"But the source of the money does not determine the spending efficiency, so why do you ask?"

You've already admitted that your belief in that proposition is circular, remember? You assumed your conclusion in your premises, remember? Fool.

You still haven't established
a) any rational criterion of efficiency of governmental action, or
b) any principle for limiting government power that doesn't depend on government to define it.

Therefore
a) you haven't established that the source of the money does not determine spending efficiency; you are only going around in circles - again!
b) you can't distinguish your political philosophy from that of North Korea: you share an open-ended belief in arbitrary government power and government's supposed superior economising competence, with any limits to be decided by government.

You have no criterion for economic freedom or human rights but what the government decides. I have repeatedly asked you for such a rational criterion and you repeatedly fail to say what it is. You have no rational criterion for deciding how much the government should take from the population. You cannot distinguish infrastructure from capital goods in general.

You have only an open-ended belief in unlimited government power, and when challenged on it, you stupidly say that you don't believe in what you do believe in, and when challenged to say what distinguishes what you say you do believe in, from what you say you don't believe in, you can't do it.

You deny that you support the enforcement the policies you favour, then you admit it and allege some imaginary point at which they cease to be enforced, and then you deny the logical consequence, that you are arguing that compliance becomes voluntary at that point.

You deny that your argument is circular, but when challenged, you admit that you assume your conclusion in your premises.

In short, you have no rational basis for your garbled self-contradictory brainwashed belief that the state does not confiscate all it has from the productive class. Not even the state agrees with you.

Jardine, you're exhibiting severe cognitive dissonance. I've neither admitted that my belief in that proposition is circular, nor assumed my conclusion in my premises.

Now, if you want to debate whether the source of the money determines spending efficiency, you're welcome to do so. I'd quite like to see you try to figure out a credible hypothesis as to how it could. But if you want me to explain something then ASK ME instead of accusing my argument of being circular because I haven't spoonfed you every tedious detail!

Your accusation that I've no criterion for human rights is an outright lie. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is such a criterion, and I've previously cited it when you asked. As for economic freedom, a good start would be that there shouldn't be arbitrary restrictions on trade.

Your claim that I share North Korea's open ended belief in arbitrary government power is another lie. I believe government power should not be arbitrary, but should be limited by the country's constitution and by existing laws (both domestic and international). I'd like the UDHR to be strongly enough enshrined in law to make it a limiting factor.

I don't assume the government to always have superior economising competence, though for provision of some services (especially those where the infrastructure cost is a high proportion of the total cost) I assume it does in the absence of evidence to the contrary. But for some things I assume it doesn't in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

Both evidence and logic show that outsourcing the public/private comparison process is a bad idea.

Unlike other capital goods, infrastructure is geographically fixed.

I make no apologies for thinking tax rates should be set contextually rather than by some predetermined formula! Indeed I would regard the latter approach as highly irrational as it hampers the ability to react to events.

Why don't you?

It seems to me that we are moving inexorability towards, what to me is the least offensive indirect tax, the financial transactions tax ; it is easily collected, easily tracked and unlike the GST should eliminate black market avoidance still rampant.

Just before Christmas I bought a quantity of landscaping materials for a project I had in mind over Christmas: as I proferred my credit card to the man in the office, he said " have you got cash, otherwise I'll have to charge you GST ?"

wantok, I find it rather amusing that you give an example of why the financial transactions tax WOULDN'T be any harder to avoid than the GST!

To those who understand it, it is more offensive than the GST. Fortunately we're not moving towards it at all.

"Why don't you?"

There's no use asking me questions, or pretending to engage in a rational discourse, if your thinking is merely circular.

"Jardine, you're exhibiting severe cognitive dissonance. I've neither admitted that my belief in that proposition is circular, nor assumed my conclusion in my premises."

Yes you have. In a prior discussion in which you asserted, and I denied, the possibility of superior efficiency of governmental provision of services in some circumstances, you denied that your argument is circular, but then later admitted that you don't assume the ability to economise doesn't "magically disappear" when we consider governmental action. But the issue was whether government can rationally economise [i.e. work out whether a loss is worth it] in the first place. Therefore you have admitted that you have assumed what is in issue.

"Now, if you want to debate whether the source of the money determines spending efficiency, you're welcome to do so. I'd quite like to see you try to figure out a credible hypothesis as to how it could."

You're doing it again. You're ASSUMING that the source of the money makes no difference to spending efficiency, when that is what is in issue, and then asking me to figure out a credible hypothesis when
a) I've already given you a credible hypothesis, that based in 1. the coercive nature of taxation, and 2. the disconnect between governmental provision and any demonstrated preference of the "consumers". You haven't answered that hypothesis, except by circularly pretending that it doesn't exist, and
b) You’re reversing the onus of proof. You’re the one asserting that government can economise more efficiently in certaion circumstances. Prove it.

"Your accusation that I've no criterion for human rights is an outright lie."

I didn't say you have no criterion, I said you have no rational criterion.

The UDHR is merely States deciding that human rights are whatever states say they are: Caesar appealing to Caesar. That's not a rational criterion because according to that theory, if they decided that free ice-cream, or owning slaves, were human rights, all of a sudden they would be human rights. But if you deny that, you are still left wanting any criterion for deciding what a human right is, other than "whatever states say it is". So ... what is it?

Same with the Constitution. We only have limits on government power because of people who DON'T share your circular belief in unlimited power.

You say you don't, but when I ask you to explain what rational criterion for limits you have, you don't have any except appeal to the state. So it’s circular.

You say you don't believe in unlimited government power, but believe governmental provision is justified because
a) government can access cheaper finance
b) private owners will be motivated by profit.
But since there is no area of production that this would not justify governmental provision for, therefore it's a creed of unlimited power, unless you can specify the limiting principle, which you can't, because when asked, you keep making it depend on governmental fiat.

According to your theory, no amount of tax would ever be enough.