Not Yours to Give

[SwissMercenary]

The point that is missed here is that the government is the equivalent of "by the sword". Whatever is enacted by law is forced upon the people. By passing laws to tax people, the government is taking away property by force. For a citizen to not pay taxes is to violate a law which then means that the citizen would face "justice".

So, your local police station would run on charity donations?

The question posed by the article is; "Should the government take peoples money by force to spend on things that are not explicitly written into the Constitution (Charter of Government)?"

Back then, plenty of current issues were not forseen, or did not exist. Holding on to the technical practices (As opposed to the goals) of a 240 year old document sounds like a bad idea, allright.

And, I would pose a second question; "Should the government take the peoples money by force to spend on things that do not benefit "ALL" the people?"

All of the things you've cited benefit - or could benefit all people, should they take advantage of the services provided. It just so happens that some benefit more then others, which is again unavoidable.

It really should be a case-by-case basis.

Taxing all the people in the US to pay for some pork project (e.g. The bridge to nowhere), seems to be a violation of the peoples trust at best, and larceny at worst.

Case-by-case, it's an example of useless pork. On the other hand, taxing all the people to pay for something that an area needs, if it were to avoid facing economic ruin, but can't afford, is something else. Want an example? I live in a small municipality. We have two major roads running through it. Those roads are hammered day after day in the summer, by tourists going to the rec centers beyond them.

My municipality simply can't afford to pay for the repairs to the roads. Right now, they are a mess. Potholes every ten meters. More cracks then I'd like to count. What we're asking for is provincial and federal grant money to fix the road, already.

Do you think that since we can't afford to pay for repairs, we should just let our road be destroyed in the next year? Because without some grant money this summer, that's exactly what's going to happen.

We live in a society where the funding good ideas and compassion do not need to be done at the point of a gun.

I'd beg to differ. If anything, my involvement with local politics has amplified the importance of the gun. The masses simply wouldn't care otherwise. I see it every time I hear a report on the state of negotiations with neighbouring municipalities over budget issues.

People are, in general, greedy, self-serving, and looking out for themselves, and I don't blame them.. Some of us who can afford it get a warm and happy feel-good feeling when we give money for 'good causes'. However, with your ideas, all that'll happen is that the country will be ran off the sweat of their backs, while the rest will benefit.

We see the need to make apple pie. As of now, each of us puts an apple in the pot, from which we make the pie.

What you want is to give people the option to not put an apple in the pot.

Yet we still need the apple pie.

What's going to happen is that either a minority will slave away to make apple pie for the rest, or the apple pie will be far smaller.

You can argue about how many apples are currently wasted, how the pie gets burnt, or that you don't even like apple pie, but either way, we are all going to be in a worse situation then we already are.