Summary
The IRS anticipates a $500 billion revenue loss as taxpayers increasingly skip filings following cuts from Elon Musk under Trump.
The IRS, set to downsize by 20% by May 15, has seen increased online chatter about avoiding taxes, with individuals betting auditors won’t scrutinize accounts.
Experts warned that workforce reductions could cripple the agency’s efficiency.
Treasury officials predict a 10% drop in tax receipts compared to 2024.
Former IRS commissioners have criticized the cuts, warning of dysfunction and reduced collection capacity.
Admittedly, trusts are definitely not something I understand well. But it seems like the easier you make starting a competitor, the easier it would be to keep a trust from forming.
The oil trusts of the early 1900s seemed like they were difficult to break without governments because of the fact that oil is a difficult thing to get a hold of. It’s not something you can just go out with a small water pump and pull out of the ground.
A security company wouldn’t have such a moat around them to keep out competitors. At least that’s what it would seem like anyway.
As to whether these security companies could use violence. I think that would have to be on a case-by-case basis where violence would not be used in most cases unless there is active aggression occurring or imminent upon somebody they are to protect. In which case the use of force would be retaliatory and not aggression.
If a security company thinks that another security company is using unjustifiable force, then it could always be taken to an arbitrator or outed in the media.
Once the trust gets big enough, they can run other competitors into the ground even without doing violence.
You kind of see this with food stores in the US. You have some small shops, and then a mega corp like Walmart or whatever moves into the neighborhood. They can undercut the small shops due to scale, or even by operating at a loss. They can operate at a loss longer than the smaller companies can stay solvent. When all the small shops close up (or get acquired), the big company can then raise prices.
Behavior like that is just emergent from “free markets”.
That’s not even touching on the idea that they could just do violence to secure their position. Like old union busting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States might be worth a read, even though it’s not exactly on this topic.
Who decides on the case by case? If anyone can form their own private security company, and can unilaterally decide that lethal force is authorized, that’s a recipe for disaster. Alex hates his neighbor Bob. Alex forms a security company of his own. Bob comes home and walks over the flowerbed again, so Alex confronts him. Bob raises his voice. Alex decides this is imminent aggression, and shoots him dead.
Who is the arbitrator? Why does anyone listen to them? What is their enforcement mechanism? Are you reinventing a court system?
You’re kind of reinventing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism still, which has a lot of problems.
I will have to read about the union busting so will only respond to the second bit
Alex can indeed form his own one man security company and shoot bob dead if he wishes to die as well. Because when bob is killed bob’s security service will go after alex and persue the death penalty against alex. Alex’s newly formed security company (himself) won’t have the resources to defend him. When bob security vs alex security gets heard in arbitration the arbitrator is going to rule in favor of bob security which will then carry out the death penalty against alex. If the arbitrator ruled in favor of alex even though he was clearly in the wrong that arbitrator would rapidly be discredited and their business would shrink as security companies use the arbitrators compeditors.
Its modern court but without government monopoly. The government is a “trust”.
Why would Alex listen to the other arbiter? Why not shoot them, too? Why not get a bunch of your friends, and fight your enemies until you establish yourself as a local warlord? That’s what these security companies would be positioned to do, and that’s going to bring out the worst of humanity.
Meanwhile, what if Bob was behind on his payments? Is this going to be like The Purge, where you can just do crimes to anyone who can’t afford private security? That’s going to extra suck for groups that are historically economically disadvantaged (women, children, descendants of slaves, chronically ill, to name a few)
And again, there’s not really a reason for these different entities to compete when they can instead form a cooperative trust. That’s sort of the history of the gilded age in the US. it sucked for most people.
It sounds like it’s going to devolve into the rule of might-makes-right, where whoever has the most guns and willing soldiers gets to say what’s what. Real life has at least some thin wrappers around might-makes-right, with rights enumerated in the constitution