Controversial opinion(s) 2

@Eternity My point is, you can get out.

@LordShadowfire I'm working on it. That isnt exactly a cake walk either and its by design. If the door was wide open over half the country would be gone in a week and then how would the congressmen afford to fly to private islands and have big child molesting parties?

@Eternity Yeah, okay, whatever. Don't let the doorknob hit you where the dog should have bit you.

@LordShadowfire Not trying to argue but I don't see why people think it's such a big problem not supporting taxes. I have to pay as well as everyone else. Just that I recognize it has major issues and is hardly fair. I could take home twice as much if it wasn't for that.

Most roads aren't maintained, most schools are underfunded. I fail to see how everyone's taxes can help with everything in the world, hence why things get less attention.

I think it's fine to have a job under the table where you don't got to pay taxes, I just don't care that much. But I still pay taxes. I just think it's an unfair system.

@SatanBurger I mean, I agree that the tax system is flawed. But simply refusing to participate because it has its warts strikes me as immature. If you think your tax dollars are going to the wrong place, get a bunch of people together and tell that to the people whose salaries your tax dollars are paying.

Idk. I mostly get mad at people like @Eternity because they tend to support other hot takes like "gay people shouldn't have equal rights"' or "women shouldn't have access to abortions". It's like "taxation is theft"' is a gateway philosophy to other, incredibly stupid things.

@LordShadowfire Do you know their views on abortion, gay rights and other things? I agree that views like that are common with certain people so I'm not disagreeing but I think that's irrelevant here in this conversation.

I think there's a better way for sure but also don't really care about tax and why should I pay it. I have to pay it though for sure

I'm not getting any benefits. I typically don't get anything that anyone else does. Like if I want food stamps I can't. I got told I made too much at 7 hourly lol, that was way back in the day.

Emergency services will still charge you up to 2,000 dollars per ambulance ride unless you got insurance and people still lose their houses to fire because insurance is too much to pay.

I don't get any benefits and honestly I've never have gotten anything.

I honestly don't know how people have benefits even, every time I've needed anything I've had to think of ways around it.

For me that's what it is.

@Eternity Anyways, I agree. I've actually entertained living off the land but people get arrested for that. There was a guy that because he wasn't paying for city electricity and finding ways to generate their own, they couldn't do that lol.

@SatanBurger [quote]Do you know their views on abortion, gay rights and other things? I agree that views like that are common with certain people so I'm not disagreeing but I think that's irrelevant here in this conversation.[/quote]
I'm referring specifically to Libertarians at the moment. People who claim to be about individual freedom, but generally tend to oppose the freedom of anybody different from themselves. And I admit to some bias myself, baste in large part on my numerous conversations with those folks.
(I'm not saying you. You seem like a reasonable, realistic individual who recognizes that the system has problems. As an example of the type I mean, there's that fella with the photo of the drummer from Cream as his profile picture.)

[quote]Emergency services will still charge you up to 2,000 dollars per ambulance ride...[/quote]
Not all of them, but you're right. There's a lot of them that do.

[quote]...people still lose their houses to fire because insurance is too much to pay.[/quote]
That actually doesn't have anything to do with taxes, although maybe it should.

Anyway, I'm sorry you can't seem to get the benefits that others enjoy. One of the numerous problems with our system.

@LordShadowfire tax evasion is as all american as it gets. Remember the boston tea party? That is essentially what that was all about.

And it was because the powers that be were demanding so much money from a people who they were failing to adequately represent the desires of. No taxation without representation.

Sound familiar?

Our political machine is broken. It doesnt work. The people we elect are in it for themselves, 9 times out of 10 they were born into an echelon of society that doesnt have any real issues and are therefore divorced from working class realities, and the few good ones that do make it into the machine are surrounded by enemies on all sides.

Disobedience is the next stage in the rules of engagement once political representation has failed. And I do believe it has indeed failed. It's patriotic to the original idea of the nation.

I pay taxes too. But only the ones I can't wriggle out of. Thats pretty civil if you ask me.

