• TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      Whatdoyoumean?! The govt obviously has so much money as to be able to put millions away for each and every person born! And that money isn’t even being used! Just $3M each, that’s just sitting there waiting for the right magic words to be uttered in a Bank of America in Lubbock, TX to finally be used! Of course money is infinite! They’re the ones printing it!

      • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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        Not even making that bit up, it’s established SovCit lore that pops up now and again. I’m a boat, you’re a boat, your mom is a barge lovely lady (and also a boat).

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            yes, they believe it’s one of the “in plain sight” pieces of evidence - that when you’re born, you have to have a berth (maritime) certificate that makes you like, property of the state or something because you’re recorded as “docking” with the country (which is actually a corporation that wants to own you and use your cache of money they hide from you that you receive at birth), and “they” get away with the ruse because us normal rubes just never think to ask if they said “berth” (maritime) or “birth” (reproduction). not even joking lmao

            it is a funny pun, too, but they really think birth certificates are, in fact, secretly “berth” certificates for them in maritime trade law, which they believe is the only real law, in which we are all like… sovereign vessels that have been duped into signing away our independence.

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    My econ 101 professor once said “what are the things that even the most anti-government people say the government needs to do? Emergency services.” Then these dense motherfuckers came along to outdo even that.

    • sparkle@lemm.ee
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      Internet libertarians & off-the-rails conservatives unironically say EMS and Fire Departments should be privatized. Ancaps go one step further and say police and sometimes even military should be private. It makes me lose hope in voters, until I remember that I was 15 before too and most people surely grow out of that phase. But there’s a few people who are fully adult-aged who still believe that which is kind of sad for them I guess

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        Firefighters were literally private companies before we collectively decided it was a bad idea. Firefighters would just sit and watch a place burn if nobody payed up. Sometimes rival firefighters would even get in brawls over who gets the contract while the house was burning down beside them.

          • Contravariant@lemmy.world
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            Somewhat predictably they also started the first public firefighting force after a large part of the city burned down, again. Apparently prevention is just not profitable if you’re only paying people to extinguish fire.

            Didn’t prevent what is now known as the Great Fire of Rome though.

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          They’re municipally operated here and we actually had a case a few years back where a small town that couldn’t reasonably afford to operate their own fire department needed to make arrangements with a nearby larger town to have fire emergency response services cover them.

          The larger town said sure, $50 per year per home. Small town had 63 people, but some refused to pay. Fire department said they weren’t going to keep track of which houses were and were not covered, so they had to all be on board or none of them would be.

          Naturally a home later caught fire and burned to the ground. Thankfully no one was inside at the time.

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            Damn, that isn’t even all that much. Tiny town so I’m assuming some people just couldn’t afford it.

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        They tried this with firefighters before way back when, and then realized that fire doesn’t seem to care who’s subscribed or not lol. Can you imagine? “The fire and EMS lobby” would be powerfully pushing for reduced safety and maybe even starting fires themselves LOL.

        Edit while looking up the first thing: Oh my word… mercenary firefighters are a thing for the rich and we’re living in clown world.

        EDIT: Link went to NYT because it was top result, but screw that lol. Fixed.

        I can see it now though…

        Privatized emergency services be like:

        “Thank you for calling 9-1-1, this is Janeanniesomebody, can I have your 14-digit emergency insurance number, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name please. Okay thank you, one moment while I verify that…” (Click)

        "Your call is very important to us. Want to skip the line when it matters most? Did you know, for only $49.97 a month, you can get Emergency-Services-Plus+! Whether you want help fast, or to regret being covered for the rest of your life, we have a plan right for YOU!

        “Remember, emergency insurance means you can have peace of mind that, when you’re in mortal danger, we’re only a phone call and 45-minutes-to-1-business-day away! Not signed up yet? Press 1, and we can help!”

        ((Trendy upbeat hold music))

        “Did you know? We’re always hiring!”

        (Receiver pickup) “Thank you for calling this is Devaidengregjimmothy, dispatch specialist, how can I help you today? Hello?..Hello?..”

        • Mikelius@lemmy.world
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          Cassius from the tail end of the roman republic famously was the richest man in Rome and owned the “fire brigade”. When a fire broke out he would only put it out after the owner agreed to sell the place for next to nothing.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              Also the guy whom Parthians had drink molten gold.

