that saving the butt of those in dire need is a part of the definition of a society, handing out cars and other luxuries is not. Also, what is this idiotic dichotomy in which you attempt to see the Navy or the Post Office as abstract entities composed of something other then people? Your money also buys "stuff" for Post Office employees and for the Navy personnel as well as the vast array of shipbuilders and associated suppliers.
Well I disagree. My philosophy is this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..... That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed." The government is not there to collect fees. The government is the servant, the People are the master, and it was created to protect individual rights (property, labor, ownership of self), not to violate those rights through raiding wallets and giving the money to somebody else.
Err, what?! Are you suggesting that you get to opt out of anything the government does because you personally disagree? "The consent" for taxation was given to the US government by its voters, i.e. "the governed". And so it is there to "collect fees" (amongst a million of other things that it was given "the consent" to do). And as a servant of its master, i.e. the people who agreed to be taxed, it taxes them and uses the money where their elected representatives tell it to. Taxation is an explicit part of any government because otherwise... the government has zero funds and thus ceases to exist.
If my government procures a Navy, I gain benefit from the mutual defense of all our homes.
Assuming that your country is not land-locked and there are actual enemies....
If my government procures a new car for Master Bob, I gain nothing except theft of my labor. I'm working not for my benefit, but to enrich somebody else. It's a human rights violation.
We were talking about Bob's heart-transplant, which government's single-payer insurance should do, not his car, which no government I know of gives to anyone and which is a straw-man you keep bringing up. Having accessible medical care has a lot of benefits, more so then a navy that exists to fight a war that might-or-might-not occur every few generations. Your kids to not get to be infected by rampaging out of control pandemics of every description, destitute families of random victims of medical issues do not set up tent cities on every public street corner, disillusioned and destitute kids of people bankrupted by their medical bills do not become highway robbers, etc and on and on and on. Giving someone a luxury like a car has nothing whatsoever to do with satisfying one of the basic tenets of a society: caring for those of its members who are in dire, life-threatening need.
Dude, this is getting out of hand, your response is far too long for me to deal with given my time constraints and the fact that this thread will auto-shut down very soon. Start a journal or something that does not have a time-out, post a link, and I will come to it to respond when I have time.
Fear the drive towards an all powerful federal government. The average man on the street won't like what it is when it arrives.
The trick is of course to come up with a government that does maintain the basic framework of a society (what is "basic" is of course the whole crux of the discussion) but does not infringe on anything else...
Tricky? Certainly. Possible? Chances are.
I see governments to be like nuclear power. Very powerful and very useful... if kept in check by triple backups and fail-over contingency systems. Get sloppy just a little and....
The problem for a lot of people (with no judgments made on present company) is that they can see the positive effect of paying for Bob's new heart, but they never think clearly enough to realize that the funds to pay for it, had Bob not had the need or had I not been forced to pay, would have gone somewhere else, and--here is the most important part--society as a whole would be richer by the cost of one heart transplant.
Well, strictly from the point of view of economics, completely empathy free, Bob's new heart is actually more economically sound investment then otherwise. Because paying for the procedure furthers medical training and the progress of medicine and maintains social stability, while on the other hand someone (since he his family would bankrupt itself trying to, unsuccessfully, save him through quacks and snake-oil remedies, them being the only thing they could afford) would have to pay for.... Bob's funeral, deal with his now destitute family begging on the streets etc. And since now his kids are beggars with no chance for education and a sizable resentment toward society - for they now know that they will be thrown in the garbage at the slightest provocation and thus have no social obligations any more, their "social contract" having just been demonstrated null-and-void - there is also a whole other, rather expensive socially and monetarily, host of "problems" on the way. This time involving gunfights. For which I would not blame them in the slightest. And I am not merely hypothesizing here. This is history and it is exactly how all of these "socialist" ideas developed: they were learnt the "hard way".
But then there is of course that thing called "humanity" and the pesky little issue of what is the whole point of forming a society.
Your point about Bob's future contribution is an example of the broken window fallacy, albeit made a bit strange by the health care aspect and the emotions and tangential problems it brings with it.
Not at all. The "broken window" fallacy is because the alternative is status-quo, the windows stay unbroken. In case of Bob's heart the alternatives are more socially expensive (on average) and Bob gets to die.
It directly affects Bob, for sure, but Bob should not be my responsibility unless I choose to take it upon myself to help him, and the indirect effects of Bob's future contributions are, quite frankly, unimportant--if he is working somewhere where he cannot be replaced, rest assured that someone there will pay for his transplant. This makes me (and most libertarians) sound like a stingy bastard until you realize that I, like most people (incl. said libertarians), will spend money to pursue my interests and to help the people whom I care about, and that letting me use my money to do so will result in a greater good for me and them*.
Bullshit. You would not. A vast majority of "libertarians" are concerned only with their own ass and satisfying of their own astronomical greed, and would (quoting one of you on this very thread) "cross the street to piss" on Bob as he dies. The choice, historically proven, is between social unrest, vast hordes of destitute and dying in filth surrounding palaces of "capitalist" Robber Barons who occasionally take rides in their Rolls Royce limos, tossing coins out of the window and calling it "charity", and a stable society where there are no armed revolts of indentured "servants" lurking around every corner. And again, this is history not some hypothesis.
Hell, with some of that extra cash, I'd even subscribe to my local public radio station along with hundreds of others, which could let them give Jeff the bonus he deserves, and Jeff could chip in with the rest of his family to help his brother Bob pay for his heart transplant!
Which again is nonsense. For every "Jeff" there are a hu
The whole tactic is nonsense. A sent email is essentially something that was placed upon your property by a 3rd party. There is no proof at all that it was intended to be sent to you or that you
consented to receive it.
