Scariest part? Hovind says the confiscated guns “belonged to the church.” Why does a church need guns?
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Reminds me of a line by Captain Kirk: “Uh, excuse me, but what does God need with a starship?”

Easy enough in private communities. What about in public areas? What about in cities? No one would be able to get anywhere in a city if the store owners only let customers use sidewalks.

“Roads”

Easy enough in isolated suburban environments. But how would people get between their communities if the only roads are within the communities? Once again, what about cities? There is no way to divide an urban environment into small, private enclaves. What about rural areas? Would they hire someone to police hundreds of miles of dirt road? Isolated, private communities are not a good model for the country as a whole. They are both isolated and private, neither of which applies in cities or rural environments and neither of which applies to getting between isolated communities.

“Highways”

The vast majority of highways in the country do not have tolls. Tolls cause a massive hit on productivity by greatly slowing down traffic.

“Welfare”

I can’t debate this one.

“Offensive Military”

Ultimately you still have the issue of people mooching of others. People may support it, but be unwilling to foot the bill because they think others would simply take the benefit without contributing anything.

“Medical Coverage ”

The US has no state-sponsored medical coverage, so this doesn’t even apply.

“Parks”

Not all parks can be isolated in that way. And it could likely significantly increase the cost.

“Schools”

An educated public is essential the functioning of a republican government. You could eliminate this, but it would do a great deal of harm to the country. If you have been at BA long you have seen all the damage that is done by a lack of education causes. Some people would certainly think education is worth it for their children, but even today there are many that don’t. Children are forced to go to school for a reason.

Gary Ansorge Says:

“Black cat: as far as successful countries without a significant tax structure goes, check out Saudi Arabia. No income tax, no social security tax, no sales tax, no gas tax, import duties, in fact, as far as I know they have no tax structure at all, yet the society works and its people seem to like it enough to keep it intact.”

That is because they get a fortune from oil. Not only do they have enough money from oil to cover their expenses, but everyone in the country gets a stipend from the oil revenue. Few, if any, other countries have that luxury.

Gary 7

I take issue with this statement, and I think that may be the missing component in your analysis of why people don’t pay taxes. If the government did only this, taxes would be a small fraction of what they are now, and I would pay them happily. Many people are unhappy with, and in disagreement with, the bloat which causes them to attempt to pay as little as possible.

Granted, there are a few things that cannot be isolated and must be paid for by taxes, law enforcement and national defense come immediately to mind, but are you seriously suggesting that everything our taxes pay for could not be privatized?! How do you respond to these few examples:

Sidewalks - My parents’ community has sidewalks and common areas constructed and maintained by homeowner association funds. Only community members pay for them, and only they use them. I have seen several groups of non-residents chased off because they were on the common areas illegally.

Roads - As above, community roads are paid for by the community. By insuring the community road is a dead end, and cannot be used as a thru-way, they minimize traffic. If you use taxes to only pay for roads not part of a community, you could break off a sizable chunk of DOT upkeep.

Highways - We already have privatized road systems called turnpikes.

Welfare - If someone does not pay into welfare, then they have no right to collect if something goes wrong and they need it. While this may be morally objectionable to some, the point remains that it can be isolated.

Offensive Military - While you cannot isolate those who gain from national defense, you can control offense. If a citizen feels strongly enough about an issue that they would go to war over it, let them foot the bill. If not enough will donate their own money for a cause, how can you say there is enough popular support to condone a government doing it?

Medical Coverage - Much like welfare above, isolating this could be morally objectionable, but it can easily be isolated. If someone does not pay in, they cannot use it if they eventually need it. Allow the market to set prices for the consumer and let them decide if they will pay into a government insurance program, or use the one provided by their employer?

Parks - Have a fee collected at the entry point. Yes, some could still sneak into the park by parking somewhere nearby, but the vast majority will pay the nominal fee to park on-site and avoid acting illegally. In this way, those who use parks once a year are not funding those who use them daily.

Schools - You would have to switch them all at once, as no one would pay to send their kid to school when public schools are free and available and…oh, wait…

As for the whole taxes debate. Good grief, forget all this complex economic theory, it’s human nature. People are people. Have you never seen anyone illegally and selfishly parked? dog s**t left on sidewalk? Illegal but there are always people who don’t care about anyone else and figure they can get away with it. You need laws to make such people pay their taxes and you need those laws to have teeth.

