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Comment by refraincomment | Hacker News Reader

I know, I understand. Societies become mafias and they start extorting high-income individuals to guarantee the peace and the welfare.

I just applaud fair countries that don't extort their own citizens.

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It’s a symbiotic relationship. High-wealth individuals need organizations to enforce their property rights. At the same time, we have gravitated towards democratically managed organizations when it comes to running our cities and states. That is why, for example, there are rent control laws, easements and many other restrictions on what you can do with your property. It’s what the majority of the people want, although the few who amassed a great deal of the currency may not.

My question is ... why does any organization owe you to enforce your monopoly ownership of resources and let you unilaterally exclude others from using them? Is it better for society to let high “net worth” individuals to centrally plan where the resources will be diverted, and at a whim move arbitrary amounts out of a town, emptying it of jobs and resources?

Let me put it in stark terms. Should a city allow a few individuals to buy up arbitrary amounts of its fresh water reservoirs, removing them from being collectively managed? Once that they “privately own them” should the city allow the individuals to pollute them for profit, subsequently moving out and taking the profits from externalizing the costs to the people living there? It may result in “more revenue” to the city in terms of job creation, and cheaper goods, but can do you agree there is a trade-off?

Okay, you claim 50% taxation is beneficial for all. It's highly debatable.

But the point it's that taxes should be phrased and understood for what they are, a whitewashed extortion. It has no proportion at all with costs of running a rule of law society. Be grateful that we take just 50% from you because we could take everything!

Just replace the word “taxation” with “rents” and imagine that each city is owned by an individual and it’s their own private property. Suddenly this becomes OK under anarcho capitalism, right? Such private cities exist, eg Walt Disney World.

So now, imagine that each city’s owner chose to “go public” and sell shares of the city to each citizen equally, and they put in place bylaws. So now you have a democratic society.

In fact that is how cities like Boca Raton came to be owned by the residents. How is paying taxes to the city of Boca any different in your view than paying rent to locate your business in Walt Disney World?

Well you paint a very gloomy dystopian picture, with scarcity and fighting for every square inch.

This issue is present in any political system, even full egalitarianism, increase population by an arbitrary amount to reduce land per citizen to an epsilon.

Provided you are a good neighbour, it will always be possible to find space to rent at the marginal cost, without a rent-seeking political class.

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