You misunderstood. I was merely taking the idea of encrypted emails and files from the poster, not the actual process of sending them. My proposal was for botnets to create false positives, and so they would fake both sending and receiving of these emails, complete with appropriate "trace" in the email client.
What ever happened to actual investigative work? If your really a pedophile you would expect other media, and activity. Being caught masturbating near elementary schools or something sick and twisted like that. Or trips to Thailand to molest young boys.
Catching paedophiles is hard and they are far rarer then some of the "moral panic"-riding fascists would like everyone to believe. And all actual paedophiles are still innocent until they actually go out and try to molest a real child and even then things get questionable if it was the "child" who was soliciting. And yes there are pervert kids out there - just check out any sex-oriented boards to find out when the perverts on them started having their sex drive, most of the TV talking heads would faint from hyperventilation if they ever found out.
Catching "thought criminals" however is very easy and painless and profitable.
Guess which of the two The Righteous Crusaders focus on?
A real pedophile is going to have far more incriminating evidence and behavior than just some encrypted files.
Not at all. Some are savvy tech users who are likely to have well hidden data. Some do not do tech at all. Some get off on pictures. Some do not. There is only one common critical element: a molested child. The rest, if it is not direct evidence pertaining to that child, is all thought crimes.
The fact it is used to justify a complete and total invasion of all of your encrypted data is egregious when there is no other evidence to support their accusations.
They do not care. Catching paedophiles, terrorists, witches and what-not was never the objective. Just a pretext. The objective was always to create an ability to have total surveillance and thus to permanently and irrevocably shift the balance of power firmly toward the "intelligence" and "policing" complexes, away from the public. And this is all about just that one thing: power. As it always was, since times immemorial.
Wow you really have gotten completely lost in the liberal propaganda haven't you!
Actually I live in Canada and have first hand experience with the "socialist" medical care here. I also have experience with the US variety. The US care is superficially superior as some elective procedures are easy to obtain and at the same time greatly systemically inferior as for most people outcomes of serious illnesses are financially catastrophic. I would trade our Canadian system for the US one only over my dead body. I would actually take up arms if some idiot tried to get rid of it. Me and most of other Canadians. And I am a long-time small business owner, not some wild-eyed student revolutionary.
If the tax loop hole did not exist than there would be no bias in the system in the first place to favor the big enterprise.
In other words all insurance plans would be astronomically expensive, not just the smaller than the 10,000 employee ones. You seem to forget that the insurance companies have no incentive to lower premiums and increase payouts and the doctors and hospitals have no incentive to reduce costs as none of them actually compete in a "free market". All of you "free medical enterprise" types seem to constantly and conveniently forget that. When you are in an ambulance and unconscious you do not get to make an "informed purchase" of your care in the marketplace. Random chance decides that for you. Even if you have a flu you do not get to shop around for doctors and compare their "products". There is no "free market" at all in medical care because basic requirements cannot be satisfied due to the mechanics of the thing. As to insurance companies, they long since stopped competing since they discovered that one can use legal complexity as a mechanism to hide anything as to the actual value and price of their "product". And the result is that 40 million Americans (and growing) are with no insurance at all. And most of those who have it quickly find out that it covers pidley-squat.
Your argument is complete B.S. as your proposed solution is more government as answer to a problem that same government created in the first place. Any rational person knows unless its completely impractical to do so you fix problems by addressing the cause not the symptoms when the cause is known.
The exact same situation existed in Canada prior to the single payer system being crammed down the throats of snake-oil-salesmen and politicians by our then rather pissed off and militant public. And the exact same arguments were used by doctors and insurance companies to try to forestall it.... and the result has been massive decrease of the medical costs for everyone at the expense of putting most of the insurance parasites out of business - although the few that remain still keep trying to sell insurance for various "extras".
My guess is you are just ignorant, heard "Yes we can!" a few to many times and forgot to think which is what *they* want you to do. Start thinking, start analyzing past the surface and quit voting for sound bites.
Ignorant? I know that it can be done because... it was done here! USA is the only industrialized country where the insurance parasites are allowed to run amok completely unchecked and where they practically used to own the discourse on the subject of medical care. And so the richest nation on Earth has one of the lousiest positive medical outcome rates, at the highest cost per capita! "Analyzing past the surface" my ass!
And who are "*they*"? As far as I can tell the only people to seriously gain from opposing single-payer insurance are... the private insurance crooks who have been making out like thieves, raping and pillaging both businesses and private individuals for decades, the same very
For example, it is not uncommon for people to "own" their identity, which is just a collection of their personal information. Their names, their bank numbers and the number they store, their
signature, all make up parts of a person's identity, and that identity has no more fixed reference point in the space-time continuum than a copyright or patent.
That is actually an illusion. A man can get born in Britain, with a name John Smith, and at the same time someone completely unrelated in, say, New Zealand who is named Smith can also have a kid named John. Neither of them "owns" their names as any number of kids can be called John Smith. In China, roughly 50% of population of over a billion people have just these 9 family names: Chen, Lin, Huang, Li, Zhang, Wu, Wang, Cai and Liu. Neither do they "own" their bank account numbers, nor the street names where they live etc. A combination can be used (temporarily) to identify them, but they are no more "owners" of it then they are owners of, say, a number 5. In fact anyone who guesses at the combination can usually proceed to abuse it, which various misguided maniacs then run around calling "identity theft".
