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Hence my last paragraph: I think the real issue isn’t that freedom (and democracy) are failing us, but that we’re losing freedom and democracy without realizing. Those who advocate for authoritarianism really want more freedom and power for themselves, which they’re more likely to end up with in a functional democracy (for example, to pass and enforce laws for decent neighborhoods).
To some extent a modern state has to be less free and some definitions of Democracy. The Commons are much bigger today and there are a lot more regulations that need to happen to make society work. And everything happening all at once to. Relate a modern economy is more complicated than any one person can track at once to vote so you have to outsource a lot of decision making.
1-2% of GDP tax rates are a thing of the past. It’s likely much smaller than we have now but 1-2% of gdp to state capacity wouldn’t work at modern living standard. You actually do need a FAA. Though the TSA and the rest of the parasitic class attached to it probably not. Someone has to coordinate the commons.
Like one example today is the skascraper that had structural issues in NYC and maybe might collapse. I think they have $700 million in it. A libertarian world I don’t think can deal with that coordination. You can wipe out the builders money but if it collapses it’s probably 10-40 in damages and then the builders just bankrupt.
Yes, to be clear I’m not against taxes or regulations.
I think the important part is that richer and more influential people and organizations should have strictly more taxes and compliance overhead (and not in the sense “both rich and poor can’t sleep under bridges”). Today we have situations where working-class citizens pay more taxes than rich locals via offshore tax havens, and small businesses suffer from unnecessarily difficult regulations (not protecting anyone) while big businesses fail audits then suffer less than it would take to pass them.
More generally: it’s important for everyone to contribute and compromise for society, the problem is when people asking/enforcing don’t evenly contribute and compromise themselves. I think growing lack of effort and honor within the working class should and would be fixed by seeing more effort and honor from their leaders.
Once everyone has to suffer evenly from laws regulations etc., they become more permissive, because everyone wants as much freedom as possible for the choices they want. Almost everyone agrees that (for example) murder is wrong and building safety is important, few would accept safety for living in a panopticon.
I think that this is feature and not a bug. For instance it is legally and financially high-risk situation to hire random bum to get him mow your lawn for cash. This simple interaction is covered by literally thousands of pages of regulation. You have tax liability, you have premises liability, you have equipment liability, you have environmental liability and million of other things. The system is designed that such a simple and age old interaction is basically impossible.
This is the litmus test of how tyrannical the government is. It basically forces local bum to begging, as he is incapable of getting regular job, not to even talk about being able to do the paperwork necessary to be a small business operator. And you as a customer cannot profit from this opportunity and you are forced to contract companies who have to finance all that regulation. Large corporation can utilize economy of scale, their operations can afford regulation compliance, which only incentivize them to lobby for more. Alternatively you just do it yourself, which in this tax and regulation environment seems to be more and more attractive, incentivizing autarkic economies.
On an intuitive level, the modern society especially in a west is absolutely unfree under pretext of safety.
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