How much taxes should you pay? How should you pay them? The answer depends on who you ask.
Most right-wingers believe that taxes should be around 25% to 33% at the most, and that everyone, regardless of income, should pay more or less the same tax rate.
Most left-wingers believe that taxes should be decently high, as in 40%, 50%, even 70% or 80% in some cases, and that you should have as many types of taxes as you can possibly get away with. Left-wingers in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, want taxes high on pretty much everyone. Left-wingers in America instead tend to like taxes on a sliding scale, with moderate taxes on the poor and middle class, with rates increasing as you make more money, ending with sky-high taxes on the rich.
That covers both types of people who are uncomfortable with personal freedom, but how would taxes work in an actual free society?
If you’re an anarchist, you believe tax rates should be zero, since there should be no government at all. I am not an anarchist. I think that like communism, true anarchy is a utopian concept that sounds great on paper but would not work in the real world populated by real human beings. If you magically eliminated all governments right now, by tomorrow morning people would start gathering together to form little governments all over again.
Sadly, human beings like government. So while I philosophically agree with anarcho-capitalism, I am instead a libertarian minarchist, meaning that I accept we need government, BUT, we need to do our very best to make sure it stays small, local, and decentralized. Therefore, government should indeed cover a few basics like cops, an army, courts, roads, a patent office, and three or four other basic items, and that’s it. Everything else would be handled by the free market and nonprofit organizations. That’s as free as you’re going to get within the real world, and since free is a good thing, let’s discuss how taxes would work under a realistically free society.
First off, there would be no income tax, no property taxes, and no corporate tax. Why? Because income and property taxes are theft, and theft is wrong. A third party called “government” pulling out a gun and going into your paycheck to rip money out of there without your permission is theft. Your money is your property. No one has the right to take your property away without your permission, and if they do, that’s stealing.
If your knee-jerk response is “You used the pubic commons like roads and stuff to make that money, so the government has a right to take some of your money!”, then just hold on, I’ll cover that in a minute.
The other problem with income tax is that it requires you to file a tax return every year, telling the government how much money you made, how, and from whom. How much money you earn isn’t any of the government’s business. Forcing you to file tax returns is a massive violation of personal privacy.
Property tax is also theft, since you already paid the taxes on the money you used to purchase your property. You made your money, paid taxes on it, used that money to buy a house, and then the government comes in and taxes you again(!), every year(!), on the house you already paid taxes on(!). WTF? If you don’t pay these repeated taxes, the government sends guys with guns to your house and takes your house away from you. Obviously, all of this is blatant extortion and theft, immoral in the extreme, and no better than the mafia.
Corporate tax is the exact same thing as an income tax, and therefore it is wrong and would not be allowed in a free society. Many will argue that since corporations are not people, they could and should be taxed. The reason for this thinking is the modern-day hatred of the word “corporation.” When people hear that word, they envision some gigantic, “evil” company like Comcast or Wal-Mart. The problem is that the vast majority of corporations, over 80%, are small businesses, often owned and operated by one, lone hard-working entrepreneur, who is creating products, services, goods, tax revenue, market demand, and jobs for the economy. If you eliminate the income tax but then enact a “corporate tax” on this person, you’re doing literally the exact same thing as an income tax. You’re just calling it by a different name.
(If you’re wondering about capital gains taxes, that’s simply another form of income tax.)
So under a free society, there are no income taxes, property taxes, or corporate taxes whatsoever. How does the government get its money then? We need roads don’t we? Well, fortunately there are other kinds of taxes besides income and property that are not theft and don’t require you to file a tax return. Here are a few types that would be perfectly acceptable under a free society.
Sales Tax or VAT Tax – This means you pay a tax on things you buy at point of purchase. This is not theft, since if you don’t want to pay the tax (or less of it), you would simply refuse to buy things, or buy less things, or buy things of lower cost, or buy things that have no sales tax. In other words, the tax is largely voluntary. It’s true that’s not completely voluntary; you could probably never get your sales tax to absolute zero, and in that respect you may argue that it’s then theft also. It’s a grey area but you get my point. No force is used on the consumer for its collection.
