Posted by
glen ropella on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/11-American-Nations-tp7584250p7584764.html
On 01/13/2014 12:42 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> Then I do what I'm relatively good at, and the the landscaping
> people, etc. do what they are good at. I'm a tax and spend liberal
> because I don't have the time or patience for all this.
That's a fairly robust argument. I use it myself in choosing to donate
money, rather than labor to the community garden. Some locals donate
other things like fencing, compost, etc. Those who want to do the manual
labor do so with the money, tools, and materials donated by those of us
who don't want to do the labor.
However, the counter argument is exemplified by our property tax bill.
We have an entire page of various taxes for various things. What
bothers me about it is not the $ amount or the collection, but that it
needs to be delineated. I like it for the transparency, but I can't
help but think that government function could be much more efficiently
handled if some of those projects were executed using NGOs.
The general argument turns out to be one of inappropriate or mismatched
scales. For example, the county has various things going on in various
parts of the county (e.g. light rail coming to the North Eastern most
corner of the county, urban renewal in unincorporated areas surrounding
various cities, etc.). The county, as a cooperating governing body has
to weigh in on these things and levy (or not) taxes to help cover its
negotiated participation. But the taxes paid by someone way off in some
distant place within the county are not lower, despite the expectation
they'll never use the services they're paying for.
A similar example would be funding for foreign wars like troops in
Afghanistan or drone attacks in Pakistan ... or collecting money from me
so the NSA can spy on me.
So, while I think I grok your argument for government run services as
opposed to more organic organizations, it's not an unassailable position
and, indeed, is fundamentally flawed in some contexts.
--
⇒⇐ glen
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