Income v. Consumption taxes

[markvee]

Markvee, clearly Hans-Hermann Hoppe knows little more about these issues that you do if he thinks the post office is a public good. Likewise with his other examples. I suggested that you google the term “public good” to try to learn something about the concept. Clearly, you are not a good judge of sources (hell even Wikipedia would have been better). I would take the time to educate you if I had not wasted far too much time doing so in the past. You have your beliefs and I have facts. Sort of like the difference between a religious person and a non religious person. By all means keep your beliefs. However, if you ever do decide to educate yourself, there are plenty of sources you could start here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good. If you decide not to, that is your business.

You are confusing facts with an appeal to the authority of wikipedia. However, I can still make my arguments using the wikipedia instead of Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

Definition of public goods:
"This is the property that has become known as Non-rivalry. In addition a pure public good exhibits a second property called Non-excludability: that is, it is impossible to exclude any individuals from consuming the good."

So called public goods that have been provided privately:
You stated that Hans-Hermann Hoppe knows little about these issues if he thinks the post office is a public good. Likewise with his other examples. However, lighthouses are provided as an example of so called public goods by both Hoppe and the wikipedia article you referenced:
"Common examples of public goods include: defense and law enforcement (including the system of property rights), public fireworks, lighthouses, clean air and other environmental goods, and information goods, such as software development, authorship, and invention."
I use the term so called because public goods because Hoppe used historical examples of alleged public goods, as in not alleged by him. He argues that the distinction between public and private goods is illusory in the paragraph entitled "The problem of determination" from my original reference. In your wikipedia reference, Murray Rothbard questions whether defense is a public good:
"'national defense' is surely not an absolute good with only one unit of supply. It consists of specific resources committed in certain definite and concrete ways—and these resources are necessarily scarce. A ring of defense bases around New York, for example, cuts down the amount possibly available around San Francisco."

Why public goods are a waste of resources:
"Regardless of the method of providing public goods, the efficient level of such provision is still being subjected to economic analysis. "
One possible analysis is that so called public goods are most efficiently provided by the free market.

Jumping back to my original reference to Hoppe's essay, Hoppe also references Rothbard in arguing against the notion that production of public goods is an exception to primarcy of free market efficiency: “... such a view completely misconceives the way in which economic science asserts that free-market action is ever optimal. It is optimal, not from the standpoint of the personal ethical views of an economist, but from the standpoint of free, voluntary actions of all participants and in satisfying the freely expressed needs of the consumers. Government interference, therefore, will necessarily and always move away from such an optimum.”

 

[markvee]

Imagine a world with public goods/services...

You wake up in the morning in your house, better hope it is all OK, because of course their are no building codes and no building inspectors to make sure they are ok when build. You go to have your shower--oh no, the company you hired to supply you water had a main break down the street and the neighbour whose land it is under won't come to terms with your water company to allow them access to the pipes to fix it.

Wander downstairs for breakfast, get your food ready but you ponder how safe the food is, after all there is no government authority to regulate the food industry. You did get horribly sick once so you exercised your property rights and sued the big food company, of course with the inbalance in you resources you got crushed in court. A court that you had to pay a substantial fee to bring a lawsuit in front of. You always wondered whether the corporations paying significant retainer fees to the courts has any influence on how they make their decisions?

Well get dressed and hop in the car...man the drive to work is expensive as you electronic toll negotiator blimps everytime you enter the property of each landholder along your path. Some of the stretches are getting very hard to negotiate since their owners have really neglected the upkeep of those stretches. The intersections where the owners can't come to terms on right of way are quite dangerous.

But speaking of danger, the roaming bands of thieves, rapists and murders are quite troublesome. You are quite angry that although you have signed up for an annual prison retainer fee very few of the other people have so there is nowhere for people convicted to go. Course there are very few people convicted these days, what with the cost to the victim of pursuing a criminal trial through the private court system. Of course you can then sue the criminal for the cost through the private civil courts---surprisingly very few of the criminals end up having the money to reimburse the cost of the trial or the financial settlements order for infringement of your property rights to your body, property and rights.

Oh well, you manage to get your job. You hear the company is unilaterally changing the work conditions again. You do miss the days when you had some sense that your workplace was safe, but at least their are no interfering government bureaucrats meddling in the affairs in your company. And you feel comfort in knowing if you are killed on the worksite your heirs can sue the company for compensation, but oh yeah again that problem of the inbalance in the court system

Well maybe better killed than seriously injured--then you really would have problems. The very high costs of completely private health system really worry you and course there is no support for you if you have no income for any period.

You ponder taking a vacation some day. But the airports have all shut down since the airspace all become private property over each individual piece of land, there was really no way to negotiate fees for millions of acres the planes fly over. Well with no regulation, inspection and rules the planes started to have serious rate of crashing anyway. Maybe a get away to just the local mountains--very expensive drive but you need it. Then you remember your buddy who went hiking but suffered a fall. You understand he passed away while talking on his cell phone negotiating with the different search and rescue companies to get one of them to come to his aid at a price he could afford.

