Voluntary taxation, a thought experiment

[elwoodblues]

No. I believe that we would still have police, but only because the very rich would fund the police (to protect their assets.) Most people would ride on the coattails of those who voluntarily paid the tax. The poor would not receive good (if any) service from the police, because the police would have a vested interest in paying attention to those who pay their salaries (the rich).

[HtotheNootch]

Other than the fact that (and I know it's not the OP's intention), government will grow under your system, I'd say it makes sense.

IMO, whenever someone comes up with a political thought, they should always first and foremost consider the words of the most intlelligent person ever to win the presidency:

"That government is best, which governs least."

[vulturesrow]

[ QUOTE ]
No. I believe that we would still have police, but only because the very rich would fund the police (to protect their assets.) Most people would ride on the coattails of those who voluntarily paid the tax. The poor would not receive good (if any) service from the police, because the police would have a vested interest in paying attention to those who pay their salaries (the rich).

[/ QUOTE ]

I am more or less with Elwood on this one. Bet you never thought youd hear that huh Elwood? I find it unrealistic to think we could maintain any sort of credible military with voluntary donations.

[RR12]

This is interesting. Can we make a comparison just to create thought on how/why/who gives and why there are changes.

Let's take the Catholic of America. 50 years ago, giving your money to the Church was a priority to a Catholic Family, even before saving for their family. Today the last to things that people do with their money is save and give to church/charity. Did the institution change or peoples priorities change, or the role of the institution in the lives of the people change? Could this parallel to the idea of voluntary taxation?

Also, wouldn't there be alot of the my vote/dollar doesn't make a difference so I won't participate attitude?

just thoughts.

[lehighguy]

Your dollar would make a huge difference. Right now the government spends its money in a numerous amount of ways you don't approve of. And your vote has little effect over how it is spent. With direct funding the government would HAVE to come to you. You would only fund those government services you support.

Look at Howard Dean's campaign. He raised utterly huge sums of money from small internet donation by regular folks. If people will give that kind of money to a crazy [censored], imagine how much money they would be willing to give if it went DIRECTLY towards government initiatives of thier choice.

Even welfare program would recieve a great deal of funding. More then half of Americans support SS, Medicare, etc. Many of them are quite wealthy. If they REALLY support those programs they should be willing to pay for them themselves.

[RR12]

Good points, but for things to work it would have to be supported by the masses. You had me nervous when at first glance I saw your Reference Howard Dean Whew! went I kept reading. Still obviously only a small fraction of the voting public which is a minority of the taxpaying public were willing to support Dean. These were the true believers even if they were in small amounts. The size of a losing campaign fund is dwaft by the money needed for one entitlement program. But I like to think about what your saying.

[jackdaniels]

Very interesting article.

2 things I would like to add/amend.

First: You got 3 of the 4 items right in your quest to limit government spending. Military, Police and Courts. Education should not be left in the hands of gov't. (Any Objectivist can explain why, or go here: http://capitalism.org/ )

Second: The idea for voluntary taxation is both possible and moraly appropriate. The thing you are missing here is that government can and should try to raise funds in non-compulsory ways - this is the definition of voluntary and it doesn't only encompass charity type donations. The best idea I have heard so far was a 1% fee on the value of any contract entered into by 2 or more parties. This fee would entitle the payee to seek court protection/adjudication should there be any need for it. Without this fee, people would be left to resolve their own disputes and the government would not get involved. Such a fee could raise more than enough money to operate all 3 morally appropriate branches of government (see above), and, since voluntary, would only apply to those who chose to pay it (obviously, the larger the value of your contract, the more incentive you have to pay this fee).

[lehighguy]

Good point. This country functioned without an income tax until the 1930s. It provided its limited government services from tariff revenue. In todays world tariffs are non-existant. Some very very small compulsary fee could be used to cover basic things such as this.

[nokona13]

Interesting article, and it's nice to see a crazy conservative who's willing to go after the adventures of today's ruling "conservatives" (farm subsidies, foreign ventures sold on lies, etc...), as well as liberal ideas you naturally distrust, such as social security.

There's all kinds of things I disagree with here in principle (obviously this would never be implementable, so I won't argue those points), but I'm going to take two arguments more in line with where you're coming from.

First, as was mentioned briefly above, it seems like it should be obvious that a volunarily funded criminal justice system would be almost inconceivably corrupt, unfair, and generally undemocratic. Think south america. The rich band together and hire militias to protect their neighborhoods and private security to guard their persons and assets when outside their communities. The poor would get no police whatsoever. A few philanthropists might try to fund some kind of minimal public police for poor places, but obviously they would never have the budget to provide even the level of security currently provided by police. Sure Manhattan might have enough rich people who'd want it to stay safe that they'd fund some police there, but who's paying for the police in the ghetto in Queens? So what you want is all the gangs in this country to turn into better armed para-militaries in neighborhoods with no law enforcement? That's GREAT for society...

The second is just to point out a basic of economics and of game theory that you probably have heard but are ignoring for ideological reasons. One thing everyone learns in their first semester econ class is the tragedy of the commons. People just don't treat things they don't personally own very well. You don't own someone else's neighborhood. You don't own someone else's grandparent's horrible destitution. You're not going to pay for those things. Do you really wanna go back to the 1920s, where the next stock market crash might wipe out any savings you have and leave you to retire to some back alley?

The game theory point I think is even more persuasive. Think of the prisoner's dilemma. Sure, in some fantasy world, you might be able to get 300 million Americans together and convince them that they need to support law enforcement, and then get everybody to give money. But in real life, you never know who else is going to contribute. Since most of the budget, since it's so huge, would have to come from regular people making small payments, each incremental payment would do very little to increase security. If the land is lawless and the small police force is corrupt and owned by a few rich types in your neighborhood, are you gonna give a few hundred bucks? You would get exactly zero for that contribution. So the equilibrium point would always be everyone giving exactly nothing except those rich enough to buy their own security force effective enough to actually protect themselves. Even if you got people starting to contribute to a police force and it was effective for a time, most people would stop giving, since it seemed like the police were effective enough and they could better spend their $1,000 on that super expensive private school you want them to pay for on their own. So there's not even two equlibrium points, but just a single one where most of society gets no protection.

[tomdemaine]

Governments are needed due to the free rider problem. No single private person will pay for a public good. Government action can create Pareto efficiency where the market is missing or inefficient.

Free Rider