The income tax is not wage theft. Wage theft is wage theft. The income tax is a forced payment to protect you from your wages being stolen. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_naet1B36nU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I am afraid of the enforcement methods used to try and enact someone's particular idea of a "equitable society". So should you.
He doesn't know what he believes. He doesn't know anything. He just feels empowered making a counter cultural argument, raging against the machine. (and that's OK to a point) One way to tell the difference is when you stop arguing against things and start arguing for things, like describing how a libertarian or free market system would look in real life.
i am afraid of the enforecment methods used to try and enact the status quo which has led us to this ****ed up place we are at as a country. so should you.
interesting headline contrast today U.S. CEO Pay Jumps Minimum Of 27 Percent Last Year, Survey Finds http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/...ost-survey_n_1149535.html?igoogle=1?igoogle=1 Census data: Half of U.S. poor or low income http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57343397/census-data-half-of-u.s-poor-or-low-income/
Your assumption that someone's wealth must come at the expense of someone else is incorrect. Money is not static. Someone's gain is not someone else's loss.
I hear you, last year I did get a paper cut opening the envelope containing my W2. Then, because of the paper cut, it really hurt to fill out the online 1040 forms. The horror...
Anyone know where this libertarian bot is coming from in real life? I am assuming a lower middle class 14 year old on fire from reading the Fountainhead who imagines himself as a future Roark being held back from being a billionaire master of the universe. Although perhaps we are just dealing with a random generator of libertarian slogans and not an actual person.
That is not my assumption. I actually understand how banks' leverage lending creates national wealth when it is spent on capital improvements withing the borders. I think the contrast in the headlines is indicative of a skewed direction in the national priority. Profit at the top 1% to the detriment of maintaining a strong middle class compromises the national security of the United States. To wit: villainizing unions as profit killers fails to recognize their function as market maintainers, spreading the wealth to workers who in turn buy products and pay taxes. Stark capitalistic efficiency fails to recognize the reality of humanity; people do not want to be workbots, they have families, they want to have fun. Due to it's advantages of geography and history, the American system can produce abundance for most of it's population. We just need to value the contributions of all segments of the system more equally rather than letting the top set the the value for their own work and everybody else's. The head Of Exxon may think he is worth $27 million a year because of his stock value and his board saying he is, but he works 40 hours a week in an air conditioned office reading reports from others and and saying yes or no. I'll do his job for $2 million and work twice as hard. Or, if you just paid him $2 million what else would he do? Where else would he go? It's only because his crony board says that he can have that he gets it, but they lay off 10 $10 an hour guys at a pipeline pump station in Wyoming because the available storage is full in Cushing. They have to move and may lose the house. It's all relative and the relationship is out of whack.
It would look like people entering into freely negotiated contracts. For example, JJ Abrams, the producer of the new Mission Impossible movie decides he wants to make another one after Ghost Protocol. He contacts Tom Cruise (for whatever reason Tom decides not to be a producer next time). They negotiate Tom's salary. Hell, maybe they can't come to an agreement. JJ Abrams then contacts Liev Schreiber and they negotiate for him to play the lead in the next film. They come to an agreement for the terms of a contract which they both enter into freely. Liev trades his labor for money from JJ. They are both happy. The end.
I have a thousand government involved events a day: roads, regulated monopolies and banks, regulated foods and medicines, air traffic, interstate transactions, international travel, airwaves, pollution monitoring.... dream a little further and tell me how those work. Tell me how peoples lives are effected without an EPA and no one is monitoring water quality from coal mining tailings. The only recourse is a lawsuit after the cancers have formed. Crap, you think of a hundred of those.
Your example is flawed in a number of ways, and each reflects a key failing of the pure free market. I'll go over one point in depth; there is no accounting for externalities in this transaction; i.e costs borne by parties not factoring in this transaction. Therefore, the costing mechanism is broken; in this case, for example, by the fact that the cost of hoisting Mission Impossible 872 on society is greater than the private costs of the transaction in question; in essence, social returns are negative, while private returns are positive. You are, to use libertarian-speak, essentially forcing an outcome on people based on your own private gain. It is humorous in this case, but not so much when the externality in question is, for example, poisoning a well with arsenic, thereby causing numerous painful deaths, or global warming that sinks an island or two. This is why we have the EPA, and numerous economists are on record as to supporting Pigovian taxes (i.e carbon tax schemes or cap-and-trade programs). Here are some other failings--- Excessive market power (illustrated by Tom Cruise being the only actor you would go to---creates excess profits by the monopolist/monospony at the cost of the welfare of competitive parties. This is why antitrust law exists.) Asymmetric information (moral hazard/adverse selection)---what if Tom Cruise shirks on the job? Extreme short-term horizon of agents involved/systematic information errors (related to the above point) The distinction between private/public goods, and the tragedy of the unregulated commons. anyways etc. etc. etc. If you all want a really good example of a "pure" free market, combine Victorian England, with the "free banking" era. makes me wonder why we ever evolved past that.