Tariffs – This is a tax other countries pay in order to sell you stuff. This would be perfectly acceptable to have in a free society, since you’re not the one directly paying it. Having high tariffs is not a good idea for a free country, and that leads into a very big and complicated debate about free trade vs. fair trade, which I won’t discuss today. My point here is that paying, for example, a 2% tariff on imported goods would be a perfectly acceptable tax to have in a free society.
Poll Tax or Head Tax – This means you pay a small tax when you go to vote. If you don’t want to pay the tax, don’t vote. While this type of tax may make some left-wingers uncomfortable, it’s a perfectly acceptable tax to have in a free society as long as it was small and thus payable by anyone at any economic level.
Excise Tax – This means the manufacturer of product or good pays a tax based on how much they produce or sell. The company then passes the cost of this tax onto you. In a way, it’s sort of a hidden sales tax. Excise taxes were one of the few taxes the US Constitution allowed. Excise tax is another grey area. It’s a little too close to a corporate tax, so it’s not exactly something you’d want in a free society. However it might be acceptable in lieu of other tax types listed above.
Usage Fees – This is the absolute best way to tax a population. You charge people a small fee for using a particular item or service. If they don’t use it, they don’t get taxed. Only the people consuming that item are the ones who pay for it. It’s by far the most fair way to tax the citizenry.
You’re already familiar with parking fees and bridge tolls. In many cities, like San Francisco, drivers have a small device that automatically bills them whenever they drive over certain roads or bridges. That’s a fantastic, fair, and honest way to tax people.
In a truly free society, this would be taken a step further. Since there would be no income tax, corporate tax, or property tax, the city you lived in would send you a bill once a month. Let’s call it a “city bill.” On that bill, it would itemize all the local services the city was responsible for maintaining that you were using. Your monthly city bill might look something like this:
Police Protection: $22.24
Library: $3.45
Local Roads: $9.73
Local Parks: $4.32
Courts/Jails: $8.28
Sanitation Services: $2.42Total Due: $50.44
Things like fire protection and ambulance services wouldn’t be on there, since those functions would be covered by insurance companies. Education wouldn’t be on there since that would be more than adequately handled by local religious organizations, nonprofits, and the free market.
You could also remove certain items from your city bill by opting out of particular services. For example, you could opt out of your local library. You could then not use the library for any reason, but you wouldn’t be charged for it any more. The same would apply to parks and the like. With today’s technology, this would be very easy to do.
You probably could not opt out of things like police protection, but every city would make their own judgements about that, based on the will of their local voters. Emphasis on the world “local.” People in San Francisco could vote on how to run San Francisco, but they would have no say whatsoever on how to run Miami.
Attached to the bill would be a monthly budget of exactly how much money your city was collecting in taxes, and how much it was spending, and on where. It would be as transparent as possible.
If you didn’t like what you were being charged for, or what your city was spending its money on, and your voting just didn’t cut it, then you’d move to a different city. All cities and towns would have their budgets published online so you could pick out the exact city you’d like the best. Cities would compete against each other for the best lifestyle for the lowest cost.
You’d pay your city bill just like you’d pay your electric bill. No one would be putting a gun to your head and pulling money out of your paycheck without your permission, nor forcing you to file a tax return, nor forcing you to pay taxes on something you purchased that you already paid taxes for.
What if you didn’t pay your city bill? It would be the same as if you didn’t pay any utility bill like your electric bill. You’d get several nasty warnings, then you wouldn’t be allowed to drive on roads, then you’d get sued or worse. You’d better pay your city bill, or you’d be in big trouble, again, just like any other utility bill.
How It All Ties Together
In a free society, since government would be doing so little, it wouldn’t need to tax you very much. If all the government was doing was providing basic services as I listed above, then you could easily have a federal government that was completely funded with a 2% national sales tax, a 2% or 3% tariff on imported goods, and a $10 poll tax whenever you went to vote. Your local city would be covered by your monthly city bill. That’s it. No other taxes needed.
If the United States had that tax system with those percentages, the federal government would receive around $500 billion every year; more than enough to support a limited, constitutional government. Cities all over the nation would be funded from their usage fees. Ideally, there would be no state government system; just a federal government and cities, since things like “provinces,” “states,” and “counties” are just more useless layers of government (but that’s a conversation for another time).