              He wanted to try himself as a general too, but that didn’t quite work out.

              • Illuminostro@lemmy.world
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                I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, that’s the account. It probably didn’t happen, but it made a great story. The greediest, richest man in Rome bought an army and was made to drink what he craved most when he failed. Poetic justice.

                Side note, Crassus was an experienced military man who fought under Sulla, and put down Spartacus’ rebellion. But he was no general, treated legionnaires under his command with brutal discipline, even using the mostly outdated decimation (if a unit failed, or dishonored themselves, they were forced to beat every tenth man in the unit to death as punishment. )

                The only reason he invaded Parthia was that he was envious of Pompey and Caesar’s respect amongst the plebes (common citizens, i.e. peasants.) Military conquests were a sure way to gain respect in Roman culture, and to amass fortunes in slaves and booty.

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                  I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, that’s the account. It probably didn’t happen, but it made a great story. The greediest, richest man in Rome bought an army and was made to drink what he craved most when he failed. Poetic justice.

                  Yes, I know ; there are a few stories of his death, some mutually exclusive. The most popular is the version that he was beheaded, “gold-fed” and his head used instead of cabbage in a theatrical play, the place is disputed too, most likely Ecbatana or Susa, but there’s also a version of that happening in Artaxata (matches the premise where it’s said that he didn’t listen to Artavazd’s warning out of his pride, and then Artavazd decided to “betray” Crassus by remaining loyal to Parthia).

                  I think I’ve heard a version of him being overfed with meat and fat and made drink cold water, thus dying ; well, I don’t know if it’s even a working way to execute someone.

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        They sure do want us all to live in a world where you have to swipe your credit card to drive anywhere, to go into a store, to walk anywhere, to use a public bathroom, to call 911, to use any services at all.

        But I guess it will be worth it, because I’m sure the ancaps and libertarians and sovcits have a really good plan to keep each of us wealthy enough that privatizing the entirety of civilization won’t harm anyone.

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        It makes me lose hope in voters, until I remember that I was 15 before too and most people surely grow out of that phase.

        Wait till you turn 25 and leave your parents’ basement

        • sparkle@lemm.ee
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          Damn I didn’t know ancaps existed on this site. Ooooo taxes ooOo basic public services ooo scawy

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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            You’re the one who wrote about being 15.

            You are most likely not able to reason why ancap ideology is bad or why your own ideology is good. Which is why you should show more respect to people who are trying to reason in either direction. Their opinion, no matter which direction specifically that is, is worth something.

            Specifically ancap ideology is attractive for me exactly because it requires one to imagine very specific architectures of how things would work, so - to reason their position. I’ve been following one ancom channel in TG, because they were posting many interesting articles about tackling the same problems ancaps want to tackle. And as you may know, ancaps and ancoms don’t like each other.

            Both ancap and ancom ideologies are simply better than all the rest, because they don’t ignore the problem of compromised institutions.

            Once again, your opinion is worth as much as you personally can support it with logic. Being part of a crowd doesn’t mean attaining the intelligence or the authority of somebody else in that crowd. These things don’t transfer. So your tone makes only you personally look immature and stupid.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              Both ancap and ancom ideologies are simply better than all the rest, because they don’t ignore the problem of compromised institutions.

              And yet almost no one wants to live in the world those people have presented to everyone. Should they be forced to?

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                Should they be forced to?

                If I can be forced to live in the world you like more, then yes, otherwise no.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  I see, so how would you force them to live this way, kill the ones who elect a leader and decide to trade in currency?

            • Emmie@lemm.ee
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              I mean I am basically a feudal lady but even I know this whole capitalistic mess is toxic for mind, soul and environment. How you want that but dialled to 11 is beyond me.

              It would end in actual feudalism as in few people amassing goods, land, resources and ruling over the masses as kings with their monopolies and monetising air you breathe or the like. Killing you for disobedience in some private execution using private justice system keeping u in check with private militia.

              The only thing between that reality and current is government with its anti monopoly laws, taxes, protection of basic amenities and wealth redistribution. Of course countries vary here.

              Ancapitalism is probably one of the most stupid systems you can invent as it basically deconstructs itself as one individual amasses so much wealth they become a de facto king ruling over everything with absolute power destroying the system that helped them amass such power.

