It's hard to get mad with you libertarians since you're all so damn polite!

Very true, there are a lot of similarities between the Church and the State. Some call them "competitors" for the minds of the people which is not the most flattering if you ask me.

I watched a video recently by a fascinating philosopher called Stefan Molyneux which you may be interested in watching:

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"The gold standard is the negation of slavery and the empowerment of virtue"
If voting changed anything they would have made it illegal.

Started watching the video.
Interesting to note that in the past it was the more right wing religious people that were statists, it meant that religion controlled institutions, nowadays it is the left wing religious people that are statist, they tell the state that they must provide services etc. part of this is a change in eschatology. in my experience more conservative religious people today tend to be more libertarian in their politics
of course most of my experience in this debate comes from the US

I think you have a very valid point Liam. I know a number of radical libertarians who are devout Christians. I guess its not always the Institution that opposes the State but conscientious individuals within the community. Many people get drawn into religions because of the social and family values that they advocate and so when these values come under attack from the State they wake up and become libertarian.

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"The gold standard is the negation of slavery and the empowerment of virtue"
If voting changed anything they would have made it illegal.

This is correct. Without taxes we'd have none of our glittering civilisation, even this fine internet upon which we type is a direct output of US military research. At a certain level of development, you can get the brilliant geniuses who invent things privately, your Teslas, Einsteins and Edisons. Note you don't reach that point without standardised public education, which needs taxes to support it.

But beyond that certain point, it becomes almost impossible to advance a field significantly by private means, since so much specialised knowledge and indeed equipment is required to master any particular area, never mind advance it. Private corporations do not have the wherewithal to risk putting so much money into blue sky R&D, thats really, really expensive, so unless its being done publicly, it won't get done. All we'll have is readily apparent advances that produce a profit within the next three quarters.

Its a common mistake to feel that the welfare of business=the welfare of the economy or the welfare of society, this is not the case, at least not entirely. The rest of the structure, your police, your roads, your electrical networks, your teachers and nurses and doctors, without any one part of this picture you can't achieve maximum efficiency and nurture a thriving society.

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Do they pay tax in Ireland today? There is a huge income to individual Priests from Mass cards and I'd love to know how many are declaring it. Do they pay benefit in kind on their free houses?

Tax is something you can look at in two ways. If it's a contribution to services provided then it is reasonably neutral. Somebody mentioned sewage and I'm sure we are all happy to pay for that. One could argue that the state need not be the provider but they are now and that's fine.

But tax goes way beyond things like sewage and national defence. It allows the government to introduce a job-destroying and inflexible minimum wage and they extort from working people the money to fund the subsequent unemployment.

It allows the proliferation and subsidisation of single-parent families by turning the state into a substitute for feckless fathers.

It decides that the pastimes of the elite get subsidised (Opera, Classical Music) while the workers have to pay through the nose for their highly-taxed pleasures.

But when a government gets too big and they all are, politics is about fending them off as best you can from taking your wages or demanding your share of the stolen money.

And right now we in Ireland have a €20 billion gap between what they can take and what they are spending. Those who live on money taken by the state are a huge vocal voting block. The rest of us better get ready for a fight.

They didn't have money in ancient Egypt.

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If there is a future, it will be green.

When it comes to economics, I'm just an amateur and you all sound like smart college kids with fancy book reading, so forgive me if this sounds too simplistic...

I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as the free market.
If you regulate it, it is not free, because it is regulated.
If you don't regulate it, first of all the strong survive and the weak go to the wall. Then the strong set up monopolies. So much for free trade.

I am guided by the principle that decision making should be at the lowest effective level. To me this means there should be a lot more power devolved down to local level. Every town and village should have its own budget and ever citizen should have day-to-day control over that budget. Outlandish? Well it works in Switzerland.
Obviously one town can't run the trains, that has to be done at a higher level. Likewise the sewers as someone pointed out above. And water supply.
Under libertarianism, these services would be very poor. Do they really suppose there would be rival sewer systems between which the customer could choose? Of course not, there can only be one, and everyone has to pay for it. Hence the need for taxes.

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If there is a future, it will be green.

The United States from 1776 and 1913 was reaping the benefits of genocide. Not so much "liberty" for people in reservations.

Punitive regressive taxation does not equal Keynesianism.

That is all.

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Romanes eunt domus