Even if you feel those percentages are too low, you could easily double them without much trouble. Have 4% national sales tax and a 6% tariff on imported goods. The government gets double the money, around 1$ trillion a year. Moreover, there would still be no one paying any income taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, or property taxes, so the economy would boom. A booming economy means even more money for government. Everyone wins, except for people like left-wingers or neocons who love big government. But hey, the world is a very big place. Left-wingers are always welcome to move to Sweden whenever they want, and those warmongering neocons can always move to Russia.
Then everyone gets what they want! Now that’s freedom!
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JimmySmash
Posted at 08:33 am, 4th April 2015While I have high respect for your opinions, Caleb, and generally agree with the proposition that we should have no more government than absolutely necessary, I have a few points of disagreement:
The rationale behind property tax, older than the country itself, was to uncouple power and wealth from ancestry. A family shouldn’t be able to just sit around on the throne of power and wealth forever simply by virtue of its bloodline (e.g. the old British Monarchy). So the early Americans instituted property taxes so that rich families had to keep working and being productive to sustain their powerful positions in society. I think it’s a good thing.
I also disagree with the notion of “opt-in” taxes, just based on the vast array of desirable things that cannot be accomplished effectively by private enterprise. If you allow people to opt out of paying for education, for example, I submit you will end up with a society run by an educated few elites trying to manage an ignorant multitude that does not see the value of educating themselves, or does not have the wherewithal to spend time or money on the venture. Living in a society where everyone has access to free, quality education is one of those things that I believe is desirable (because I don’t want to live among a throng of idiots), and the benefits of it cannot be withheld from anyone for a price. In other words, yes, paying for it can only be accomplished through taxation.
Other similar desirable things include clean air and water, military protection, and law creation and enforcement that (in theory) keeps the powerful from abusing their positions. Nobody can opt out of those benefits in practice, so everyone must be made to pay for them somehow. I’m willing to live in a world where I’m “forced” to pay a portion of my income so that my air is clean, my water isn’t brown, and I can sleep at night without worrying about my house being raided by militants.
Obviously this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive refutation of your opinions; just food for thought.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:01 am, 4th April 2015And the rationale for slavery was so farmers could utilize cheap labor. Should we have slavery then?
The rationale behind something done hundreds of years ago should NEVER, EVER be a rationale to use it today in the 21st century.
And the last time I checked, there are still hordes of ultra-rich people who wield vast power over our government and society…and they pay property taxes. So it looks like it didn’t work.
We don’t have that now? I think you’ve just described the Western world…a system that’s embraced government education.
And for the record people wouldn’t opt out of education; government wouldn’t provide it in the first place. Though under the system I’m describing, individual cities could provide taxpayer-funded education if they wished, and citizens could choose to live in those cities, or not.
Agree. I implied as much in the post.
fred jones
Posted at 06:55 am, 5th April 2015While ideologically you bring up some good points practically it has very little merit. Social security, medicare, defense spending and interest payments far exceed the 1 trillion dollar mark, not to mention I question your calculations, I looked up total business sales and imports in the US for the last 12 months which totaled about 19 trillion, thus putting you at about 800 billion. Practically you cant just stop paying people social security and medicare who have paid into the system 30 years, and you cant stop paying interest on your existing debt because you decided you wanted to change your ideologies. You would probably need a sales tax closer to 12% to balance the budget which would surely create significant headwinds on the US economy (just look at the impact of japans new sales tax) and would likely negate any benefits from reducing income tax.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 10:34 am, 5th April 20151. Social security would not be a part of the system described. Retirement should be a free market function.
2. We don’t have defense spending, we have attack spending, which is far more expensive. Under a constitutionally limited government (which we do not currently have), military spending would be a small fraction of what it is now, since the neocons and Democrats wouldn’t be attacking everyone and policing the world.
3. Under the system described, we would have very little government debt, thus very little government interest.
US GDP is $16.77 trillion, though one-third of that is currently government spending (but wouldn’t be under the system I described of course).
I’m not suggesting that. This article was about a hypothetical free country and how it would operate, not how to change the United States from what it is now to a more free state. That would be an entirely different article. (I realize I used US numbers for government spending as examples; I just did that for purposes of comparison based on US-sized population numbers.)
