Quoting Tim May (tcmay@got.net):
That's quite an impressive haul. How do they do it?
I think I explained pretty well the mechanics of how the taxes are piled on at each stage.
If you mean "how do the sheeple let themselves be fleeced?," the answer lies in creeping statism. The boiling frog metaphor. Each special interest group thinks it is "getting something" as the size of government grows.
But, sometimes a frog jumps out. What happens then? Do the JBTs then point their guns at the frog saying, "Right, you! Back in the pot! Boiling water is good for you."
Fortunately, there's enough entertainment out there to keep everyone happy.
"Everyone happy"? Disproved by just a single counterexample, and
Pedant.
there are a lot of folks out there unhappy enough with things to
Demonstrate?
<fill in favorite examples here>.
I'll invoke the WTO protests and the resulting LEA response as a good example of how far such unhappiness leads to change. Now that the army has their Instant Microwaved Student Ray 'o Death Cannon, demonstrations of that kind may soon be history. As for other forms of `protest' such as has been done by the likes of the Unibomber or McVeigh, the state capitalises on the hysteria and expands, as per incrementalism. What, then, is left for the starry-eyed idealist to do? Write code, says the Cypherpunk screed. Regards, Steve -- Cephalopodia is the key insight.