The Political Thread

[M.I.K.]

I think I was less alarmed when it was just links.

[The Legendary Shark]

Dr X, you say that "(tax)...is deducted from the individuals in society as part of a social contract for the order and structure that government brings. Without tax, there would be no government. Without government, there would be anarchy."
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Firstly, taxation is nothing more than legalised theft. There is no getting around this. Taking money from individuals without their consent is almost the very definition of theft. The fact that it's dressed up as law is merely deception. If a local street gang issued a proclamation that it was going to extract money from the local residents under pain of violent retaliation, almost nobody would regard that as law. If a government issues a proclamation that it is going to extract money from the population (via legislation) under threat of violent retaliation (i.e. robbery (forced confiscation of goods or fines) or kidnapping (imprisonment)), almost everyone does regard that as law. The only differences are in scale and belief.
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The 'social contract' to which you allude is likewise nothing more than a belief. Have you ever signed this mythical social contract? I'm fairly sure I have not. Some argue that merely by being born into a certain abstract region, or 'country,' a person is bound by the country's social contract but this is absurd. Simply being born is in no way indicative of having signed a contract (unless you want to get all esoteric and claim a 'contract of existence' with God or the universe or other grand power).
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Thirdly, the idea that "government" brings order and structure is also a myth. One would hardly call the massive and complex process of mass food production and distribution "government" but this process goes on all the time and is simply the result of co-operation between people. One could argue that "government" streamlines this undertaking somewhat but in that case it is not government but facilitator. The main things government brings to this process are taxation, levies and fines which, as I say, are simply theft.
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You finish your point by saying that without government there would be anarchy, which is absolutely and undeniably true. However, I think you may equate anarchy with Mad Max and not consentual and mutually beneficial societal cooperation - which happens all the time. This very forum is anarchic but doesn't lead to criminality and chaos - we all know the rules and (largely) stick to them. There is no "government" here and neither is one needed.
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You go on to say, "Some of the things a government does are unpalatable to some of the people. Spending on war, or defence, or on the NHS or on benefits may not be what some people want. But, sometimes it is for the greater good." At what level does it become wrong for one set of people to override the rights of another set of people? If it's just one person whose rights are ignored, does that make it okay? How about ten, 100, 1,000 or a million? And who decides that level other than government itself? It's the same with levels of taxation. If it's legitimate for the government to decide to steal 1% of a person's wealth then it's logically legitimate for it to steal 2%, 17.5% or even 100%, is it not? Again, at what level does this legalised theft become illegitimate? Either a thing is legitimate or it is not, fractions of legitimacy is an absurd idea. One cannot commit 12% of a fraud, 25% of a rape or 62% of a murder.
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"...you cannot get rid of tax. It's like getting rid of pencils because you don't like what someone has written." Yes, you can get rid of tax. One can replace it with voluntary contributions or with a restructured banking and money creation process or a combination of the two. Of course, while we continue to run our economy in such a primitive way (using money), taxation will always be the easiest solution to certain problems but it is by no means the only way.
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Finally, to answer your first question; no, I don't think I'm being grossly naive.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

"They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good.

And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; – it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice.

For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice."

I'm fighting with Plato Block. There has to be a policed compromise or else what we get is worse than what we have.

A social contract, btw, is a socio-political concept to distinguish theft from tax. The analogy of gangs etc is wrong and doesn't hold, because a gang has no accountability to its victim.

And the needs of the many outweigh those of the few for the greater good. Granted, it's s thin line then to discrimination but, again, the legislature should enact protections where needed.

I'm not saying the system is working. I'm saying it could work and four energy should go into policing what we have rather than ripping up something that is effective for a ill-thought through alternative.

Edit: for clarity, a social contract is about the basis of government power, not merely tax.

Edit, edit: it is naive to assume voluntary contributions would work. You need to govern to the lowest common denominator and that, I'm afraid, is that most people are selfish and greedy and wouldn't pay.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I also told myself never to get engaged in this thread.

In short, no matter what, we end up with a shower in charge.

So I'll bow out with a question:

In UK elections, the electoral officer records your voter roll number and the number of your ballot paper. They then give you the ballot.

How, then, is it a secret vote?

[Professor Bear]

I like a good conspiracy as much as the next man, but I assumed the numbers are to stop ballot-stuffing and to be able to verify each vote in the event of highly-contested results.  I don't think they actually connect the numbers to the individual voters as normal practice, only in extreme circumstances, and even then, the voting process in the UK is still pretty low-tech, so it would be an effort to create a central archive of who votes for who.