Sorry to engage in semantics here (I really have no choice, since semantics is the basis for your argument), but it actually does not imply some control over integers. It implies the control over the distribution of certain strings of integers. The integers themselves don't change. It also requires some context to the integers. For example, I could say the numbers 539367834548, and that could be someone's credit card number. But unless I actually say it is a credit card number, and specify the expiration date, and the person it belongs to, then it isn't enough to be considered a credit card number. So yes, it differs from traditional property in the sense that some context needs to be applied.
Sure, except.... you cannot control the distribution either! In order to do so you would have to a) prevent people from coming up with "your property" completely independently and b) ensure that a scientific method exists to determine that it is in fact the "copy" in question, which after applying even the simplest of transforms (such as noise) is no longer feasible. If I take a wild guess at your credit card number and get lucky, in accordance with the "intellectual property" Holy Scripture, I automatically become a "thief" since I now have both the number and the "context". And no, probability has no impact on it as even the lowest probabilities conceivable are still possibilities, and as weekly lottery winners show, quite a commonplace.
Similarly for intellectual property, before copyrights and patents, there was no real legal recognition of ownership of the intellectual domain. It's another debate as to whether such a domain should be subject to property, but to say that it's unnatural because it's different to how things were is not sufficient to take it off the table. Things used to be different before physical property. We had different values back then. But change does not equal bad, or infeasible.
The "intellectual property" is unfeasible not because we "had different values" (a specious point since my values for example had not changed) but because physical property could be taken from the "common pool". "Intellectual property" cannot. It and its component parts are abstract entities which cannot be "taken" or "controlled" in any way. And that is one of the reasons why the concept of "intellectual property" it is a scam.
Which only goes to show that some of our notions of property need to be rethought with regards IP. It is possible for two or more people to own the same intellectual property. If two people, regardless of timing, come up with exactly the same piece of music or invention independently, then neither of them have copied the other, and neither of them a
Yup, that would work too. Just as long as it is part of the regular spam campaigns of the bot nets. I forgot to include encrypted data in my original proposal, but you are absolutely right, that nonsense about coughing up "passwords" to any random blob of numbers must too be addressed or the fascists' power will just keep increasing.
You just called the Founders of this nation (Jefferson, Henry, Washington, Madison, Franklin, et al) assholes. Nice job. Maybe you ought to take a moment and actually READ what they said about government, before you decide not to hear their words, and prejudge those words as assinine?
None of them were "libertarians" in the vain of Zhynovievna, and if they read her drivel they would probably think it was a bad comedy. I can't imagine any one of them saying things in the vain of the "libertarians" up thread going on about "crossing the street to piss" on a victim of a heart attack.
Also you should note that they were all wealthy men and many of the modern societal ideas were unknown in their time. They would also be probably be the first to tell you that they were not omniscient nor infallible. They were men, not gods as some would have them.
Actually they are examples of unconstitutional acts. I can not lay my hand on any part of the Constitution that grants Congress those powers (like giving taxpayer money to AIG executives).
That is because US constitution is a general outline of government. No constitution of any country is capable of dealing with the actual details of governance. The AIG (rightly or wrongly) was given money because elected representatives attempted to rescue a nation-wide economy (nation-wide welfare being part of their explicit mandate) by doing so. One can argue the wisdom of the thing, but one cannot argue that they did not have the constitutional backing. Otherwise the federal government is pointless, and you might as well go 50 separate ways (at which point you will be whining about your state government not being "legitimate"... etc and so on, ad nausea).
If we simply followed the Constitution with a Congress limited to only the particular enumerated powers, with appropriate amendments as necessary such as for SSI, our politicians would once again be under our control, instead of spending like teenagers handed a credit card.
Then you would have to come up with a whole new document that is phrased far more cleverly, and which could predict future. However smart the Founding Fathers were, the constitution is only a rough guideline and the devil is in the details of its interpretation. Which of course you do quite differently then many other people.
Things that benefit everybody (like a navy) are legitimate taxation (and constitutional). Things that only benefit are few are theft of labor, and it doesn't matter if we're talking about a slave picking crops for his master, or neighbors being forced to work to earn money so Bob gets a new heart/house/car. We're still talking about a human rights violation.
And of course you get to be the one making the decision as to what is "benefiting everybody", naturally, no? Like for example the fact that in many places a navy or an army does dick all because the terrain prevents any feasible invasions and at the same time a pandemic of heart-disease causing virus can kill far more then any foreign navy could manage. Or the fact that a society in which medical care costs are under control and removed from consideration of individual businessmen is actually more friendly to small enterprise, which then benefits "everyone". One could go on.
But all of this is besides the point that taxation in a democratic society is by definition legitimate. What the taxes are being spent on is a matter of debate. However one thing is clear: a society which does not take care of its weakest members is pretty much pointless. Because it is the whole point of society that in it individuals can count for help beyond their own means. Otherwise we all might as well head for hermit cabins and shoot each other on sight for "trespassing" (which by the way is many a "libertarian" fantasy).
Theft of another man's wealth (or labor) certainly fits the description of harm.
And I keep pointing out that if this is "theft" then all transactions are "theft". If you go to a private club and the bouncer asks you for the proof that you paid your dues, do you call him a "thief" also?
The redistribution of wealth, whether it's from a slave to a master, or your neighbors' wallets to Bob's new heart/house/car, is a human rights violation.
In the same vain you could call a lottery a "redistribution" of wealth from the numerically illiterate to the rich...
Again, the "redistribution" would only apply if you were prevented from leaving the deal at any time. There are many places on the globe where a deal far more to your liking is being offered. I already mentioned some of them.
The exact-same argument used by the Kings of the past.
That is because every society has an entrance fee of some kind. What that fee is and how it is paid varies.
A good society is one that recognizes individual rights and does not violate them to steal wealth (or labor) from one person and give it to another.
