A government imposes taxation on the citizens to fund the services the citizens are required to use for daily life.
Libertarians: “GOD THIS IS AN UNJUST TYRANNY TO ME AND ONLY ME”
A corporation imposes a new service fee and increases the subcription charges, to fund their wallets and act like its better than it was before.
Libertarians: “This is normal and just, everyone is stupid except for me, I read Ayn Rand.”
I’m down to talk out what is a just tax, what is unfair, what the taxes should go to once collected, but I think Libertarians are too hooked on think tank propaganda to decide something for themselves.
Corporations are fucked up. They will never allow the state to be abolished because they need to collect taxes in order to bail themselves out of trouble and in order to fight wars for them at the taxpayer expense so they can reap the profits… a corporation will never go to war alone. War is fucking expensive and is rarely directly profitable. They want to socialize expenses and privatize gain, which is impossible to do without a government of some kind.
It’s even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.
It’s like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they’re money that’s supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you’re getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.
I’ve taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.
Libertarians: “GOD THIS IS AN UNJUST TYRANNY TO ME AND ONLY ME”
Libertarians: “This is normal and just, everyone is stupid except for me, I read Ayn Rand.”
I’m down to talk out what is a just tax, what is unfair, what the taxes should go to once collected, but I think Libertarians are too hooked on think tank propaganda to decide something for themselves.
Corporations are fucked up. They will never allow the state to be abolished because they need to collect taxes in order to bail themselves out of trouble and in order to fight wars for them at the taxpayer expense so they can reap the profits… a corporation will never go to war alone. War is fucking expensive and is rarely directly profitable. They want to socialize expenses and privatize gain, which is impossible to do without a government of some kind.
It’s even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.
It’s like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they’re money that’s supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you’re getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.
I’ve taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.