Check this out for some interesting work on honesty.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9424-big-brother-eyes-make-us-act-more-honestly.html

And I am saying that is not possible! Things are paid for by taxes specifically because those things cannot be isolated to specific people. That is the whole point of taxes in the first place! I don’t know how many other ways to say this.

“There’s a big difference between saying that prison isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind and advocating no consequences whatsoever.”

Prison is the only punishment left. If someone refuses to pay taxes, refuses to pay fines, and doesn’t care if you sieze his property, then short of shooting him prison is the only other punishment left.

“I am not proposing free anything.”

Yes, you are. The system you are advocating has no other possible outcome. That may not be your intention, but in the real world just because you don’t want something to happen a certain way does not mean it won’t. Whatever your intention may be the end result is the same.

“And thermodynamics DOES govern the gross character of economic systems.”

So you say, but you have yet to provide any evidence, or say how this could actually be done in practice, and the few predictions you have made based on thermodynamics are all wrong, in fact completely opposite of reality, so I tend to doubt this.

“You may have models of micro-economic behavior, but this will be, at best, a specialised subset of the more general fate of a closed system due to thermodynamical constraints.”

Obviously, and that sort of knowledge is absolutely essential for businesses. Similarly, looking at the whole system is a specialized subset, or at least it is now (as I said before it used to be considered a completely seperate field). People specialize, that is how the world works. People have their area of expertise, and they usually stick with that because they recognize their knowledge is limited in areas outside of their area of expertise.

“In the long run, your economic models won’t matter.”

Depends on your definition of long run and what questions you are asking. If you ask the right questions you can often get very useful predictions of long-term behavior. You have to understand the limitations, however. Besides, in many cases the long-run is not what people are interested in, they are interested in the short-run. But to address your claim directly, in the long run many economic models are very successful.

“It also doesn’t matter if calculating human behavior directly from thermodynamic principles is intractible in practice.”

Of course it does. If thermodynamics cannot actually be used to predict human behavior, then your statements that it is as good at predicting human behavior as economics is incorrect. It is absolutely central to the issue at hand.

“Do you seriously contend that human behavior will supersede the global availability of usable energy? Do you think everything boils down to what people *decide*? This is just Maxwell’s Demon again.”

Strawman again. I never said that. Humans are governed by thermodynamics, I know that. What I am saying thermodynamics is fundamentally inferior at predicting human behavior and explaining human behavior in practice compared to economics because the system is far too complicated for thermodynamics approaches to apply in the vast majority of cases. You said, and I quote, “Second, any competent thermodynamicist knows at least as much about economics as do economists”. If thermodynacis cannot be used in practice to make all the predictions and all the explanations economics does then your statement is incorrect and you do not have the ability to address economic issues based solely on thermodynamics principles.

“That’s the beauty of thermodynamics; it doesn’t matter if you have a theory of human decision making within the system. They are constrained too. A human marooned on an island without food may decide to eat, but it’ll still starve to death.”

Now say there are two people on the island. Can thermodynamics alone be used to predict how they will share food, how they will divide up work, or anything like that?

“Furthermore, aren’t you aware that trading companies have been hiring physics grads for at least the last couple of decades to apply thermodynamics directly to futures (most notably by modelling the market in terms of diffusion)? I personally have known one such gentleman, and I have been aware of the practice in general for years.”

Interesting. So there is one very specialized example where they use fluid dynamics (not thermodynamics) to predict a very specific thing. That still does not support your statement that thermodynamicists are as good at economics as economists.

“Where’re all those economists’ predictive track records I asked for?”

Predictive track records? They have been very good at predicting recessions in a general sense (not necessarily a specific date, but even that is possible). They can also tell you the best behavior after a recession has begun, or what to do during one. How many recessions has thermodynamics correctly predicted? How good is it at telling you how to handle them. It can predict relative prices of goods depending on local market conditions, such as competitors. How good is thermodynamics at predicting prices of goods? It can be used to determine relative prices different people will pay for the same good or service. How good is thermodynamics at predicting that? It can be used to isolate desired individuals from a given population, such as the most dedicated fans at a sports game. Can thermodynamics do that? It can be used to predict the time course of market penetration of a product and relate it to local factors. How often is thermodynamics used to predict this?

Except for the recession bit these are all things I can predict myself with my intermediate-level economics knowledge. The recession bit I have seen predicted myself by others. Unfortunately I gave my textbooks and notes to my sister, so I do not currently have access to more detailed information. But pick up any intermediate-level university economics textbook at your local library if you want examples.