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Francisco, many thanks again, The Market for Liberty is ingenious. I love how they thought out the private national defense contractors and insurance agencies. In their view, in a free market, it would be chiefly large corporations who'd purchase "national defense insurance" passing the premium costs onto their products, so everyone buying those products would participate, avoiding the free-rider problem.

Hello Francisco, this is some great material. It is easiest to see how the public firefighting department can be replaced with private contractors, and I can see now also the case for private courts. Thinking about it, they already exist today in the form of various private arbitration agreements. What would you say about national defense, however. Would people "voluntarily" contract with a private national defense provider, knowing that if their neighbours contract, they can easily free-ride instead? And if they wouldn't, do you not accept the necessity of a public service and a forced taxation to pay for it? The only argument I've seen on the topic was made by Harry Brown in How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World, who claimed that national defense is not needed at all and neither is the government. The citizens are safer that way, since who would conquer them and how? If there is no central government, and no bureaucratic machinery to control a country, an invader cannot force the central element to surrender and take over the machinery - he'd have to conquer and police every single one of the hundreds of millions of citizens, keeping a permanent occupational force in the area. That is a semi-passable argument if you're thinking of rational invaders seeking to conquer you. It is very disappointing today though, as we also have to consider invaders trying to just wipe you out and make Lebensraum for their own gang. EDIT: I guess, you can also take the same stand I made about NASA some posts ago. If I care about national defense, and my neighbour doesn't, what right do I have to force him to pay for it through taxation...

Because you are an American ... great. Let's have a look at an example from your own country. The East Coast mafia since the end of the 19th century until today. Since their extortions are pretty much universal and large-scale, the playing field is even for all businesses and only the whining failures complain about it, right? The competent ones, change THEMSELVES, adjust to the new conditions of doing business and prosper. If you are fine with that, the argument ends, but I will leave it to you to draw its conclusions. If you disagree, them show me one difference between the welfare state and the mafia. One asks me smugly to pay for some great services I didn't ask for, or else. And the other one asks me, not so smugly and with no pretension about what they are doing, to pay for services I didn't ask for, or else.

Hello Selene, I didn't know about voluntary taxation. However, I find Rand's claim that it is practicable to be pretty bold Looks like I have a lot of reading on the topic to do, before I'll be able to finish the text. Many thanks for the lead.

I understand where you are coming from now. Unfortunately, it puts the whole discussion on a dangerous slippery slope - who is going to draw the line between the services properly provided by the governenment and those that should be left to the free market? I would have really loved to believe that no government/no taxation society were possible. But I cannot imagine how for example private courts/private armies/private police could ever work. I appreciated the help and I was really trying to save your time as typos-hunting is not something I'd ever want volunteer reviewers to do. A professional proofreader will be paid to do that to a final version of the text.

Hello Francisco. I originally started with Luca making that claim, too - "all taxation is extortion" but I had to tone that down a bit by now. I am not familiar with Ayn Rand enough, but even in Atlas Shrugged she defends some functions of the government, eg. Ragnar refuses to attack the navy because national defense is a proper function of the government. Clearly, this has to be paid for somehow. So, which forms of taxation would you consider just? Do you object only to income tax as it punishes ability but are fine with say VAT being demanded to cover the government's overhead?

