I understand that government has an important, but limited role in a free society. That role being primarily to protect the rights of individuals from foreign invasion, criminals, and also for the establishment of courts for the settlement of disputes. My question is: how do the followers of the Austrian School of Economics propose to fund these functions of government? Thanks.
Many of them don't propose using government at all. Rather, they prefer free market solutions to problems such as the ones listed. See: For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard, The Myth of National Defense edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Chaos Theory by Robert Murphy (among many others, these are just the ones I've read) for ideas on how this might work. All of them are available online for free through the Mises Institute website. Also, you might want to check out The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill, which you can get a free audiobook version of at http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/
Others, the georgists, support a land tax, based on the unimproved value of the land I think. Look up Henry George on that.
Yet others support a purely voluntarily funded government. Most notably the majority of objectivists belong to this group.
I haven't finished reading "Human Action" yet but I have yet to see what form of taxation Mises favoured. He must have presumably favoured some form of taxation since he advocated some degree of government.
Morty: Many of them don't propose using government at all. Rather, they prefer free market solutions to problems such as the ones listed. See: For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard, The Myth of National Defense edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Chaos Theory by Robert Murphy (among many others, these are just the ones I've read) for ideas on how this might work. All of them are available online for free through the Mises Institute website. Also, you might want to check out The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill, which you can get a free audiobook version of at http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/
True.
In fact in TEOL Rothbard points out that the minimal government advocates have yet to come up with a cogent theory of taxation.
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If natural rate of unemployment of 2% is considered fine, and 2% of interest rate is considered as a low interest rate (well, nowadays central banks are going to extremes and are going much lower than that, but 2% used to be reasoinably low until recently), couldn't we say that a 2% rate of taxation would be small enough not to be perceived by those governed, and high enough to meet funding requirements of a properly managed, limited government?
I work for a company where there is a lot wasted funds by upper management. I have little by little identified the unnecessary areas. By the same token, I am sure a similar job could be done for government. It would only require officials not interested in corruption. Such people should exist somewhere even if they haven't been found yet. Couldn't a government budget with limited functions be prepared counting with revenues of only 2% of national income?
Art transcends ideology.
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Rubén: they'd spend more than that just finding the incorruptible people to serve...and then they'd have to force them into service against their will...
(And why should people pay a percentage of their income, anyway; why not a fixed price?)
Rubén:By the same token, I am sure a similar job could be done for government. It would only require officials not interested in corruption. Such people should exist somewhere even if they haven't been found yet.
Why would you succeed where every generation of men has failed since the dawn of civilization?
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Rubén:couldn't we say that a 2% rate of taxation would be small enough not to be perceived by those governed,
How about 2.1%? 2.25%? 2.7%? 3.1%? 5%? 10%? 50%? 100%?
Where's the arbitrary line going to be drawn?
Any amount taxation is theft and is therefore too high, I daresay if you were to be robbed and the thief's defence was that he only took 2% of what you had you wouldn't be convinced, now what if we give said thief a name, the state.
Rubén:and high enough to meet funding requirements of a properly managed, limited government?
That's the problem.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Sasquatch: I understand that government has an important, but limited role in a free society.
I understand that government has an important, but limited role in a free society.
In a realy free society a State cannot exist.
State is ,by it's nature, against freedom.
I believe that Miseans will always speak for freedom and will never fight for something as a just amount of money or freedom that can be robbed by anyone.
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." – Barry Goldwater (1964)
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scineram:Others, the georgists, support a land tax, based on the unimproved value of the land I think. Look up Henry George on that.
I'm pretty sure that the Georgists couldn't be described as 'Austrians' by any stretch of the imagination.
The whole theory is based on a negative right to land possession where the 'collective' gets to tax the land owners in order to keep them from absorbing all the productive gains of the society because, as they claim, the only place for the profits from any technological improvements to go is to the 'rent seeking' landlords.
They also seem to use 'rent' (the charging for the exclusive use of land) and 'rent seeking' interchangeably with the assumption that renting land = rent seeking.
It is my belief that in a free market you would have usage fees.
Sometimes "majority" simply means that all the fools are on the same side
Stranger: Rubén:By the same token, I am sure a similar job could be done for government. It would only require officials not interested in corruption. Such people should exist somewhere even if they haven't been found yet. Why would you succeed where every generation of men has failed since the dawn of civilization?
Exactly. Every generation has failed in such an ambitious goal. That is why I do not considr seriously the assertions of a no-government world. Why not settle on a minimum government possible? Perhaps I went too far by suggesting 2%. Perhaps 3% is still too ambitious. Economics & Statistics are in a highly developed stage such as a proper figure can be calculated to draw the line, as long as people in office have the morals AND THE GUTS to live by the standards they boast for.
Rubén:Economics & Statistics are in a highly developed stage such as a proper figure can be calculated to draw the line, as long as people in office have the morals AND THE GUTS to live by the standards they boast for.
May I introduce you to the problem of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth?
By the way, the people in office will never have the morals and the guts to live by the standards they boast for. They are just people. Unless you can find some superpeople, your plan is as doomed as any other socialist plan.
Thank you for suggesting me to read the article, with which I am in agreement. Entrepreneurship works best privately, financial markets must be advanced, and the other topics outlines in section 1. I also agree with part 2, that states that implementation of central planning decision poses problems.
The article, however, is stating nowhere to get rid completely of the government. Therefore it is safe to assume that the authors favor a small, limited role of government. Such a limited government needs modest funding. I was proposing on an earlier post to calculate a symbolic tax rate of 2 or 3% in order to finance such a small government. Comparing to the 30% or beyond that lots of people pay in taxes everywhere, I believe my proposal is as close as No-Government as anything can be.
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