uplyme.com

[geoff]

How can the government justify cuts like the woodland sell-off and the closure of local libraries to save a few tens of millions from their annual budget of about 500 billion pounds, whilst continuing to fund a war in Afghanistan that is costing billions ?

I just don't understand how they get away with it

G
_________________
it's never too late

[voluntaryist.uk]

[voluntaryist.uk]

I know that the above might make for hard reading so here is a further list of books & articles:
I know that this will be a hard thing for some of you so to help you on your way there please see the following reading list:

Private Cities (Routledge Studies in Human Geography)[url]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0415341701?ie=UTF8&tag=voluexchonly-21&link_code=as3&camp=2506&creative=9298&creativeASIN=0415341701[/url]

The Privatization of Roads and Highways[url]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/193355004X?ie=UTF8&tag=voluexchonly-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=211189&creativeASIN=193355004X&link_code=ur2&creative=9325[/url]

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty[url]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0965603679?ie=UTF8&tag=voluexchonly-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=211189&creativeASIN=0965603679&link_code=ur2&creative=9325[/url]

Atlas Shrugged[url]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141188936?ie=UTF8&tag=voluexchonly-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=211189&creativeASIN=0141188936&link_code=ur2&creative=9325[/url]

Free-Market Anarchists: Murray Rothbard[url]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1156477131?ie=UTF8&tag=voluexchonly-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=211189&creativeASIN=1156477131&link_code=ur2&creative=9325[/url]

Voluntaryism for Everyone (pdf)[url]
http://www.marketanarchy.com/files/pamphlets/vpamph.pdf[/url]

Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau
http://voluntary-exchanges-only.blogspot.com/p/civil-disobedience-by-henry-david.html

[geoff]

This is such a selfish and narrow-minded attitude. Can you not accept the untold benefits of living in a society where we all pay towards things that are of common value, not just for the things immediately in front of us ?

People without children pay for education because we want a well-educated population with excellent doctors, scientists, engineers and so on to make our lives better. Where do you think your drinking water, electricity, food, heating oil, petrol, etc comes from ? Other people's children make them happen of course.

People who cycle or walk pay for roads because that is how their food gets from the producers to the supermarkets and how ambulances get to them when they need emergency treatment - or should the health service only be paid for by people who happen to be sick at the time ?

Even people with Neighborhood Watch pay for the police service because they know that without them there would be no one to uphold the law and prevent the bad guys from ignoring your top class alarm system and taking your stuff.

I assume you must be completely against any form of insurance on the grounds that you don't make claims most of the time ?

You seem to want to unravel society and create a world where only the survival of the fittest is possible

G.
_________________
it's never too late

[voluntaryist.uk]

Thanks for the reply G,
would you pay taxes if it was voluntary? ie if you had a choice? hands up how many would say "actually, I'll opt out of this part & that part, etc" I will not refute you point for point, but I will say this: we all pay now because if we did not someone with a gun (or force) would come & take away our possessions.
selfish & narrow minded
I & those like me (call us what you will) are not selfish or narrow minded, we give to local & national charity in both time & money, we help our fellow man where we can & however we can, we support local & national causes for justice, liberty, access & rights. Remember that alternative thinking gave us some of our finest human rights accomplishments, like ending slavery, votes for all men, votes for women, ending children working, wars against tyranny. etc.
education, roads, etc:
Gosh, government's must have invented libraries, schools, hospitals, roads, silly me. No they did not, they saw that they could make money out of it & simply took it over. Did you know that literacy rates were better in Victorian Britain than they are now? did you know that most of our greatest engineers, builders, explorers, soldiers, sailors, business magnates, & community leaders never had a "state-funded" education. Rail was built by business, canals were built by business, roads were built by business, hospitals, libraries, swimming baths, were built by patronage & local voluntary subscription
Unravel society
I & those like me do not want to "unravel" society, we want society to work together, better, not simply forced to pay because Government has only got one plan. People working together come up with many plans & ways of doing things, government is not good at that, simply giving us one size for all. This is not moving society forwards, this is at best standing still & at worst marching us backwards.
how much of your life is under your control
Just think for a moment how much of your life is under your direct control, with no government supervision, does your world come crashing down in chaos? No, of course not. We do not NEED so MUCH government, let's face it, they are at the moment getting rid of a lot of the above aren't they, perhaps it is not me that you should be worried about, perhaps it is Cameron, maybe he's a closet anarchist, moo ha ha ha! (evil laugh!)
PEACE,
"No service should be provided out the barrel of a gun. This is not freedom, it is tyranny"
ps: please try some of the books I listed, I am sure they could be ordered from the Library (while it still exists)

[geoff]

>would you pay taxes if it was voluntary?