I can already tell from the recent posts that this is going to be mightly unpopular, but anyway. This question is mainly for Derek, as I agree with his evaluation that the argument against the "we are leeches, too, Luca" statement was really weak. Below is the section reworked. It puts Luca on a much weaker moral ground, though. Any comments you care to give will be welcome. When she spoke at last, it was with a lifeless voice, as if something inside of her that she had trusted had just been crushed---and its dead carcass revealed that it had been a fraud all along. ``Luca, if we do not pay our taxes, that leaves us as leeches too. Every time we use some public service.'' ``No. There is a small number of services properly provided for by the government, the police force is one example, and it is unfortunate that we cannot selectively pay for those. But what we pay in indirect taxes, to the extent that we are consumers in society, far exceeds our part of the payment. As to the rest? Most, I'll never use---why should I foot the bill? ``And even in the rare cases where I do use them ... I didn't ask the government to provide those services. They did anyway, wiping out all private competition, thus forcing me to deal with them. I do not feel obliged to pay for those services any more than I would pay a mobster who's used his goons to shutdown all competitors, leaving his diner the only one in operation. If the government nationalises a railroad, which I had been perfectly happy to use, or provides subsidised train fare, is that really a claim on me to obediently stand and watch while I am being extorted, to the extent that I am a producer in society, to pay for those subsidies? ``I am free never to use the train again in my life, of course, and if I do, you are right to think of me as a leech. I am a leech openly, and will not hide behind a shroud of moral high ground. This is a war. And it was the government who started it. Apparently, they think it is justifiable to deal with other men by means of a force. Very well, I accept that tenet. Their force against mine. Let them catch me and punish me, if they can. Then I will go to jail. But until they do, the leeches will have to taste some of their own medicine---with me as a free-rider on their subsidised trains. ``But this is all rather theoretical, in the vast majority of sectors, in health care for example, private providers still exist. They are a mere shadow of what they would be without the government's interference, but they do exist. The rational and moral thing to do is not to use public services and pay for them in taxes---it is to evade paying taxes and purchase your services on the free market, or on what is left of it nowadays.'' <The discussion then follows unchanged, considering health care expenditures, to the "the wellfare state has destroyed both compassion and decency by administering tax-paid charity" argument>

I do deny that normative and cognitive can be divorced from each other, you do not have to hold back saying that by any means. It is your judgement on what something ought to be, that allows you to judge whether something you examine matches that vision and so enables you to identify it. I'll be fishing to you again, but I can live with that. Consider the concept of a nail. Your mind tells you that nails ought to be thin, strong and able to be driven into wooden walls, which enables you to judge an object lying in front of you - maybe made from a material you've never seen a nail made of - as fitting that or not, and identify it as a nail or reject it as such. Now are you going to dissect that process into normative and cognitive aspects? That's artificial. They are inseparable in establishing a standard and applying that standard to a particular in question. It is the same with humans as with nails, only more complex.

4 people did, of whom 3 knew me fairly well. I don't love the typos. I was just answering the attitude, stated clearly before by someone, and perhaps only imagined by me this second time, that it is somehow an affront on my part to post anything less than 100% typo-free here.

OK, guys, I do not understand why this riles you so much. I say this calmly, if the language insults you, do not read it. It is there offered freely in case you choose to read it anyway. It will be proofread once done. As a curious note, that paragraph has been read by many people, including me several times, and you are the first one to notice the typo. So it is kind of naive to think that just having something proofread is a surefire way to remove all mistakes.

I will have to see your book, because I do not understand this. It is all about principles, nothing else. The only "practical" aspect to it, is that if you just accept being cheated, because you still have enough, you send somebody a message that he can get away with much more ... and one day you may regret not making that stand when things were not that bad. Just out of interest, even accepting that this is an idealised world, what do you think of the characters joining Galt? Were they misguided to walk away from their passions in order to remove their support and their sanction?

While what you say has some appeal, you are wrong. We do not judge what we have identified, we judge in order to identify. See for example the concept of a swan. For centuries, people have thought being white is a necessary quality of a swan. Then some curious black birds were discovered in Australia and it took somebody's judgement to say these are indeed swans too. Our concepts were wrong and what we identified as swans had to change. It is the same thing with a totalitarianism. You see someone curbing mobility in a perverse way, and immediately judge that as a totalitarian quality. In this case, you are correct though, that while necessary, it was not sufficient in order to identify the concept in question as a totalitarian state.

OK, guys, maybe calling your country totalitarian is even offensive to you, when clearly your media are free, guns can be freely owned, etc. - all of them aspects that are unthinkable to the historic examples of totalitarian dictatorships. I take it back. US is generally more free than Europe, but when I see your rules on expat taxation, it just screams 'barbed wire' to me. At the risk of offending you further, maybe the means of control exercised over society have simply gotten more sophisticated in your case.