              It is sad to see someone crazy enough to advocate for such system that isn’t even possible to exist long term and leads to feudalism very fast.

              Not many people are insane enough to want RUST game irl unironically

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                OK, the other comment was bored, lazy and not very sincere.

                Ancapitalism is probably one of the most stupid systems you can invent as it basically deconstructs itself as one individual amasses so much wealth they become a de facto king ruling over everything with absolute power destroying the system that helped them amass such power.

                No. To learn about ancap, go to ancaps and not to non-ancaps writing about ancaps.

                It would end in actual feudalism as in few people amassing goods, land, resources and ruling over the masses as kings with their monopolies and monetising air you breathe or the like. Killing you for disobedience in some private execution using private justice system keeping u in check with private militia.

                No, because ancap is not the same as anarchy by Hobbes.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                Sorry, I see no value in this text because it wrongly assumes that ancap is about abolishing rules.

                Ancap is about determining a specific functional set of rules and functional architecture to support it.

                It’s about evaluating forces and feedbacks in human societies and economies and designing a system where people are impeded in using power to enforce their vision upon other people.

                That is why central authority and state are a problem - there are never backup mechanisms that you can switch to once the main one stops working correctly, and many people want this, because they want to capture that mechanism and enforce their will upon others. So even attempts to create backup mechanisms are met with resistance by crowds of fools who think that their favorite faction is the closest to capturing the main one and making others do something, and by people with power, who, of course, exist just as well despite that being ideologically inconvenient for you.

                The problem of someone eventually amassing too much power is not being solved by existing states any better than in ancap.

                Thus ancaps are trying to design systems as decentralized as possible for human societies. So that there always would be backup mechanisms to run away to.

                EDIT: If this is too abstract, that’s because ancap as an ideology is defined by these criteria and not by specific solutions. And that’s right, if an ideology puts its set of solutions above the goals, then it’s a religious cult.

                • Emmie@lemm.ee
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                  That’s a big load of pseudo-intellectual gibberish. But the end effect would be the same no matter how you try to gymnastic your way around it

            • sparkle@lemm.ee
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              Your reading comprehension must suck because you completely incorrectly read the sentence you’re obsessing over. There are so many of you ancaps (almost entirely clueless teenagers) online that it becomes tiring to debunk your stupid ideology over and over again. If you can’t see why a system based around capital – where you vote with your capital and people with more capital have more votes, where resources are distributed based on capital and capital itself is a resource – is inherently flawed, then that’s completely on you. If you want leftists to educate you, then you can support the education reforms they’re advocating for, not go on Lemmy and beg for them to personally tutor you. But I guess you’re still in high school so that’s not exactly something you’re old enough to do.

              Ancaps are pathetic, there is no reason to seriously engage every single one you see. They live in a fantasy world where charity replaces taxes and systematic discrimination & deepseated cultural biases are solved by the “free market”, and pollution & climate change (if you even think it’s an issue) are solved by future techbros which will totally invent stuff to completely unfuck the planet asap (or something something they’ll totally be stopped when people realize it violates the NAP). They also live in a fantasy world where capital isn’t used to “compromise the institutions” as you say you’re worried about. You can try to slither your way into anarchist discourse all you like and try to gain their acceptance, but it is not happening.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                No. You may imagine you’ve defeated someone or debunked something. Bye

                EDIT: “If you want leftists to educate you” - definitely not. “Ancaps are …” - you are not qualified to talk about ancaps instead of ancaps themselves.

                • sparkle@lemm.ee
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                  The fact that your resolve immediately crumbles when you have to think about the logic of your ideology even a tiny bit says a lot about the number of years you have left until you graduate from high school

            • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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              Specifically ancap ideology is attractive for me exactly because it requires one to imagine very specific architectures of how things would work

              You’re saying you like it because it makes you use your imagination because it’s literally so far from reality it’ll never exist? Lol.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                Ancap ideology, not ancap world.

                Most ideologies require you only to bunch together and yell louder. Ancap is not suited for that, which is why it’s cool.

                I would formulate this as “hard to achieve, so requires clearly understood principles”. Same as space travel. Or GNU/Hurd. Sigh.

                • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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                  Most ideologies require you only to bunch together and yell louder. Ancap is not suited for that, which is why it’s cool.

                  Then why the fuck do I constantly see Ancaps doing this?

                  I’ve literally never actually seen an ancap successfully practice their ideas. I’ve only ever seen them desperately fail trying, or loudly exclaiming that they’re the smartest and bestest and all their ideas are golden (ignore the fact they’ve never even tried to put them In place, just loudly yelled complaining about the world they exist in like cats).

  • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Fun fact: The government doesn’t actually need to use taxes to pay for things. The amount of currency in the market isn’t fixed, and so the government actually is fully capable of “printing more money” however, this has the potential to cause rapid inflation. So, taxes are a way of reducing inflation, rather than paying for government services.

    • Trantarius@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      That’s assuming printing money is the default solution. Taxes have existed for longer than that. The earliest taxes were literally a portion of a farmers harvest. You can’t just print more food, or gold, or whatever else. Printing money to fund government was never really an option, so positioning taxes as a solution to inflation just doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that instead of eating at a restaurant, you could eat roadkill, which you aren’t going to do because of disease, and therefore restaurants are a way of reducing disease rather than providing food.

      • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        That’s assuming printing money is the default solution.

        I’m not operating with a model of solutions being “default” or not, so no it absolutely does not. What I’m doing is intentionally ignoring the historical context of how these systems developed to observe how they work in the present moment. Doing so allows me to understand the flaws of the model where money is viewed as a resource, rather than a pure social construct that exists in the minds of those who use it. Resources are limited by physical reality, whereas money flows like a clockwork river who’s source is infinite and who’s sink has infinite capacity. Changing the ammount of money available too much, too quickly, or in particular ways has negative consequences but it is possible. Resources don’t do that.

        Resteraunts are a way of reducing disease instead of providing food

        I’d say they have more to do with entertainment, but they do all of those, yes. It’s just a matter of perspective.

    • Jikiya@lemmy.world
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      There is a Planet Money (podcast) episode about this. It’s a fairly new economic theory, but actual PhD level economists have said this. Government prints money, and to bring down inflation they need to get taxes to reduce the amount of money in circulation, to control inflation. The epidsode was in the 2019 timeframe, I think.

      Something that absolutely works in the abstract, but kinda hard to fit into my current model of reality.

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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        You have to look at it from the perspective of mathematics, like systems control theory and balance / equilibriums. Money flow is comparable to energy flow. Mathematical equivalence principles allows for multiple descriptions of the same phenomenon because every externally visible system behavior can be implemented in many different ways.

        So even if that’s not how the underlying implementation looks like, you can switch the system to work like that without changing anything about how you interact with it. And that allows you to analyze the system in different ways that might not work in the current system

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          I’m a mathematician, so yes; I can confirm. 😂 I was trying to avoid that comparison, but I did use the same techniques I use to compare algebras when my sister and I stumbled on this way of thinking about the economy. I’ve never heard of systems control theory, though.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        It’s not really abstract, it’s pretty close to how advanced economies already work in practice. Fiat currency is the proxy by which goods and services are valued and exchanged. It is the underlying goods and services themselves which actually have intrinsic value, and printing money doesn’t actually change that. Deficits are inflationary and surpluses are deflationary. Growth is deflationary and recessions are inflationary. Governments in these economies will always run deficits because you can’t have both growth and a surplus at the same time. At the end of the day macroeconomics isn’t balancing a spreadsheet as much as it is about balancing the money supply and economic activity.

        This is also why something resembling capitalism is pretty much inevitable in an advanced economy where scarcity is a factor governing economic behavior. If you are using a fiat proxy to mediate economic inputs and outputs, you will end up with market forces. Pretending you can centrally plan around that is naive, which is why harm reduction is the right strategy.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        Except that money is put back into circulation through government spending, especially when they’re running the kind of deficits we see in the US.

    • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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      Taxation is a big part of the reason why fiat money has any value at all. By demanding to be payed with its own currency, a government can ensure that the bills it issues will always have demand (because people will need it to pay taxes) and therefore will always have value.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      “printing more money” however, this has the potential to cause rapid inflation.

      That only happens if you put all that money into circulation - if you were to, say, just give it away as a handout to the military or Israel… no inflation. Which is… exactly how they give handouts to the military and Israel.