Then an example of "good" society is, say, Somaila. No government to rain on your parade there. Or United Arab Emirates, where income taxation is at 0%. That is of course ignoring the fact, which I already pointed out, that taxation is simply a deal, whereby you get to reap the benefits of participation in a society, in exchange for payment. You can cancel the deal at any time and leave. If this is "theft" then all transactions are "theft"! What is done with your payment in a typical transaction is no longer of concern to you because after you paid for something the recipient of the money is then free to use it as he/she sees fit. In the case of taxes, the other party is government, who chooses to use its fee as it sees fit, but as a bonus, unlike with any other regular deal, in a democratic society you have a say in what the government does with the money you paid as your participation fee.
If they had it their way, the only rights we would end up having were ones we could afford to buy and enforce as an individuals.
Quite right. It is no coincidence that most of them have fantasies of societal collapse followed by a "Mad Max"-type future where "real men" and their shotguns get to rule the day.
They never seem to get it that a "working" example of a "libertarian society" is... Somalia. No functional central government to rain on the "real men's" parade there at all. Everyone there is free to conduct "free enterprise" any way they see fit. Curiously however, libertarian immigration to the Paradise in Mogadishu remains rather low.... perhaps not enough pamphlets at the weekly meetings at the temple of the Goddess Alyssa Zhinovievena?
Forcing me to pay taxes and then using those taxes to benefit someone else is theft. You think taxes are good, then defend taxes, don't dispute that they are theft though. If I stuck a gun in your face and demanded 20% of your money it would be armed robbery. When the government does it, it is called taxation.
Then every deal is a "theft", since the person you paid money to for whatever you bought is also going to use it to benefit his family, i.e. "someone else". Participation in a society is also a deal. You are free to leave the deal anytime by going to a place where a different deal is offered, say some banana republic with no taxes (and the corresponding quality of a society). Or you can hide up in the mountains and never pay a red cent of taxes. But then you do not get the benefits of the deal either. But of course you would like all the perks but are too greedy to pay for them. Now, come to think of it, speaking about thieves....
He could die before I walked across the road and pissed on him if that was all he needed. I also don't care if your mewling brats get an education or if your parents have to eat roadkill. Taking my money to benefit you and yours is fucking wrong,immoral
That is the logic of vicious, rabid animals, not civilized people. "Sociopathic" does not even begin to describe it...
... and exactly what the founders of the USA were dead set against.
Oh really? You mean they wanted a "society" where people "walk across the road and piss" on those who have a heart attack? Could you offer some quotes from Jefferson or Payne on that?
But when you are taking my money to give to people in the ghetto to have 5,6 or more babies. Taking it and giving it to illegal aliens so they can feed their ever increasing broods of children. Taking it and giving it to the person who contributed the most to your campaign. Or as in my hometown, taking it and giving it to two of the wealthiest individuals around here, so they can build themselves a
baseball stadium and make even more money, it is fucking wrong.
These are all examples of loss of control over taxation due to political corruption, and have nothing whatsoever to do with "socialism". A corrupt government in any political system will fuck the governed society up. So the problem is not with taxes it is with keeping governments accountable to their citizens, which is a whole different ball of wax.
Your heart being bad and you needing a transplant is not my problem, nor is it societies problem. It is your problem.
Only in a jungle full of, and run by, jackals such as you. The hallmark of civilization, and the point of societies, is that they offer support to their members in time of need. You are what is called a "sociopath" and by the looks of things you would be much happier in a cabin somewhere in the woods with no contact with anyone. If the government cannot find you, you will get to pay no taxes and no one would expect a shred of humanity out of you, since you would be living as a vicious animal, which is apparently already your personality. Just do not come out of there. Rabid animals tend to get shot.
Fucking grow up and stop looking for the government to take the place of mommy and daddy
Yes, the typical howl of a self-absorbed, narcissistic idiot who thinks all (or even a majority) of people can control their lives. Yet another "self-made" man who "made" his own language, was fed his own milk as an infant, who created or paid for thousands of years of development of all of the stuff he uses daily etc and so on. I usually do not wish bad things to happen even to idiots like you, but in your case I will make an exception: may a bus blow a tire, swerve and hit you, crippling you and may you discover that your insurance and savings cover less then 10% of the cost of your treatment.
And while you are at it, get out of your mom's basement and get your own place, with money you earned and see if your attitude about taxes don't change.
I have been running my own company probably longer then you have been alive. Which explains why I do remember things which are complete news to you. You would do much better to stuff all that Zhynovievna's drivel you've been reading in the garbage and read some history books for a change.
Actually, I have a request to all of bot-net operators out there: redeem yourselves.
There is a thing you can do to pay for your sins and help rescue the future of free speech and unrestricted communications: Use your botnets to spread false positives!
Make sure that every PC that you have a bot on has: a) random political messages, b) random terrorist messages, c) random child pornography, d) random pirated media, e) any other "taboo" crap like cartoons of the "prophet" Mohammad.
Ensure that your bots create credible traces in history caches of web browsers, email clients, deleted files on the file system etc.
If all the millions of infected PCs out there are treated like that, you will make witch hunts and mass persecutions impossible, or at least short lived after every second judge and politician or their family member is caught in the net.
Do this and I will forgive you all the spam. Hell, I will go out and order random crap from spa... err "offers"!
No, its a fee that you pay for the privilege of partaking in society. Bob's new heart will enable him to go and make contributions which then might (or might not) affect you, but will affect someone else, who in turn might affect you etc. The alternative is dog-eat-dog jungle where all (but the richest assholes) who get sick die destitute. Sort of like America today...
... (or house) (or car)....