Look, I lived in a country that for 40 years had the borders lined with barbed wire. I am not comparing USA to that. But do you really claim that you are fine with your government saying, "leave if you wish, we still own you and you owe us a slice of whatever you earn, wherever you go."? So ... how far do things have to go before you'd personally call them totalitarian?

I was refering to the fact - to my knowledge unique to US - that even after leaving the country, you still owe IRS taxes on your worldwide income. I think there is a cap, maybe 10 years or so? after which you are free and clear. I would call that totalitarian, honestly.

That's interesting. I didn't even know that the Czechs had an independent Olympic team in 1908, since we were a part of Austria at the time. How come you have so many Czech friends? Are they all descendants of the exiles of the flight from Communism?

I am, but I left ... for various countries ... and also, Czechoslovakia no longer exists Never heard of any fencers, so I guess, I am not.

To keep up with some of the terminology used directly by Luca, he would call that teacher "a servant of evil", leeches are not the teachers, but the people who send their children to a public school, which is paid for by redistributions from the childless, or from parents sending their children to private schools. I don't understand Welfare and regulation (except natural monopolies regulation) is 80% of everything I object to. I don't have really strong objections against the rest, although I'd be happy to see much of that go as well. For example the NASA you mention. Is it the the government's business to do this research? It is not. Dump NASA. If you disagree, then you prove the point about pressure groups muscling in on tax revenue to support their own narow interests. Why should people who do not care about space finance your pet projects? If you care about space, use your private money to gather similarly minded people and fund a non-profit organisation to conduct that research. Do not make others help you through force. To an extent, I agree. As Luca says though, I am not brave enough to move to Inner Mongolia. But I think comparing moving out of a country to living in a community you choose is a bit disingenuous. If the government did not stick its nose into your freedom of association through say, anti-discrimination laws, the latter would be relatively easy. Just gather enough like-minded people, buy a stretch of land, and refuse to allow the unwanted elements to move in. Have you tried to move out of a country, however? Try it just once in your life, to see how much of a slave you really are. Especially as a US citizen, you will have lots of fun with IRS even after leaving the country for good. I think, Derek, this is something Dr. Floyd Ferris would be really happy to hear. To Luca, this is a matter of principles. If you disagree with him that what the government does is unjust, then yes, the revolt is foolish. But if you agree, isn't it the moral thing to do, to remove as much support for the goverment as possible? In Luca's view, an aircraft engineer paying his withholding taxes is a pillar the welfare state rests on. He refuses to be that pillar. You have to draw the line somewhere, Luca has drawn it obviously earlier than you would. Suppose you lived in Germany in 1930s. At which point do you quit? Or do you build bullets happily till the end? Because philosophical reasons do not take precedence over having a warm meal today?

Look, lady, there are no shoulds here. If you are insulted by the quality of the language to which I was able to proofread it myself without a native speaker doing a final pass, then simply do not read it. You can easily evaluate that from a couple of paragraphs and move on.

