Here are some responses to your comments, prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday. Blogging may be light during the next few days as I try to catch up on reading, then again, blogging may be prolific. Who knows.

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Mike Gogulski 1955Design left a comment on Metablogging, in regards to my inquiry about the Twitter badge in the sidebar.

Mike and 1955Design report that they see the Twitter badge correctly.  Must be something local to my machine, although it was visible at first.

If readers are seeing it (and I’m not) then I’m not worried about it.

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I’ve had a few technology-related issues in recent months.  This morning, this website was haxxed.  It may be a WP security issue, but appears like it might be a server hack.  In any event, some of my readers have been kind enough to offer advice for dealing with these problems.  Although I haven’t needed their help, it’s great to know that people who are essentially strangers are willing to help me out. That’s voluntaryism.

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Mike Gogulski points out that Taxation is still theft no matter how many logical fallacies you employ was getting some attention on reddit|Anarchism. I’m glad there’s discussion, but a lot of the comments were obvious trolling. I don’t follow reddit, digg, etc., although reddit and stumbleupon have been driving some traffic to my site lately.

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On the metablogging note, Billy Beck @ Two–four.net recently linked here. I got a lot of traffic from that hit. I’m very happy people are noticing and reading my blog. If you don’t read two–four regularly, I suggest that you do.

Traffic for November looks to exceed 4,000 absolute unique visitors according to AWSTATs. I’m getting anywhere between 50-150 unique visitors each day, and approximately 500 pageviews, daily.

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Brad left a comment on No Nation Ever Taxed Itself Into Prosperity, Either:

What are you and RG trying to solve? It sounds like a battle of “I have read more books than you so I’m more qualified.” RG sounds like a politician.

I think your argument of taxation brings no good is simple enough. There just needs to be a better way to collect taxes instead of just taking it through income taxes or raising taxes on certain products (like yachts). I like a flat federal retail tax. This way the government can only get as big as the market will let it.

LOL @ the first part of the comment. I sensed it was kind of going that way, and asked RG to post his commentary at his own blog (he doesn’t have one) or to feel free to correspond with me via e-mail. He has yet to do so. He left a number of comments that I’m trying to put together into a coherent post, rather than piecemeal comments/responses, they’re not going unnoticed or unchallenged.

The second part of Brad’s comment is WRONG.

I oppose a flat tax for the same reason I oppose any tax. Taxation is theft, and it even though a flat tax is somewhat more transparent (allegedly) it still amounts to ransom for permission to live. In a free society, that is intolerable.

Brad is a budding libertarian, so there is hope for him, yet. The problem is buried as a hidden premise to “There just needs to be a better way to collect taxes”, which is, “Government is the only entity capable of providing certain things, from which it follows that taxes are necessary for the provision thereof.” I could probably write a book on that topic.

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I’ll respond to one of RG’s comments

Also — as much as you have studied economics, I find it hard to believe that you support the market-distorting mortgage tax deduction. Granted, you believe nobody should ever pay taxes and we should live in caves. But given current circumstances, surely you can see that the tax deduction is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from renters and homeowners (e.g. no mortgage) to people who are somewhere on the 30-year journey to homeownership.

Taking off my anarchist hat, for a moment, from a policy perspective, it seems far more reasonable that a deduction be based not solely on mortgage interest paid, but rather on the total monthly housing expense. In this manner, no matter where you are on the 30-year amortization continuum, or even if you rent a home, you’d be eligible for a deduction based on the monthly payment. This proposal might also base the deduction on the property value instead of monthly payment, in order to reduce/eliminate the incentive to remain indebted.

Insofar as the current incentive serves as a transfer, it falls primarily on the renters, since homeowners at one point benefited from the deduction (or, if they paid cash, had the opportunity to benefit from it). I don’t support it as a general principle, I’m just trying to point out that repealing that deduction would be the single largest increase in effective tax rates, probably in the history of the world.

But wait: If reducing tax burdens for some people “distorts” the market (I agree that it does), is it not also true, that raising tax burdens for some people is also distortionary?

Yes, that must also be true. That’s one of the points I’m trying to make in that series of posts.

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Enjoy the holiday weekend.