I am being nudged by Simon Gibbs, who is organising it, to say something here, now, about this Libertarian Home event, about and against taxation.
This event will happen on the afternoon of Saturday May 14th, in Holborn, London. The speakers (see the list here) will include: Yaron Brook; Anton Howes; and a couple of new names to me, “Janina Lowisz, BitNation and Julio Alejandro, Humanitarian Blockchain”. Sounds intriguing, in a twenty first century and good way. I’m guessing that the gist of what they may say will be that the internet makes it possible for things to be crowd-funded and micro-financed and generally supported in ways that not long ago were impossible, and that modern life thus offers even greater opportunities to chip away at and to improve upon the tax-and-spend state, both ideologically and in practice. You could sum those speakers up by saying that there is no need for high taxes in the future (Lowisz, Alejandro), there was no need for high taxes in the past (Howes), and there is no excuse for high taxes ever (Brook).
That nudging I mentioned at the start of this posting is worth emphasising. Based on how a similar event in October 2014 went, which Simon Gibbs also organised, Simon will do whatever he needs to do, having already lined up some good speakers for May 14th, to get also a good throng of people to listen to them and to mingle with and to network with one another. The cost of a ticket is, if you book now, £12, and there is a basic sense in which attenders will be paying their £12 for all that nudging that Simon is now doing, to ensure that this event is a success. The most helpful way that you can support Simon and his nudging would be, if you now know that you want to attend, to book your own ticket, now. To tell Simon, now, that you will be attending, go here, and click on the bigger and lower of the two red rectangles saying: “Join us!”
I could expand, on the wrongs of taxation, on the particular excellence of Anton Howes as a speaker and as an up-and-coming libertarian historian and intellectual, on how interesting and how well organised and welcoming that October 2014 event was (at which Yaron Brook also spoke), and how many attended it, and so on and so forth, but Simon wants the word on this latest event on May 14th to spread now, and he wants this posting to go up now. So, up it goes, now.
Taxation is of course a very topical subject just now. If you want more tax talk here, try this.
Two things about this are very hard. Having only left myself a month to sell the event out the first is to be relaxed about it. The second is trying to talk about tax in a positive way, however that is the intent.
One thing which is easy to be positive about is that booze and food are included in the ticket price 🙂
The excitement is palpable.
I hope it is clear from what I say later that I do not resent that nudging; I admire it. It’s all part of what makes Simon so very good at organising these things.
Cass on nudge
Cheers
Sunstein does not now own the word “nudge”. Sunstein did write an evil book recommending that the government should sometimes smile nicely like some creepy Mafia hood, when forcing people to do this or forbidding them from doing that, telling them quietly to be reasonable instead of going straight to horses heads in beds. And Simon Gibbs was not threatening to pass a law compelling me to do a Samizdata posting about his meeting if voluntary methods had proved insufficient. He was just nudging me, to do what I had already promised him I would do.
Simon Gibbs said,
“…trying to talk about tax in a positive way,”
Eh?
The only positive thing about taxation is that we don’t get all the government we pay for. (Allusion, Will Rogers).
I wish the conference every success.
The only good tax is a repealed one! It’s not rocket science! (Nothing is, these days.)
There isn’t really such a thing as ‘rocket science’, it’s all just chemistry and the laws of motion. There is certainly ‘rocket technology’.
Tough luck, Mr. Ed! The phase ‘rocket science’ will outlast us both.