Yes the nasty gubmint is giving away houses and cars to every illegal Mexican!
And don't forget all them illegal-alien-friendly channels on basic cable! Oh, wait, its actually a private enterprise that is making you pay for all them cable channels! Paragons of "free market", the agents of the "invisible hand"! Oh dear!
Socialism - Being forced to pay for other people's stuff ("free" food, "free" housing, "free" heart transplants),
... and roads and bridges and the police and firefighters and...
I have news: its called "society". The only way for you to hoard 100% of your loot and not to ever pay anything for the privilege of participating is to... stop participating. I hear the hermit cabins up in the woods somewhere in Montana are still going strong. Just make sure that you do not infringe on "personal space" of some other lunatic or he will accuse you of being a "Commie", and he probably has a working (unlike his brain) shotgun.
Oh, that's right, but you wanna participate, reap all the benefits of a society without paying a penny for it.... I get it, Mr. Free Loader.
while you personally slave your ass away and go bankrupt trying to pay the taxes.
Yes, yes, like all those who went under in the late 1940s through late 1960s when top tax rates were 90%, no? Oh, wait, was that not the most prosperous time in American history ever?
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Your problem then is not that taxation exists, but how to make government expenditures follow some reasoned approach that actually benefits everyone's "welfare and pursuit of happiness". Simply giving money away to "crack whores" is not a wise investment, something different is required, and I tend to agree that US government has been spectacularly foolish with its "social" expenditures. Like for example spending on the idiotic "war on some drugs" and private prison network, instead on things such as education and common-sense social safety such as single-payer medical care, or promotion of small, community oriented business. But then again the US government is rather special in its apparent inability to manage anything that does not involve using 500lb explosives ... and even there with rather mixed results. No other industrialized country appears to have this degree of competence problems in such basic areas ...
Which only covers the absolute basics and leaves the rest to the elected representatives... see also under "general outline".
Which, of course, leads to never ending arguments as to what is and what is not "contrary" or "delegated". Enter the Supreme Court and its interpretations. Because, naturally, the Constitution, being just a general outline is wide open to various interpretations.
Except, of course, one of its enumerated powers is to make laws. And right back you are to the previous point of arguing what is and what is not "allowed" in these laws. And various interpretations of thereof.
All of which is besides the point because the Constitution does not forbid taxation. If it did, it would be a self-destructive document as it would demand that any government that follows it immediately dissolves upon its creation due to the lack of funds.
Because he did not. He lives in California, long ways from Canadian medical care of his old country, and is rich enough to pay all expenses out of his pocket. And like many celebrities, he gets to be "Canadian" only for the purpose of lunatic rants against us. Otherwise he is just another denizen of Hollywood. His cancer was diagnosed and treated where he lives: the USA. Canadian medical system had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Needless to say, the "9 months" is also a complete fabrication. Quote Green: "The weird part is how quickly all of this has happened. In three months, I found out I had cancer, I got rid of the cancer, and now, I'm recovering from cancer". He was diagnosed at and the procedure was performed at the USC.
Again more bullshit. He lives in the USA, and is probably ineligible for the Canadian medical care which requires at least 6 months continuous residence in one province (which is probably where the "9 months" nonsense comes from).
Yes, that is why the support for the single-payer system is on the ticket of all Canadian political parties, including the Conservatives, because they know in no uncertain terms that their votes would go down to single digits if they dropped it....
You can rant an rave, but the global statistics show the truth quite clearly. USA is behind Slovenia in infant mortality for example ...
That has been working out so great that over 60% Americans now want single-payer...
Only if there is an actual marketplace possible in this area. It is so with computers and other gizmos, it is not with medical insurance. That is what has been demonstrated over and over by practical experience. That is so because the insurance companies can successfully obfuscate the particulars of their "offers" and the results are not detectable to their victims until it is far too late. And there is no apparent way to solve this problem. That is why in many places insurance companies (not just medical kind) have the same standing as loan sharks, i.e. societal parasites. Meaningful competition is not possible if there is no way to make individual transactions adhere to the "free market" principles. Which is also incidentally why medial care is not part of the marketplace.
Yea, human rights were based on the idea of tax-free "societies" ... oh give me a break. No one is buying your crap. And no government is giving away cars. The taxation, being an entrance fee for any democratic (and other) society is wholly voluntary. You can leave the deal any time. No one is holding you back. Your cherished "human rights" are just an air-plane ticket away. Somalia awaits you!
Which is, of course, total bullshit as a Navy would defend coast lines and an Army would put up defences inland, each having a different impact on different parts of population ... roads are built only in some places and not others, thus benefiting unequally different parts of the nation and on and on and on...
You should learn more about your idols. Her pen name was Ayn Rand.
Which is on par with standard "libertarian" level of education in history, i.e. next to none. But then again, that is pretty much a pre-requisite to being a "libertarian"....
Which of course no one is advocating, other then perhaps some die hard Statist-Communists, and they are getting rarer then hen's teeth these days.
Non sequitur. None of them were opposed to taxation. There is a loooong way from providing some absolutely rudimentary societal benefits for those in dire need to "providing everything [everyone] needs".
Back to your "car" and "house" straw-men? Also as to the "human rights violation", I keep pointing out that the deal is voluntary. You can move to any place which does not "violate" your cherished "right" to hoard all your money, in any way. Say, Somalia. Trust me, you will not be missed.
I already pointed out that a) no government issues cars or free houses to anyone, and so you can stop with the straw-men, b) medical care has wide-ranging positive social effects, far more so then a navy and the Post Office combined. The point is that saving the butt of those in dire need is a part of the definition of a society, handing out cars and other luxuries is not. Also, what is this idiotic dichotomy in which you attempt to see the Navy or the Post Office as abstract entities composed of something other then people? Your money also buys "stuff" for Post Office employees and for the Navy personnel as well as the vast array of shipbuilders and associated suppliers.
