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Originally Posted by flstf
Nope, they squated the land when it was open country and then built the house. The crooked polititians came along later and demanded money backed by threats of violent removal and/or imprisonment.
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How did squatting give them any rights to the land? We talking common law land squat+improvement, government land grants, or what? Aboriginals who pushed out previous Aboriginals?
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I think you are naive to not see that it is everywhere in the current group of polititians. Get in office by fixed elections and get rich. They almost all increase their net worth tremendously once they are in the ruling class.
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You said 100 times more expensive due to corruption. That's a 99% corruption rate. I stand by my statement that you massively overestimate corruption.
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I have no problem with human civiliization but the current ruling class are not civilized. They are organized criminals and they should go, I was born on this land and have every right to be here. Let them go somewhere and work for themselves. I suspect they'd die very shortly but I'd be just fine without them.
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You have no right to be here. You are not entitled to a chunk of land, security of the person, food, water, or happyness.
You can earn all of those, or recieve them unearned.
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I have told them to keep their overpriced resources but they still insist I pay them tribute.
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Then leave. Really, just get up and walk away. You probably have plenty of skills, there should be dozens of places around the world willing to exploit them for your mutual benefit.
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Originally Posted by asaris
I'm enjoying this discussion alot, so I don't want to say much, but I did want to note that I object to property taxes. It can be reasoned that the infrastructure which the government provides is essential to being able to provide for yourself and your family through a mutually beneficial contract with your employer, so they have the right to some of those taxes to maintain said infrastructure. But the same argument doesn't apply to property.
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I actually have a few justifications for property taxes.
First, properties require access. In cities at least, the amount of infrastructure a piece of property requires is large.
Second, land is a finite resource, unlike many others. Land not being used for the common good is something that can not be compensated by making land somewhere else.
A tarrif on land helps ensure that non-productive land gets moved to productive uses. A simular justification can be put forward for all wealth taxes.
Third, the value of land is dependant on a healthy society. A tarrif on the cost of maintaining that society seems just. This also applies to wealth tax.
Fourth, as a wealth tax, land-taxes are 'progressive' (using tax-jargon), which has certain benefits.
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Originally Posted by Master_Shake
I don't believe in good or evil, but if I'm doing $4 worth of work and the guy keeps $3 but does no work then that is a little fucked-up. Again, I'm not going to revolt against it, but I'm not going to cheer when that fucker buys a yacht.
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Why is the work worth 4$? Your work is required to generate the benefit. But so is something the other person has.
You can work for 0.50$, or you can work for this dude for 1$. The dude just doubled your salary. And your problem is, the dude takes 3$ home with him?
Your work is
worth 0.50$, the next-best alternative, to you.
If the next most productive (and willing) person the dude could hire would cost 0.75$ and earn the dude 2.50$, your work is worth 1.25$ to the dude.
That's market capitalism. That dude owns the means of production. As such, your labour is worth less than the output of your labour.
The means of production aren't free. They have costs -- be it fortune or effort -- and the proper amount of means of production is a hard problem to solve. Capitalism solves this problem by putting the problem into individual hands.
Your ownership of the means of production is determined by your past production surpluses and your ability to manage means of production to generate more surpluses. You can also exchange your means of production for additional consumption, at a rate you and another find mutually benefitial.
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Originally Posted by Master_Shake
It's not even a question of laws, the system is rigged to ensure that the rich stay rich.
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Only to a certain extent. But Capitalism does create concentrations of wealth, yes.
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Originally Posted by Master_Shake
Assuming the personal trainer comes to the gym with options and consciously chooses to pay the gym, then no. When I am taxed by the government to support rich people, when my wages remain low so as to ensure the corporation that runs things makes even more money, and when my job consists of finding ways to hurt people to ensure the rich people retain their wealth then that is a relationship where one party has a lot more power than me. Just like the mafia demanding protection money, or the pimp demanding his cut.
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The corperation wants it's wages to be as low as possible. You want your wages to be as high.
Are you worth more? If so, find a corperation that will pay you more. If you aren't worth more, you
do not deserve more, under capitalism.
A corperation that won't pay someone what they are worth is harming itself.
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Unless you are forced to work in order to live (which you've already admitted we must do), then you are taxed according to how much you want to do for yourself. Your tax bears no relation to how much the government or the corporation provides for you, only to how much you work.
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A stable, productive society benefits you in porportion to how much you get from society.
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It's my understanding that really cheap vodka doesn't taste nearly as good as some of the more expensive vodkas.
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The spiral of quality is a trap. In any case, if you want expensive vodka, buy a brita, filter your vodka 5 to 8 times, and try the result.
