It didn't take long for inspiration to occur. What would a government be like that didn't rely on taxation? You may be thinking that such a thing does not seem possible. I actually think it might be more possible than it has ever been before due to our technology.
You may be thinking that a government could not operate without taxes.
You may be thinking that at the bare minimum we need the Constitutionally (U.S.) permitted forms of taxation that existed before 1913 corrupted it all and created the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
I am actually thinking... what if we don't need taxes?
I have this nagging suspicion such a situation could fix the majority of our problems...
How?
Crowd sourcing. What if the officials or those that wish to act on behalf of the nation, the state, the county, the town, the neighborhood, etc. had to convince you that their idea was a good one and anyone could donate to them just like crowd sourcing, patreon, subscribestar, etc.
What would the officials need to do if they wanted to keep receiving your backing?
A good job perhaps?
If they have a reputation for not doing what they say they are likely to find it increasingly difficult to get funding.
Advantages
100% voluntary. No force. No coercion.
What about people using services without contributing?
That would be totally up to how the original proposal is framed. If you are creating a charitable organization/action then that may be by design what is expected. It will of course still have to stay within the constraints of its funding. For this to work no one should EVER be forced to contribute to something.
The original proposal could be setting up an organization/action/service that is only available to subscribers as well. If you don't subscribe then you don't get the service.
Could there be services some people can afford to subscribe to and others cannot? Of course. This is part of life. If it is something you truly want then hopefully it will give some goals to strive towards.
A Society Without Goals
When people have less things they need for survival because it is effortlessly supplied to them there seems to be a growth in attention on trivial and petty things. It is almost like boredom and lack of meaningful activity lead them by nature to seek out THINGS to do even if that ends up being offended by truly insignificant things when it comes to the truth of life.
If there are goals for things people want but they have to work towards them that gives them things to focus on that are likely not trivial and not insignificant. I am increasingly seeing this is an important thing for a healthy society, healthy mind, and well being. I suspect a lot of the issues today are actually because of how easy people have it, and how we almost want for nothing. There are exceptions but in truth in a number of countries those that are called "poor" don't truly know what that word means. There are some people in other countries that would swap places with them and suddenly feel like they were living as kings/queens. "You have running water?" "You have electricity?" "If you are out of food they'll give you food stamps?" "You can stand on a corner and people driving by will give you more money than I see in a week?"
People can think they have it bad no matter what their actual situation is. We tend to think we have it bad when what we have come to expect as our NORMAL life is disrupted. A very wealthy person can think they are broke when they don't have as much spendable cash that week but they are driving in a car that if I sold I could feed my family and pay all of my bills for more than a year. They still think they are broke. I have witnessed this firsthand.
What do you think?
What do you think of the idea of a subscription and crowd funded form of government?
I think it would make it easy to insure the people you are funding do their job well and actually represent the people. Those that do not would find it challenging to get funded.
Where did the inspiration come from to write this?
I was reading about tax havens and the countries people use in a Zerohedge article.
I have thought a lot about this concept before. Honestly i think this i the true middle road between protesting to change the system, or violently revolting. First one is just asking the system to change which rarely does anything, and the second is just tearing down the old one, but in the end you just have to rebuild most of it to get things functioning. So why not skip the tearing it all down part, and just start with building the new one right in the middle of the old system.
One way to implement this would be to find a legal loop hole that allows people to choose where their tax dollars go, or makes investing in the things you want, tax deductible. Then eventually the budgets for things we don't want shrink, while the things we do want have large budgets, which hopefully translates to the change we want to see.
The other way is to realize that the politicians themselves are obsolete, since we only needed representatives when we all travelled by horse back, and couldn't attend every town meeting in person. So we form a new system to allow self governance, which allows anyone who wishes to vote on any issue. Of course since direct democracy is actually very messy, we could leverage all the data gathering being used against us, to make much of the voting passive through our actions, and or debates about the issues online. Thus making the system adaptable, so as it can correct it's own mistakes, and never create simply one rule for every situation. Of course at first it would just be a living online simulation running along side real life, so that we can work the kinks out before move into the real world, and just stop listening to governments anymore. And when they send the police and military after us, we offer them a job doing what they all were brainwashed into thinking police did, and actually protect the public.
Of course I could go on for a very long time if I wanted to cover all the details that I have thought of before, but i think you're very much already on the same mindset. And really before blockchain, i don't actually think we could have created a system that would do what we needed, while also being both transparent, and anonymous. So who knows, maybe Hive will actually play a role in the evolution of the new system. But i think the important thing is that we stop leaving governance up to other people, because that's what got us into this mess in the first place.
