>Has there ever been an example of a succesful tax-less capitalist economy?

I think the GP means income tax since the conversation is about being a slave === being 100% income taxed. And yes, there had been an example of a successful income tax-less capitalist economy. The United States of America for most of the time pre 1913.

Maybe in terms of the income tax that we know today, but if you did any importing or exporting you paid a heck of a lot of taxes via tariffs. If you ever get a chance to read up on the pre-Civil War period you'll find that the south was responsible for about 87% of total Federal revenue and almost entirely due to tariffs.

It's an interesting subject.

Why don't we go back to that system?

That's an excellent question ... my experience over several years helping campaign for a party that wanted to eliminate progressive taxation was that:

* people are terrified of fundamental changes to systems that provide their 'benefits', even if the existing system involves literal slavery

* people get really, really angry when you mention the 'slavery' thing; they don't seem to like really thinking about how the sausage is made, so to speak

* slavery is easy when quality of life is so good; it's easy to get bent out of shape when 40% of your income is being taken when your income is diddley-squat; when you're living like a 1700s king already, meh

* socialists have entirely and completely conflated the concept of a just society with compulsory taxation and state welfarism that it is almost impossible to get people to even acknowledge that the two can be considered separately

* self-described capitalists are often only capitalists when it suits them, otherwise they are often happy to suckle from the State tit to a far more egregious extent than any 'welfare queen' ever did

I don't do politics any more.

One could wonder whether USA1913 was stable in the long term. It probably operated on unlimited resources for some part (land, at least). It's the limited resources which require us nowadays to care for unemployed people, because we've built the system without including their food/shelter. For example Australia is, to this day, the new America (23% taxes at $80k), but it's also only 20M people and exploiting still-abundant mines.

If you're arguing for some radical libertarian theoretical economy with 0% taxes then you're not really arguing for anything that would normally be called capitalism. In a way you're being an anticapitalist yourself.

Voluntary taxation is not a thing. That's called a donation.

No, not at all, because a donation generally doesn't get you something in return (say, citizenship or the right to vote).

Imagine a country run entirely on a voluntary poll tax. You literally pay in order to vote. The last time I ran the numbers (along with the now-defunct Libertarianz party), it'd cost around $2.5k per working person to run core Govt. services in New Zealand on that basis, assuming 100% buy-in.

That's not a donation, exactly, but it's not compulsory taxation either.

Government by the wealthy for the wealthy, as Lincoln didn't say. Might want to look at the history of poll taxes and especially property qualifications.

Wealthy? $2.5k isn't exactly a lot, if you consider that that was the entire tax burden we were planning for. As in, $2.5k tax in total, for everything.

Sure, poll taxes and similar have been used to exclude all but the wealthy from Government. Many types of legal structure can be misused: gun control laws to disarm black people in the face of the KKK, union laws to prevent non-white people from getting decent jobs, etc. etc.

But it's not a given.

Edited to add: and especially when you consider that the so-called 'sin taxes' that particularly burden the poor would be eliminated under that scheme.

Sure, if you want to ignore the part about not having freedom of choice.

Last I checked the consequence of not paying compulsory taxation was jail (if you didn't resist physically as well) or death (if you did).

But you have a choice of whether to work and what to do for that work don't you? Can we say the same for slaves?

I don't think that's entirely true. There are been plenty of counter-culture examples of people mostly opting out of that system. It's hard, but really it's hard relative to the system they are opting out of, which is why we have the system in the first place. Ultimately, nobody is keeping anyone here, so people have the option to emigrate to a location with less oversight and taxes. This may be hard, but it's possible. I think this is a bug distinction between "real" slavery, and how people equate taxation as slavery. There is implicit acceptance of the system by staying within the region where the system is the prevailing way of doing business.

Wow, you value a persons life so little that you would let them die if they didn't work. If a person killed you to feed themselves or their family, I would consider them more ethical, because at least they had a reason to kill you. You would let them starve over almost nothing.

"Wow, you value a persons life so little that you would let them die if they didn't work."

How the actual fuck did you read that into what I wrote?

... deep breath ...

What I meant was, and perhaps I was unclear, is that material goods are a requirement for life, and a good many of them if you want to thrive rather than just 'not die'.

Those goods have to be produced, by someone. Work has to be done. This is not negotiable. It is a fact of living in this universe.

If that work isn't done by you, then it has to be done by someone. You can't just "opt out" of work, all you can do is either a) do it yourself, b) let someone else do it for you, c) force someone else to do it for you.

Right now, my children are in state (b). There are many adults in that state too - they are dependant upon the work of others. In many case that's through no fault of their own, either, and I think that it's entirely just that a civilised society look after such people.

This is how the fuck I read that into what you wrote, and I quote: "In a state of nature, to refuse to work is to commit suicide, at a rate proportional to the hostility of your environment." ... "So, no. There is no choice about working."

It seems pretty clear to me where I got it from. You are definitely fine with letting people live in misery at the best. It's pretty simple, there is no "actual what the fuck" about it.

Funny that you comment on nature, when civilization has made a lot of the horrible things that have to be dealt with in nature a lot less relevant. In nature animals are violent to each other, and will kill each other even of their own species. By your logic you must support killing each other, otherwise your argument about nature would be totally hypocritical.

The more civilized a place the more people can do their own thing without worry of harm or their needs being met. What you wrote below has nothing to do with a basic income. A basic income will make people less afraid of moving employers for example, making parasites that employ people in hideous conditions lose power. Threats from those psychopaths will have a lot less punch. That is a massive gain.

A basic income does not look like it will not alter how much people work. As an example, the MINCOME project showed that the only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less in an actual experiment with a form of basic income, the people who work will still work. I will not repeat other sources here, any reader can look it up if they want.

While I don't agree with duncan_bayne's view, what you've done (previously to this comment) is taken the most uncharitable possible interpretation of his words, and then written a baiting, reactionary reply to him. Any time you want to write "Wow, you value a persons life so little that you would let them die if they didn't work." you should probably stop and consider a more tactful approach that consists mostly of asking whether you are interpreting what they are saying correctly.

I think (s)he is actually a troll, and quite a skilled one.

"In a state of nature, to refuse to work is to commit suicide, at a rate proportional to the hostility of your environment."

What part of living in a modern industrial / post-industrial society is "in a state of nature"?

I give up.