      To think… they could just as easily spend that thumb-suck money on healthcare - but that won’t murder brown people, so they don’t do it.

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        That only happens if you put all that money into circulation - if you were to, say, just give it away as a handout to the military

        How do you give a handout to the “military” without putting that money into circulation?

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          How do you give a handout to the “military” without putting that money into circulation?

          That’s the beauty of “trickle-down” economics - it doesn’t. Give it to the military and the parts of it that doesn’t get hoarded by MIC billionaires gets spent on things such as R&D and asset/infrastructure development and maintenance - there’s not a lot of that money “trickling” down and circulating amongst the general population.

          If you were to spend it on health infrastructure and development, the money will still not be “trickling” down - but the benefits will. A bunch of F-35s means next-to-zero benefits for people - but a functional hospital does.

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            Even so bud, every cent used in R&D is already in circulation

            Even the hoarded money, it’s not in an evil lair, it’s in some bank, in circulation, making money for the hoarder.

            It may have a slightly less inflationary effect but this money is as much in circulation as the single going into a strippers thong

      • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Since the USD is considered the world reserve currency, the government is capable of doing wacky shenanigans like that. Inflation, so long as the American people are insulated from it, could theoretically be used as a way to extract wealth from other nations. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they’re actually already doing exactly that.

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    The forefathers were famed for their bake sales.

    Ben Franklin used to make a bundt cake that was to die for

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      And that has no influence on the price of goods, which is strictly decided by the buyer and seller. Or so I read today.

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      Not even that. All your state’s comptroller1 has to do is discharge debts made to the state, by writing “discharged with prejudice” with red pen on the DOT contractor bills. But this only works on pink collection notices, not normal paperwork. State stays out of debt and the roads stay paved.

      1 Yep, that’s a real word.

  • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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    Are SovCits against the concept of taxation in general? I thought they just convinced themselves they have loopholes that allow them to avoid it personally…

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      The ones I’ve seen posted here seem to want all of the benefits of living in a society without any of the restrictions or responsibilities that go along with it. Taxation is just one part of that.

      Some think they shouldn’t even have to pay other things, basically believing that there’s a part of loans that is voluntary and their esoteric knowledge means they can just get loans and not pay them back, which itself comes from a misunderstanding of how the rich use loans to get to spend their assets and keep them.

      That misunderstanding itself is that there’s an overall fair system in place, if you have the esoteric knowledge to use it, and you just have to know what magic words to use to make judges agree with you and police back off. They don’t realize that the rich following a different set of rules isn’t based on fairness under a secret system, it’s based on the soft power that comes with being rich and having the resources to make someone’s life better or worse with a phone call.

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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    All the posers here thinking they are very smart, while never asking similar “stupid” questions about their own political ideologies.

    In general, smart people ask stupid questions about everything.

    As of this specific question, there are various possible answers:

    1. Crowdfunding;

    2. Custom fees as a source of income;

    3. Close to taxes, but paying some fixed fee, like a membership fee.

    Variants which are taxes, but relevant for the question in spirit:

    1. Georgism;

    2. Only one simple income tax, only one simple property tax, no other taxes;

    3. Deciding every citizen’s payment into budget on a popular vote every N years (may even make it not a sum, but a percentage of property or something), as the average of submitted numbers or something.

    Not a sovcit, but they do have a point in saying “fuck you” to the authority.

    • HollandJim@lemmy.world
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      Not a sovcit, but they do have a point in saying “fuck you” to the authority.

      No they don’t. Fighting “authority” for the sake of it stupid and meaningless because it’s so vague it’s dangerous. You fight the injustice or the lack of transparency, but what you prescribe as “authority” could be anything from schools that educate to laws that protect to support of groups you don’t belong to.

      If you said “Authoritarianism”, you’d have a point.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      Wait you’re calling us stupid and you think the government can fund themselves through crowdfunding.

      The government tells people they no longer have to pay taxes but they can if they want. That’s your pitch is it?

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          We aren’t distorting your words. Just rearranging them so your logic becomes clear.

          Please, tell us what you exactly mean then.

          How would crowdfunding work if it isn’t based on non-mandatory donations?

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          Why can’t leftists argue without distorting their opponents’ words?

