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<!-- you can have any number of categories here --> [[Category:Unindexed]] <!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.--> {{URL | url = https://www.reddit.com/r/LibertarianPartyUSA/comments/970m7p/taxation_is_theft_will_continue_to_alienate/}} <!-- {{Other URL | url = }} --> <!-- {{Old URL | url = }} --> {{End URL}} {{DES | des = | show=}} <!-- insert wiki page text here --> <!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them. Use these explicit workarounds. --> <!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}} --> {{List|title="Taxation Is Theft" will continue to alienate potential voters until it is revised|links=true}} {{Quotations|title="Taxation Is Theft" will continue to alienate potential voters until it is revised|quotes=true}} {{Text | It may have just been on my state's particular website, but in the stated platform section, the "taxation is theft" or "abolish all taxes" part is bound to continue alienating even moderates unless you revise it. You could say "most taxes are theft" or "taxes on production are theft", these are the taxes (and they constitute the vast majority of what we now call taxes) which pervert the market economy, you could sustain a minimal government with taxes on negative externalities, for example, these would be functionally user fees made in exchange for voluntary "privileges" like pollution, or opportunity costs as in the case of land ownership. And before you all REEEE at me for being a commie or some shit, a land value tax has been defended as being the least objectionable form of taxation by not only "Free to Choose" Milton Friedman, but also by, co-founder of the Libertarian Party, David Nolan. You should distinguish yourselves from the Anarcho-Capitalists who are generally averse to establishment parties anyway. I recently attended a Libertarian Party meetup in my area and they were handing out cards that said "taxation is theft". It's a cute meme, but that's not going to go as far as "repeal and abolish most taxes", and that's probably why only a grand total 5 people showed up and one of them legitimately told me that they believe that the government is a religion which worships Baal and that capitalism can't work because it requires corporations. Is it so beyond the pale to suggest that Libertarians are still considered fringe thanks to it's proximity to anarchism? You have to distance yourself from that, regardless of your thoughts on Gary Johnson, we need more candidates with platforms like him, willing to reach a hand across the aisle, to empathize with the issues concerning modern Americans, and still to take a principled stance against spending and abridging basic freedoms. The underdog candidate in the last election was Bernie Sanders, and he had even the ears of centrists. You need to speak to that crowd, to explain to them why far-left solutions offered by fringe Social Democrats and Socialist Greens are not the answer, while also advocating your own initiatives to circulate wealth and prevent abuse of the environment. By no means will I argue that left are economically informed, but they're certainly not so stupid as to take your "the free market will self-regulate" bullshit at face value and run with it. I certainly won't. You can't explain away all of the abuses or examples of poverty we see on corporations or government overreach, private land ownership creates speculation, this results in abandonment and urban sprawl, land value collects in the form of rent, and as spaces are bought up, rent soars, poverty climbs, and mass bankruptcy unfolds in the form of industrial depression which we invariably chase with minimum wage hikes and other worker "protections" time and time again (the game Monopoly literally exists to demonstrate this economic principle, if you've played it, you already know how and why this happens). And I know it's a trigger for capitalists, I've seen it time and time before, but you have to be taking me and everyone else for real idiots if you think I'm going to trust the market to sort out all the bad actors. The market operates in hindsight, it's no preventive measure, there's a reason the conman moves from place to place under different names and businesses, because he knows the market learns. But even with a learning market, there's no assurance that it won't be in any given business's rational self-interest to raze a forest, pollute a stream, or exterminate a species if it results in a net profit at the end of the day. Ignoring this simple fact is not a position of environmental awareness, it's not of forward-thinking sustainability, and it's not out of a concern for what is best for society at large. How would I go about it? Maybe a pigouvian tax, I'm not even entirely sure, but I'd rather vote for someone open to creative solutions than someone stubbornly asserting something I know to be false. Yes, a "free" market means the maximum circulation of wealth and fewest impediments to industry, I do not intend to discourage that at all, but there are many many ways in which you could organize a minarchist state and accomplish various goals without constant blind deference to "the market will sort it out, the market will sort it out, the market will sort it out". I want private schools, I want private healthcare, I want the state incarnation of these things gone as much as you do, but certain things you simply cannot entrust to profit-driven individuals; PLANET EARTH is one of them, and the constant claims I see about how "oh, well individuals could just sue a business over pollution" are an obvious political farce. How would that even go? I question how skeptical we even are of our civil court systems in general because this sounds like an hellacious recipe for frivolous lawsuits. Why should any one person step up to prosecute another person for unquantifiable damages to the community? Why isn't it something the community is collectively responsible for, and accountable for, in the first place? I get the individualism aspect, but at some point you have to accept that any political debate necessarily comes down to a question of what it best for everyone. Collectively. In society. Because we are a collective of individuals at the end of the day, and if every man and woman is an island unto themselves, you can hardly call us united in any meaningful sense. Tomorrow I will be voting Libertarian in my local elections. My best hope is that a principled candidate and some substantive cutbacks lead to a positive reception and a consistent record of that will lure Greens out of the far-left and onto center ground where we can compromise. The Republicans and Democrats are perpetually wrapped up in their neocon vs. neolib media war, and I think it's a Green Libertarian fusion of principles and policies that could set us straight. It just takes lifting us out of the fringe of discussion and into the middle of intellectual heavyweight debate. In the meanwhile I'll be over in r/Georgism, r/GeoLibertarianism, and r/CapitalismVSocialism. That's where the debate is happening, and that's where minds are changed. }}
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