jesus

At least it depreciates

the social contract is a collectivist concept, though

But yeah I got a bill after I bought my car a few years ago and it was from the state saying "hey, you owe us $300, and in 6 months, you'll owe us another $290"

and if you don't pay, bye bye car, or jail

No

If I don't pay it, I don't pay it...but I can't renew my registration without paying

You should do a bunch of cosmetic damage to your car to lower the value.

it's almost like demanding money under the threat of violence

benji boy knows what's up

@Benjamin it doesn't matter what condition it's in, it goes by like KBB average I believe

Lame.

sad

Yeah...so last time I renewed my registration I did it for two years, so in theory I could just not pay any of it and pay a lump sum when I need to renew

I honestly don't have a big problem with taxes, I get that the government needs money to function, but I feel like if we got rid of all of the pointless spending, taxes would be able to be lowered.

my opposition to taxation is on ethical grounds, so there's no much need in arguing utilitarist points and so on

I think the fact that everyone pays taxes means that, for example, I should never see a road and go "fuck, I really don't want to drive down there because there are pot holes big enough that I've popped a tire." Shit like that should not be an issue.

And yet there are highways in MD that make me feel like I'm playing Frogger with my wheels and potholes

exactly

decentralizing the management of pathways would make it easier to well, manage them

even the centralization on municipal level is problematic

too bureaucratic

My thing is I don't care who gets it done, but my tax money is supposed to go to shit like that. It clearly isn't, so something is wrong.

...and then now that I think about it, what usually happens is the local government contracts a company to fix it, and probably overpays like crazy.

sometimes i think its better if people just fix the roads themselves and make the govt reimburse them

that way its faster

lol

Probably

If you want a private company you need a good contract

voluntary solutions are always the best and most ethical

I don't know about that part, you might get someone that doesn't know what they're doing but is trying to help but makes things worse.

I saw that a lot when I was a cable tech. People would have problems, determine it was their inside wiring, try to fix it themselves and sometimes cause more issues

but you can voluntarily higher someone who gets the job done well, no need to have the government as the middleman and overbudgeting the shit out of it

And then have the govt reimburse based on receipts? I could support that. Personally I wouldn't be excited about still having to pay out of pocket at first, but if reimbursement was done pretty quickly I wouldn't mind as much

the government shouldn't be doing that to begin with, so the least they could do would be reimburse and not include that on their budget anymore

including upkeep

What about situations where a whole section of road needs to be redone though? Try to get a bunch of people to crowdfund it?

yeah

For example on that same highway in MD I remember one time they shut down like 5 miles at a time for repaving, no idea how much that costs

Shut down one lane rather

i read about the case of an entire community who crowdfunded the building of a bridge and ended up managing to pay like 5% of what the municipal government had estimated