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Forum - Libertarian rhetoric about taxation versus reality.
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| advancedatheist | Posted: Feb 03, 2010 - 10:17 |
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 Level: 3 CS Original | Libertarians say something to the effect that governments can collect taxes because they threaten to murder the people who don't cooperate. I wonder how they reconcile this claim with the fact that over 90 countries have tax-collecting governments which have renounced the use of the death penalty, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of Europe and even Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_nation</p> The persistence of the death penalty in the U.S. makes us look more like a Third World country than a properly civilized one. | |||||
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| Agent Matt | Posted: Feb 03, 2010 - 11:35 |
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 Genuine American Monster Level: 70 CS Original | "I wonder how they reconcile this claim with the fact that over 90 countries have tax-collecting governments which have renounced the use of the death penalty, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of Europe and even Russia" They don't. Libertarianism is based on a fundamentalist faith in the Constitution. Which explains why they hate the Supreme Court. | |||||
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| advancedatheist | Posted: Feb 03, 2010 - 11:46 |
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Level: 3 CS Original | The situation in other countries also suggests that their populations don't have such an adversarial relationship with their respective governments. The American Revolution, according to some interpretations, started because of a baseless conspiracy theory among American colonists about the designs of King George III; that delusion has made many Americans irrationally suspicious of government ever since. | |||||
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| Agent Matt | Posted: Feb 03, 2010 - 11:51 |
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Genuine American Monster Level: 70 CS Original | "The American Revolution, according to some interpretations, started because of a baseless conspiracy theory among American colonists about the designs of King George III" Drastic oversimplification. "that delusion has made many Americans irrationally suspicious of government ever since." Again, drastic oversimplification. For example, Bill Clinton's speech about "the era of big government is over" had much more to do with market democracy and negative liberty (Isaiah Berlin was not an American) theory than colonial conspiracies. | |||||
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