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Heavy neutrino posted:On the bright side, we don't really have to worry about AnCap gaining popular ground if its adherents don't bother with the persuasion part and simply skip to calling people worse than sociopaths. To be fair, his existence is a pretty damning piece of evidence against the effectiveness of public education. Come to think of it, a lot of the worlds problems are caused by people who have no business doing so talking a lot. Hmm makes you think there might be a public interest in people not being ignorant greedy assholes. If only there was a way to make people all agree to the same basic principles of order or something.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:22
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QuarkJets posted:I tried to get jrodefeld to talk about HOAs, too, but it seems like ancaps are just unaware of how an HOA works or are uncomfortable with the idea that private organizations can become states (because modern states sprang forth fully formed from the bowels of hell and certainly didn't arise from smaller groups of voluntary participants) This is a point I often try to make in discussions like this. It's not like governments randomly appeared out of nowhere; they're organizations that groups of people chose to create. A theoretical An Cap society would have to somehow force people to not form governments, since it's clearly something that people have tended to do all over the world throughout all of human history. A situation would ultimately arise where people in one geographical area inside of "An Cap-land" would form a government and people elsewhere would also need to form government-like organizations to retain control of their property/rights/etc.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:50
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shiranaihito posted:Don't feel satisfied by this, by the way. I'm not seething with anger here. In fact, if you weren't the kind of utter scum you are, I'd feel some sympathy for you for being basement-dwelling eternal virgins. Hideous land-whales don't count, by the way. What are you trying to prove? If you aren't seething with rage, then why take the time to post what you posted? You seriously came off like a kid on youtube calling out the haters. Well, considered me called out. But you got off light. But don't play off for one moment like we were trolling here. You came in here, called us insane sociopaths who didn't think. You fired the first shot in your post. So if you can dish it out, you better be able to take it. It's something most of us learn when we were six. So let's look at something you posted. shiranaihito posted:Let's go back to where we started, because no one answered the question: If you believe in Cause X, but your best friend doesn't, do you want him thrown in jail for not supporting the cause? The only moral and reasonable answer is "No", and once you've arrived at it, you'll have to reject governments (because you're not a complete retard and you accept that we all have the same rights, and that if violating your friend's rights is wrong, so is violating anyone else's, right?). Here you go again. A common tactic that I've seen with libertarians is that they'll go and leap to the most extreme conclusion that could possibly happen and presume that's what you're advocating for. Now, as an aside here, your argument is terribly constructed. It's not a sound and reasonable argument to make a claim, say that it's the only reasonable answer, and then say that I have to arrive at your conclusion. That's not the spirit of a debate. You have to prove what you're saying to me. It's not that I have to disprove what you're saying. Also, saying that if I disagree with you makes me a complete retard offends me deeply. Now, back to your argument. I don't support throwing my friend in jail because he opposes the Afghanistan War. However, he's not being thrown in jail because of that. He's being thrown in jail because of how he is opposing the war. He could petition his congressmen to vote against further engagement in the war. He could write articles and books against the war. He could publish Youtube videos. He could lead a demonstration. I'm opposing his actions. In your scenario, he's choosing not to pay taxes because he's opposed to the war. But how much of his money is really going to the war, and how much of it would be going to things that he finds moral? And does he really determine how that money is distributed. It doesn't matter even if he does disagree. We're not asked to agree with everything our government does. It's like at work. I don't agree with every decision my boss makes. But at some point, she looks me in the eye and says "Can you live with this decision?" And if I can't, I'm free to walk out the door. At some point, you've chosen to live here. You've chosen to make yourself part of the community. And because you receive the benefits of that community, it is reasonable to ask you to pay based off the rules of the land. And if you don't agree, then you can either try to change the system, or you can leave. But you can't decide to not play by the rules and then get upset that people are enforcing them. So yes. I support throwing my friend in prison. Not because he doesn't support the government, but because of the actions he's taken. quote:Do you think you're a thinker? "You" as in everyone here. Do you think AnCaps are idiots and wrong about everything? -Well go ahead and call Stefan Molyneux to educate him then. He's got a call-in show twice a week, and anyone who wants to debate him gets to the front of the line. Obviously, since you're right and he's wrong, you'll have no problem beating him in a debate, right? Here you go: https://freedomainradio.com/ I don't want to debate Stefan Molyneux because there's no point in going into his turf, and thinking that I could say something that's going to make him listen. Also, his content is so incredibly dense and filled with pointless and weird statements that it would be impossible for me to completely refute it. He would find some avenue I left open, and ride it even though it's at best a minor semantic issue. How do I argue with someone who believes that you can disregard Marx's political theories because he may have had a bastard son with his maid? quote:Do you think Austrian economics is bullshit? -Go ahead and see for yourself then: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmT6-ChKpaiIVu2fhEIsNtQ .. They've got shitloads of material where they explain things in an easy to understand way. Go tell them why they're wrong, and why you know better. -Don't feel like doing that? :P Once again. Why are you here? It seems like you just came here to call us a bunch of idiots and if we'd only listened, we'd see how wrong we were. But you've done nothing to support your claims. So please. Tell me. Why did you come here? Did you came here to insult us and then act surprised when we give it back. You know how it is. It's like anywhere else. If you act like an idiot, people will kindly let you know that you're an idiot, before not-so-kindly rubbing your idiocy in your face.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:55
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Stop trolling the new guy with "things he actually said" VitalSigns. Can't you see how mean and close minded you are being? 