Again, you’re speaking under the current US conditions, which are utterly fucked up due to Americans’ current worship of big government. I’m talking about a completely different hypothetical country started from scratch.
huefwl
Posted at 08:22 am, 11th April 2015“Most right-wingers believe that taxes should be around 25% to 33% at the most”
This statement surprised me. If true, it means that most of them want a *larger role* for the government in the economy, given that presently tax revenue as % of GDP is about 26% in the US. The Club for Growth types probably will give a much lower number, but then again, they are fantasists.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:28 am, 11th April 2015Well, I wasn’t referring to conservative’s view on tax revenue as % of GDP. I was referring to their view on the typical overall tax rate the typical American should pay.
True, there are some hardcore right-wingers who think like I do; that taxes should be super low. But most mainstream Republicanish voters think 25% to 33% is okay. George W. Bush actually said this a few times in public speeches: “No American should pay more than one-third of his total income in taxes.”
EurEye
Posted at 05:59 am, 4th June 2015Hello, a bit late to the discussion but the topic is far from over so I join in with an insight from Europe (farther down the big government spiral).
There is a problem with your gray zones which places it out of gray zone deep into powerful government zone.
VAT (any sales tax) meddles with the relationship between the seller and the buyer – the government has the power to make some products relatively more expensive and thus distort the free market in a non negligible way. Governments (especially here in Europe) are expert in playing with it to buy votes: most countries have several values for VAT depending on the type of goods. And so a “social” government might decrease VAT for, say, medicine to unburden the sick and increase it for the rest of the goods(so the sick end up paying more but still are happy with cheaper medicine and how the government showed the nasty capitalist scum who´s the boss). This double standard naturally opens huge possibilities for corruption (which, in my opinion, is the biggest if not the only problem of governments, especially big ones which are removed from the voters and thus can screw them without taking responsibility). The lobbyists make the government decrease VAT on their product while punishing competition (Portuguese government used to be famous for favouring domestic cars even though EU regulations forbid it: they just decreased taxes on whatever type of car was being manufactured in the country that year and so one year you got discounts on all SUVs, the next on all small cars, then pickups etc.).
Same goes for the Excise, easy to manipulate, since the values are a political decision. Example: beer doesn´t pay alcohol excise, hard liquor does. Can be the other way around in a few years.
The worst of all, of course, is the combination of several gray zone taxes. Example: I paid the equivalent of 1,3 USD for a litre of diesel fuel. Then I noticed the value of the excise on the check (not present on all checks): cca 0,45 USD.
The VAT is 21% right now (puts Fred Jones threatening 12% sales taxes into perspective).
The beauty is that to get the final price, you take the costs of diesel, add the excise and then tax the whole with VAT, so not only does the state extort the excise, it taxes it all over again. In this particular case it means the that out of my 1,35 USD per litre roughly one half goes to the government. This means that at the end of the year, the government has extorted about 600 USD from an average driver just in fuel. He will eat something (10 or 21% VAT), live somwhere (21%), buy clothes (21%) and all the other things (21% except for a few “very social” things). That´s of course without anybody realising they pay to the state, since they gave the money to the seller.
That gets us to my point: if you let governments have ANY gray zones they are doubtlessly going to swell them up to take any percentage of your salary they like. The problem doesn´t lie in the kind of taxes(whatever you call it, it goes to the state) but in the transparency of the taxation. Ideally you would really have to go with the monthly bill system or they would turn any other tax into the same racket. Medical care fee isn´t even called tax but insurance, yet, since it´s administered by the state(many European countries have at least one state insurance company), it is a tax.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 03:04 pm, 4th June 2015I agree with everything you said. Regardless of the tax, it can, and often will be expanded and/or applied unfairly.
We’re talking about government here, so we’re not talking about what’s best. We’re talking about what’s least bad. All taxes are bad, but unless you’re an anarchist, we need to pay them somehow. If that’s the case, I’d rather pay point of sale taxes rather than income taxes, since as a consumer I have a little more control over those than big government putting a gun to my head and going into through my paycheck, bank accounts, and financial life. Though granted, VAT taxes can be a huge ripoff, no question about it.
jadezebra
Posted at 08:03 pm, 8th October 2016Did you ever think of changing the whole system? I am working on a whole new system i do not have a name for it but it focuses on humanity as a whole not on old worn out classes and cast system. No big guy just cause he was born a Rothschild and no expensive politicians that do absolutely no good for the people. Instead it is based on the weakest link and moves up. I advocate it to work by instead of using the feudal model we do today. Yes i call it feudal because its THAT old. It relies on the wealthy (working or not) and forced taxes (thievery) in order to try to even out the pit falls that are creating all the issues in our society as it is now. So what did i do. I changed a few things and sitting with several people i know who care as much about humans and earth as i do we decided it best to throw out the old and bring in a new concept.