          This is what’s called a strawman fallacy kids

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              Honestly at this point you either seem like you’re trolling or you’re very passionate but haven’t done your research beyond reading a few articles years ago without following up or verifying their sources.

              Then when people point out the flaws you go into personal attack mode

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                but haven’t done your research beyond reading a few articles years ago without following up or verifying their sources.

                Have you rehearsed this phrase before a mirror? I mean, where specifically in these insult exchanges was research required?

                Also people don’t reason with “ahahaha, this has been disproved many times, everybody knows this”. Not all social changes since Lucian’s time I like.

                Then when people point out the flaws you go into personal attack mode

                There’s been one (1) person who came really pointing out something, which I gave answers for.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          No one’s distorting your words, that’s literally what you said, you literally said the government could fund themselves through crowdfunding, it’s right there, you said it.

          How the hell would that work. People already dodge taxes that they have required to pay, I WAS if you’re not required to pay taxes then they definitely won’t do it at all.

          I don’t need to rearrange your words to make them sound stupid.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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            I said it can be one of the sources of income and it already is in the form of war bonds and donations.

            How the hell would that work. People already dodge taxes that they have required to pay, I WAS if you’re not required to pay taxes then they definitely won’t do it at all.

            Some dodge taxes, some donate. I’ve donated to some things. Many others did.

            You need something, you want something done, you have a motivation.

            It’s a part of a list.

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              But how is any of that better than the current system of taxes which will ensure they get money?

              It doesn’t seem like relying on the good will of people could possibly work. And I don’t see how the richer incentivized to pay literally anybody anything at all.

              This all seems like the sort of thing a hippie comes out with, but they’re allowed to come out with that kind of rubbish because their brains are permanently suzzled, so what’s your excuse?

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                But how is any of that better than the current system of taxes which will ensure they get money?

                Ideological problem, where you can’t opt out.

                It doesn’t seem like relying on the good will of people could possibly work. And I don’t see how the richer incentivized to pay literally anybody anything at all.

                This has some similarities with wind as a source of renewable energy. It’s one of the inputs, not all of the budget.

                In this particular line of the list there’s no incentive other than goodwill.

                This all seems like the sort of thing a hippie comes out with, but they’re allowed to come out with that kind of rubbish because their brains are permanently suzzled, so what’s your excuse?

                I don’t need any excuse for thinking about possible solutions. I’d argue people with such reactions to those do.

                And since you said “this all”, other points are not reliant on goodwill. If by excuse you jokingly meant the reason we can’t do with usual taxes - because of corruption in the wide sense. Unfair advantages gotten by some companies paying full taxes and other getting exemptions in various ways, bribe money finding more targets in a complex bendable system, imbalance of interests affecting lawmakers though the way the budget is comprised.

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      What if my neighborhood can’t crowdfund enough money to keep a fire department in operation because we can’t afford to?

      Just let our houses burn down?

      The fire department sends us a bill?

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          From where? You didn’t fund enough to have a fire department. And since you’re so clever as to not pay for support services, wait to you see the cost of your exceptional insurance…

          Folks, we either have a sovcit who discovered this group or an anarchist-type just stirring up shit.

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            Also, what road are the trucks gunna drive on? Cause the trucks are gunna have to carry their own water since there’s no public water lines running for them to use. And all that weight is gunna be hell to drive on dirt roads

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                Do you genuinely know the cost of maintaining those tracks? Cause there’s a reason we just use roads

                Edit: I made this comment before coffee and see I’m being a bit dumb here haha

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            This person said below that people should be forced to live in an ancap world even though almost no one wants to, so I think this is some weird form of fascism.

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              You are ignorant of basic facts about markets. You guys need to go out more, you’d understand why the world is the way it is, and what can be done about it, instead of fantasizing about dystopic worlds. You really are the flat-Earthers of politics.

            • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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              Did you really choose which firestation was gonna send a truck?? That’s the problem with using a “free market” argument for emergencies, yeah sure it’s great to choose between different emergency providers when there’s nothing happening.

              But when a fire starts or you have a heart attack? The nearest Ambulance or Fire Truck that can get you is coming to get you, and you don’t (and can’t) have a choice in which Hospital they’re gonna rush you to, or which fire station that truck came from, all that matters is that it came

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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                Imagine being the first person to answer without insults or smug stupidity since I first commented under this post, and I wasn’t insulting others then.

