From: Raymond G. Van De Walker (rgvandewalker@juno.com)
Date: Wed Jun 23 1999 - 00:02:38 MDT
On Sun, 13 Jun 1999 10:04:26 -0400 "Michael S. Lorrey" <mike@lorrey.com>
writes:
<snipped good points about bogus government services, and extortionate
taxes
to pay for them>
Absolutely. They _are_ abusive. Very.
If we had competion in "government", then for $30/day we could all live
in Disneyland. I'd _like_ to live in Disneyland, and in fact, I own a
pass. That's _my_ standard for service at a good price. Government has
never come close.
But IMHO a minarchy's legitimate concern is to provide a communal defense
without free-riders. Since this protects land, billing per hectare seems
like the logical way to pay for the defense services and equipment.
That's really all I meant to say.
Not for other purposes; I think you're absolutely right.
>The problem with evenly apportioned taxes like this is that it is
>anti-environmental and anti-rural, unless specific exemptions are
>written in for farmland and wilderness property.
Aren't defense costs are real costs of maintaining property? It seems
to me that profitable enterprises have to pass these costs along, or else
somehow the value has to be coerced from other people that then don't
control the expenditure.
Can you think of a reasonable libertarian way to pay the defense of
wilderness without subsidies from nonconsenting persons?
The Nature Conservancy _buys_ it, and then pays taxes, etc. on it. We
had a case in Norco CA where the NC owned a swamp (remarkably rare land
in Southern California, which is mostly subtropical desert). The city
wanted to put a road through it, and the NC flew in a brace of
high-powered lawyers that stopped the process. I was impressed.
I personally would live to give exemptions for wilderness, but I worry
that it's too coercive.
If one did permit such exemptions, it would pay people to plant wild
plant species in their yards and roofs, to better care for small birds
and native animals.
Exemptions could also pay developers to route greenbelts between local
biopreserves, so that the biopreserves would not be genetically isolated.
In Huntington Beach CA, the central park is remarkable, because it's
based on native species, with water and mowing added to keep the grass
green and short. One of my teachers was a field biologist that consulted
on the choice of species. The park is lovely, and they can turn off the
water in droughts without killing the plants. My teacher said that the
native insects, insectivores, herbivores and small predatores were all
settling in nicely, in plausible ratios. I've seen hawks there.
A good system of exemptions could thus probably pay for parks to serve as
regional biopreserves.
I'd love to have exemption to a property tax system, becaus ethey could
pay for biopreservation, something that I value. But, It's not clear to
me that my values are shared.
I'd love to hear your ideas.
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