Taxation and participatory democracy

[rishab@dxm.ernet.in]

Tim May:
> In any case, something is a "market price" if one can walk away from
> the transaction. I know of almost nothing the U.S. government calls a
> "tax" that taxpayers are free to walk away from, to not pay (and thus
> not receive the service).
> 
> If Jason is arguing that goods and services will be bought and paid
> for in cyberspace, who could disagree with this? They're just not
> taxes. 

Of course taxes were originally meant to be payment for services (at least 
in democracies - even US taxes are not quite the same as the half-your-crop
exploits of kings and modern despots). Taxes were to be compulsory where the
services were, to - it's difficult to say that you don't need the police, or
the roads, when you live in a community where you do benefit from them in any
case. The same is true for basic amenities (sewage, water...) in countries
that have a government monopoly on such things.

With the ever-increasing complexity of governments, the taxes you pay have
been far removed from the use they are finally put to, and a tax-payer's 
involvement in the decision of their use is remote (or non-existent, in the
case of secret defense or intelligence budgets). There have been occasional
suggestions that the use of taxes should be specified at the time of payment,
rather as one can do with donations to many charities.

Most economists think such hypothecated taxes impractical. So does The 
Economist - in "Taxing credulity" (August 20-26) it says that, while compelling,
such taxes are unworkable in practise and result in increased public spending.
Basically the problem is that changes in allocation of monies cannot be made
fast enough, the reason why we have _representative_ democracy rather than
_participatory_ democracy with universal involvement. I saw a good article
some years ago in Telecomputing (?) magazine on how electronic networking could
change things.

As I outlined in some posts last week, the _necessity_ of government (as we
experience it today, against highly distributed Internet-style administration)
is doubtful. Taxation is but a pinhole in the colander of its flaws. However,
the alternative comes from a cyberspace just 0.5% of the world's population.
Change is hardly likely to come soon.

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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh             "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
rishab@dxm.ernet.in                   take stone from stone and wash them..."
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