I’m watching Seth’s blog

Ever since there is tax, people are against paying it.

If we define a tax as a “non-productive burden on our operations,” it makes sense. And a payment doesn’t have to be a government to be a tax.

Is paying your electricity bill a tax? Most people don’t mind paying for electricity because it makes their lives safer and happier and helps them work dramatically more productively.

So paying doesn’t tax anything, it’s the non-productive part.

When it comes to industrial systems, they are usually embraced because the transactions they offer are so productive. When Walmart comes to a city, everyone grows short-term, because the cost of buying what we want and what we need is reduced. When a new technology or system offers to save people time and money in the short term, it is often accepted because it is a free choice and productive.

But then the rules began to change.

Exclusive is a tax. They limit the choice and increase the price. As a result, we regularly pay “taxes” on things like broadband and spare parts because there is no alternative.

The loss of a vibrant market is a tax. When local businesses stagnate, jobs are lost, choices are made, and the essence of a community fades.

Lobbying is a tax. Since large industrial companies invest money to seize government control, we each pay for it even though it only benefits lobbyists.

Subsidies and duties are a tax. Last year, Americans spent 50 50 billion subsidizing the beef industry. Restrictions on trade are not called taxes, but they are.

Traffic is a tax. We don’t get back the time we spend waiting for trains or sitting in traffic, and unchanged investments in mass transit infrastructure cost a lot more than we do.

Lack of public health system is a tax. The inability to find clean water, or the possibility of getting sick often is a real value.

And make climate change a looming and hidden tax. The loss of money and productivity that it already costs us, and the extraordinary amount that it will cost us, is a burden to meet our goals and unproductive for our livelihood.

There is no government tax on an abandoned desert island. But it is almost impossible to imagine living or working there.