From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Jul 06 2002 - 20:44:12 MDT
At 11:56 PM 7/5/02 -0700, Reason wrote:
>Why is it ok in your book for the majority to force the minority to pay for
>or do something that they don't want?
It's a difficult issue, but consider:
When this line of thought is applied to taxation, it seems to be assumed
that teeny weeny slices of your tax payment is being applied to whatever
programs you detest: mandatory traffic lights, state supported schooling,
cancer research, nuclear power or its regulation, water fluoridation,
bridges, etc. But mightn't you, an individual, support some of these
measures while disliking some of the others (while other taxpayers feel the
same way about different measures)? Might you not assuage your pangs of
dispossession by regarding the share you pay as going preferentially to
*your* favorite scam, and theirs as paying for what they favor?
Most of the folks here gets all juicy when a costly space probe sends back
messages from the depths of the solar system, while I'd guess most other
taxpayers are yawning at the news, assuming they ever hear it, and wishing
they had that ten cents back so they could spend it on beer or better
household guns or worming the cat or contributing to a new golden temple to
Jesus or L. Ron Hubbard.
Now I realize that Reason and other libertarians might respond: `Away with
*all* of it! We'll fund it if we like it, but first get this giant boot off
our necks.' Fair enough, but in the meantime, maybe relax a bit about how
unfair it is that those swine are gobbling up your hard-earned dough--the
fact is that you're conceivably gobbling up an even larger share of theirs.
Damien Broderick
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