A former Chairman of the Federal Reserve (don't recall which one, but it was before Greenspan) said that income tax is no longer necessary for funding the government, but is being used for income redistribution and social engineering. It should be abolished, and not replaced with anything; no flat tax, no national sales tax, no "fair" tax (what is that?), no tax, period.

Our station life is, in a statistical sense, mainly determined by the social class we're born into and our genetics. The rest is determined by our own efforts and pure luck with the latter being much more significant when it comes to great success. Why is pure luck so significant? Because even brilliant visionaries who are extremely driven require precise timing and connections for a breakthrough in business. The world is much too complex for anybody to get everything right except with luck.

Because the highest levels of success depend on factors that are beyond anybody's control, the fruits of the highest levels of success should be distributed accordingly. In accumulation of wealth in the hands of few individuals to the degree it is accumulated today, there is a high risk of political corruption.

Libertarianism is not even sustainable. Extreme levels of wealth accumulation lead to an unstable society prone to a populist takeover of the brown or the red kind. A hundred years ago, the world was in a very similar situation to what we're facing today. Runaway social inequality and instability led to the Russian revolution and the Nazis rising to power in Germany. Similar processes are at work in the West today, resulting in Trump, Brexit and right-wing populists rising everywhere in Europe.