The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News:
To the Editor:
Charlotte Ward asks us to imagine a world without taxes. (“Don’t like taxes? Imagine a world without these services,” Tuesday.)
Okay, let’s try. What would it be like?
True, the government wouldn’t be able to provide its services any more. But it also would no longer be able to forbid competitors from offering such services non-coercively. With formerly governmental services no longer insulated from market competition, their quality would rise and their prices would fall.
Government would also no longer be able to rig markets in favor of the corporate elite and against the poor and middle class. Most governmental redistribution is from the less to the more affluent, not vice versa. Getting rid of taxation and the plutocratic policies it supports would eliminate the chief cause of poverty.
Gone too would be the ability to enforce laws against “lodge practice” – laws that deprive the poor of low-cost health care in order to enrich the medical establishment. That one change would do far more for health care than either the liberals’ state-run solution or the conservatives’ corporate-run system.
Oppressive policies like harassing immigrants [deleted by the newspaper: and downloaders] and pot smokers, or bombing Pakistani children, would be unsustainable in a freed market. And police brutality would be a lot harder to maintain if security services were competitive.
Liberals claim to be advocates for the disadvantaged, but all too often support regulations that entrench established interests and make it impossible for the poor to compete.
Conservatives claim to oppose big government, but in practice support corporate welfare, anti-union laws, intrusions into personal liberties, a bloated military-industrial complex, and grants of monopoly privilege and cronyism cloaked in the language of “deregulation” and “privatization.”
And taxation makes all this possible.
To learn more, check out the websites of the Center for a Stateless Society and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
Roderick T. Long
It’s kind of funny actually that the only people willing to argue in favor of government are Randians. Everybody else just stops once they get you to admit you don’t favor taxes or conscription, having “proved” their case by demonstrating you favor anarchy. Or they just don’t know what to say at that point.
…it’s easy if you try
…no war to pay for,
Around us, lots of pie…
OK, sorry, I’m trying to rhyme with “try” and I ain’t got much.
A stateless society would be full of pie! Strawberry, rhubarb, key lime, peach, boysenberry, huckleberry, cherry, blueberry, and so forth! Perhaps we could better sell our ideas if we promised a world full of punch and pie.
More people will read Rothbard if they think we have punch and pie!
Imagine no taxation
It’s easy if you try
No war to pay for
Electric chairs to fry
Imagine all the people
Living free today!
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
No state religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world see freedom
Imagine no transgressions
I wonder if you can
On your right to live freely
And do the best you can
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world see freedom