                Did you really choose which firestation was gonna send a truck?? That’s the problem with using a “free market” argument for emergencies, yeah sure it’s great to choose between different emergency providers when there’s nothing happening.

                Yes. You need to have at least twice as many firestations to have a choice, if you want to choose between fire services, though.

                Or if we are talking only about choosing between insurance companies, then there’s no problem, but with only one fire service and some imagined jungle capitalism you’ll have a problem, because it’ll be very expensive as a monopolist.

                I don’t see a problem with having twice as many firestations, as in two parallel services. They don’t have only one landline at the firestation after all. They have HA in any mass service system.

                This all is unimportant, though, since it ignores the fact that something like a state fire service, only one separate from police, military and others and with administration formed separately from them is still allowable for ancap. Where membership would be like citizenship in our world, and a member gets the service on usual conditions (but pays something like taxes), while a non-member will pay a lot that one time. It’s similar to state healthcare being free for citizens, but not for foreign nationals in some countries.

                Notice how it requires no coercion or monopoly, so perfectly acceptable for ancap.

                But when a fire starts or you have a heart attack?

                See my solution.

                • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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                  Yes. You need to have at least twice as many firestations to have a choice, if you want to choose between fire services, though.

                  You’re gonna sit there on your phone trying to decide which fire service to use while your house is literally burning down?

                  What about people who rent? It’s not their own private property, are they supposed to pay for the whole building being saved? Does it get put on the landlord? He never consented to having his building saved, his tenants just called the fire station when a fire started. Are the tenants supposed to contact their landlord first so that he can properly consent to having a fire station save his property?

                  I don’t see a problem with having twice as many firestations, as in two parallel services. They don’t have only one landline at the firestation after all. They have HA in any mass service system.

                  Well other than now having to pay for double the amount of infrastructure, you now also probably have people who own and profit off the stations, which introduces every normal market pressure, positive and corrupting.

                  Notice how it requires no coercion

                  “Pay our massive fee or your house burns down” certainly sounds coercive. You’ve also not established anything to guarantee that a fire station doesn’t develop a monopoly.

                  See my solution.

                  If your solution to serious and urgent emergencies like “Oh my god, my house is on fire” or “Oh my god, I’m having a heart attack” is several paragraphs long, you’ve not actually developed a solution, just a hypothetical which shows painfully obviously why we stopped running society like this millenia ago.

            • FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works
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              You can’t be sure of that. Some companies have monopolies on certain goods/services.

              One thing you can be assured of is that it would be way more expensive, and probably shittier, as is the case with that kind of privatized services.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        Wrong post. All things mentioned are about one centralized state.

        The reason for them instead of usual taxes is to make it harder to embezzle taxes and reduce motivation to corrupt the state apparatus. You’ve heard that before, it was the usual republican shit.

    • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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      they do have a point in saying “fuck you” to the authority.

      The don’t say “fuck you” though - they say “gotcha!”. The way I understand it, the Sovereign Citizens Movement is a cargo cult. They hear about all the billionaires who barely pay taxes thanks to clever accounting and all the criminals who escape punishment on technicalities, and figure that “if the law can be manipulated - why can’t we manipulate it?”

      Do they “have a point”? Maybe, in the same way alchemy had a point that lead and gold are made of the same fundamental matter and therefore one can be converted to the other. In the same way humoralist medicine had a point that the human body has various substances that must be balanced to maintain health. They’ve all had a point in that they’ve managed to glimpse at the nature of the problem - and they all fail by grossly underestimating the actual complexity of the model and the amount of effort, resources and expertise required to achieve their goals.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if an expert legal team could achieve some of the things SovCits are trying to achieve. But that would require lots of hard work from them, and SovCits have managed to convince themselves that all it takes is a few magic phrases. I leave it to anthropologists to figure out how they came to think they could so easily figure out what these magic phrases are.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        The way I understand it, the Sovereign Citizens Movement is a cargo cult. They hear about all the billionaires who barely pay taxes thanks to clever accounting and all the criminals who escape punishment on technicalities, and figure that “if the law can be manipulated - why can’t we manipulate it?”