The rights of other parties could be protected by lawsuit. Anyone forced to see MI872 could sue the producers for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. Free markets do not abrogate individual rights. People whose well water is poisoned can sue the miners for nuisance. If they drank the water they can recover for the injuries they sustain. If someone's island sinks, they can sue those who sank it. It doesn't even need to come to that. A popular boycott of polluters could force a change in behavior. These are methods that don't strip freedom from individuals. Aha, clearly you missed that Tom Cruise, by asking too much money, was tossed aside in favor of Liev Schreiber. The producer bites the bullet and hires someone else, also see above re: Tom. Entities that favor the short term too heavily will eventually be overtaken by those who take a longer view. This of course only happens if they are not bailed out when they fail. We actually have largely unregulated commons right here in America. The internet is a good example of self regulation of a public good. Sure there are pitfalls. There are viruses and crappy web pages and slowdowns when too many are using the same pipeline at one time, but it all seems to work pretty well nevertheless. Every system has flaws. The free market at least has flaws based in freedom instead of tyranny.
The whole law suit will regulate industry is flawed in so many ways. With a central regulation harmful products can have proper tests done and identified as harmful. If lawsuits are the only way it will have to be determined which of many possible harmful products (sludge in drinking water, air pollution from the factory, unhealthy food, unhealthy medicine etc.) caused the damage. Courts will be full up all the time, and law suits will be on hold for decades while the companies continue to damage generations of people, and may get away with it because people are unable to determine which of the many harmful things ruined their lives. Not to mention the fact that the big corporations will be able to hire a better team of lawyers than a sick worker, and the sick worker though damaged by harmful products, or unsafe conditions will never get their just recompense. Of course add on to that the fact that a company who screws over 100 people may go bankrupt after the 3rd law suit, and then 97 people won't be compensated for their medical expenses, or anything else. The more the system is examined the worse it seems.
Your basic assumption is that free markets work because you can sue when they don't? Even given the dubious notion launching lawsuits is fair in any way (given the transaction costs involved, and the key conflicts of interests an indentured class of lawyers would have towards justice for the rich), does that not imply a use of force regardless---in other words, in a pure free market, who enforces this system of "justice by litigation", and how is it any way better than basic enforcement standards being imposed by the EPA, which would have a much more systematic view of problems, rather than a composite of individual lawsuits, which may or may not be launched? A popular boycott sounds good too, except the residents of Palau could boycott Shell for all that they care; their island is sinking regardless. And really, what evidence lends itself to the view that the average gas consumer would give a s*** enough to boycott for the poor residents of Palau? Except in this case, Tom Cruise has a unique staying power that inflates his price---he in effect, holds the movie ransom. It cannot be made without him. Kinda like a drug producer cornering the cure for AIDS, and exploiting unenforced monopoly power to extract billions from helpless sufferers. Don't say consumers can sue, that's the whole point of government intervention in this case, with antitrust law. Moral hazard, and other problems of asymmetric information can't be waved away by saying you fire the guy---that's the whole point; you don't know the guy is shirking. You would fire him if you knew. Just like you would insure the guy if you knew more information, take a loan that makes sense if you knew more information etc. Regulatory reforms (for example assigning penalties to moral hazard in the case of Goldman broker short selling products it was selling to its' own clients) make sense in that kind of situation. As for short-term horizons, unregulated commons---look at how the system uses under-costed resources, manipulates them through accounting treatment year-by-year, and then flushes it out. If your axioms on this were true, half of the companies on the Dow Jones would have failed already. Bailouts and government subsidies play a part, but the entire system, through moral hazard, principal-agent problems, incentive structures, is set up for the extreme short term, and it's starting to show. We're starting to wonder if there will be a planet for our grandchildren. It's seriously a messed up situation. Anyways, the free market has flaws that can be corrected. Whether your ideal is equality or liberty, there are certain costs associated with the systems set up around these ideas. Long ago, governments realized this and moved towards the regulated mixed economy we see now. A "pure free market" would be a step back dozens, hell, hundreds of years, and is every bit as naive and idealistic as a "Neo-Marxist paradise".
The thing that puzzles me about the whole "Lawsuits can fix things" schpiel is...... I don't recall it working for the meat industry 100 years ago.
