Taxes and government

It continues to amaze me how poorly so many people understand economics and government.

Where I live, as with very nearly every other state, we have budget problems. We have things that need money spent on them, and the state doesn't have the money to do so.

Services cost money. Plain and simple. We need road work. We need police. We need fire/emergency help. We want good schools. We want a working court system. These things cost money.

There are groups which advocate more government-run activities, and groups which oppose such.

I am in neither. Government should do some things, and not others. Government should do things where all citizens need exactly the same thing at all times, or as close as is feasible to provide. (By "do" here, I could mean "regulate", as well, where the actuality is performed by some other organization, like your electricity supplier).

If you want, for example, snow removal service during the winter...that costs money. That could be commercially provided, but how would that get done? I want all the roads I am likely to use to be plowed right away. And my driveway. I don't care about other people's driveways, nor do I care about roads I don't use...Except that maybe I need for others to be able to use those roads in order to make deliveries I will need access to, like the grocery store. "Stock up in advance" you might say...and that certainly works to an extent, given that where I live snow generally doesn't last too long (although it has been known for one single snowfall--a blizzard--to last a couple of weeks). But there was a time when I lived in Massachusetts, in 1994, and there was 9 (yes, nine) feet of snow that winter (two years later it was ten). That snow didn't all melt away for four months. Not really feasible for me to "stock up" (although the Pilgrims must have done so somehow). I can't get to work without plowed streets, so that blizzard here in 1996, which the county did not deal with effectively, kept me stuck at home for a week.

So I am willing to have some tax dollars go to providing this service. Lacking a county-funded provider of snow removal, I'd have to get all my neighborhood together, and we'd have to pool to hire someone, or buy the plows ourselves to fit the pickup trucks of those who live in the neighborhood. The question then is what do you do about the people who live in your neighborhood who don't want to pay for this? The government has some measure of coercion it can apply, but you do not. Do you just pile up the snow in front of their driveway? Suppose they need an ambulance?

So this is a thing that government should do, or regulate. It will work best if there's a single provider, for uniform results.

In contrast, trash collection is done differently. There are county-gov sanctioned providers of collection service, I pay the provider directly, there is competition, it's not too expensive, and I could change providers if I wished. What I can't really do is let trash pile up, if I wished to not pay for it at all, although that's mostly because I don't *want* it to pile up. I recycle a lot of stuff, but that's the same service provider there. I could take recyclables to the center, for free, and if I could keep my packaging-materials limited to paper, I could probably go without the trash service; paper I could burn, or compost to an extent. Could snow removal work the same way? Maybe...it's an expensive business to be in, you only need it a few times/year, whereas trash service is every week. I'd be willing to do some plowing of the neighborhood, and maybe bit beyond, but no way I'm plowing the highways. I think that could work, except for those folks who would want it done but not pay for it.

Government needs to do other things, too, but plenty of folks don't want to pay for those things.

So what I'd like to see...recall how we keep hearing that the "states are little experimental test areas where ideas can be tried out" ?

Let's try out the idea of zero government.

No taxes. No laws. No police. No courts. No water/sewer service (unless you dig well, septic). No electricity (except self generated). No roads except those you create yourself. No trash collection, no snow removal. No regulated businesses. What would that really look like? Who would live there?

Partly it would look a lot like "the wild west": the guy with the biggest gun and greatest willingness to do grievous harm to others will be in control. Most people would get along with each other ok, I expect, but they'd also become victims.

But it'd be an interesting experiment. Could it work?

This idea was triggered by a couple of things: one was some interviews with protesters in DC a week ago, and there was this one woman who said she wanted government out of her life completely. The guy with the mike/camera didn't pursue that far enough, but I suspect she doesn't *really* want government entirely out of her life, because she does want water, sewer, trash, snow, electricity, police, etc. She might want her taxes to be zero (who doesn't?) but she probably doesn't understand what all those taxes actually pay for. My impression is that most folks don't.

And of course going along with the "pay for it" issue, you also hear "waste, fraud and abuse". I really think that's a euphemism for "fire people", but since we can't seem to figure out who to fire, let's just fire them all.