Rebuttal to the rebuttal and a fictional budget

I have structured this piece mostly as direct answers to the points Martin brought up in his last post. I believe a lot of the disagreement in the way we see taxes/budget issues is because we are not looking at an actual (or fictional) budget. I think if we saw a budget, it would be pretty clear where the available money needs to go to best serve the people and what are the best ways to raise that amount of money by the govt. So I will try to make a fictional budget at the bottom of this, after I address Martin’s individual points. I strongly disagree that DAOs can replace nearly all govt expense and I think my fictional budget will show this.

-I have made my fictional budget for year 2035 and so I am assuming that there will not be any major revenue stream from LLD or LLM, but I am open to being wrong about this if anyone has info about those programs that show otherwise.

-I have not seen anything that shows there are yearly recurring fees charged to businesses by LL. As far as I understand it, it is either 100 or 500 euros for one-time business registration. 

-Liberland still has to make more money than they are paying LL govt employees to process the applications. I feel the rebuttal to this will be: 

“No it’s all automated online, no LL govt employee is getting paid in this process.” 

And in answer to that, I would ask how is LL verifying that the person applying for a LL business is not part of a drug or human trafficking cartel? Or that they are not a wealthy person looking to launder money somehow? No physical human being from LL is going to look at the application? How about the IT guys that are getting paid to make and maintain that “automatic” system? IT guys still cost money and 500 euros is not a lot of employee hours.

-I believe that, in general, a sovereign wealth fund has been a good thing. But, I believe for Wyoming’s fund and just investment fund managers in general have had an extremely easy time making money for themselves. The market always eventually goes up! If any of these fund managers make a bad call about when to enter an investment, and they pay too much and then go negative, all they have to do is wait it out. Their mistake will eventually fix itself and then become profitable and if they are only buying/selling a small % of the total fund on any given day, they can run a successful investment fund without extreme skill. BUT THE KEY IS THAT THE MARKET (in general) ALWAYS GOES UP.

Now I am currently taking advantage of the cryptocurrency market in the same way. But, unfortunately, on the horizon I can see that the entire way that markets function is very close to changing. We can easily get into a market that, instead of continually going up, just stays relatively flat. I would argue that the current market is, in many ways, based on fraudulent rules and/or actions that favor the elite class. And that when/if we get into a completely fair market that valuations will not rise to the moon like they have been doing for decades.

-In regards to the OECD global minimum tax agreement, I do not believe all agreements with other countries should be denied without cause. LL has many extremely smart people in it and they should be able to read and evaluate something and decide if it benefits LL (and the world in general, since we are all human beings). I personally strongly do not believe in FOREVER contracts. The contract either needs to have an “out” clause that can be used whenever LL feels like it or maybe there could be a time period; no more than 5 years or so. I haven’t read the OECD, but so far, I do think it is worth reading and evaluating, and hopefully in the future there will be more public discourse around such things.

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Fictional LL Budget for year 2035 – LL Population 10,000 – (I’ve assigned a 20000 euro yearly salary for each position because AI says it’s the average salary in Croatia, so probably a low estimate) also I am positive that this budget is horribly inadequate and should not be viewed as anything except a tool to realize that even the leanest libertarian govts still cost a lot of money.

140000 euros (7) LL Congressmen (People in powerful positions are much more likely to become corrupt if they are unpaid)

80000 euros (4) E-vote administrators/clerks (someone has to set up e-votes so that the citizens can vote on stuff. They can also do other menial tasks for the govt)

80000 euros (4) IT workers to maintain unique digital infrastructure

10000 euros    IT components 

20000 euros  (1)  Public Information/Education Official (elected official – an informed and educated public prevents deaths/injuries/property damage/crime/litter/excess laws)

80000 euros (4) Court ???? (Totally guessing here, hopefully someone who understands court systems can help with this estimate)

20000 euros (1) Police Commissioner (elected official) 

240000 euros (12) Police Officers (number is based on 24/7 staffing, 2 officers working at any single time)

40000 euros  Police vehicles/maintenance/gear

20000 euros (1) Prison Warden (elected official)

240000 euros (12) Jail/Prison   (number is based on 24/7 staffing, 2 jailers working at any single time)

20000 euros (1) EMS manager  (elected official)

240000 euros (12) EMS responders  (I am working on an article about why this should be paid for by govt)

40000 euros    EMS vehicles/maintenance/gear

10000 euros   Volunteer fire dept gear maintenance

50000 euros (wild estimate) Roads and Bridges 3rd party company (Govt funds the shortfall of whatever is not covered by crowdfunding each roads construction by a roads DAO)

50000 euros (wild estimate) Parks/Forest maintenance 3rd party company (Govt funds the shortfall of whatever is not covered by agreements with PAPDG businesses)

25000 euros (1) Food Inspector and Lab results outsourced to Serbia (Food inspector should be an elected official to encourage turnover and lower possibility for corruption)

100000 euros (wild estimate) New construction and/or remodeling on govt buildings

1.5 million euros per year just for a simple bare-bones govt that is probably a severely low estimate of what it would cost. In reality it will most likely be more than double this number. For comparison, the EMS/fire department I used to work for in the US had a budget of over $1.1 million/year for one EMS/fire station. 

And remember this budget is assuming a lot of road building costs will come from a DAO, as well as public parks maintenance hopefully coming from PAPDGs. And also we are assuming that each house/building in LL provides their own electricity/water/septic so the govt does not have to build public infrastructure for that. 

Where is this 1.5-3 million euros going to come from? You can’t just stop paying police and prison guards because people didn’t feel like contributing taxes that month; there has to be a budget surplus that goes at least a year or two in advance to prepare for hard times.

And here are all the things I didn’t include:

Anything for border checkpoints/security or defense of the country      (very likely a needed item)

Anything for environmental protection or regulation of dangerous chemicals

Anything for anti-monopolies      (hopefully this could be done by Congress)

Anything for financial regulation      (hopefully not needed in the new economy)

Anything for transportation regulation      (will citizens have to pass a test to get a drivers license?)

Anything for technology regulation      (if LL becomes another Prospera as far as biotech work, is anyone going to ask questions into the morality of the work being done?) 

Anything for media regulation         

Anything for agricultural regulation       (hopefully this will fall onto the food inspector)

Anything for prostitution regulation      (I’m assuming prostitution will be legal)

Anything for firearm/explosives regulation       (I am against any regulation on firearms but explosives need to be considered closely)