This is a bit tangential, @suesa, but you said:
But you know what? I still think taxes are important, I still think health care should be universal and especially government funded.
Taxation is theft! Burn the witch!
Nah, but seriously, I share your dream of healthcare for all but I'm not so optimistic about it unless we can all agree to do it voluntarily. It's impossible to ignore the effect that cryptocurrency can have on a government's ability to levy taxes. In my view, the invention of cryptocurrency, especially coins with in-built privacy like Monero, is a Pandora's Box which, if successful, will eventually result in either:
- governments losing the necessary power to compel the rich to help the needy on the government's terms, or
- governments using the momentum they have today to sabotage our efforts at removing that power from them.
Perhaps this is a false dichotomy, but I don't see it, because the very possibility to evade taxes with impunity means most people (or at least, most money) will. Naturally, as a cryptocurrency enthusiast, the first option wins my vote, hands down. Some people might think I'm a monster for that. But I believe our collective freedom and agency is worth more than any one life, or collection of lives. There is precedent for this-- the founders of the United States of America believed the same thing.
Perhaps that means that good, caring people will have to choose to be less prosperous than the selfish. Or perhaps when the time comes, there will be a people's rebellion against the plutocracy. Regardless, I think we have to work as a society to figure out how we can help people in a post-taxation world.
Well said.
To be honest, I haven't been an adult for long yet. I'm 21 and, thanks to steemit, I now have to pay taxes for the first time. And I already know why people say it's "theft", why should I give my hard-earned money to the state?
And then I remember that my whole bachelor degree cost me about 1600€ in fees, total. I remember that I can see my doctor whenever, that the streets here are fixed and clean, the police comes when called and actually does their job and I'll be receiving money from the state when I finish my degree and can't immediately find a job.
So I grit my teeth, declare every cent I earned and pay up.
Maybe that's one problem in many other countries: the taxes aren't used in an appropriate way. Especially in the USA! The stories about how you're basically in debt for life after school, how cities like Detroit just fall apart and so on, they paint a picture of taxes not well spent.
And I'm not sure if I'd be willing to to pay any there myself.
Under such circumstances, it'd probably really be better to get rid of taxation and rely on people helping each other voluntarily. Because it's already happening anyway. People start fundraisers to pay their student loans, they give food to food banks,...
The world isn't ideal, it never will be. And everything is just so damn hard, because there is always someone who messes everything up. Be it an individual or the state.
I'm one of the more reasonable libertarians (if you can even call me one). I believe that calling taxation theft is unproductive. I think one of the big pitfalls of mainstream libertarianism is the failure to understand the definition of government.
Government can be defined in layman's terms as the practice of pointing guns at people, taking their money, and using it to do things. We want to build a society where that doesn't happen, not one where corporations and criminals, absent the "legitimate" government to control them, end up holding those guns instead.
This is our last chance to get it right... we are building the next oligarchs, the last ones... here today. Who we choose to support and the technologies we embrace are critical.