Are Taxes Theft?

[CreamCat]

In theory, it's possible for the government to not collect tax if human labor is not needed.

When human labor is not needed, the government could give a certain amount of money to people every month in order to maintain control.

Tax is convenient when human labor is needed.

What if AIs take care of the vast majority of administrative tasks? What if human labor is not needed?

Tax is not the only way to maintain peace and order. The government can exist without tax.

Edited June 4, 2019 by CreamCat

[Norbert Lennartz]

One last loving attempt.

What is wrong with laissez faire?
Is it greed, fear, ignorance, ideology or laissez faire?

What is order?

Greed, fear, ignorance, ideology, aggression, blackmail - is it order or disorder?

Laissez faire, voluntary cooperation, respect, decency - Is it in conflict with love or with order?

Are you really all so stupid?

[Shadowraix]

@Norbert Lennartz Doesn't seem very loving when you shut down genuine inquiries about this stuff but you instead call it trolling, ignorance, or stupidity dismissively without actually addressing it. 

Did you come here as a preacher of your own political ideologies? You'll never have other people at least see where you are coming from unless you actually open up to engaging in conversation. But instead you use the same labels you once dismissed as illusory identities in another thread. 

[Norbert Lennartz]

What more can I say?
It is not about being right. It is about wanting to understand the most important thing of all. Amen.

[Norbert Lennartz]

6 minutes ago, Shadowraix said:

Doesn't seem very loving when you shut down genuine inquiries about this stuff but you instead call it trolling, ignorance, or stupidity dismissively

when it is?

straw man fallacy

[Norbert Lennartz]

9 minutes ago, Shadowraix said:

own political ideologies

For my part, it would have been a political discussion if I had addressed the traps that had been set.

[ajasatya]

On 03/06/2019 at 0:17 PM, UDT said:

Are Taxes Theft?

Short answer: no.

Taxes are used to maintain the social structure. Do you like having lights on at night? Do you like having streets to drive through? Do you like public education? Do you like public health services? Do you enjoy having police to protect you from raids, robberies and murderers? Do you think it's important to have a public justice system that works?

Mankind is evolving slowly. We will gradually achieve a better and better society. Taxes are a great idea. There are two major problems, though:

1. We're born in a society that has its own modus operandi. If all of your answers to my questions above were "no", then you might as well just go live on your own in the jungle. Or maybe even start your own community (there are plenty alternative communities out there);
2. The average human creature is easily corruptible. It's very likely that people will just screw up and do wrong things with the huge amount of money that's collected from taxes.

[outlandish]

Do you like having roads? Do you like having a civil society where you rarely have to worry about being murdered? Do you enjoy having a long lifespan, free of diseases like malnutrition, cholera, malaria? Do you believe that all children in a society should have a right to receive an education? Do you enjoy being free of the tyranny of warlords? Do you prefer having a sewage system, rather than pouring your feces onto the street?

If the answer to those questions is no, then you should move to Somalia, and see how nice it is to not pay taxes.

Shit ain't free.

[Moreira]

@UDT Where do you live and how much you earn per month?

[Norbert Lennartz]

It's no coincidence that a state monopoly works like a mafia syndicate. The mafia produces security. And if it can do that long enough, then it does it a bit far, so people say, wow, yes, without them I wouldn't know how to do that. Al Capone opens soup kitchens, which he did. After a while everyone says, oh, look, he's good to us. How else could we have managed that? 
What kind of stupid argument is that?
You are occupied with opinions. And then you think, if enough voices come together, then that's probably right. Are you stupid? In Germany we now have knife stabbers and rapists to supply, because public opinion about immigration has turned 180 degrees in a short time without any apparent reason. And this is just one example among many things that all go down the drain. The grandma then still chooses a Christian Nazi successor party, because she doesn't know otherwise.
The Fiat Money system alone. Anyone could know that this is a fake money system. But nothing happens. Are you kidding me because social development takes time? These systems will all have to collapse at some point.

But now I've told way too much stuff.
You have to deal with metaphysics.
What is absolute?

Instead I hear, yes, Laissez faire is of course a political ideology. Voluntary cooperation is a dangerous political ideology. Sure. The love associated with it must be a political ideology.
But democracy, no, that is not an ideology. Democracy is God. The state is God.
Coercion is a great idea to do something very social. Not to catch criminals, no, to let criminals in, or yet, but only small fish, we build roads with it, we build schools with it, we bake bread with it and in the end do a lot of stupid stuff with it.

 

[CreamCat]

12 hours ago, Shiva said:

Can you describe a scenario where human labor is not needed?

Have you heard of AI singularity? AIs are eventually going to automate every dirty job that humans don't want to do.

Money helps distribute finite resources. Even with AIs automating jobs, resources are still going to be finite.

AIs are not going to turn finite resources into infinite resources.

Edited June 5, 2019 by CreamCat

[CreamCat]

5 hours ago, ajasatya said:

Taxes are used to maintain the social structure. Do you like having lights on at night? Do you like having streets to drive through? Do you like public education? Do you like public health services? Do you enjoy having police to protect you from raids, robberies and murderers? Do you think it's important to have a public justice system that works?

Taxes are not the only way to have lights on at night. It is only one way. When AIs are running everything automatically, humans won't need to tax others. Actually, the government can hand out money to people in order to maintain control and account for resources when AIs do almost everything.

Anything is possible with God. God allows governments to exist without tax.

