I honestly can't answer that question, tariffs seem problematic for sure, and bonds are if not evil at least central to the banking system we're dealing with today.
It's a funny dilemma as a Christian, because the real ideal is absolute benevolent authority. But that's not attainable by humanity, so the next best thing is distribution of power through incentives. It's not that I don't wish ancap were possible, I just don't think it is because authority and power are baked in to the pie, and the only one who can fill that vacuum is Jesus.
As for why people can't just choose to support organizations that serve them, that can work for some things (courts and roads, maybe), but for others in which the good is necessarily collective (e.g. national defense), you can't avoid a tragedy of the commons. The atomic individualistic framework ancap assumes just doesn't fit how the world works.
If there is no national tax base to take over then there is no nation to defend. If people can defend themselves from domestic taxation then they can defend themselves from foreigners who want to tax them too.
The govt as an organization is nothing but a manifestation of the tragedy of the commons. Everyone just tries to get what they can, while they can, without putting in any work. It's people seeking to become a parasitic authority as a source of wealth rather than working to create value for others.
The divide between good & evil is the prioritization of the pursuit of truth vs the prioritization of the pursuit of status & power. It's not a coincidence that God in human form was a man who spoke truth to men of arbitrary political authority & was killed for it. I'm quite certain that a large part of the point (no matter how few people choose to see it today) is that men in govt, clinging to status & power, will destroy the truth & kill God to maintain it. God or reality or the universe (or whatever label people prefer) wants people to see that force funded institutions are evil, & the cycle will repeat until we learn.
I think the world has shown us quite clearly that minarchy doesn't work. The American experiment was started with the goal of establishing the smallest govt ever & we now have the largest. The aim was good, but the experiment was a total failure. Repeating the same mistakes (especially given the amount of death & destruction & brainwashing that has been the result) would be completely retarded.
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That's a very interesting position. It is striking how anti-establishment the Bible is, even taking into account passages like Romans 13. Personally, while I do believe in some form of authority, the discussion is pretty academic, because in practical terms I spend as much time as I possibly can rowing with libertarians and ancaps.
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The first paragraph is very interesting. It makes me wonder how a bitcoin system compares with a gold system for freedom from oppression. Reading through the thread, maybe a good case in point could be comparing Jerusalem under Roman rule at the time of Christ and now. Do bitcoin and encryption make us more able to resist an occupier now? How so? Did the centralizing tendencies of gold play a roll in Rome’s ability to conquer? My intuition is no, but I wanna think this through…
There were four primary kinds of taxation in ancient Rome: a cattle tax, a land tax, customs, and a tax on the profits of any profession. These taxes were typically collected by local aristocrats. The Roman state would set a fixed amount of money each region needed to provide in taxes, and the local officials would decide who paid the taxes and how much they paid. Once collected the taxes would be used to fund the military, create public works, establish trade networks, stimulate the economy, and to fund the cursus publicum.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_ancient_Rome
Comparing some other empires, they mixed centralized collection and decentralized. Sounds like the Chinese system where taxes were due based on land ownership worked well for the empire since land ownership was easy to verify. So today, where our work is to a large degree difficult to verify, we may have a special advantage. Especially if the laborer and the contractor can not know each other. Though AI will affect that…
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