Based off 'blind taste tests', this turns a cheap bottle into a many-hundred dollar bottle.
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That's great, sounds like you've got the system beat. I hope that makes it a little easier to fuck that wisconsin couple out of their insurance money. You wouldn't want to do a bad job and not have the corporation make money, would you?
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/chuckle. I actually scam people into wanting things, in an abstract way (I help people who help people who help people scam you into buying things). =) Fools all of you! Fools!
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Really? You can choose not to pay taxes or send money to the man? Don't you understand that it doesn't matter what shitty job you're working at, you are working to make other people rich.
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Yes. I could get a job in Japan, cutting my taxes. I could move to Barbados, or many other places, where taxes are tiny to non-existant.
You said no power. Not 'little power'. If you have power, you aren't a slave.
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Exactly, Bill isn't doing the work, he's rich now. (It can happen, however rarely that people move up or down the ladder of wealth). Who's doing the work for Microsoft? Indian computer programmers earning a third of what American programmers would pay. Why pay them less, Windows doesn't cost any less than it used to? Where does that extra money go? Certainly not into building a better Operating System (not in relation to the price anyway). That money goes into Bill's pocket, who did very little work for all that money.
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Bill does work. Bill did work.
He 'earned' his money via capitalism the right to spend a large number of resources. More than he wanted to. Instead of buying up a tonne of stuff and destroying it (as capitalism gave him the right to), he chose to invest it in
making shit for you.
Why would microsoft charge us less money? Microsoft, under capitalism, should charge the amount that maximizes it's profits. It shouldn't charge what you think it should cost.
It seems you object to ownership, when it isn't you that is doing the owning. Microsoft products are cheaper than writing the same product yourself. If you want a computer operating system, there are a large number of extremely primitive free, or nearly free, ones. There is also a few reasonably advanced free ones.
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Right, that keeps us sedated and docile so we don't get pissed.
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Hey man, if you want to be sedated, go ahead. They entertain. It is up to you to decide what you want to buy and what you want to watch.
The point is, they earn money in order to entertain us. There isn't a giant conspiracy of people thinking 'lets keep them docile with hollywood'. Hollywood wants money, and entertains us in order to get it.
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When business and the government consist of the same people and both are out to take your money, that's hardly a capitalist economy.
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I don't think you are using 'capitalist economy' in any way I understand.
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Or you just point a gun at their head and take their money. Enough with the provide something people want shit. People want marijuana, but the pharmaceutical industry works with the government to keep it illegal. That way people keep paying high prices for their painkillers.
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*nod*, and people provide marijuana. If I wanted some marijuana, I could get it.
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No, anti-trust laws work so that the rich people can crack down on businesses it doesn't like. It's got nothing to do with protecting people.
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Laugh, you live in a very strange world, my friend. Are anti-trust laws used improperly? Ayep, they are sometimes. You imply they are always used improperly.
Being blind doesn't mean the world is painted black.
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And enough with the roads make my life better. I only use the road to get to work, the only reason the government can justify spending money on roads is to ensure we all get to work to continue to make the man rich.
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Stop using roads. Stop using police protection (oh wait,
you cannot stop using police protection). Stop using any product produced by any company listed on any stock exchange. Stop buying any good shipped on roads. Stop eating any food that any government food agency has examined or certified. Stop living in a nation of amazing political stability partially guaranteed by their armed forces. Stop looking at random strangers as unlikely to gut you for your shoes -- hire 24 hour bodyguards to keep yourself safe from the starving masses, unfed by government programs. Stop using electricty carried on government regulated power lines. Stop using telephones which use a network which was regulated and supported by government programs. Stop using the radio waves, regulated to the point where you can recieve coherant signals. Start drinking water that other people shit in, prevented by government sanitation. Start getting infected by dozens of fatal deseases, eradicated by government programs. Start fighting wars against the people 50 miles away. Start breathing air as bad as the great smog.
Oh wait, the government doesn't do anything. Just throw it away. =p~
Every law is an evil, for it robs someone of their essential liberty. This doesn't mean that the evil they are overwealms the good they are. An accounting system that ignores the good and only counts the evil is flawed.
If you don't believe in good and evil, use functionally equivilent words, and the statement holds.
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It's tough to measure something like corruption, since by design it's unnoticable and hidden. But I know I pay money in taxes, and I don't receive nearly that much back in services. That money is going somewhere.
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Then, go track your money -- pick 10 dollars of your money, and follow it in a random path through the government. I've even posted a breakdown of where your federal tax money goes, to this board, if you are from the USA, if you want to start.
I do not believe that out of 100$ in taxes, 99$ is lost to corruption. That is a massive overestimate of the amount of corruption in modern western society.