Raise the Hammer

"So what is your point? Farmers own their land and yet people don't have a problem with that. What if all farmers decided to stop selling food. I guess everybody would starve to death. The fact is, if a private entity owned Lake Ontario and took too much supply off the market, the citizens would physically take it over."

My point was already laid out in plain logic with my forestry example, I won't repeat it. Your vision of an unregulated, market driven, resource hoarding free-for-all - complete with false shortages and price increases - and peppered with an occasional public takeover/revolt is... interesting.

Like it or not, we live as a group in a society in which we need each others' services in order to collectively prosper. Our collective contributions (whether they be financial, labour, etc) will need to be managed at some level. As such, government is simply not going away. It might take different forms. It might get paid in ways that do not necessarily go by the name "taxes". No doubt there are more efficient forms it can take. But it is not going away.

Most of us are fighting to bring some sense to the decisions that are made in this city, so that the taxes collected are invested in our future rather than being squandered. It seems like that's what you want too - but endlessly calling for a reduction of taxes is simply not a viable "fix all" solution to every single problem. Lowering some taxes, raising others, shifting them around and overhauling the budget are probably all great ideas - but each is a small piece of a very large puzzle.

All we ask is that you stick to the topic at hand under each article so that we can discuss all of the little pieces of the puzzle and perhaps move things forward as a group of people who want the best for Hamilton.

If you want to endlessly discuss your single idea of lowering taxes across the board, once again, I suggest you write a piece on it for RTH. In the comments under your article, we can discuss it 'til the cows come home without distracting people from all of the other (equally important) issues brought up here. I am certain that if you wrote something based on fact (of course with a dose of opinion), you could have it posted, and your ideas can be put to the same test as all other RTH contributors'.