1st what is money? How do we use it? Why do we use it? Money is the means to our survival. We use it to trade and for everything we need as a modern human being. We use it because its easier to carry and trade then items.
2nd Who should control the money? How should it be distributed? How is this achieved? We believe money should be controlled by the people through a government organization transparent to the people it governs. It should be distributed by said government with humanities best interest in mind. It is achieved by forming a pool we actually have a base of.
Today money is distributed by banks. It has no base meaning we have no clue how much we need or who should have how much. We literally live in a world in which a person can be starving on the street right next to a full grocery store and empty apartment.
3rd How to distribute? Who should have? Why should they have?
Distribution of the money should be equal for every single human being at its BASE. What does this mean. It means if your born on this planet (or country) which ever makes you more comfortable you will receive a base income. This income would be enough to live with dignity and to start out your life. It would not be too much to cause laziness in those who wish to go further or too little to cause poverty. It would be enough for a human being to start out well in life with the chances needed for them to achieve the best he or she can do.
That said why should we do this? Let me simplify it. If you where a wild animal your parents would teach you the basics,feed you until you are ready to leave them. You would then join the wilds fully able to sustain yourself with very little. Wild animals do not need clothing,food that is not grown by someone else. (they hunt) Education and healthcare. They do not need other animals to aid them such as net,driving,cooking,cleaning, ect. They do not need the shelter we do. they are fine in their fur and living under bushes and rocks. They are fine having no language and writing but we as humans need these things. A human cannot simply go out and grab food off someones land or build a home. This simple fact of education alone is enough in my opinion to need a better money system.
4th How do we pay people? How does it work? Simple actually. With a beginning standard of living we will know where all mankind would start and how much money all people have. Yes even the rich. we would know because our base would be a equation like this.
population=0 income=0 over all money available=0 Now since the money is done monthly we would know every month what every person on the face of the planet would have. Even if someone steals from another. Even if a rich man manages to make himself wealthy. We would have a base. This is why i say the base income should be a dignified living. It should cover housing,clothing,food,education and other necessities. Now if you choose to work it will be because you want to not because your forced to due to a system of monetary slavery. If you cannot work you are no longer tossed onto the street. If your elderly you will have income. If your a child you will have income for your parents to use to strengthen your education and abilities. In a sense we would be investing in society.
What about taxes? How could we pay for this? What about work no one wants to do? Taxes are thievery and thusly i do not agree with them and i also think forced taxing only leads to hate against those the taxes is used for such as hate against welfare and obamacare. It does not matter if your helping the weak,old or sick people see it as unfair regardless because it IS unfair.
How do we pay for this? We pay by knowing what is needed due to the fact we have a base line to build on. We know how many people need. We know what people need and we also know how much to produce.
Since i can remember people have said to me. People wont work if their needs are met and it came down to them choosing to work or not. I answer this by bringing up some key things they miss. 1. Volunteer workers do these people not work? 2. Those who want a job but cant find one or have to be too choosey due to their needs. 3. Those who choose jobs simply because they are close to home or they enjoy the work. what about those who hobby on the side? Even a stay at home person who is cleaning,caring and maintaining a house or family is doing (work) so why are we not valuing them? We would pay maids for this same job would we not? So the fact is humans would work despite having their needs met. Just ask rich men who repeatedly answer the question. How did you get rich? They say doing what i loved. The problem is so many cannot even get started because they do not have the very base of our society. (money) they do not have a way to get education. For some just having a fruit or juice that day is a improvement. To many people just having a roof over their head is improvement.
Now If we cut out the bureaucracy. That is ALL the stipulations such as welfare,SSDI,SSI ect all these things that are supposed to aid end up being more costly and do so little because you have to jump through hoops to even get them. They also barely cover enough to get your head above poverty. So why have them? Does it not make more sense to have a monthly sure fire income that a person can learn to budget with the help of those who WANT to do the job as budget officers?
