In the United States check out the tax laws that apply if you decide to leave and change citizenship. In theory you can... in practice you are subject to a set of tax laws where the governments gets to keep a lot of your hard earned money.
Best
Ralph
At 02:20 PM 1/15/99 -0600, you wrote:
>hal@rain.org wrote:
>> Distinctions between governments and mutual agreements go by the wayside
>> if we assume that everyone involved voluntarily agreed to live by the
>> rules of their society. Newborn children are a sticky issue with this
>> approach, since they are born into society without agreeing to anything.
>> Generally you can consider that while minors they are bound to obey
>> their parents, and then when older they have a choice between accepting
>> the rules of society or leaving.
>
>This is a convenient fiction for people who like big government, but it
>doesn't have much to do with reality. No government ever asks its citizens
>to agree to its rules - you are stuck with them whether you like it or not.
>Leaving is also an illusory option - there is literally no place on Earth
>where you can go to escape the rule of bog government. Besides, you can
>only leave if the government lets you - and the bigger it gets, the less
>likely it is to let you go.
>
>I would be the first to agree that a group of people setting up a new
>society in ungoverned space should be able to create any social contract
>they like. However, here on Earth we are stuck with a system no one agreed
>to, that no one is allowed to leave. IMO, that puts important constraints
>on the policies that we can endorse with a clear conscience.
>
>Billy Brown, MCSE+I
>bbrown@conemsco.com
>
>
Ralph Lewis, Professor of Management and Human Resources
College of Business
California State University, Long Beach
Long Beach, California
rlewis@csulb.edu http://www.csulb.edu/~rlewis