Dating is perhaps the freest “market” in the United States today, and its lack of regulation can teach us powerful lessons about the flaws inherent in government regulation.
Most people recognize the absurdity of trying to regulate romantic relationships. What many don’t realize is that this absurdity stems not from the nature of these relationships, but from the nature of state intervention. For the same reasons that regulating dating would be counter-productive, regulating many consumer choices is unwise.
The battle for the North Pole is snowballing between national governments along the Arctic Circle, as they all have their eyes set on the vast natural resources residing in the Arctic region. Indeed, it’s estimated the Arctic Ocean floor contains 22 percent of all unused oil and natural gas in the world — the largest remaining untapped concentration.
Mises Daily Monday by Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna:
While not at all perfect, the classical gold standard of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century facilitated some of the greatest leaps in economic prosperity ever witnessed. Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna surveys the views of central bankers and economists of the time.
D. Voluntary Contribution to Government
A few writers, disturbed by the compulsion necessary to the existence of taxation, have advocated that governments be financed, not by taxation, but by some form of voluntary contribution. Such voluntary contribution systems could take various forms. One was the method relied on by the old city-state of Hamburg and other communities—voluntary gifts to the government. President William F. Warren of Boston University, in his essay, “Tax Exemption the Road to Tax Abolition,” described his experience in one of these communities:
(3) Sacrifice Theory
Another attempted criterion of just taxation was the subject of a flourishing literature for many decades, although it is now decidedly going out of fashion. The many variants of the “sacrifice” approach are akin to a subjective version of the “ability-to-pay” principle.
(4) The Benefit Principle
The benefit principle differs radically from the two preceding criteria of taxation. For the sacrifice and ability-to-pay principles depart completely from the principles of action and the accepted criteria of justice on the market. On the market people act freely in those ways which they believe will confer net benefits upon them. The result of these actions is the monetary exchange system, with its inexorable tendency toward uniform pricing and the allocation of productive factors to satisfy the most urgent demands of all the consumers.
(5) The Equal Tax and the Cost Principle
Equality of taxation has far more to commend it than any of the above principles, none of which can be used as a canon of taxation. “Equality of taxation” means just that—a uniform tax on every member of the society. This is also called a head tax, capitation tax, or poll tax. (The latter term, however, is best used to describe a uniform tax on voting, which is what the poll tax has become in various American states.) Each person would pay the same tax annually to the government.
(6) Taxation “For Revenue Only”
A slogan popular among many “right-wing” economists is that taxation should be for “revenue only,” and not for broad social purposes. On its face, this slogan is simply and palpably absurd, since all taxes are levied for revenue. What else can taxation be called but the appropriation of funds from private individuals by the State for its own purposes? Some writers therefore amend the slogan to say: Taxation should be limited to revenue essential for social services. But what are social services?