You finish your point by saying that without government there would be anarchy, which is absolutely and undeniably true. However, I think you may equate anarchy with Mad Max and not consentual and mutually beneficial societal cooperation - which happens all the time.

Society is a work in progress, and while Anarchy in the political sense does seem appealing on paper, I think it would mean Mad Max times if we tried to implement it right now because a lot of people only act in a civilised manner because they fear reprisals from government agencies. Anarchy would most likely result in feudalism and warlords and I'd rather have some kind of overarching authority in place to prevent that.
Maybe one day when we're a bit more evolved it might be a possibility, but right now we still need taking in hand, no matter how much we might want to believe otherwise.  Just look at Iraq when power changed hands - we might not have liked that Saddam would have people murdered or his sons would abduct children from the streets and rape them to death, but now that they supposedly have a much better kind of government/democracy, ISIS does the murdering and raping on a much larger scale but don't even pretend to keep the utilities working.  You might not like a government - they might even be provably evil - but just abandoning that system and hoping people who rely upon it will be okay doesn't have a great track record of success.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I don't think they actually connect the numbers to the individual voters as normal practice

They fill out a table. One column is your ballot number, and beside it your voter role number.

[Richmond Clements]

I don't think they actually connect the numbers to the individual voters as normal practice

They fill out a table. One column is your ballot number, and beside it your voter role number.

"Michael James Meadowcroft clarifies the background of the ballot system in the UK. Meadowcroft emphasizes that in order to maintain secrecy of the votes whilst having ballot numbering, the results are declared at the whole electoral area level, instead of at the individual polling stations level. However, if an individual would lost his or her vote through being impersonated, the numbering enables that he or she will be given a "tendered" ballot paper of different colour than the normal ones (for more information, see ACE article on Provisional or Tendered Votes). These ballots are not being counted unless the majority of the winning candidate is less than the number of tendered ballots. According to Meadowcroft the Parliament and the courts have initiated this process exceptionally rarely."

http://aceproject.org/electoral-advice/archive/questions/replies/912993749

[The Legendary Shark]

I would argue that the gang analogy holds because where is Tony Blair's accountability for the deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq he is responsible for? Whence the accountability of Ian Duncan Smith for the deaths he has caused? To say that their accountability is merely to be voted out of office (which you did not say) is not enough.
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I would also say that the 'social contract' is not about the basis of governmental power. Governmental power derives from the people - and if the people (you and I) have no right to force our demands on other people, have no right to force our morals on other people, have no right to force other people to give us their wealth - then how can we possibly pass these rights on to the "government?" We cannot give away that which we do not ourselves possess. The social contract, then, like government itself, is no more than a mythical entity.
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The needs of the many may well outweigh the needs of the few on a like-for-like basis, for example a medical quarantine may sacrifice the need for life of a few quarantined souls to protect the need for life of many. It is when needs are confused with desires that things go wrong. Take my own particular example, my need for a home was outweighed by the desire of many council officials, politicians and bankers to balance the books. When desires are presented as needs, as they are with breathtaking arrogance in our current society, the equation becomes unbalanced and the centre does not hold. My need becomes subservient to the desire of others.
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Perhaps it is naïve to expect voluntary contributions to work, especially under society's current mindset. However, people are only greedy today because they are driven to it. The need of the many ordinary people to make ever more money to satisfy the desire of a few elites to maintain their wealth and dominance is at the root of this greed problem. "The love of money is the root of all evil," as the Bible says (there is some wisdom in there), and that's as true today, maybe even moreso, as it's ever been. Fix the money creation scam and a whole world of possibilities will open up before us. That is why I always say we should fix that first - freedom and creativity will automatically follow.
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I have never, and would never advocate ripping up everything we have achieved - there is much that is good and decent and useful in what we have created. The problem is that most of it has been hi-jacked by the greedy desires of a very few people. This is what must be ripped up.
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I for one am glad you engage in this thread, Dr X, I enjoy the perspective and intelligence you bring.
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If we fix the money creation scam, thereby ensuring our institutions, our services and ourselves have enough, and then begin to exercise our right to govern our own lives as free individuals, then if we are governed by a shower we only have ourselves to blame.
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And in answer to your last question - I suppose it isn't a secret vote. But then, your vote doesn't matter anyway. No matter who you vote for, it's the few unelected bankers who hold the power. If you don't believe me, just look at what the Greeks voted for and how the IMF won't let them have it.

