California Considers Placing A Mileage Tax On Drivers

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I mean, you could always find a nice spot of land in Somalia if you want to live in a paradise with no formal government. I suspect you wouldn’t like it in practice, though.
 
Maximilian75 said:
It’s also the reason you’re alive right now… the hospital you were born in was most likely government funded, the roads you drive on, the police, firefighters, and EMS that risk their lives for you, the freedom of speech that lets all of us here be keyboard warriors…
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I’m alive right now because my parents had sexual relations. I was born in a private hospital. I’m forced to pay for the emergency services you list, which, if were done privately would probably resulted in better service.

God gave me freedom of speech. Not man.
 
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That hospital got nothing from the government? I find that hard to believe.

And the US government still recognizes your right to free speech and protects it.
 
By the way, I hope you have thanked your parents for starting your life with no government support. I guess that means they didn’t drive on any public roads. I hope the hospital didn’t accept patients that paid them with government money (that includes any type of any government employee), nor had any tax breaks that other private businesses didn’t have.

Have you ever heard the idea that no man is an island, entire unto himself?
 
sallybutler said:
By the way, I hope you have thanked your parents for starting your life with no government support
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Well, they are long passed and I don’t think I would have felt comfortable in discussing with them the intimate act that started my life but I’m confident that it was without government influence or interference.
 
sallybutler said:
. I guess that means they didn’t drive on any public roads. I hope the hospital didn’t accept patients that paid them with government money (that includes any type of any government employee), nor had any tax breaks that other private businesses didn’t have.
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I’m guessing that they used the overpriced roads that they were forced to pay for. Wouldn’t you?

Thank you for telling me you hope that. I do too. We are on the same page 😀
 
So cmon man, move to Somalia! The free market can supply all of your needs. Just hire a private militia to guard you. It’ll be a government free utopia. What’s the matter, need the government to take care of your booboos and owies? 😉
 
Lemuel said:
I’m guessing that they used the overpriced roads that they were forced to pay for. Wouldn’t you?
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You keep talking about overpriced government infrastructure, but you ignore the fact that the idea of everyone buying their own personal roads is unrealistic. How is anyone supposed to drive across the country? They would have to drive on other people’s roads. Those people would want to collect fees, so every road would be a toll road. That is inefficient. Also roads would not meet up with other roads in anything resembling a coherent plan. And what about maintenance? Snow plowing? If everyone’s private road had to contract their own private snow plowing service, you would lose the economy of scale that you get with a city government contracting for snow removal. And what about safety standards? Would all roads have uniform conventions regarding safe construction?

At least with government infrastructure we have lots of examples of large systems that are working. The fantasy you describe has never been realized on anything other than the scale of the roads in DisneyLand. You can hypothesize all you want about how much cheaper everything would be if there were no government involved. But without a demonstration of such a system anywhere in the world, it is still just a hypothesis.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
So cmon man, move to Somalia! The free market can supply all of your needs. Just hire a private militia to guard you. It’ll be a government free utopia. What’s the matter, need the government to take care of your booboos and owies? 😉
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Nah. I love my beautiful house on my beautiful land. I’ll stay here. And I have friends and neighbors who help me take care of my booboos and owies. We don’t wait for Mommy government to do it. We do it the right way! 😉

If you’re so pro-government, why don’t you move to North Korea?
 
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Here’s the thing: saying government control is all bad because some governments abuse their power, is like saying all children shouldn’t have parents because some parents abuse their children. We wouldn’t argue that since some parents beat their children that all limits placed on children are wrong.

The trouble with not having government control is you just end up with someone else in control eventually anyway. And there are more ways of control than just physical violence. The “company store” was a good example - companies would hire poor workers who had few options, then opt to pay them in company script rather than in normal currency. The script was only good at the company store, so the workers were forced to purchase the necessities at whatever prices that one company set. Since they lacked the funds to pack up and move (the towns were often isolated), they basically had no choice but to continue working under whatever conditions the company offered. Effectively turning the company into a miniature government with control over the worker’s lives.
 
DarkLight said:
Here’s the thing: saying government control is all bad because some governments abuse their power, is like saying all children shouldn’t have parents because some parents abuse their children.
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It’s an understandable analogy for people who lust for power and control. That’s how they think.
They want to control how people act and if they don’t live up to their standards, they use the strong arm of government to force them to live how they think they should live and spend their money how they think they should spend it, because THEY know what’s best for everyone else. And if they think someone sucks as a parent, they would have no problem stepping in and making them do it right, or not allow them to do it at all. People like that must lay awake at night fantasizing on how they are going to control everyone around them.

On the other hand, there are those of us who just want to mind our own business and live our lives imposing no harm upon others. For us, that analogy breaks down in so many ways it’s not even worth the energy to discuss it.
 
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How do you know you you aren’t harming others while you are minding your own business? In the example of the Good Samaritan, the first two that passed the injured man were just ‘minding their own business’. They assumed that someone else would take care of the problem, either by helping the man or clearing up the mess before they had to use the road again.
 
Another bad analogy. The Good Samaritan did what he did upon his own accord, not because he was forced to do it. And Jesus told us to do the same.
 
But the first two were held up as examples of what not to do. Minding your own business is not a value espoused by Jesus.
 
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