Hi Derek, thanks for the detailed comments. You will get mentioned in acknowledgements. I am afraid that we are going to disagree on great many things though Principally, due to this claim you make: " If someone does work then they need to be compensated." If someone does work I did not ask him to do, I see no reason why I should be paying his bills. None. I agree with you, that Luca should make it clearer that he does not propose zero government. There are some services that are properly provided for by the government, but there are very few of them. I guess he can claim with some justification that he still pays indirect taxes (like VAT ... this is a major tax amount in EU), and this covers the essential services he uses. The rest, he refuses to pay for, because, and here I have to disagree with you, it is all redistribution imposed by one pressure group or another. No exceptions to that. In EU, social security is the largest governemnt expenditure for every single member state. For many of them, it even exceeds 50% of the budget. I don't understand how you can find say socialised health insurance not to be redistribution. Any free market insurance scheme would base premiums on the client's risk, not on his ability to pay. A well-paid guy, who keeps himself fit, does not smoke or drink can end up paying about 20% of his earnings in forced insurance (varies between EU states). A bum on welfare, who sits on his butt all day, smokes and drinks has full health care coverage for free. Is that not redistribution from the responsible to the irresponsible? Do you call that justice? I guess this also answers your objection to the gun simile. Outside of the small set of services properly handled by the government, it is all immoral, and no way I'd pay for any of it without an implied gun aimed at me. The same goes for the elephant + leeches simile. To me, the leeches rhetoric is central, and I will absolutely keep it, but you might have a point that Elke should not accept is so readily. She says it more playfully, than seriously, "...you want to play games with me and I can oblige you..." but I will try to make her struggle with accepting his line of argumentation a bit more. Thanks. Concerning the inspection, they were inspecting the safety of the workplace (electromagnetic radiation from tools), not public space hazard. I guess it doesn't matter, however. I'd still maintain that this is none of goverment's business. The government should enforce liability for any damage caused and leave it to private parties how they prevent them. Does your employer use dangerous tools? Do not work for him. Are you concerned about nuclear radiation? Do not live next to a power plant. I do assure you that a private nuclear plant operator is more obssessed about the safety of his plant than some bureacrat sitting in a cozy office in the capital city. They don't throw you in jail for a divorce, but they do for a second marriage without that divorce. I will keep the ties between the goverment and marriage mentioned. Not sure I undestand you on the intellectual property. Do you claim that there is no such thing? Can you elaborate? If the church charged for camera usage (many do in EU), then Luca would have paid, of course, and made no objections whatsoever against it. I had Luca described to me by a friend as an annoying sage who never does or says anything wrong. The sex scene is an attempt to make him at least a bit flawed. He damns himself for what he has done, but Elke understands that there is no reason for that. At the end of the story, when he "proposes" to her in front of her parents, he references back to that night and acknowledges that he was wrong, while she wasn't, and thanks her for letting him learn from her. Maybe this all fell flat?

You're not that important, and the protagonist does not make any claims about wanting the society to collapse, although he admits that it is a pleasant fantasy for him, if a large enough fraction of the productive similarly revolted. You do not have to go on strike because you are being oppressed, but if you happily live on, then in effect you are condoning of the oppression. If you can bear an ugly simile, it is as if a 1930s German quietly, obediently worked on, because, hey, it's only the Jews, I don't have it that bad after all.

Thanks for the typo check, but do not waste your time on that. I will hire a proofreader if this ever heads for publication (will probably need two more stories to accompany it first though). The missing quotation mark note is curious though. There seems to be a rule in English (sorry, not a native speaker), that multi-paragraph quotations open each paragraph with a quote, but only the last one has a closing one. Is that not your understanding?

I've written it before in the thread, but maybe I can repeat. There is absolutely zero chance of a democratic welfare state changing bottom-up, as the majority of the electorate will always have something worth looting to look towards, and will not give up the chance. Or how specifically do you imagine the change? The only chance is a reconstructin following a Galt-style destruction of the system, by those who have something worth looting refusing to provide it. Sadly, the system doesn't really stand on only a handful of giants, as in Atlas Shrugged - in the real world, a much larger proportion of the population will have to revolt.

The protagonist rejects such a disappearance as the rational thing to do, but as something he is not brave enough to do. There are degrees of removing support for the society at large ... although they leave the protagonists in a somewhat unjust position, consuming services they refuse to pay for...

Also, Brant, this is a cheap escape. Name one practical thing the government can do to 20 million strikers. Just one. I am pretty much sure that they are not going to jail them. And they are not going to evict them from their homes, confiscate their property and shoot them. Not these days. So what can they do? Maybe they can threaten to withhold the loot distribution for them, but the strikers are the ones being robbed, so they'd just laugh at the threat. What's left?