My biggest problem with EVERYONE voting is that a lot of people don't even know what they are voting for. They do what someone else tells them. This is very dangerous.
I'd be all for everyone having the opportunity to vote but I think it would be good to have some way to be certain the person was familiar with what they were voting on and that they are at least informed enough to be voting in the first place.
The risk there is if it is just a simple multiple choice type thing then someone could give them the answers ahead of time.
I've thought maybe having a large pool of potential questions and answers and having it randomly select a few would be sufficient.
I am of the opinion that if you are not personally informed about what you are voting then you shouldn't be voting.
Weighted voting based on experience in the subject, whether or not they have education, or if it directly affects them in some way. Very few things would really be open for general public to vote on, unless it actually is a matter of public opinion, but I think a lot less things should be based on public opinion than they currently are.
The issue is military.
How would that be funded? What if two politicians both wanted their own military?
Is it fine to have wars between the states? And what if one would win, and the one who wins is able to force nonvoluntary taxation onto everyone?
"Countries don't go to war with other countries. Governments go to war with other governments."
Usually under the false pretense of security. In reality the sole purpose is to steal that countries natural resources (see middle east) or their tax chattle.
Both of which are non-existent when government ceases to exist.
So militaries will no longer really exist, rather a private security force, one which is beholden to accountability and its growth commensurate with the population which is willing to fund it.
Good thing to use game theory to always look at ways to exploit the situation.
If there is transparency about what is going on for national defense I am okay with that. It'd be a refreshing change. They would need to seek funds just like everyone else. It also would be possible to put limits on how such things could be funded.
Neighborhoods funding a constable to protect their neighborhood as needed. States funding people to patrol their highways, parks, etc.
There is no such thing as utopia. There will be problems that we need to address as they arise.
I simply think they would be NOTHING remotely close to the problems the world is facing now.
Yeah,voluntary taxation is for sure better than forced taxation.
Even just "issue-based voting" would be better than voting for trickster politicians.
When an issue wins an election, a task-force of interested politicians, no matter their party, are assembled and put to work.
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STOPI myself am always in favour of voluntarism instead of coercion. But it is interesting that in my conversations with people I have found that they are used to coercion and even welcome it because they think they are incapable of achieving anything or behaving sensibly without it. The self-image that people have of themselves is "I am lazy, useless, pleasure-seeking, inconsiderate" etc. They project this self-image onto other people and therefore there is a conviction that one has to force others to be happy or to teach them how to behave. It is a lack of confidence in oneself.
Here is a quote from Darren Allen that I think sums it up well:
I would be in favour of football tournaments without referees, for example - that would motivate players to play a fair game, because in time, when the rules explain themselves, we would finally see what makes a game so enjoyable: players playing their game with spontaneity, joy and ease. That the rules explain themselves would first be noticed by the fact that without a referee, the players themselves would have to find ways to ensure that unfair behaviour does not prevail. Perhaps there are still places where you can observe such things in street football. When I watch football, I want to see virtuoso players get the opportunity to show their full ability to handle the ball. Without being immediately fouled or stopped from the flow of the game by an offside rule.
But where football is dominated by the club, the public, the stadium operator and broadcasting licences, advertisers, etc., there are the rules and there I often see no joy in the players' faces, little chance to show really artfully executed manoeuvres, because everything is done just not to concede a goal.
Regarding taxes:
On the other hand, I find it very difficult to decide where money should go if I have no personal connection to my immediate environment. That means, if I am not settled somewhere, constantly moving, have no family, live only for my work, how am I supposed to be able to make decisions when it comes to the distribution of money?
I have to admit that since I don't have property in the form of a house and land, I hardly feel any responsibility for the environment in which I live. I might have to move at any time, the neighbours in the house are constantly changing, I always meet new faces in the supermarkets, there is almost nowhere I can establish a personal relationship and all the shops I used to go to eventually close down and give way to chains. The uncertainty about where I will be in my future gives little reason to make local connections in the present. Attempts to do so have shown me the short-livedness and boundedness of temporary integration efforts. None of the connections and relationships have really lasted. It may be me, I can't really say, but investing in relationships, for example at work, without any share of participation, means that these relationships become meaningless from one moment to the next as soon as you change jobs.
On what personal basis would I therefore decide what to do with money if I am so unattached and not integrated into an existing - not constantly changing - community? The only solution I see is village life, where the number of people is manageable, i.e. understandable for me. Large metropolises are not suitable for this.
Nevertheless I think it's worth considering utopian concepts.