Another point i will make is how this system also has a self reprimand tool built in. A person who places themselves in debt would have less money monthly but still able to see a way out if they budget better. Instead of prisons we could use a fine system in which their monthly income they receive is lessened or community service is issued. Prison would be only for dangerous criminals. A budget officer would be provided to help said person regain control and as well as a psychologist to aid them in over coming what ever pit fall has caused them to act out (crime). A person will learn to utilize that which is given to them to better their lives. Education can be easier to achieve,better choices in food can be made, better choices in health and over all living conditions. Now i have been asked but would not this make companies lower down to a standard and not push them to make better products. Actually no it would do the opposite. How? Because people no longer HAVE to work those who WANT to will need to be lured via incentives to work for companies. They will also have chances for education to they will be more able to fill said jobs. that said smarter people will make smarter products. More creativity,More abilities. We see this already in countries that focused on education,creativity and wellness. We also see several other things occur in social based economy like lowering of populations,lesser crime rate and less pollution over all.
What about the Rich? Rich man would no longer exist as he does now. I do not mean we would not have wealthy or those who have done well for themselves. Sure we should pay those who do work and do make effort. However wealth would be capped at a certain point for companies. (if your into taxes some think a 1% tax all around would fix the issue) I am not a believer in tax but this is a idea i am willing to consider. Also my wife had the idea that money should have a degrading cap where after it exceeds a certain amount for the person or company it has a limited time for the excess before it begins to deteriorate. Meaning lets say the cap is 100,000 a year. Once the person or company hit 101,000 it would have a limited time before the excess would be removed from the company and placed back into the population. Redistribution economy. This would make sure no company or individual could exceed the wealth cap. Note these numbers are just hypothetical and by no means end game.
I have also found some people like the idea of gift economy in which instead of taxes (still having the income base economy) you would be mailed every month a questionnaire in which you would be asked to donate whatever amount you saw fit to various government functions. As we know some would give some would not. The amount would also vary but this could be a good alternative. Especially if you think that this economy would not have forced taxes so the people would have the money to give in the first place.
I also believe we could use media to educate people on how to work,learn,and live in the new system by adding tips on the bottom of the screen during tv commercials and adding more class choices in schools. Like classes on trade skills (young age) and banking,budgeting,social skills ect all of which have been cut due to our modern system. Since people would have needs met those who enjoy and wish to teach these fields could do so for more income thusly opening up the ability to have more intelligent people and more jobs available. Is that not what is taunted all over the news? Jobs jobs jobs? But what about having people want to work and better yet having them skilled and enjoying it?
Those who work would benefit society as well as become respected due to the fact they chose the field. Experiment i did recently was studying (Brazilians) and (Americans) 1st thing i noticed is how it was more common to find Brazilians who enjoyed their job versus Americans. I also noticed that Brazilians over all seemed more interested in learning and social aspects of politics. When i asked details i was told time and again that it mostly came down to they could choose their work and education. (They have a public Free university) They also push small business and have 0 interest on pretty much everything. So i thought why not go further and get to the source of the issue. (money) I would ask both Americans and Brazilians if your needs where met would you still work? Would you go back to school? Would you invest in others? All 3 where YES. So why are we still living in a feudal system based on kings and queens treasury? Why are we still printing dollars in which one man uses to enslave another? Why are we not investing in every single human being so we can develop the world we WANT to work and live in?
Anyway this is some of the idea i have come up with your welcome to use it. Maul over it and or discuss it please no hate speak just add to it or work it over. As i said this is a idea and one i been working on for a while. I did see other similar ideas like the zeitgeist movement and Venus project both i think have good points but in today’s age i think if we all sit and discuss and work over the key needs of humanity and solve the issues caused by using a money system we could wake up in a much more fair world.
Steven C.
Posted at 08:58 pm, 9th August 2020These are great ideas. I suggest a little modification though. If certain fees are optional, then the local government should not be running those institutions. If only some residents are paying for the local libraries, than the Board in charge of the libraries should only be elected by the people paying the optional library fees and not by all residents paying the mandatory fees. That could also apply to school systems as well. People could home-school, hire tutors, use private schools, or set-up their own system of schools that they pay the fees for and elect trustees to run. In the greater New York City area; there could be twenty different school systems, distinguished not by territory but by educational methodology and philosophy.