LogFAQs > #939259786

Zeus posted...

If somebody cares about a specific cause, it makes far more sense to donate directly for that cause.

That's all well and good, provided enough people choose causes that actually help society run smoothly and not just whatever they like the sound of or what advertises the best. The latter is what tends to happen, which is why pandas happily continue to exist despite being hell-bent on their own extinction (I'm all for conservation and all, but pandas really have no business surviving given how poorly-adapted they are) while people starve in the streets outside the offices that helped to fund pandas' survival, or why we saw an amount of money go toward Notre Dame's restoration that could have fed the world for a year.

In theory, a government is elected based on its ability to make sensible decisions about which causes will best contribute to society's function. A government that fails to do so (whether by incompetence or by corruption) is voted out and replaced with a more capable one. In practice, of course, that's a very complex assessment that voters aren't very good at, and it's rare for there to be plausible alternative candidates that can be voted for to make changes (mostly because those that might get dismissed as "crackpot insanity," to use the words of somebody you might know). That's a broken electoral system, though, not a flaw in the fundamental concept of taxes. If you vote for better people and convince everyone else to do the same, taxes work just fine.

Revelation34 posted...

Nobody used the word "slut" in this thread.

You pick the weirdest stuff to be contrarian about for no reason.

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