Yes, because I understand that to have rights (like expecting a fire engine to turn up if my house catches fire), I must accept responsibilities like paying a fair contribution towards providing the service. Unfortunately, I suspect there are people who might not see it that way and do anything they can to avoid paying a penny more than they are forced to. Selfishness seems to be a natural human trait and because of it we need to impose penalties on those who take from the rest of us without paying in themselves when they are able so to do.

>Did you know that literacy rates were better in Victorian Britain than they are now?

No, I didn't - because they weren't. According to the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/09/literacy the UK literacy rate is approx 99%. In Victorian England it was considerably less - the British Library estimates approximately 60% in 1840 http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/pr_intro.html

>We do not NEED so MUCH government, let's face it, they are at the moment getting rid of a lot of the above aren't they

Now, actually I very much agree with you here. I think there is way too much government at too many levels, too many laws and too much red tape. I also think that our current way of deciding who runs the country is deeply flawed and unrepresentative of the will of the majority.

However, I don't agree that the solution is just to rely on everyone being generous enough to voluntarily give enough money to run the country, picking only the bits they feel they use - to use your example, walkers not wanting to pay for roads, non-parents not wanting to pay for schools. Having a voluntary taxation policy would be like giving turkeys an Xmas opt-out - it ain't going to work.

>"No service should be provided out the barrel of a gun..."

What about rabbit hunting services then ?

G.
_________________
it's never too late

[ima.lumberjack.imok]

I don't trust anyone that tells me this is for your own good, whether it be government or some other so called expert, the best scams are always the one's you never see.

ever see the film the sting? they never saw it coming, ha

just because some idiot who; is probably far less qualified than me; tell me that this is how it should be, does not mean I should trust them, even if I did vote for them.

[voluntaryist.uk]

RE: paying taxes & selfishness: first of all let me tackle the selfishness aspect, selfishness, or being selfish, or greedy or a glutton are all religious labels handed down from time immemorial to imbue the priesthood / religion (of whatever flavour) with a superiority over the masses; ie us & as a means of control through guilt etc. Most people I know are not selfish or greedy, remember I said most. Some are, it is true, but even with the most draconian laws you could not stop them. Why they are the way they are is probably an effect of their upbringing. So I would in short reject your most are selfish argument as not exactly on the money. If it were on the mark, hardly any charities would survive at all, but they do therefore my point stands.
Literacy Rates:
please see http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/pr_intro.html literacy was rated at nearly 97-99% at the beginning of the 1900's before taxes paid for schooling. what is more worrying is this : http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/blog/2902 "20% of children who leave primary school below their expected level in reading, and 10% significantly below that level" or http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/about/faqs/s1#q284 "Around 16 per cent, or 5.2 million adults in England, can be described as functionally illiterate" this of course is despite the millions of taxes spent on education. So I think the Guardian's report, via the UN (flawed btw) is an inaccurate snapshot of the UK today. I would feel more confident about a report that was produced by a Leading UK organization, which is a Trust btw, not some quango, so more likely to be truthful.
Too Much Government:
I am glad you agree that there is simply TOO-MUCH government. Government both local and national should be honest with us & say, " sorry, we cannot run everything, here: you have a go & btw, here's a much, much lower tax bill." some of our finest & longest standing institutions are Voluntary & Charitable based like: RNLI, WI, SCOUTS, BARNARDOS, RSPCA, FANY (Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps), Amnesty International, Liberty, SSAFA, The Horse Trust (estb: 1886) THE LAUGHARNE CORPORATION LANDS (Welsh-estb: 1290 !) NSPCC (estb: 1884) I could go on but you get my drift.

