(urth) Gene Wolfe's Politics

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes danldo at gmail.com
Thu Mar 26 13:57:27 PDT 2009


On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 1:46 PM,  <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:

>> I'm talking about the gummint going bankrupt, silly boy.
>
> It's pretty much bankrupt up here.
>
> Still a lot better place to live than where you are.

I'd hate it where you are. I like cities. You know - civilization,
in the root sense of the word.

>>> Every penny of taxes is robbed at gunpoint from a citizen, mind you.
>
>> If you take that as your given libertarianism almost makes sense. However,
>> it isn't a very exact description of how taxation works.
>
> Do you really believe this?

Absolutely. The only people from whom taxes are extracted by force
are the anti-social few who don't pony up voluntarily.

Society is like a bunch of people who decide they want pizza on a
Friday night. Everybody chips in a few bucks.  You can argue about
how to fairly divide the cost -- by who eats most, or who can afford
most, or just even-Steven, or what -- and you can argue about how
much and what kind of pizza to order (and there's always the one
guy holding out for takeaway curry), but if you want to be part of
the pizza party, you chip in.

That's taxes. Simple as that. Instead of "pizza," you get things
like "roads" and "police protection," but the general idea applies.


> Come on, man. I know you got blinders to make
> a carriage horse proud, but seriously.

Ahem. This is the guy who complains about incivil discussion?

> Whatever you say, white man.

See above. When you can't say something substantive, you
fall back on insult.

>> Therefore, the best-run society is that which does the most
>> to compensate for the imperfections of the individual humans
>> that actually implement it. That seems to me to be a large,
>> inefficient bureaucracy where nobody has the power to do
>> too much.
>
> On your dime....

That's right. On my dime. I got no problems with chipping in
my share for the services society provides.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes



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