Its not like im advocating for full blown tax abandonment or violence against the state.

We simply must stop rewarding bad behavior. Things will never get better if the working class continues presenting its ass to be fucked.

@gol979 i agree with this mostly. The government should be responsible only for those things that are impractical for people to provide.

The bare necessities of life should be a guarantee provided you pull your weight, and those things should be produced and distributed directly by the people, to the people, via a decentralized network of communities.

Things in excess of the bare necessities can be produced by the market, which would be regulated naturally by the simple fact that participation in it would be optional (since the essentials are a given) and giving raw deals will lead to less participation and thereby less profit.

@Eternity Yes, because pure laissez-faire capitalism has always led to good results.

@LordShadowfire

Laissez faire means "allow to do"

And when a market can do [i]anything[/i] because [i]everything[/i] is within its grasp, you get the nightmare we currently live in.

But in a situation where the essential quadrant of people's lives is sectioned off from both the market and the government, and a government now devoid of a mass of human cattle is desperate for something to exert control over, the context of "allow to do" changes from "do whatever you want" to "do whatever you can...and good luck".

If the people were an actual player on the board, rather than pawns, the market would have to use means other than coercion to enlist their aid to keep the government at bay.

This has a historical precedent. The market and the people have joined forces before to hold off centralized authority. The hanseatic league is a very good example of this

The Lombard league was a similar arrangement but not quite the same.

Give the working class real options and leverage and the relationship between it and the market would change completely.

@Eternity You are mistaken. We do not have a laissez-faire economic system. We have a regulated economic system, with people trying to repeal the laws that are in place. The laissez-faire people like to say things like
[quote]Things in excess of the bare necessities can be produced by the market, which would be regulated naturally by the simple fact that participation in it would be optional (since the essentials are a given) and giving raw deals will lead to less participation and thereby less profit.[/quote]

Yes, I was directly quoting you to make a point.

@LordShadowfire [i]you[/i] are mistaken. We have an economic system that is essentially Laissez-Faire but it is [i]branded[/i] as a regulated economic system.

Every law and regulation has a loophole in it that allows the aristocracy to do whatever they please yet restricts the movements of the working class.

Laissez faire disguised as "regulated"

An oligarchy disguised as "democracy"

Thats what we've got.


You arent quoting me. You are removing snippets of what i say from its context in order to create a counter argument rooted in the strawman logical fallacy.

@Eternity And now I'm done. Because you do not wish to own your own statements.

@LordShadowfire call it what you want. I explained myself well and respectfully.

There can be no coercion where people have legitimate options that they can exercise at will.

If people did not depend on the market, the market would have absolutely no means of oppressing anyone.

@Eternity [quote]call it what you want. I explained myself well and respectfully.[/quote]
Yes, I agree. You explained very clearly that you think the market can correct itself without any regulation, and then you explained very clearly that I was somehow misquoting you when you said:
[quote]Things in excess of the bare necessities can be produced by the market, which would be regulated naturally by the simple fact that participation in it would be optional (since the essentials are a given) and giving raw deals will lead to less participation and thereby less profit.[/quote]

@LordShadowfire you left out this critical clarifier

[quote]But in a situation where the essential quadrant of people's lives is sectioned off from both the market and the government, and a government now devoid of a mass of human cattle is desperate for something to exert control over, the context of "allow to do" changes from "do whatever you want" to "do whatever you can...and good luck".
[/quote]

And this concept has been historically proven to be effective. Hence my reference to the hanseatic league.

@Eternity And your plan for funding essential services is...?

@LordShadowfire a combination of a barter system whereby people are compensated for their labor by being able to enjoy the product of others labor, and providing services in exchange for money to people who seek to continue living inside the market because the communal thing doesnt appeal to them.

Most likely services centered around education and training. Perhaps even capital investment.

Thats the theory i have running currently anyhow. As I said, I'm working on it. Still researching past attempts at similar concepts and putting together the best way to make another.