Police services, fire services, subsidizing families who can't afford food + gas + monthly bills, subsidizing students who can't afford school, the ability to help offset a recession (issue extra tax refunds)...
The existing system has many advantages. What are some advantages of taxless governance?
The brilliant thing about "the existing system" is that no matter how bad a job it does, those failures are used as an excuse to justify taking even more money to "fix" the problem created by the system.
You seem to assume that all of those services would not exist without the current system. This seems to assume that there's only one possible way to fund things.
There are historical examples of all of these (except "offsetting recessions") being funded privately, and arguably producing much better results.
As for "offsetting recessions", the recessions and general economic malaise we experience are directly attributable to the current systems distortions of the market, particularly the monetary system.
Naturally, the current system spends a great deal of effort telling people that the current system is the best system. This is not unique to the USA. People in most countries, from Saudi Arabia to North Korea, from Bolivia to New Zealand, think their country (and its "system") is one of the better ones. In large part this is because one of the first things any government takes over is education.
I believe that if the US had held to the system it was intended to have in the constitution, we would have eliminated poverty by 1940, the great depression never would have happened, and everyone's effective purchasing power would be an order of magnitude better.
The poverty line is $16k or so, right? If people today who earned $16k had the purchasing power of someone who earns $160k, then they wouldn't exactly be poor. That difference can be accounted completely by the distortion in economics and poor finance and operational results of the US government.
> I believe that if the US had held to the system it was intended to have in the constitution, we would have eliminated poverty by 1940, the great depression never would have happened, and everyone's effective purchasing power would be an order of magnitude better.
Lots of people believe lots of things. What reason is there for anyone else to adopt your beliefs on these points?
Sorry, while I said "I believe", I should have stated it as a fact, as I consider it essentially proven by economics.
I suggest you read Man, Economy and State by Murray Rothbard. But if you want something shorter and quicker, try Economics in One lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Both are available free online.
I'm sure you think those works indirectly make your argument, but what I'd really like to see is:
1) Your definition of "the system [the US] was intended to have in the constitution" (including how, in concrete terms, it differs from the status quo and your justification for the assertion that the system you describe was, in fact, what was intended in the Constitution), and
2) The argument (which can be brief and supported by appropriate citations to other works) that you believe has "proven" "as a fact" that that system would have the effect you claim.
If you read the constitution, there's a section called the Enumerated Powers Clause that gives the federal government very specific, limited powers. If we had kept to that system, the federal government would not be swallowing the economy, and we'd be much better off.
Consider this- the federal governments debt alone (including unfunded liabilities) is more than the amount of US dollars in circulation.
> If you read the constitution, there's a section called the Enumerated Powers Clause that gives the federal government very specific, limited powers.
This name is sometimes given to Article I, Sec. 8, which gives Congress certain powers, but is not the only part fo the Constitution providing powers to the federal government -- or even Congress specifically -- powers (as well as limitations other places in the Constitution that apply even to the exercise of the powers enumerated in Art. I, Sec. 8 or elsewhere) are provided throughout the Constitution, so it is completely untenable to describe a federal government whose power is defined solely by those powers assigned to Congress in Article I, Sec. 8 ("the Enumerated Powers Clause") as "the system [the US] was intended to have in the Constitution".
> Consider this- the federal governments debt alone (including unfunded liabilities) is more than the amount of US dollars in circulation.
The total debt held by the public (you are using a bit of nonstandard terminology, so I'm not sure what you mean to include or exclude) is about 10 times the amount of US currency in circulation, and the total public debt is closer to 15 times the amount of currency in circulation, but I have trouble finding any remotely plausible reason for considering any particular ratio of those two numbers important.
I believe it is still the case that most fire departments in the US are either for-profit or volunteer. Tax-funded departments tend to be a LOT more expensive and less innovative than private or other voluntarily-funded ones. The best new ideas tend to come out of the for-profit firefighting sector and then spread to the city-run ones.
The chief advantage of paying by subscription in a market for services like fire protection is that you don't have to pay for services you don't need and there is a profit incentive for efficient and effective customer service. Private firms can't just automatically raise their rates and FORCE everyone to pay the new rate, so they have to actively LOOK for ways to save money on an ongoing basis. Police patrols are in a similar situation - when you include building security, most police in the US are privately funded, and the private ones are lot less likely to bust into your house and set your baby on fire and much more likely to be polite and reasonable and helpful.
If you want more info on how either of those work, I recommend to you a book called The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State that goes into a fair amount of detail on how much our system ALREADY relies on successful but overlooked free-market provision of police, fire departments, courts and other services.
If you want more on the practical, logical CASE for doing so - including some interesting historical precedents - I recommend a book written by the son of Milton Friedman called The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism - the new updated edition should be out in a few months.
Not having the advantages and disadvantages of the existing system sold to us as a bundled package, perhaps?
