[Nevermark]

You sound like someone who appreciates the costly systems that protect their property, but finds those “collective” efforts inconvenient to acknowledge.

“Property” is most definitely a social aspect of reality. It does not water down its usefulness, or moral rationale, to recognize that any view of property beyond “things you can physically defend without help from others” involves social agreements and efforts.

I don’t think dismissing others good points out of hand is the best way to communicate your own ideas.

Human beings benefit so much from social agreements it is profound. This is not news to game theorists, but some people seem to find it to be a bitter instead of sweet pill.

The question for the animal which creates exponentially more value for itself via many and varied social constructs, than any other animal, is to optimize positive sum social structures (in form and depth), and avoid and mitigate negative sums. Not deny their obvious existence or that our own existence (and freedom) as individuals and a species would be significantly curbed without them.

[richardanaya]

I do appreciate property and property rights (which I fund to be defended by my taxes). They are my only material means (aside from my bare hands) for achieving my values for myself and people I love.

If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.

There's nothing stopping you.

[Nevermark]

> There's nothing stopping you.

So true.

But at some level, people who live together have to be able to make some decisions together.

The top level of that is what we call “government”.

It complicates things that governments are as prone to dysfunction as any other structure. And that governments are often weakest at the job of improving themselves.

This is getting a bit abstract.

The specifics of what a government taxes and for what matter. The line would be only to tax for things that generate a net positive expected sum for all citizens, and only in cases where the positive sum is significant and only achievable as an agreement at the top level of society. And these systems are monitored and adapted or cancelled based on their actual, not envisioned, impact.

There isn’t going to be a general answer to the question of whether taxation is good or bad. Only cases where the net benefits are positive and negative. Real or imagined.

I share the view that blind redistribution does not deliver positive returns in reality or in any sober theory.

But the societal level returns we get, from real (not unmeasured, not just imagined or ideologically assumed) surpluses of common efforts, are a legitimate source for funding those efforts.

[sprucevoid]

> If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.

Such collective efforts are already underway. One is called the United States, a system where the legal construct property is bounded and compatible with taxation for public provision. The US is a club of people who have banded together for common goals and with democracy as a tool for updating the system. If you don't want to be part of that club then leave.

[richardanaya]

America was founded on respecting individual pursuit of life and protection of property. It's also not a democracy, it's a republic.

[Nevermark]

I don’t think you will find any disagreement on either point.

“Democracy” is often used as a general term for governments that in some sense are a delegation of citizen power. Even though a pure democracy would remove the delegation.

As a practical matter, the US model has devolved into a party-duocracy. Power at all levels has nearly completely centralized at the national level of each majority party. Of which there are only two. The extreme minimum of choice even for a Republic.

[amanaplanacanal]

It's a democratic Republic. We elect representative to make decisions for us, rather than meeting each day en masse to make decisions.

[sprucevoid]

Incorrect, it was founded with more goals than that. It also has the mechanism of democracy for updating over time, and such updates have added prosperity producing things like taxation for public provision of education, infrastructure and much more. Which means that the initial version of the technology called the United States have long since gotten various updates.

[theplague42]

Libertarians and mentally speed-running the invention of the nation-state: an iconic duo.