And then there is the Tenth Commandment. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.' The Ten Commandments are God's basic rules about how we should live — a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts.
The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law. But then, right at the end, is 'Don't envy your buddy's cow.' How did that make the top ten? What's it doing there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of those things jealousy about the starter mansion with in-ground pool next door?
Yet think how important the Tenth Commandment is to a community, to a nation, indeed to a presidential election. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't be a jerk and whine about what the people across the street have — go get your own.
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
Taxation
The Libertarian Party of the UK has already promised to abolish income tax completely. It can afford to do just by removing state funding from all the unelected quangos in the UK. If these quangos are genuinely useful, they will attract funding from local businesses and local individuals. If they are not, they will wither and die, and a lot of interfering busybodies will have to find something useful to do with their lives.
In an ideal world, the state would not be needed and taxation would consequently not exist. However, Libertarian taxes would generally be consumption taxes, like a Sales Tax with rates aligned to the "social costs" of the type of product being bought. What I would expect, though, is a much simpler tax code and much less resistance to paying it, because the outcomes of the money should be more obvious.
There would also be a lot less to spend it on. Anybody who reads Timmy knows that government job-creation is actually a cost to society, not a benefit. Government programs hoover up our taxes and spend them very inefficiently on things that the government thinks is important. We may not agree about their importance, but we have no control over it in the current political climate. But even if we did agree that those things were important, we could achieve them far more cost-effectively than the government could.
And at the end of it all, those government spending projects remove money from the economy that could be used by us to do things that matter to us.
Europe
Because Libertarians believe in determining their own future and because we believe in not being subject to any laws but our nation's own, we would withdraw from the EU. We would still happily trade with any nation that wanted to trade with us including any nation within the EU, but we would not be willing to subject to any externally sourced regulation.
The NHS
I'm pretty sure that this will draw a lot of emotional response, but in a truly Libertarian world, there is no place for state-controlled provision of medical care. The NHS would be dismantled and individual people would be able to interact with individual care providers and move between them freely.
Since hospitals would no longer be able to draw a business-saving government subsidy whether they killed people indiscriminately with MRSA or not, I would expect a dramatic improvement in cleanliness. Given that the government would also not be micro-managing their every objective, I'd expect a massive refocusing of resources away from management and back into primary care.
Oh, and before anybody starts: the NHS is not free. It's funded by taxpayers. I personally paid more into the NHS this month than a fully self-funded medical insurance package would cost me. That's without the queues; the rude, nosey receptionists; the appalling service and the outrageous parking costs.
I, for one, will not miss it in the slightest.
6 comments:
Obnoxio,
...We would still happily trade with any nation that wanted to trade with us including any nation within the EU, but we would not be willing to subject to any externally sourced regulation.
You are forgetting that any companies wishing to trade with the EU member states has to abide by its regulatory standards, the only thing a libertarian government could guarantee is that companies who do not wish to trade with the EU would not have to comply with their directives; mine for example is a European subsidiary and so would be sibject to the rules as it sells to Europe, whilst a similar business down the road that deals with exports or internal UK orders would be able to avoid these - still a good idea overall methinks.
As with regards to the NHS (and merely playing devils advocate for a minute) an entirely business-driven model would bypass those parts of the health sector that are predominantly losses - the elderly, the terminal and the outlying; these changes would benefit the fit, the healthy and the city-living but once you moved into the sticks, aged a bit and developed a number of co-pathologies and then went terminal you would be screwed. I would advocate a middle ground in this instance - emergency and long term care in an NHS setting with upfront charges on GP services proportional to income (greatly increased by 0% income tax no doubt).
...other than that though great post - I've argued these points over at the LPUK forums BTW.
Tomrat, I would also argue that the NHS (or whatever you care to call it in its new slimmed down form) should cover public health requirements - vaccinations for major diseases etc.
@tomrat: I am not sure what sort of a state the EU would be in to impose measures on others, if we were to pull out. >:o)
But yes, valid point.
Agree on EU, NHS, don't agree on sales taxes. Sales taxes are far far worse than a flat income tax.
Unless you really restrict sales taxes to user charges, i.e. petrol duty covers cost of road mainenance, sales tax on new goods covers refuse collection costs, tax on fags covers cancer treatment etc.
The USSR was a third-world economy with a space programme, albeit a massively inefficient one.
c.f. UK + universal healthcare.
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