Should we reduce the refugee intake? (3 Viewers)

[isildurrrr1]

With the amount of money wasted by our governments on stupid shit like student laptops which were absolutely terrible, I'm not too concerned on putting money towards something which will be used and still in our economy such as more welfare.

australia is a middle class welfare country. It'll be so much better to cut taxes and cut welfare at the same time. much much more beneficial for economic activity.

 

[scuba_steve2121]

Yep, that's correct. That's what would happen if we were declared stateless overnight. However, scaling back the state shouldn't be out of the question. It should be gradual and reasonable. Some of the things you've mentioned are already provided on private models. In some cases it's not entirely possible to provide them on private models and therein lies the value of the state and taxation. Public transport, especially in places like Sydney is a prime example. It's not possible to run a transport system profitably in our case. Would I prefer we spend a bunch of money on making new trains (inb4 autism) and buses and assisting people get from point A to point B than on useless stuff like giving political parties money for winning elections? You bet. I think you would too.

I'm one of the advocates for limiting government on this forum, but I do see uses for the state. I do think taxation is theft and is therefore intrinsically obtained immorally, but that doesn't mean we can't be pragmatic about this stuff.

Firstly I would just like to thank you for responding for me, since time has shown that you are far, FAR better are forming such responses than I'll ever be. Funnily enough what you have alluded to is the biggest question for those in the libertarian movement, which is "How do we go about getting rid of/scaling back the state." I personally went from a small state position-to a no position-back to a small position. Simply because a new state will arise where there is no state. Unfortunately the small state position is pure fantasy as well, because we never learn from history and that small state will eventually turn into a big state whether it is a fascist or a socialist one. The state will of course eventually collapse because socialism doesn't work and the process will start all over again.

The majority of people don't believe that individuals have a right to do as they wish in their personal and economic lives, as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of another to do the same. It is because of this that the idea of small statism or anarcho-capitalism will never come into being in the ways that we wish it to.

 

[s_lide]

out of curiousity, has this ever been implemented in practice and if so, how did it work out?

the examples of stateless societies throughout history have been:
a. the wild west
b. medieval iceland