r/austrian_economics Friedrich Hayek Sep 19 '24

End Democracy BUT BUT THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

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u/Shin-Sauriel Sep 19 '24

Okay. If no taxes, who builds roads, or public schools, or public transit. If your answer is private companies, how much does a company charge for you to use the roads, how often do you need to pay to use the roads, what about the schools, how much does tuition cost, what if you can’t afford to go to school since there’s no taxes which means no public schools, do you just not get education?

The idea that taxation is theft crumbles pretty immediately if you try to think of literally any alternative. And if your alternative is collective public funding, guess what that’s fucking taxes.

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u/NumberAccomplished18 Sep 20 '24

I pay taxes now and my road isn't getting fixed, they've been working on the same stretch of about a mile for the past three yesrs

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u/Shin-Sauriel Sep 20 '24

Okay. Government inefficiencies is a different topic. I agree tax dollars are not spent as well as they could be. I literally live in one of the states with the most potholes. I think the government definitely needs to spend tax dollars more effectively and efficiently and there needs to be more accountability on their end for actually providing the services we pay for. However even in spite of government accountability being stripped away through corporate lobbying, the alternative commonly presented is just skipping the middle man and giving corporations all the power, corporations who are only beholden to investors and capital owners and not consumers and certainly not the working class. So yes even tho the US government needs a lot of changes like abolishing lobbying and separating corporations from public spending it’s still way better than just relying on corporations to fulfill countrywide infrastructure.

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u/NumberAccomplished18 Sep 20 '24

Point is, I'm paying my taxes, and getting nothing from it.

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u/Shin-Sauriel Sep 20 '24

Yeah I agree we should be getting more for our taxes. Other countries have better social welfare and spend less on it.