Err, what?! Are you suggesting that you get to opt out of anything the government does because you personally disagree? "The consent" for taxation was given to the US government by its voters, i.e. "the governed". And so it is there to "collect fees" (amongst a million of other things that it was given "the consent" to do). And as a servant of its master, i.e. the people who agreed to be taxed, it taxes them and uses the money where their elected representatives tell it to. Taxation is an explicit part of any government because otherwise ... the government has zero funds and thus ceases to exist.
Assuming that your country is not land-locked and there are actual enemies ....
We were talking about Bob's heart-transplant, which government's single-payer insurance should do, not his car, which no government I know of gives to anyone and which is a straw-man you keep bringing up. Having accessible medical care has a lot of benefits, more so then a navy that exists to fight a war that might-or-might-not occur every few generations. Your kids to not get to be infected by rampaging out of control pandemics of every description, destitute families of random victims of medical issues do not set up tent cities on every public street corner, disillusioned and destitute kids of people bankrupted by their medical bills do not become highway robbers, etc and on and on and on. Giving someone a luxury like a car has nothing whatsoever to do with satisfying one of the basic tenets of a society: caring for those of its members who are in dire, life-threatening need.
Dude, this is getting out of hand, your response is far too long for me to deal with given my time constraints and the fact that this thread will auto-shut down very soon. Start a journal or something that does not have a time-out, post a link, and I will come to it to respond when I have time.
The trick is of course to come up with a government that does maintain the basic framework of a society (what is "basic" is of course the whole crux of the discussion) but does not infringe on anything else...
Tricky? Certainly. Possible? Chances are.
I see governments to be like nuclear power. Very powerful and very useful ... if kept in check by triple backups and fail-over contingency systems. Get sloppy just a little and ....
Well, strictly from the point of view of economics, completely empathy free, Bob's new heart is actually more economically sound investment then otherwise. Because paying for the procedure furthers medical training and the progress of medicine and maintains social stability, while on the other hand someone (since he his family would bankrupt itself trying to, unsuccessfully, save him through quacks and snake-oil remedies, them being the only thing they could afford) would have to pay for .... Bob's funeral, deal with his now destitute family begging on the streets etc. And since now his kids are beggars with no chance for education and a sizable resentment toward society - for they now know that they will be thrown in the garbage at the slightest provocation and thus have no social obligations any more, their "social contract" having just been demonstrated null-and-void - there is also a whole other, rather expensive socially and monetarily, host of "problems" on the way. This time involving gunfights. For which I would not blame them in the slightest. And I am not merely hypothesizing here. This is history and it is exactly how all of these "socialist" ideas developed: they were learnt the "hard way".
But then there is of course that thing called "humanity" and the pesky little issue of what is the whole point of forming a society.
Not at all. The "broken window" fallacy is because the alternative is status-quo, the windows stay unbroken. In case of Bob's heart the alternatives are more socially expensive (on average) and Bob gets to die.
Bullshit. You would not. A vast majority of "libertarians" are concerned only with their own ass and satisfying of their own astronomical greed, and would (quoting one of you on this very thread) "cross the street to piss" on Bob as he dies. The choice, historically proven, is between social unrest, vast hordes of destitute and dying in filth surrounding palaces of "capitalist" Robber Barons who occasionally take rides in their Rolls Royce limos, tossing coins out of the window and calling it "charity", and a stable society where there are no armed revolts of indentured "servants" lurking around every corner. And again, this is history not some hypothesis.
Which again is nonsense. For every "Jeff" there are a hu
You misunderstood. I was merely taking the idea of encrypted emails and files from the poster, not the actual process of sending them. My proposal was for botnets to create false positives, and so they would fake both sending and receiving of these emails, complete with appropriate "trace" in the email client.
Catching paedophiles is hard and they are far rarer then some of the "moral panic"-riding fascists would like everyone to believe. And all actual paedophiles are still innocent until they actually go out and try to molest a real child and even then things get questionable if it was the "child" who was soliciting. And yes there are pervert kids out there - just check out any sex-oriented boards to find out when the perverts on them started having their sex drive, most of the TV talking heads would faint from hyperventilation if they ever found out.
Catching "thought criminals" however is very easy and painless and profitable.
Guess which of the two The Righteous Crusaders focus on?
Not at all. Some are savvy tech users who are likely to have well hidden data. Some do not do tech at all. Some get off on pictures. Some do not. There is only one common critical element: a molested child. The rest, if it is not direct evidence pertaining to that child, is all thought crimes.
They do not care. Catching paedophiles, terrorists, witches and what-not was never the objective. Just a pretext. The objective was always to create an ability to have total surveillance and thus to permanently and irrevocably shift the balance of power firmly toward the "intelligence" and "policing" complexes, away from the public. And this is all about just that one thing: power. As it always was, since times immemorial.
Actually I live in Canada and have first hand experience with the "socialist" medical care here. I also have experience with the US variety. The US care is superficially superior as some elective procedures are easy to obtain and at the same time greatly systemically inferior as for most people outcomes of serious illnesses are financially catastrophic. I would trade our Canadian system for the US one only over my dead body. I would actually take up arms if some idiot tried to get rid of it. Me and most of other Canadians. And I am a long-time small business owner, not some wild-eyed student revolutionary.
