THE BEST PITCH EVER

Consider a brand new private company about to launch, and whose pitch is to offer a package of several services to make your daily life easier, better and cheaper.

In exchange of paying a yearly subscription fee, you will benefit from a bunch of services with amazing discounts, or even sometimes for free. You can not choose to pick only one service or another, as you basically pay for the whole package.

Among many services the company plans to offer, here are a few.

The company's pitch includes providing its customers with a year-long access to cheap transportation: networks of subways and buses in all cities that run, if not 24/7, long enough for you not to be obliged to rely on taxi or private drivers services at all. You can almost sell your car, as the new venture plans to offer cheap train lines across the country as well. You can use these transportation services to go to work in the morning, meet your friend who lives at the other end of the city at night, or go on vacation surfing a thousand kilometers away from your place. This will work anytime on weekdays and weekends, for super cheap.

The same company will offer utility services. As part of the subscription you will pay for, you will benefit from a reliable and continual access to electricity and gas, at your place but also everywhere you are, anytime. When you go back home from this friend’s place after a warm dinner cooked with the electricity his place is equipped with thanks to the same private company, lighting will follow you on your way back home so that you will never have to walk in the dark.

It is safer, and safety is another service this new venture will grant you with. Within the same plan, you will take advantage of a 24/7 security service that will make sure your probability to be assaulted is as low as it could be. And if this unfortunate event happens, you will just have to call a direct phone number to ask its agents to come and provide free assistance, anytime, even on Christmas Eve. If a fire or gas leak starts at your place, you will call another phone number, and specialists will come within 10 minutes to help your family out, for free again.

Within the same yearly plan, your children will have the possibility to benefit from free and quality education, from the first year of kindergarten to the last year of university. The company will provide people enrolled in its programs with world-wide recognized degrees, maximizing your children chances to get a pretty decent job. And in case they do not succeed in finding a job, the company will commit to provide an insurance. They will receive a basic monthly allowance and free advice to get back on track.

If life gets harder, you will have the possibility to move in a new apartment at a ridiculous price.

As part of the same yearly subscription, you will enjoy going to the doctor anytime for free, be paid back for the medicines you need, and even have access to the best health specialists to treat your cancer for free.

And if one day you have to suit someone, or defend yourself in court, the company will put you in touch with a lawyer who will help you out. For free again.

This new venture looks great! And it looks even nicer when you know that it will undertake generous corporate social responsibility initiatives. The company will integrate into its business model to be compliant with ethical standards, the spirit of the law and international norms. On top of that, every few years, all the customers will be entitled to vote and choose its CEO. Pretty neat.

The only thing you have to do is to subscribe to its yearly plan. To make things even easier, the venture will accept you to pay-as-you-go or at the end of the year. And to make it even more fair, your invoice will be calculated as a portion of your earnings of the previous year. Even though you will of course pay with real money going out of your bank account, the currency will then be more a fair amount of efforts than an amount of money. All customers will pay almost the same portion of efforts to have access to the exact same services. Thus, you will pay just the right amount.

I would buy that, definitely.

Luckily, this organization exists already, and has been existing and improving for centuries. It is called the State. It provides people with everything described above, and even more: maintaining healthy international relationships, defining standards to protect our environment, boosting research and innovation, supporting national industry and agriculture, preserving and spreading cultural heritage, promoting tourism, defining guidelines for spatial planning, not forgetting people with handicaps...

All this in exchange of a fair amount of effort. Definitely one of the best service I have been subscribing to so far.

PS: Still not convinced? Do you know you can actually choose how your taxes are used?