From: dlo@druwa.ATT.COM (OlsonDL)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.individualism,alt.activism
Subject: Re: Class Warfare is STUPID: (Was: : Where Have All the Liberals Gone?)
Date: 7 Apr 92 20:03:25 GMT

In article <167C1FA94.KENH@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu>, kenh@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (Ken Hudson) writes:
} Your case example is all wrong.  The government does not assess income
} tax on transactions; THAT would be a sales tax.

What about the transaction between my employer and me?  Or between me and
someone I hire?

} What the government
} does in the above case is say to the seller:  Collect all your receipts.

The transaction carried out between the other person and me is none of the
government's business.

} Now suppose you try conducting your transaction: 1) with no roadways
} or transportation to and from the site of transfer;

But I have already paid for my use of that road, either through tolls or
gasoline taxes.

} 2) with no court
} system to remedy a rip off by the seller;

If there is a ripoff, that will be remedied later.  Government has no
business forcing me or the other person to pay for court costs beforehand,
when there is no evidence that a ripoff will occur.

} 3) with no police protection
} while in transit to assure that muggers don't grab the bucks you were
} going to spend;

The police can't do that anyway.  If muggers want to steal my money, the
police can't do anything about it until after the crime has already been
committed.

} 4) with no bucks printed by a treasury (what are you
} going to do? carry around pure gold?);

While there are costs associated with printing currency, to imply that
these costs are proportional (let alone progressive) to their amount
is nonsense.  It costs no more to print a $100 bill than it does to print
a $1 bill.

Besides, the cost of that money has already been paid for -- government
has no further claim on it.

} 5) with no education to be
} able to count your dollars in the first place;

Education does not have to be provided by the government.  Besides, my
education has already been paid for.

} 6) with no regulatory
} agencies to set standards of quality which you could never test in
} your garage

Again, these do not have to be provided by the government.  Organizations
like Consumer Reports and UL do that quite well.  If there has to be such
an agency run by the government, I do not want it to do any more than test
and provide information about the safety, efficacy, and quality of a
product.  I am opposed to it's summarily mandating or banning that
product's existense.  If I don't want something in my life, I won't put
it there.  If I do want it, I'll put it there -- I don't need some damn
bureaucrat in Washington DC to do those for me.

} which probably burned down last week because there was
} no Fire Department which wouldn't have mattered anyway because there
} were no water lines to your house and you couldn't phone in the fire
} anyway, because government had never required universal service and
} no-one strung wires to your area because it was too sparsely populated
} for them to make a profit, etc. etc. etc.

Gak!  And all I really wanted out of this transaction was a loaf of
bread.

Look, this libertarian does not mind government providing law
enfocement, the courts, and defense, because they are used to protect
individual human rights.

I have a huge problem, however with the notion that it must also provide
fire protection, utilities, phones, food, education, etc, etc, etc.

I would much prefer a system in which people are either billed directly
for the services they get, or they pay for insurance which can fund those
services as they are needed.

I really object to a system that, in any transaction, forces me to purchase
something from the government, when that isn't what I wanted.
--
David Olson ...!att!druwa!dlo
"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they
can bribe the people with their own money."  Alexis de Tocqueville