Aug 21, 2010

The Inevitabilites

I don't know anything about death except that it's claimed too many people I love.

About taxes I know a little more, starting with my forced study of economics as it was understood by Keynes speaking through Paul Samuelson as taught by an academic  drone too dense to know why you pour piss out of a boot and too lazy to do it if he did. My education continued as a taxpayer who also had the professional  fortune to rub elbows with politicians, high and low.   To a man and woman  they loved the power to tax. They differed only in the power groups they wished to buy off.

Until an unlikely libertarian utopia flourishes, they're necessary to a limited extent. Defend what borders are needed. Support a court system of final resort. Enforce laws prohibiting the  initiation of violence including the  intellectual equivalent of violence, which is fraud. (You'll note the steal from Ayn Rand on the last point. No apologies; it is a thought too little discussed)

If there is one economic point to be drilled into the still educable  souls we run across, it is this:  Somewhere between most and all of our troubles result from the decision of governments that their taxing powers should not be limited by actual utility, that they should use their extortion  power to create social justice.

Pass this along to some statist redistrbutionist you know. If he can identify the politicians qualified to define "social justice," I shall recant.

2 comments:

Hilary said...

Tell me what a Libertarian Utopia would look like and how would my life be better for it?

Jim said...

Gladly, but first I must ask you to read, with an open mind, at least a few of the dystopian novels and the anti-Rousseaian treatises.

Or, if you already have read Rand's work, and Orwell's, and those of, say, Morris and Ardrey, please go back to them and consider their observations with the benefit now of a few years of adulthood.

The very short answer is that your degree of ownership of your mind and body varies inversely with the level of authoritarianism in your society.