They have the power to starve us anyway. Just a few thoughts:
They tax your property and they want payment in their preferred currency, not silver, not gold, not bitcoin; but dollars.
Getting off the grid is increasingly hard to do. In some states mineral rights automatically go to the State when you buy a House or land. In some States it is illegal to water your plants with rain water collected from your roof; their water? Legally; yes! Think you own your land? Think again. You own it as long as you pay the taxes.
I would agree with you if a level playing field actually existed, but, I would also like to point out that if a large portion of the population goes hungry, there is nothing to protect us from these hungry people taking our lunch. They will show up in droves; hunger is a powerful motivator.
Combine all this with the fact that more work will be done by machines as time goes on and we have a big problem. Self driving Cars and Trucks will eliminate drivers, but even Lawyers are not immune to this, Robo Lawyer is in it's infancy so imagine a Lawyer that can memorize the entire legal system and it's history.... Greetings.
What would some of your solutions be @onnovocks?
Hi! That's a fair question. Well, I don't have any easy solutions. I'm still at the stage of identifying and trying to see the scope of the problem. I do see this though: If we want to keep life resembling kind of what we know right now, a basic income would go a ways in the right direction, including the drawbacks of dependency that you mention of course. Some folks will undoubtedly abuse such a system and do as little as possible. On the other hand it could free up people to do what they really like doing, are really good at or passionate about. Of course adopting basic income will come with problems, especially if left to government. Unlike many, I don't see a big difference in freedom because what they can do with controlling your income in such a system, they are doing now with laws, guns, and taxes. I do know what the alternative looks like if we do nothing and welcome any discussion with anyone willing to look at all the possibilities rather than being stuck in a system that will no longer support the general well being of society. Another idea is taxing computing power or automation rather than labor. Crazy? Well, I think that's where we're headed and if machines are generating income and people are not, what are the alternatives?