How about law as a subscription service? The maxim is if it has value in people’s eyes, then people should be willing to pay a monthly fee for it, voluntarily and without coercion.
A big part of government function is managing externalities (pollution, food safety, roads etc) -- things that are not economic when purchased individually. They suffer from a free rider issue: I benefit from clean air whether I pay for it or not.
In addition I don't know enough about traffic safety to figure out what the best speed limit is for certain roads, nor how the road should be constructed (especially given local environmental conditions, estimated use etc). It's cheaper overall to outsource it to people who know. Otherwise how can I decide if I want to subscribe to that safety rail at the edge of a certain roadway?
>A big part of government function is managing externalities (pollution, food safety, roads etc) -- things that are not economic when purchased individually.
Says you.
Damn near every government (from local to national) has a charter more along the lines of "do these specific mostly administrative things that we agree are best done at this level".
Taxes are pretty much that, but I suppose "with coercion".
Otherwise, if it's truly pick and choose... how much thought did we give to this? :)
Will everybody pay equally for each law, or rich people pay more?
If rich people pay more, and they decide they don't like the tax avoidance laws, will they be disproportionally funded?
If everybody pays the same, this will be proportionally harsher for poor people.
Most people will not pay for 97% of the laws which may be overall important but don't impact them directly - e.g. I live in Toronto so don't car about fisheries laws, etc.
Some people will not pay for laws they personally don't want to abide buy - from speeding tickets to financial regulations to fitness of goods and services etc.
I don't think this would work, but it does remind me of an idle thought I sometimes have. some nonprofits allow donors to make conditional donations. for example, you might donate to a school, but stipulate that the money can only be spent on the theater program. I wonder what would happen if taxes worked the same way. you have to pay the same amount no matter what (and maybe some gets preallocated towards nondiscretionary spending), but you would get to pick from a few broad categories where your tax dollars go. would probably be a disaster, but interesting to think about. from a certain perspective, it might increase the "legitimacy" of government programs.
I think "just give it to the feds instead" should be a checkbox on everyone's state taxes. It would give the states a clear monetary reason to make their inhabitants not resent them.
That would be nice if you could also elect to give your fed monies to the local gov’t. That way the different governments could compete for the provision of good government.
