Re: Mulcair's bad tax promise, Editorial Aug. 12

Mulcair's bad tax promise, Editorial Aug. 12

You’ve got the contradiction at the heart of politics all wrong. It’s not that we “hate paying taxes, but we appreciate the services they pay for”; that’s utter nonsense. We have no choice of whether to pay taxes and no choice as to the “services” they supposedly pay for.

In reality the state prints paper “money” and distributes it through a state-enforced banking oligopoly. It has no worth without state fiat. Then us peons get to pass this paper among each other as an artificial medium of exchange, when selling our labour into wage-slavery, trading for consumerist trash, etc. We are not paying taxes for services, we are being farmed for our labour like livestock, by a system designed to make the rich richer.

We receive the health care, training, and accommodations of any slave, for after all, slaves are expected to dance as well as work. If you are not happy with this arrangement you will be violently assaulted and kidnapped (arrested), even if your activity is entirely peaceful (e.g. growing cannabis).

The contradiction at the heart of politics is this: we have scarce resources, we must find a way to allocate these efficiently, a free market can be shown to do this through logical reasoning (google the “economic calculation problem”), but we still obey politicians as if they know what to do. When has a politician ever done what they said they would? How can they possibly even know how to do that?

Can politicians read the future? Can you? If not, how can you possibly show that obeying the state’s laws will result in a material benefit to our society? If you can’t prove that, why should we submit to the state’s uninitiated, violent coercion? Why should we keep funding illegal wars, incarcerating peaceful people, “regulating” environmental apocalypse, etc.

Why should we keep voting for incompetent liars who will promise anything for a tin crown, but will do whatever they please once we’ve placed it on their pointy, little heads?

Mike Sampat, Toronto

Mr. Mulcair isn’t taking taxes off the table, just out of the headlines. Rest assured his tax-and-spend credentials are intact.

Ron Freedman, Toronto