I would love to add something to this discussion: Everyone knows that every First-World country's government purposely spends more than it's budget, right? In addition, most all of expidentures are for small interest groups whom helped elect said official. For example, Barack Obama, who as you may recall promised to help jumpstart the economy. Well, in case you haven't noticed or don't know. Every measure that his administration has come up with has the exact opposite effect. In addition, as eloquent as the man is: he can not get support behind his *cough* 'plans'.

So in order to summarize what i am saying: Government's must learn how to spend public money only on such projects that BENEFIT EVERYONE, NOT your interest groups. Thus, leading to the ability to lower taxes to more appropriate or economy stimulating levels.

(BarackObama READ THIS!!)

What are you and RG trying to solve? It sounds like a battle of “I have read more books than you so I’m more qualified.” RG sounds like a politician.

I think your argument of taxation brings no good is simple enough. There just needs to be a better way to collect taxes instead of just taking it through income taxes or raising taxes on certain products (like yachts). I like a flat federal retail tax. This way the government can only get as big as the market will let it.

The neo-Communist error to which you allude, is essentially the same error from which proponents of any monopolistic system of organization suffer…

But the reason the problem of the Commons/freeloading is an issue is that it’s one of the central issues in human organizing (the other is resource contention). So if you posit a system of organization that cannot address these basic problems, your system is likely broken. Also, if you cannot find exemplars of your system in action, that should also be a red flag. Be careful not to sound like the neo-Communists: our system is great; too bad it’s never been tried in its pure form.

Good punt. I’m not asking for you to be an expert at everything. I’m raising basic objections to named economic problems. We’re not in esoteric theory here, we’re doing basic pricing and resource allocation.

But good punt anyway, not addressing that the competing systems are not allowed in Afghanistan, Congo, etc. There *are* states further toward your ideals, you are just ignoring them.