muckypup said:
the problem with taxation is that it abdicates personal responsibility to the state creating state dependency to provide thus limiting personal choice. State policy making in main areas such as education, economic policy and judicial policy is closed off to public input and transperancy.
In particular education, there are many many criticisms that our educational intuitions do not create thinkers but, through the practice of teaching by rote, create unquestioning cogs who merely provide a function in the corporate sense.
In other words Humanity is commodified into another exploitable unquestioning resource.
Another area is that of health care which is primarily structured to treat symptoms once they occur thereby profiting the pharmaceuticals as opposed to a health care system which attempts perseveres human health.
There are many such examples which illustrate how, a centralised state tax system plays a fundamental role in restricting our freedom to achieve our fullest potential as humans.
Is that an argument for anarchism of one sort or another, or for free-market capitalism? I'm sort of assuming the latter in what I say below so apologies if I've misconstrued your argument, although if you're arguing for the former I've a whole raft of questions about how that might work...
This notion that taxation is 'abdicating personal responsibility to the state' is a handy slogan, but it doesn't seem to have much meaning in the real world. Even if you believe in the state playing the Gladstonian 'nightwatchman' role that London Boy suggests, there are still functions that only the state can adequately perform. I don't want to live in a world of private armies and police forces. At the very least, virtually everyone accepts that the responsibility for defence and the like has to be turned over to government, and few see that as an abdication of personal responsibility. Indeed, many would argue that it's the reverse: paying the taxes for government to perform those functions is an act of citizenship, of participation in society.
In terms of education and healthcare, the involvement of the state has led to a great widening of access. Of course it isn't perfect - schools are far too geared towards getting children through exams, for example, rather than giving a rounded education - but at least people do get access to
some education. Nor can I see any reason why a private education system would deliver any more rounded an education than any other. In terms of healthcare, again, the state system is not perfect, but the only current alternaitve is the marketised system they have in the States, where 45 million people don't have access to it. No thanks: I'll take the NHS, warts and all.
So no, I'm not convinced that a 'state tax system' is greatly restrictive of human potential. It carries dangers, I grant, of squeezing people into one-size-fits-all services, but that's better than no services at all, which is often the alternative. Plus, there are some things that are best done by a single entity, which might as well be state run.
