| > 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. |