[kieranperez]

What needs to be corrected is where and what that money is invested in. 

You are part of a system whether you like it or not and it is a necessary creation and system (that you created... out of Love - not going to go there though). One that needs to have both more consciousness and "upgrade" in a more evolved and holistic perspective needs, values, etc. 

Americans don't appreciate just how low our taxes really are. When people on the right bring up examples of how JFK reduced taxes by 21% they don't admit or are just ignorant of the fact that the tax rate was at 91% and he brought it down to 70%! If our species, other species, our environment, and our planet our going to survive despite the damage we've done onto it and ourselves, it will be largely because we change our system and one of the only ways we're really going to change our system in practice is through how and what we invest our money in. This world of unchecked capitalism where Amazon pays NOTHING for taxes isn't going to fly. 

Everything that you do in this system, somebody is paying for it. 

[Shadowraix]

7 hours ago, Norbert Lennartz said:

when it is?

straw man fallacy

See: your reply to me just saying it's not worth replying to. I tried to start a dialogue with you and it got dismissed as trollery. 

[kieranperez]

On 6/3/2019 at 0:33 PM, Nic Terpstra said:

Complaining about taxes is as old as taxes 

LOL

[Shadowraix]

4 hours ago, Norbert Lennartz said:

It's no coincidence that a state monopoly works like a mafia syndicate. The mafia produces security. And if it can do that long enough, then it does it a bit far, so people say, wow, yes, without them I wouldn't know how to do that. Al Capone opens soup kitchens, which he did. After a while everyone says, oh, look, he's good to us. How else could we have managed that? 
What kind of stupid argument is that?
You are occupied with opinions. And then you think, if enough voices come together, then that's probably right. Are you stupid? In Germany we now have knife stabbers and rapists to supply, because public opinion about immigration has turned 180 degrees in a short time without any apparent reason. And this is just one example among many things that all go down the drain. The grandma then still chooses a Christian Nazi successor party, because she doesn't know otherwise.
The Fiat Money system alone. Anyone could know that this is a fake money system. But nothing happens. Are you kidding me because social development takes time? These systems will all have to collapse at some point.

But now I've told way too much stuff.
You have to deal with metaphysics.
What is absolute?

Instead I hear, yes, Laissez faire is of course a political ideology. Voluntary cooperation is a dangerous political ideology. Sure. The love associated with it must be a political ideology.
But democracy, no, that is not an ideology. Democracy is God. The state is God.
Coercion is a great idea to do something very social. Not to catch criminals, no, to let criminals in, or yet, but only small fish, we build roads with it, we build schools with it, we bake bread with it and in the end do a lot of stupid stuff with it.

 

Our systems have grown as humans have developed themselves. Do you think an alternative is really viable when most people are stage blue and orange? I could envision radical changes at green and yellow. 

[Apparition of Jack]

6 hours ago, Norbert Lennartz said:

It's no coincidence that a state monopoly works like a mafia syndicate. The mafia produces security. And if it can do that long enough, then it does it a bit far, so people say, wow, yes, without them I wouldn't know how to do that. Al Capone opens soup kitchens, which he did. After a while everyone says, oh, look, he's good to us. How else could we have managed that? 
What kind of stupid argument is that?
You are occupied with opinions. And then you think, if enough voices come together, then that's probably right. Are you stupid? In Germany we now have knife stabbers and rapists to supply, because public opinion about immigration has turned 180 degrees in a short time without any apparent reason. And this is just one example among many things that all go down the drain. The grandma then still chooses a Christian Nazi successor party, because she doesn't know otherwise.
The Fiat Money system alone. Anyone could know that this is a fake money system. But nothing happens. Are you kidding me because social development takes time? These systems will all have to collapse at some point.

But now I've told way too much stuff.
You have to deal with metaphysics.
What is absolute?

Instead I hear, yes, Laissez faire is of course a political ideology. Voluntary cooperation is a dangerous political ideology. Sure. The love associated with it must be a political ideology.
But democracy, no, that is not an ideology. Democracy is God. The state is God.
Coercion is a great idea to do something very social. Not to catch criminals, no, to let criminals in, or yet, but only small fish, we build roads with it, we build schools with it, we bake bread with it and in the end do a lot of stupid stuff with it.

 

It honestly sounds like you're just salty that you're not part of this "mafia" that you speak of. "The lady doth protest too much" and all that.

Edited June 5, 2019 by Apparation of Jack

[Norbert Lennartz]

6 hours ago, Shadowraix said:

Our systems have grown as humans have developed themselves. Do you think an alternative is really viable when most people are stage blue and orange? I could envision radical changes at green and yellow. 

The question you should ask yourself is, how would I develop myself if I had to do it against my expectations? So as not to be surprised by any external events. For example, that crypto technology suddenly makes tax revenues impossible. Or that the monasteries are confiscated, as Henry VIII of England did. Or the currency collapses so that you can find the notes in the gutter like in Venezuela.

Edited June 5, 2019 by Norbert Lennartz

[UDT]

16 hours ago, Shiva said:

No, because if I had to pay 1 million in taxes, image how much I must've earned.

Even at 90% tax rate, I'd still be left with at least 100k net income, which I wouldn't mind having 

But you earned 1,1M $ and youre left with 100K . . . and youre happy with that ? Seems nonsense

[Norbert Lennartz]

@Shiva

The same nonsense as saying, I let children die peacefully through my taxes in Iraq, as long as I stay alive.