[JPMaybe]

The 'social contract' to which you allude is likewise nothing more than a belief. Have you ever signed this mythical social contract? I'm fairly sure I have not. Some argue that merely by being born into a certain abstract region, or 'country,' a person is bound by the country's social contract but this is absurd. Simply being born is in no way indicative of having signed a contract (unless you want to get all esoteric and claim a 'contract of existence' with God or the universe or other grand power).
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Yeah you didn't sign a damn contract, why don't you walk out of the restaurant without paying next time you eat out because you didn't sign a contract before you had your starter.  From the moment you were born you've been the beneficiary of a society built on taxation, you owe society as a whole, as we all do.  Even if your protestations that you personally would be more likely to contribute if there was no manadatory contribution (yeah, right) were true, do you look at the efforts the rich go to to avoid giving the paltry sum they're asked for and think the same?  If so you are, indeed, hopelessly naive.  Either way, your philosophy boils down to nothing more than identikit fuck-you-got-mine internet lolbertarianism.  Given your own financial straits I find it perverse that your ideal system would strip away what little protection we have from unfettered capitalism, and leave every single public service reliant on the capricious largesse of plutocrats. 

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Honestly, it boils down to me being a cynic and any other view being optomistic.

That said, I do think that constantly changing your forum name should be a hanging offence. No, scrap that. Hanging's too good for the likes of them.

[Professor Bear]

Gove's got your back, DX.

/goes off to change his name to "Dr X is smelly."

[Colin YNWA]

I'm just glad 'White Falcon' does the dot thing in his long posts so I could immediately identify his previously big fishy identity.

[The Legendary Shark]

I love your restaurant analogy, JPM, because it allows me to make my point perfectly.
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If I walk into a restaurant, I do so of my own free will. If the meal is inedible and the service is dire then I have no obligation to pay. If I decide I don't like the menu, I can walk out before ordering. If the meal is super delicious and the service is excellent then I'll definitely pay and may even leave a tip. If the restaurant owner doesn't like the look of me or if I behave poorly in his/her establishment then I can be refused service or asked to leave - it is a mutually consensual arrangement.
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Let's take your analogy further. If the restaurant owner employed a couple of gorillas to grab people off the street and force them inside to eat and then forced them to pay, irrespective of the quality of the food, would that be right? I'd say no.
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Let's go a little further into the realms of fantasy. Imagine your restaurant is publicly owned and the only one in town; and that if you wanted to eat out this place was the only option. But the manager, for whatever reason, only buys the cheapest cuts of meat and fish which he knows are a bit iffy. People get sick and some may even die. You'd want that manager sacked, wouldn't you? But you can't sack him for up to five years, during which time he just carries on as he is. Would you consider that to be fair? Even when he is sacked after his tenure expires, you'll only get someone else like him and so it continues.
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So you decide to open J. P. Maybe's Diner and provide a better service. This new place is the same size, offers the same dishes and the same portions at the same price but uses fresh ingredients, properly cooked and served by staff who enjoy their job and don't sneeze into the soup or spill gravy all over the place. Most people, given the choice, would rather go to your diner.
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But the manager of the first restaurant has a brother who's the mayor of your town and so taxes, levies, requirements and fines are imposed on your new diner. So much so, in fact, that the JPM Diner can't make a profit and eventually goes under, leaving you with massive debts, no house and a criminal record. The first restaurant, not bothered by such restrictions, carries on as it always has. Would you consider this to be fair or even lawful? Well, this is exactly how government works.
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Thanks for that analogy, JPM, I couldn't have thought of a better one myself and will use it often from now on!
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I don't really get the rest of your post. You seem to think that, because I am part of society, I must pay for it with money. Helping people out directly or having a socially useful job doesn't seem to be enough for you.
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If I were to turn up at your home, uninvited, and mow your lawn, wash your car and clean the windows then demand payment, would you think that fair? But this is exactly what government does. "We've built you a school, pay us," "we've bombed Iraq for you, pay us," "we've invited the King of Europe over to a banquet for you, pay us," "we've increased our salary for you, pay us," "we've incarcerated a petty criminal for you, pay us" and so forth and on. Taxation is nothing but a con job but we've all been conditioned to see it as entirely reasonable and honest when it is, in fact, the complete opposite of those things.

[Theblazeuk]

In this anarchist utopia how is money defined?

[Taryn Tailz]

F***. As if the election news couldn't get much worse:

http://news.sky.com/story/1481942/ukip-rejects-nigel-farages-resignation