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Quoted from an article that went onto the web this morning:
Why make a big stink with taxes, when we can tap sweetly? All the public revenue we need can be tapped from ground rent, user fees, and penalty payments. That's why we don't need any stinking taxes.
The author was progress.org's senior editor Fred Foldvary and pasted below is another of Foldvary's Op-Eds. It should be pretty obvious that Foldvary loves fees, hates taxes and detests government so much so that he wants to eliminate it entirely.
That particular combination of loves and hates is shared by a great many proponents of user fees --- people who understand these fees to be a means to an end and not an end in themselves. It's the mantra of such long-time fee-demo proponents as Terry Anderson of Political Economy Research Center. And heck, on the American Recreation Coalition's homepage at this very moment you'll find this statement:
Ms. Jourdain testified on May 6, 2004 before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands at a hearing on H.R. 3283, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. During her testimony, she emphasized that ARC does not consider recreation fees as an end in themselves, but rather as a means to be used - in conjunction with other tools, including appropriated funds, volunteerism and partnerships.....
Fee-Demo is not about the few bucks paid at the trailhead. It's not about a couple of thousand or hundred thousand in revenues collected at a particular recreation site. It's certainly not about sweet smelling toilets -- though from listening to the USFS you'd believe toilet maintenance was driving the entire program. Fee-Demo about something much bigger. Ultimately, and to many of fee-demo's proponents, it is about the "Privatization of Government" --- which is the title of the appended article by Foldvary.
I have long used a different phrase than Foldvary uses. For 7 years I have said that fee-demo is about "The Corporate Takeover of Nature". Perhaps I've been wrong. Perhaps fee-demo is really about something BIGGER than that.
Scott
--- begin quoted ---
Privatize the Government!
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor
Advocates of free markets tend to prefer private enterprise over
governmental operations because it is more efficient and provides for
free choices rather than an imposed government monopoly.
Free-marketeers would like to privatize the postal service and
education or at least provide an equal financial choice between private
and governmental schools. The ultimate in privatization is to privatize
the government itself.
There is already a lot of private governance. Homeowner or residential
associations elect a board of directors which functions much like a
city council. There are monthly assessments on the owners, which act
like a property or site-value tax, and the association provides
collective goods and services similar to those of a city, such as
parks, parking, recreation, community buildings, security, and public
utilities.
Condominiums, housing cooperatives, and land trusts have similar
governance, and proprietary communities such as hotels, shopping
centers, and landlord-owned apartment buildings have an administration
that is not elected but provides governance and public goods to the
tenants and customers. A great amount of governance is thus already
privatized.
As competitive private organizations seeking to maximize their profits
and benefits to members, private communities tend to be financed
efficiently, to minimize costs. The efficient way to pay for civic
services is by charging the tenants and users a rental on the property
they use or have access to. This is in accord with the benefit-based
method of public finance. Private organizations also have user fees for
services that are specific to users, such as room service for hotel
guests. But many general services, such as the elevators and escalators
in hotels, office buildings and malls, are gratis to users, paid for
from the rental charges on tenants.
City, county, State, and national governments do the opposite. They
impose taxes according to the ability-to-pay principle. This is also
called "the ability to extract." Any explicit flow of funds, such as
earning income or spending money, gets siphoned off. When government
does tax real estate, it usually taxes the buildings along with the
land value, just because the owner can pay it. Anything you try to do:
set up a business, fly in an airplane, see a movie, get gasoline for
your car, or have money in a savings account, gets taxed, taxed again,
and often triple taxed. You pay taxes when you earn money, again when
you spend it, and again when you die and your heirs inherit it. Most of
these taxes have no relation to any specific benefit provided by
government, and by raising costs, these taxes impose an excess burden
and welfare loss to society.
Private enterprise tends to be more efficient than government, so one
reason to privatize governance is on the spending side, for a more
efficient provision of collective goods. Another reason is on the
revenue side: private communities charge user fees and rental payments
rather than willy-nilly forcing people to pay surcharges any time they
want to do anything.
Local government can be privatized by dividing a city into small
districts, and then making each district a contractual community
organization. Those landowners who don't want to join the local
association can form their own association or stay under the direct
authority of the government. All taxes would be eliminated in these
associations. Also eliminated would be arbitrary regulations, including
all zoning, building codes, and laws restricting activity without
victims, such as gambling and drug use. Private communities would only
be subject to criminal laws that have victims, such as murder, theft,
and fraud. Each community would then enact whatever internal rules they
wish.
After almost all local government has been converted to community
associations and proprietary communities, the city administration would
be converted to a contractual association, the council elected by the
neighborhood associations. The county board would then be elected by
the city councils, the State legislature by the county councils, and
the federal congress or parliament by the State or provincial councils.
From bottom to top, the governance would be contractual and voluntary,
other than to prohibit and punish coercive harm such as theft.
Private governance would have maximal liberty and no taxes. The
financing would flow from bottom to top, based on user fees and
property rentals. Since it is more efficient to charge a rental for a
site rather than also for the building, competition and cost-minimizing
would induce the local communities to have assessments based only on
site value, excluding the value of the buildings and other
improvements, rather than the value of the entire property. Most US
State governments now actually prohibit localities from only using site
rent for public finances.
With private governance, there would be a great variety of community
cultures. There could be religiously based communities, communal
communities, individualist communities, and a wide variety of
contractual agreements. Some would prohibit gambling or alcohol, and
others not. Some would allow discrimination in employment and housing,
and others not. Some would have Sunday as a holy day, others Saturday
or Friday. People would be more free to live with neighbors with
similar religions, cultures, languages and values, while many
communities would value diversity and encourage people of various
cultures and races and incomes to enter.
Private government carries freedom of association to its logical
conclusion. Only when governance is truly voluntary can we have
complete liberty and justice.
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- Privatization 