You really have to consider the whole budget, in its entirety, and compare the amounts spent on those things you find to be worthwhile, and those things that you abhor, along with the actual results yielded from that spending. Different people will have different opinions, and therefore produce different numbers when calculating the net value of government, by subtracting disadvantages from advantages.
Pretend that government is a cable company. Some people like the social justice channel, and the safety net channel, and the environmental protection channel. Other people like the foreign wars of choice channel, the temperance channel, the religious non-interference channel. And some people like the robust infrastructure channel, the rule of law channel, and the tedious indie film channel. (Someone has to, I suppose.)
Most customers would prefer to only pay for channels that they typically watch. But then some of the less popular channels would have to be dropped. The cable company executives really like those unpopular channels, so they work together to ensure that customers cannot buy the channels they actually want unless they are bundled with all those other channels. And they set the price really high, because all those cool guys walking away from explosions on the war channel and the heartwarming tales of people overcoming adversity on the social justice channel cost a lot of money.
When people don't like the real cable company, they can get satellite, or an over-the-air antenna, or tv-over-fiber service, or online streaming, or buy and rent DVDs, or pirate shows. But in this metaphor, you could still get those things, but you still have to pay for the cable bundle anyway, whether you like it or not.
Can you see any advantage to not forcing a person who hates watching football to buy the NFL Sunday Ticket, even if you really like watching football? Remember, that guy is making it less expensive for you to watch.
Police, fire etc. are all instances of "insurance". The only difference is that some insurance is voluntary and some is forced upon you and you have to pay. The real question is: what is the moral basis for violently making people pay for certain services and pay voluntarily for others. Communists are at least consistent: everyone should be forced to pay for all services and all of them are provided by benevolent all-powerful Bureaucracy. Why should we have x% of communism and not 100% or 0%?
It seems like the moral basis for forcing payment of police and fire services via taxes is to prevent thugs and fire from being disastrous. It wouldn't work to let a housefire burn just because the owner couldn't afford a fireman, because the fire could spread to the whole neighborhood. Similarly, if police required payment on demand, then thugs would prey off those who can't afford this protection.
You don't actually need to force payment for fire. Fire protection is provided by private voluntary for-profit companies in many areas and it's a valuable enough service that when you borrow money for a mortgage the insurance company generally requires you to have fire insurance and the fire insurance policy in turn requires a fire service subscription, so the free market has created a system where most people just by default are subscribers and the subscription payment is taken out of their mortgage payment with no government force involved at any stage.
Then if there's a fire and you're somehow NOT a subscriber you can still call and have them to put out the fire anyway so long as you're willing to reimburse the full (retail) cost of doing so (which is quite expensive!) or your neighbors can call to have them come and stand by to make sure the fire doesn't escape your property to protect the rest of the neighborhood.
Police protection is a similar thing - best paid for by subscription in advance rather than on a case-by-case basis.
Efficiency. Actually let me back up, to me a property tax makes more sense for police and fire services. But for the rest, it's more efficient to just give money directly to families than to fund a government agency to do it for you. And issuing tax refunds wouldn't be necessary in a recession - after all, it's not really an economic stimulus, but removing the economic drain that taxes are in the first place.
Are you sure the root of economic problems like 2008 was taxation?
EU colleges are compelling, because their students graduate without a burden of debt to be repaid over a decade or more. It's unlikely any private system could fund all students in a country for no returns (other than the benefits of an educated population).
> But for the rest, it's more efficient to just give money directly to families than to fund a government agency to do it for you.
Is that so? I'm sure that in many areas, this would immediately exclude many people of wrong colour/country of origin/sexual orientation. One thing that a normal democratic system is the protection of minorities.
Well, it could help. The problem with a democracy is that if the majority is bigoted, then the money is taken from a less-bigoted minority and applied unequally. And in any kind of government, if an elected or appointed official is bigoted, then policies set can get biased too.
It's certainly a possible improvement, but it's not an absolute one.
I feel a growing sense that it's not so much a property of a 'normal democratic system' that minorities are protected, but rather that other processes enshrined these values (including democracy) in institutions.
And while democracy does quite likely facilitate the institutionalization of these processes, it's 'causal' role in this is perhaps weaker than we think.
This is the reason why I often worry about the growing xenophobia and populism in political activity. It seems much more the case that politicians sway popular opinion than the other way around, creating tempest in teapots, some of which become 'societal issues' that really aren't.
It's also a reason why I've become curious (but still quite skeptical, I must admit) about these 'alternative' democratic approaches that don't assume voting (and by extension majority rule) to be the basis of democracy.
That said, I might be saying colossally silly things here. I'm in an armchair.
Please correct me, or point me to interesting resources, as I am very invested in this topic.
False dichotomy. When the government takes up to %50 of a poor person's income in taxes (both direct and indirect), the claim that not taking half their income would result in them dying in the street seems a bit silly.
The existing system has many advantages. What are some advantages of taxless governance?