• Cryophilia@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    5 days ago

    Anyone who hates the concept of taxes should be barred from voting. Clearly, you’re too stupid to be allowed to participate.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      5 days ago

      I don’t hate the concept of taxes. I hate the concept of my taxes not actually going back into the community I live in and instead being used to line pockets and blow up middle eastern people.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        That’s fair, as long as you realize that some of it DOES actually go back to your community.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            Well you can’t just support your community. There’s a whole nation of communities. And you’ll need some sort of military to prevent others from coming and exploiting you.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      Taxation is only necessary in a country with a heavily privatized and widely stratified property distribution. The whole purpose of the tax system is to redistribute money between groups, by way of state spending. But if you don’t have these enormous strata to begin with, you don’t need crazy high tax rates to handle the rebalancing.

      Cuba and Laos has a very modest 20% top tax rate. Vietnam has the same top rate as the US, at 35%. North Korea doesn’t have any income tax at all. It’s countries like China and Japan and Germany (top rate 45% with a 20% cap gains rate) and the US (top rate 37% with a 15% cap gains rate) that need these higher brackets, because they’ve got these bloated upper classes.

      I could easily argue that taxation is just another kind of rent, and states are just another kind of landlord, in a country where the working class has no legal claim to any of the property it occupies. And that an ideal society would have many more free-at-point-of-service public utilities, such that cash (and the taxing thereof) had a diminished purpose.

      In a country where you’re compelled to chase a wage in order to have any kind of legal right to exist, the taxation of working-class wages really is awful and nobody should be punished for saying so. I’m all on board with eliminating taxation for anyone earning below the living wage. And I might go further, arguing for the abolition of private taxpaying businesses that depriving people of survival necessities.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        5 days ago

        You can be relieved of taxes as long as you’re barred from using anything paid for with taxes. No FDA regulations for you!

          • orrk@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            [starts to stretch insulin with paint thinner]

            every day it seems like people forget what things like the FDA are for, but hey, the snake oil salesmen love this state of affairs

            • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 days ago

              If I need testing for someone else’s insulin, I can get that for cheaper than the regulatory capture insulin. They don’t work for us.

              • orrk@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                3 days ago

                ah yes, use the totally legit bio-med test service down the road, due to the FTC not being a thing they can totally and without any repercussions just lie to you because they have a deal with the person selling you the insulin.

                Then again, you have been hoodwinked into some “regulatory capture” bullshit, in reality, insulin is so expensive in the USA because no one has the capital wants to sell it cheap, it’s a risk for minimal rewards, the demand is literally your life, so the cost can be as high as anyone wants it.

                as for the whole “but the free market” and “supply/demand”, do you think the people setting these prices don’t know what the prisoner’s dilemma is?

                • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 days ago

                  There is just so much going on here.

                  Are we discussing a situation in which only the FDA is gone, or complete anarchy?

                  Do you believe that regulatory capture is bullshit?

                  People knowing about a prisoner’s dilemma doesn’t make it go away.

                  • orrk@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    3 days ago

                    Are we discussing a situation in which only the FDA is gone, or complete anarchy?

                    the premise was no government services paid for by taxes, and without taxes there are no government anything.

                    Do you believe that regulatory capture is bullshit?

                    regulatory capture is commonly trodden out by people as an example of big government bad, when it doesn’t happen as often as these people like to pretend it does (take, for example, your misconception that the FDA is the cause of high insulin prices), not the fact that it is just a failure to deal with corruption.

                    People knowing about a prisoner’s dilemma doesn’t make it go away.

                    that’s the fun part tho, both parties knowing about the prisoner’s dilemma DOES make it go away, as the most successful models, over a longer set of games, tend to be Tit-for-Tat models

        • hark@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          Many more tax dollars are poured into the military industrial complex than actual regulation.

        • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          5 days ago

          Works for me! As long as Amazon will still deliver to my address, you can find me homesteading at my Uncle Ted cabin sending virtual mailbombs to fiat currency enthusiasts. Don’t come visit without an appointment though or you’ll be leaving in a box.

          • Soggy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            4 days ago

            They won’t, those roads are maintained by taxes and the internet infrastructure is subsidized.

            • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              4 days ago

              There goes my dream of being self sufficient. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

              I hope you’re happy.

            • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              5 days ago

              I didn’t do anything wrong though. No vote, no taxes, no use of publicly funded infrastructure, that was the deal. Amazon is a private company, they do pay taxes, so they can use the roads on my behalf.

              • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                5 days ago

                That’s the fun thing though, taxes pay for the legal system that protects you from both the state and other people. So you don’t get that either. Anyone including the FBI can roll up and smoke your ass and there’s nothing you can do about it.

                And I dunno what a virtual mailbomb is, but it sounds like something the FBI would care enough to stop.

                • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  5 days ago

                  And I dunno what a virtual mailbomb is, but it sounds like something the FBI would care enough to stop.

                  It’s just a funny word I made up for inconvenient free speech. Because it is my experience that right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) words at the right time can literally make a person blow up LOL

                  • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    4 days ago

                    Ah well. It will be difficult to talk to anyone, because the internet, postal service, and telecommunications are all subsidized by taxes.