Paradise Lost **potential mini spoiler if you intend to read Atlas Shrugged**

[pjclarke]

Oh FFS, not-so-spontaneous. Really?

There is a legal offence of 'demanding money with menaces',

Let me google that for you (188K hits)

akin to blackmail, my usage was a light-hearted attempt to satirise the opinion that income tax equates to extortion by force. Like all jokes, if you have to explain. ...

Met with more leaden, nitpicking, pettifogging, adolescent, pedantry. That's it, I'm out.

[Old Greg]

Oh FFS, not-so-spontaneous. Really?

There is a legal offence of 'demanding money with menaces',

Let me google that for you (188K hits)

akin to blackmail, my usage was a light-hearted attempt to satirise the opinion that income tax equates to extortion by force. Like all jokes, if you have to explain. ...

Met with more leaden, nitpicking, pettifogging, adolescent, pedantry. That's it, I'm out.

But pj, real libertarians are fine with blackmail:

I am legally allowed to tell your wife (or not) that you are having an affair.
I am legally allowed to ask you to give me £10,000.

But the moment I combine those two perfectly legal activities by attempting to enter into a contract with you not to tell your wife if you give me £10,000, the EVIL state interferes with our wish to enter freely into a contract (which would be in both our interests) by threatening me with VIOLENT FORCE AND IMPRISONMENT merely for plying my trade as a commercial secret keeper.

[pjclarke]

1. Please explain exactly what you mean by real.

2. How did you find out about the affair?

3. Where do I leave the 10K?

[Old Greg]

1. Please explain exactly what you mean by real.

2. How did you find out about the affair?

3. Where do I leave the 10K?

Don't panic. In a libertarian society, where we are free to do as we wish, such transgressions will not be met by state power, but you will be unable to leave your house because social disapproval will mean that you will not be granted permission to use the the private roads (and this lack of permission will be backed up by justifiable threats of violence in defence of natural property rights) or indeed to use any shops if you could use the roads. So you would starve to death if unable to grow sufficient food on the property contiguous to your dwelling. But you would starve to death an objectively free man.

[pjclarke]

Are you sure there will be roads? I guess free people could voluntarily form companies to build roads to serve their area, everyone with a vehicle or who wished their dwelling to be accessible could voluntarily contribute some of their inalienable property, if they had any money left after voluntarily paying for their private health care, private education for their children, private Fire Brigade, private police force (to defend their property rights, natch). Then these local companies could link up to build and maintain a national network to serve the whole country ...

... of course the road taxes would be entirely voluntary, and we rational self-interested Objectivists would attempt to get the most road for the least money, which might lead to a shortfall. So maybe, to ensure there's a road network for all we would invite shareholders to vote on making the road levy compulsory. Wait! WHAT AM I THINKING!

[Old Greg]

Are you sure there will be roads? I guess free people could voluntarily form companies to build roads to serve their area, everyone with a vehicle or who wished their dwelling to be accessible could voluntarily contribute some of their inalienable property, if they had any money left after voluntarily paying for their private health care, private education for their children, private Fire Brigade, private police force (to defend their property rights, natch). Then these local companies could link up to build and maintain a national network to serve the whole country ...

... of course the road taxes would be entirely voluntary, and we rational self-interested Objectivists would attempt to get the most road for the least money, which might lead to a shortfall. So maybe, to ensure there's a road network for all we would invite shareholders to vote on making the road levy compulsory. Wait! WHAT AM I THINKING!

If the demand is the why not? It is how the railways were built. Except... landowners' natural property rights were violated by threat of violence through Acts of Parliament. It was highly controversial.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Oh FFS, not-so-spontaneous. Really?

There is a legal offence of 'demanding money with menaces',

Let me google that for you (188K hits)

akin to blackmail, my usage was a light-hearted attempt to satirise the opinion that income tax equates to extortion by force. Like all jokes, if you have to explain. ...

Met with more leaden, nitpicking, pettifogging, adolescent, pedantry. That's it, I'm out.

So, lets assume that it really was some kind of joke, and you're not just desperately trying to dig yourself out of a hole...

What happens if I refuse to pay my taxes, and refuse to comply in any way with any efforts of the state to get hold of my taxes?

Simple question, right?

[darmstadt]

So, lets assume that it really was some kind of joke, and you're not just desperately trying to dig yourself out of a hole...

What happens if I refuse to pay my taxes, and refuse to comply in any way with any efforts of the state to get hold of my taxes?

Simple question, right?

Change your name to Vodafone perhaps, although they're not really refusing to pay, they just get around paying.

[Zero Liability]

The assertion was the crash was caused by the banks being forced to make loans to the poor. There may have been some legislation in the US to that effect in the mid 90s BUT the MAIN cause of the crash was allowing the banks to operate without the proper reserves and gamble on products such as Credit Default Swaps from the late 90s, which many didn't really understand, becoming heavily Over Leveraged in the process. The banks could not do this before the de-regulation (repeal of Glass–Steagall Act lobbied for by the banks). This is a good explaination:

Understanding the Financial Crisis very good explanation HD - YouTube

The other things you mention would not have led to a crash without repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act as the amplification would have been small.

Just a question but what do you think central banks exist for? They are the coordinators and facilitators of no reserve banking. They came about because of how spectacularly bad this form of banking is in their absence. It still fails explosively, but they can coordinate it to last for longer before it does. Until their own balance sheets become full of rubbish that no one but them wants.

As for that tulipty piece of legislation, here's an even better video.

Central banks pushing rates down to near zero and standing by in the event that any banks required it (the Greenspan put), banks being incentivised to lend to submarginal creditors (or even penalised if they didn't), GSEs siphoning off bad debt from the books of banks, effectively reducing the losses to them to nothing for assuming risk, perverse regulations prejudicing junk assets like debt later to be revealed as worthless junk (think PIIGS sovereign debt) such as Basel and the horrid financial models they inspired all had their part to play. Without the fuel provided by the central banks, the fire would struggle to get going. They only now are beginning to admit their culpability in the matter. Nevermind the media mythology surrounding the likes of Yellen, painting her as some enlightened prognosticator, when the dozy tart was still brushing aside any concerns about a bubble in 2006 (or was it 2007?) You can say the government only did this because it was asked to, but to do so is to ignore the substantial benefits that accrue to governments in power from financial bubbles. No one forced their hand to do it. They hold all the guns in the end. The word "no" is something they're very familiar with. They put their power on sale. I refuse to let them off the hook just to myopically focus on the complicit "private" banks. The truth is that the "regulators" are part of the problem. It takes an act of singular delusion to try paint this as a problem of "too little" regulation, because the entire system is geared towards accommodating low levels of 'reserves'.

Why am I to believe that some little piece of paper being partially torn up is the major cause behind the recession? What legislation's "repeal" will we blame next time, one wonders? Oh, we'll have to make one up and retrospectively introduce it into law, and then repeal it, so the central bank psychopaths have someone else to blame.

[pjclarke]

So, lets assume that it really was some kind of joke, and you're not just desperately trying to dig yourself out of a hole...

What happens if I refuse to pay my taxes, and refuse to comply in any way with any efforts of the state to get hold of my taxes?

Simple question, right?

I cannot possibly answer until you define the word 'taxes'.

Seriously, I know the answer. You know the answer. You know I know the answer. I know you know the answer. We all know where you're going with this, please, please please get to the point, life really is too short.

What is the tax collector's surname?