In other words all insurance plans would be astronomically expensive, not just the smaller than the 10,000 employee ones. You seem to forget that the insurance companies have no incentive to lower premiums and increase payouts and the doctors and hospitals have no incentive to reduce costs as none of them actually compete in a "free market". All of you "free medical enterprise" types seem to constantly and conveniently forget that. When you are in an ambulance and unconscious you do not get to make an "informed purchase" of your care in the marketplace. Random chance decides that for you. Even if you have a flu you do not get to shop around for doctors and compare their "products". There is no "free market" at all in medical care because basic requirements cannot be satisfied due to the mechanics of the thing. As to insurance companies, they long since stopped competing since they discovered that one can use legal complexity as a mechanism to hide anything as to the actual value and price of their "product". And the result is that 40 million Americans (and growing) are with no insurance at all. And most of those who have it quickly find out that it covers pidley-squat.
The exact same situation existed in Canada prior to the single payer system being crammed down the throats of snake-oil-salesmen and politicians by our then rather pissed off and militant public. And the exact same arguments were used by doctors and insurance companies to try to forestall it .... and the result has been massive decrease of the medical costs for everyone at the expense of putting most of the insurance parasites out of business - although the few that remain still keep trying to sell insurance for various "extras".
Ignorant? I know that it can be done because ... it was done here! USA is the only industrialized country where the insurance parasites are allowed to run amok completely unchecked and where they practically used to own the discourse on the subject of medical care. And so the richest nation on Earth has one of the lousiest positive medical outcome rates, at the highest cost per capita! "Analyzing past the surface" my ass!
And who are "*they*"? As far as I can tell the only people to seriously gain from opposing single-payer insurance are ... the private insurance crooks who have been making out like thieves, raping and pillaging both businesses and private individuals for decades, the same very
That is actually an illusion. A man can get born in Britain, with a name John Smith, and at the same time someone completely unrelated in, say, New Zealand who is named Smith can also have a kid named John. Neither of them "owns" their names as any number of kids can be called John Smith. In China, roughly 50% of population of over a billion people have just these 9 family names: Chen, Lin, Huang, Li, Zhang, Wu, Wang, Cai and Liu. Neither do they "own" their bank account numbers, nor the street names where they live etc. A combination can be used (temporarily) to identify them, but they are no more "owners" of it then they are owners of, say, a number 5. In fact anyone who guesses at the combination can usually proceed to abuse it, which various misguided maniacs then run around calling "identity theft".
Sure, except .... you cannot control the distribution either! In order to do so you would have to a) prevent people from coming up with "your property" completely independently and b) ensure that a scientific method exists to determine that it is in fact the "copy" in question, which after applying even the simplest of transforms (such as noise) is no longer feasible. If I take a wild guess at your credit card number and get lucky, in accordance with the "intellectual property" Holy Scripture, I automatically become a "thief" since I now have both the number and the "context". And no, probability has no impact on it as even the lowest probabilities conceivable are still possibilities, and as weekly lottery winners show, quite a commonplace.
The "intellectual property" is unfeasible not because we "had different values" (a specious point since my values for example had not changed) but because physical property could be taken from the "common pool". "Intellectual property" cannot. It and its component parts are abstract entities which cannot be "taken" or "controlled" in any way. And that is one of the reasons why the concept of "intellectual property" it is a scam.
Yup, that would work too. Just as long as it is part of the regular spam campaigns of the bot nets. I forgot to include encrypted data in my original proposal, but you are absolutely right, that nonsense about coughing up "passwords" to any random blob of numbers must too be addressed or the fascists' power will just keep increasing.
None of them were "libertarians" in the vain of Zhynovievna, and if they read her drivel they would probably think it was a bad comedy. I can't imagine any one of them saying things in the vain of the "libertarians" up thread going on about "crossing the street to piss" on a victim of a heart attack.
Also you should note that they were all wealthy men and many of the modern societal ideas were unknown in their time. They would also be probably be the first to tell you that they were not omniscient nor infallible. They were men, not gods as some would have them.
That is because US constitution is a general outline of government. No constitution of any country is capable of dealing with the actual details of governance. The AIG (rightly or wrongly) was given money because elected representatives attempted to rescue a nation-wide economy (nation-wide welfare being part of their explicit mandate) by doing so. One can argue the wisdom of the thing, but one cannot argue that they did not have the constitutional backing. Otherwise the federal government is pointless, and you might as well go 50 separate ways (at which point you will be whining about your state government not being "legitimate" ... etc and so on, ad nausea).
Then you would have to come up with a whole new document that is phrased far more cleverly, and which could predict future. However smart the Founding Fathers were, the constitution is only a rough guideline and the devil is in the details of its interpretation. Which of course you do quite differently then many other people.
And of course you get to be the one making the decision as to what is "benefiting everybody", naturally, no? Like for example the fact that in many places a navy or an army does dick all because the terrain prevents any feasible invasions and at the same time a pandemic of heart-disease causing virus can kill far more then any foreign navy could manage. Or the fact that a society in which medical care costs are under control and removed from consideration of individual businessmen is actually more friendly to small enterprise, which then benefits "everyone". One could go on.
But all of this is besides the point that taxation in a democratic society is by definition legitimate. What the taxes are being spent on is a matter of debate. However one thing is clear: a society which does not take care of its weakest members is pretty much pointless. Because it is the whole point of society that in it individuals can count for help beyond their own means. Otherwise we all might as well head for hermit cabins and shoot each other on sight for "trespassing" (which by the way is many a "libertarian" fantasy).
And I keep pointing out that if this is "theft" then all transactions are "theft". If you go to a private club and the bouncer asks you for the proof that you paid your dues, do you call him a "thief" also?
In the same vain you could call a lottery a "redistribution" of wealth from the numerically illiterate to the rich ...