Oh well back home. Man there is a lot of garbage around! Sure there are plenty of private garbage pickup firms, but surprisingly many of your neighbours haven't signed up with any and just leave the garbage laying around. None better fall on your property or you will sue! Oh oh...what's this bad cough you are developing? What with the garbage piles and the open sewers (your area couldn't find a new company to install a new one after the last company failed and people want to much to dig under their property.) you have heard that the Black Plague has returned. Too bad there is no public health anymore to track and fight off these such things. Well at least as you begin to slip away into the "big sleep" you feel comfort in knowing that old, antiquated, inefficient ideas of government, taxes and public goods was abolished...

I'm fear mongered.

 

[markvee]

Logic tells me that if you make it voluntary for me, I will not pay & neither will most others.

I do not like the monopoly aspect of the service delivery as that has lead to wasteful spending and fat-cat unions gouging the public purse while they are protected from competition
I think we should open up more services to competition

However, voluntary remittance of taxes, just plain will not work
Thats pie in the sky thinking, ignores human nature / behaviors and is not practical

If you accept that all so called public goods are better delivered under a free market than under a coercive government monopoly then you must ask yourself to what ends the taxes are being collected in the first place.

I like this bit from the wikpedia entry on Hoppe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe
'Defining a government as "a territorial monopolist of jurisdiction and taxation" and assuming no more than self-interest on the part of government officials, he predicts that these government officials will use their monopoly privileges to maximize their own wealth and power.'

 

[JohnLarue]

Again, you are not being practical
I do not like the level we are taxed at and do nt feel we get value for our taxes

Taxes are not going away, deal with that reality & focus on whining about the value you receive for your taxes
No sense fighting a battle you can not possibly win.

 

[someone]

You are confusing facts with an appeal to the authority of wikipedia

I am starting with the basic fact that you understand knowing about the issues involved and thus wikipedia would be as good a starting point for you as any other source available to you. However, like a religious person, you see know need to learn about facts when you have your beliefs to comfort you. As I say, if your beliefs provide you comfort, by all means stick with them. I have often thought religious people are happier just accepting their beliefs rather than trying to think for themselves.

If you accept that all so called public goods are better delivered under a free market than under a coercive government monopoly then ..

In general, only an idiot could accept that so the rest of your post is irrelevant.

 

[markvee]

Again, you are not being practical
I do not like the level we are taxed at and do nt feel we get value for our taxes

Taxes are not going away, deal with that reality & focus on whining about the value you receive for your taxes
No sense fighting a battle you can not possibly win.

The best value I could receive for my taxes would be to have the money returned to me in its entirety to be spent by me voluntarily.

My whining won't accomplish increased efficiency because government doesn't respond to feedback any better than it does anything else. Also, I am an individual, not a free market, so my suggestions for improved government would really only amount to another version of inefficient central planning.

Why not avoid being taxed in the first place?

 

[JohnLarue]

.

Why not avoid being taxed in the first place?

Because it is not ever going to happen
Taxes are here to stay, deal with it or you will be forever disappointed

 

[markvee]

Because it is not ever going to happen
Taxes are here to stay, deal with it or you will be forever disappointed

I can argue against taxes to see if I will be swayed by arguments (not insults) for a class of goods that defy free market efficiency.

I can advocate against taxes while accepting the reality of paying taxes.

But should I give up on bawdy house laws and deal with not visiting incalls and MPs?

Or should I rather find ways to visit incalls and MPs irrespective of arbitrary moralistic laws

and hope that avoidance of the law becomes widespread to the point that enforcement becomes too costly to the law makers' coffers?

 

[Peter123]

I'm fear mongered.

?

what did I get wrong? You tell me how a day in the life of the tax free goes?

 

[Peter123]

The best value I could receive for my taxes would be to have the money returned to me in its entirety to be spent by me voluntarily.

My whining won't accomplish increased efficiency because government doesn't respond to feedback any better than it does anything else. Also, I am an individual, not a free market, so my suggestions for improved government would really only amount to another version of inefficient central planning.

Why not avoid being taxed in the first place?

Yeah Markvee you are just a man born 10,000 years too late. You would have really enjoyed those pre-tax, pre-civilization days. Disappointing that we started those cities and began taxing. Had we stayed living in a hunter gatherer or early agricultural times, what a utopia we would enjoy!!

 

[JohnLarue]

Consumption tax is best for the taxpayer; but, won't raise enough money for govenment.
QUOTE]

Perhaps the government should learn how to get by on 20% less
There is soooo much waste in government, (a million dollars in overtime for MPs limo drivers for sitting and waiting)- get rid of the limos & take a cab or better yet , set an example & take public transit
I can guarantee that those that spend our tax dollars are much more frugal and careful with their own money