        Ah, there is that, yes. There are people who believe that law is some magic where they can prove anything if they know it well enough and know some secrets.

        It’s not a bad belief, frankly. They want to prove something they consider right, so they believe the law would be on their side if they worked hard enough. Just naive, but not worth ridicule.

        In the sense that its connection to justice is not 1-to-1 they are right, but there are no secrets that bend it, just raw real power which a sovereign citizen doesn’t possess.

        I wouldn’t be surprised if an expert legal team could achieve some of the things SovCits are trying to achieve. But that would require lots of hard work from them, and SovCits have managed to convince themselves that all it takes is a few magic phrases. I leave it to anthropologists to figure out how they came to think they could so easily figure out what these magic phrases are.

        Oh, you already said that.

        I don’t know what you mean by “figure out” (as in what else there is to figure out), but this is indeed a common enough plot point in fairy tales.

        I was talking about the emotional part where right and common sense matter more than the law. The law is supported by force, so it’s morally acceptable to use force to protect right and common sense against it. Oh, well, speaking of USA, that’s in their Constitution anyway, and what’s more important, those founding fathers they like to mention have many times said that this is a natural principle and the Constitution doesn’t create or support it, just mentions it.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      1. Crowdfunding;

      2. Custom fees as a source of income;

      3. Close to taxes, but paying some fixed fee, like a membership fee.

      these are just taxation with extra steps

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        Sovcits believe most of the laws are corrupted or something like this, so these things are better as they are simpler and can even be put into constitutional law or something.

        I’ve never met one, we have “citizens of USSR” where I live.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      1. Crowdfunding;

      Sounds like someone has never gone on a charity drive and hasn’t experienced how limited one could get funding from it.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      You’re definitely misunderstanding this post. Yeah, there’s value in bucking authority. But you’re also just describing taxes. It sounds like you’ve read up on the modern form of libertarianism. Which is another crock.

      The problem isn’t that they’re questioning authority. Generally most people (especially on lemmy) are down with that. We’re talking about the leaps of illogic that sovcits rest their entire belief system on. This post is to highlight the absurd hypocrisy in what they preach. Not to call their disobedience of authority foolish, but their methods and entirely unfounded beliefs.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        You mean that they are imagining a phantom republic so resilient that they can live by its “true” laws while most people violate them day and night, and that these “true” laws make functioning of said republic impossible?

        Many people believe in rule of law, yet revolutions and forceful changes are a necessity, states recognize facts made against existing law all the time, every state and system in existence has been erected by illegal violence, and with all that many say that another revolution (in hypothetical scenario, not right now) would somehow be less legal than existing systems. There’s a clear contradiction here, the only answer to which is usually that the current situation is in common interest and you can’t do that, because “fuck around and find out”.

        There are such contradictions in free speech, of which everyone here certainly knows - one can use free speech to kill free speech. There are such contradictions in property rights, as everyone ridiculing ancaps certainly knows. There are such contradictions in personal freedom. There was another example but I think I’m writing too much. Got this habit while learning English at school.

        But you’re also just describing taxes. It sounds like you’ve read up on the modern form of libertarianism. Which is another crock.

        I’ve read up on many forms of it. Yes, I’m literally listing ways to make taxes acceptable for a libertarian.

        TL;DR: Nobody employs pure ideology. If sovcits were to make their own state, they’d have taxes with the reasoning that these are necessary in practice. Same as NEP in Soviet Russia.

    • Ballistic_86@lemmy.world
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      How very libertarian of you. Who’s going to make me pay those “not tax” taxes? Your private military? Well, my private military is bigger so I say NO to your desire for my money.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        This post is not about libertarianism, idiot. Bunch of lefties overloaded me with their bullshit yesterday and now the slow ones come to have a shot, thinking those of yesterday didn’t buttfuck themselves publicly with triumphant look.

        In general when you are doing such things like they did instead of normal discussion, you are robbing yourself of an ability to make a case for your wrong opinion.

        • FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works
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          You merely stating things doesn’t make them right. But keep believin’ I suppose. You got plenty of rational arguments yesterday, too bad you weren’t able to respond to them 🤷‍♀️

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      Just sign up for corpo-pass! As you drive through the toll, your Zelle account will be charged automatically. You hereby agree to all fine print as you drive past it.