Conversation

We have antitrust laws to break up monopolies. Why should the gov be the exception? We're getting a raw deal: stagnant products, price gouging, customer service agents literally beat you up for complaining. We need competition. We need accountability. We need options.

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Max Boonen

@maxboonen

Jun 7, 2020

You don't realise it but you already have much of that. Local government is famously important in the US (see Tocqueville), and that's evident in your structure of taxation (no VAT, property taxes). You can easily vote with your feet in that respect.

Jesse Powell

@jespow

Replying to

@maxboonen

Yeah, nice to be able to move but you still have the state and fed rules & taxes imposed on you in every city. For most, the political differences aren’t enough to overcome the switching costs of physically relocating. Less geographically desirable places usually have better ToS.

7:59 AM · Jun 7, 2020Twitter for iPhone

Replying to

I voted with my feet twice so I'm with you. Just wanted to point out that American "idiosyncrasy"! One major consequence is much lower property prices due to high taxes. In Europe AFAIK the same house is twice as expensive because local taxes are so low (I'm talking $200 low)

Replying to

and

You both summed up both sides of the coin. America was designed as a decentralized, semi-autonomous system of nodes wherein each node was governed by the agents the existed in each node. The problem is emergent properties aspiring to optimize the system destroyed its robustness

Replying to

and

Funnily enough, our high ideals are what made America a centralized cesspool of mediocrity. I don't think American founders generally saw that coming.