This all goes to the very heart of the Voluntaryism ethos, we see all interactions as voluntary, whether it be for obtaining services, like travel, or education, to private individual transaction person to person & business to business, etc. the government is hardly ever "needed" in these interactions, but, forces it's way in nonetheless, to get it's "cut" like a mafioso enforcer, demanding "protection-money"

A voluntary society would work, as well as our society does now, but better, with out the proverbial barrel of a gun point us us, forcing us to fork over our wealth for someone else to not spend wisely. (unless you count rabbits. Sorry bunnies, you do not get a say )

over to you....

[geoff]

>RE: paying taxes & selfishness: ...I would in short reject your most are selfish argument as not exactly on the money.

I actually said "Selfishness seems to be a natural human trait" and I stand by that. Some overcome it and are generous others do not. I don't propose to get involved in a 'whose stats are the best' war on literacy, but your questioning of the accuracy of the British Library's figures and claims of a UK literacy rate of 99% at the beginning of the 1900's are plain nonesense.

>A voluntary society would work, as well as our society does now, but better, with out the proverbial barrel of a gun point us us

How do you know it would - where has it ever worked ? And most importantly how would you deal with people who for example don't want to pay for schools because they don't have any children or pay for roads because they only use a bike ?
_________________
it's never too late

[voluntaryist.uk]

of course, this system works so well, we have governments that send us to faked wars for oil & power,
we have corruption by just about every current or past mp (called whoops over-claiming, sorry guv' here's the money back, HA!)

we have waste & inefficiency all over the place, from hospitals to the justice system. No, no one ever gets wrongfully accused, no one ever dies in a dirty hospital, coppers never rough up the innocent & governments never, ever, ever, lie or cheat or lose sensitive data?

This system is barely hanging by a thread, the kitty is bare, the country is just about bankrupt, the cuts haven't even started & already it's hard.

I am trying to get people to see that there is an alternative, well, to be frank I think we'll need one. Voluntaryism could be that alternative. It is peaceful, it promotes peaceful voluntary exchanges without the threat of force by some overbearing government getting it's cut, simply to justify it's existence.

There have been many example of voluntary societies that worked for years with our a centralized government. Goodness me Belgium hasn't had a government for over 260 days. I'm pretty sure Belgium is still a member of the EU & that hordes of Vandals & Visigoths have not descended to ravage the country.

in closing I will quote the great man
"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."
Mohandas Gandhi

[geoff]

[voluntaryist.uk]

One final shot at convincing you:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UNL8CypId5IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+voluntary+city&source=bl&ots=YEVnv05l6u&sig=jI5NrXDViFPCekK18cQGVojB87s&hl=en&ei=zBxaTbb2F5GzhAeE153dDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false

the book explains it far better than I ever could, most parts are there, although not all. You will also see many examples of voluntary exchanges, past & present that could all work again.

btw, cameron has recently been seen with a copy of this book. If you read it you'll understand his "passion" for "the big society"

PEACE,
"No service should be provided out the barrel of a gun. This is not freedom, it is tyranny"

[geoff]

Sadly I don't have the time to read a 465 page book to better understand your ideas, though I did skim the forward in which Paul Johnson touches on how the fall of the USSR demonstrates that big government does not really work and I would certainly agree with that.

Also, I can see how, in principle, voluntarism may be a fine sort of utopian goal, where the perfect people all volunteer to run everything together and it all goes smoothly because eveyone agrees on how everything should be done and is happy to pay for it without being asked because there is 100% efficiency all the time. However, in reality we don't live in Utopea and until we do there will always be a need to provide essential services from the centre, fairly funded by compulsory taxation.

For my own point of view, I agree with you that there is too much government and I think there are far too many laws. Whether we will ever see either of these significantly reduced I don't know, but while the poacher is also the gamekeeper, I have serious doubts.

Does anyone else have a view on this ?

G.
_________________
it's never too late

[voluntaryist.uk]

Hi G,
thanks for the discourse & the fair hearing.

PEACE,


"No service should be provided out the barrel of a gun. This is not freedom, it is tyranny"