[fabbari]

I see a couple of straw-mans in the reasoning. First is the claim that taxation assumes that working you get paid for nothing - "When I work hard to earn money, I’m not getting something for nothing. I’m getting something for my time and my time has value." - that is not at all the point, the IRS doesn't assume that. You get paid for your time AND your skills AND your willingness to exchange both for value, whatever value you choose to receive.

Which takes us to the barter part of the essay.

There is a major difference between paying someone to do your chores or doing them yourself. What's the difference? The value you are willing to exchange not to do the chores yourself, of course. Be it lack of skills, lack of time or valuing that time spent doing something else more than what you're giving in exchange.

In other words: the IRS recognizes that you own your own time and are free to do with what you want, but when you exchange it for something of value - money, services, goods - you will be taxed on that value.

Not entering the discussion on taxes: both the lawn mowing person and the house cleaning person recognize that there is more value in the other's time for a given task than their own time, if and how much that differential in value should be taxed it's a different conversation.

[dsr_]

"You get paid for your time AND your skills AND your willingness to exchange both for value, whatever value you choose to receive."

Still leaving out one major part: the willingness of some other entity to trade your input for money at a mutually agreeable rate. You can be willing to trade 55 hours a week of high-quality work for $3 million a year and not find an employer.

[DarkNova6]

Taxes are the price we have to pay in order to live in a civilised society. Anybody change my mind...

[_heimdall]

That leads to a much bigger question. Can human society only be civilized if there's a government drawing boundaries and enforcing laws?

I've never liked the idea that we would devolve into chaos if our government wasn't there keeping us all in line. It assumes that a) there are some people who know what is best for all of us and b) that we're effectively signing up to live as animals in a zoo.

Don't get me wrong this isn't some anarchist dream, I don't want to find out what happens without a government. But I can't sign up for the idea that a government and its taxes are a fundamental requirement for any form of civilized society.

[DarkNova6]

I believe in inter-human relationships, trust and reputation. If you have a community of people where everybody knows everybody, you likely don't need greater authorities.

But that's not how the world works, and you will often deal with people from which you cannot know how trustworthy they are. Nothing stops a gang of thugs from outside to come steal and kill without repercussions.

There's some good research being done in regards to prisons in Calofirnia. And how an increase in prisoners has cause a massive deterioration in social conduct.

[_heimdall]

There is a bit of a chicken and egg problem there. Yes the society we have today is structured in a way that's dependent on a government authority, but that could very well be because we built this society alongside ever-growing governments.

Maybe the question doesn't matter now that this is where we're at, but at best I think it's be safe to say government taxes are necessary for the civilized society we have today.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Even the smallest human groups tend to end up with governments quite quickly. A tribal chief is a government. Taxes might not be necessary for the simplest governments that provide no services, but as soon as a government starts providing things for the people it governs it needs resources, and thus some way to acquire those resources.

[dsr_]

Taxes are /one of/ the prices we pay to live in a partially-civilized partially-capitalist society.

We are not aware of non-hypothetical long-term widespread high standard of living completely non-capitalist societies (yes, that's a bunch of qualifiers), but there is certainly a range of taxation, legal and social policies that work to varying degrees of success.

[JDEW]

…sure, but the discussion is about _where_ taxes a levied, and _how much_ taxes should be levied.

[dennis_jeeves1]

Taxes are not needed for a civilized society, somebody change my mind.