Again, the "redistribution" would only apply if you were prevented from leaving the deal at any time. There are many places on the globe where a deal far more to your liking is being offered. I already mentioned some of them.
That is because every society has an entrance fee of some kind. What that fee is and how it is paid varies.
Then an example of "good" society is, say, Somaila. No government to rain on your parade there. Or United Arab Emirates, where income taxation is at 0%. That is of course ignoring the fact, which I already pointed out, that taxation is simply a deal, whereby you get to reap the benefits of participation in a society, in exchange for payment. You can cancel the deal at any time and leave. If this is "theft" then all transactions are "theft"! What is done with your payment in a typical transaction is no longer of concern to you because after you paid for something the recipient of the money is then free to use it as he/she sees fit. In the case of taxes, the other party is government, who chooses to use its fee as it sees fit, but as a bonus, unlike with any other regular deal, in a democratic society you have a say in what the government does with the money you paid as your participation fee.
Quite right. It is no coincidence that most of them have fantasies of societal collapse followed by a "Mad Max"-type future where "real men" and their shotguns get to rule the day.
They never seem to get it that a "working" example of a "libertarian society" is ... Somalia. No functional central government to rain on the "real men's" parade there at all. Everyone there is free to conduct "free enterprise" any way they see fit. Curiously however, libertarian immigration to the Paradise in Mogadishu remains rather low.... perhaps not enough pamphlets at the weekly meetings at the temple of the Goddess Alyssa Zhinovievena?
Then every deal is a "theft", since the person you paid money to for whatever you bought is also going to use it to benefit his family, i.e. "someone else". Participation in a society is also a deal. You are free to leave the deal anytime by going to a place where a different deal is offered, say some banana republic with no taxes (and the corresponding quality of a society). Or you can hide up in the mountains and never pay a red cent of taxes. But then you do not get the benefits of the deal either. But of course you would like all the perks but are too greedy to pay for them. Now, come to think of it, speaking about thieves ....
That is the logic of vicious, rabid animals, not civilized people. "Sociopathic" does not even begin to describe it...
Oh really? You mean they wanted a "society" where people "walk across the road and piss" on those who have a heart attack? Could you offer some quotes from Jefferson or Payne on that?
These are all examples of loss of control over taxation due to political corruption, and have nothing whatsoever to do with "socialism". A corrupt government in any political system will fuck the governed society up. So the problem is not with taxes it is with keeping governments accountable to their citizens, which is a whole different ball of wax.
Only in a jungle full of, and run by, jackals such as you. The hallmark of civilization, and the point of societies, is that they offer support to their members in time of need. You are what is called a "sociopath" and by the looks of things you would be much happier in a cabin somewhere in the woods with no contact with anyone. If the government cannot find you, you will get to pay no taxes and no one would expect a shred of humanity out of you, since you would be living as a vicious animal, which is apparently already your personality. Just do not come out of there. Rabid animals tend to get shot.
Yes, the typical howl of a self-absorbed, narcissistic idiot who thinks all (or even a majority) of people can control their lives. Yet another "self-made" man who "made" his own language, was fed his own milk as an infant, who created or paid for thousands of years of development of all of the stuff he uses daily etc and so on. I usually do not wish bad things to happen even to idiots like you, but in your case I will make an exception: may a bus blow a tire, swerve and hit you, crippling you and may you discover that your insurance and savings cover less then 10% of the cost of your treatment.
I have been running my own company probably longer then you have been alive. Which explains why I do remember things which are complete news to you. You would do much better to stuff all that Zhynovievna's drivel you've been reading in the garbage and read some history books for a change.
Actually, I have a request to all of bot-net operators out there: redeem yourselves.
There is a thing you can do to pay for your sins and help rescue the future of free speech and unrestricted communications: Use your botnets to spread false positives!
Make sure that every PC that you have a bot on has: a) random political messages, b) random terrorist messages, c) random child pornography, d) random pirated media, e) any other "taboo" crap like cartoons of the "prophet" Mohammad.
Ensure that your bots create credible traces in history caches of web browsers, email clients, deleted files on the file system etc.
If all the millions of infected PCs out there are treated like that, you will make witch hunts and mass persecutions impossible, or at least short lived after every second judge and politician or their family member is caught in the net.
Do this and I will forgive you all the spam. Hell, I will go out and order random crap from spa... err "offers"!
No, its a fee that you pay for the privilege of partaking in society. Bob's new heart will enable him to go and make contributions which then might (or might not) affect you, but will affect someone else, who in turn might affect you etc. The alternative is dog-eat-dog jungle where all (but the richest assholes) who get sick die destitute. Sort of like America today...
Yes the nasty gubmint is giving away houses and cars to every illegal Mexican!
And don't forget all them illegal-alien-friendly channels on basic cable! Oh, wait, its actually a private enterprise that is making you pay for all them cable channels! Paragons of "free market", the agents of the "invisible hand"! Oh dear!
... and roads and bridges and the police and firefighters and ...
I have news: its called "society". The only way for you to hoard 100% of your loot and not to ever pay anything for the privilege of participating is to ... stop participating. I hear the hermit cabins up in the woods somewhere in Montana are still going strong. Just make sure that you do not infringe on "personal space" of some other lunatic or he will accuse you of being a "Commie", and he probably has a working (unlike his brain) shotgun.
Oh, that's right, but you wanna participate, reap all the benefits of a society without paying a penny for it .... I get it, Mr. Free Loader.
Yes, yes, like all those who went under in the late 1940s through late 1960s when top tax rates were 90%, no? Oh, wait, was that not the most prosperous time in American history ever?