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Oct 14, 2014 00:56
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RuanGacho posted:To be fair, his existence is a pretty damning piece of evidence against the effectiveness of public education. I'm not sure it's the public education system so much as I'm reasonably sure that he has a an actual mental illness.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:14
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shiranaihito posted:Did you miss me? You're a coward and a simpleton who can't distinguish trolling from the total dynamiting of your belief system by people who understand your idols better than you do, it's embarrassing that you're physically a grown man 
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Oct 14, 2014 02:15
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quote:Here's a wild unsubstantiated claim: If you actually go through enough Austrian economics material, you'll eventually understand that governments are only harmful to the well-being of everyone on the planet, even from a purely economic standpoint (ie. disregarding the NAP altogether). Don't believe that? -Go ahead and prove me wrong then! *Think* for yourself.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:19
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If anything, governments are usually a little too dedicated to facilitating economic matters.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:27
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ARGUMENTUM AD FUNDAMENTUMquote:I'm not seething with anger here. In fact, if you weren't the kind of utter scum you are, I'd feel some sympathy for you for being basement-dwelling eternal virgins. Hideous land-whales don't count, by the way. Can this be a thing for calling out poo poo posting arguments? Fallacy ad cheeto?
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Oct 14, 2014 06:52
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Grognan posted:ARGUMENTUM AD FUNDAMENTUM I have to admit that I am largely just... puzzled by Shiranaihito. He didn't come here to argue, but to basically lose his poo poo and then leave. And then he came back several days later.. to say how he totally wasn't angry while in the middle of a crazy loving rant. I mean seriously, if that is how he speaks normally, can you imagine how he'd have posted if he was actually angry at us? He would have warped spacetime to kick us in the balls over the internet. Jrodefeld is playing missionary. Shiranaihito is... I don't know, honestly.
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Oct 14, 2014 07:01
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Caros posted:Jrodefeld is playing missionary. Shiranaihito is... I don't know, honestly. I doubt shira knows, either. That's part of why he's so brilliant. He actually, legitimately believes that he came in here to have a good faith discussion, and we weren't willing to listen and instead trolled the gently caress out of him. He really doesn't know that he's not being a missionary, can't see that he's insulting people, and doesn't understand that he's not making any arguments. It's wonderful.
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Oct 14, 2014 07:15
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Caros posted:I have to admit that I am largely just... puzzled by Shiranaihito. In this What's the difference between libertarian economic theory and the Rapture? People survive the Rapture.  One time a libertarian told me to give up coercion and embrace freedom, so I pointed out to him that I was raised to believe that freedom and meaning are two ends of a spectrum. If you have freedom, the less purpose there is in it, the more meaning you have, the less choice you're allowed. Libertopia is meaningless, it's apes loving, killing and collecting. It's the steampunk of political philosophy, it never was really, and people who should know better suffer from its miasma. If you ever want the world to be more equal, more free and more economically fair, you cannot do that in a vacuum. You must make great works, you must create and give meaning rather than obliterate and tear down. The freedom to self determine can only be made through shared bonds and order because if it isn't; there will be one crazy fucker who rejects your perfect rational order and wants a state back, whom through a violent and rational ground will burn your utopia to ashes and torn up contracts because he wants meaning. Just wanting to live your life and have to answer to no one isn't an act of courage, it's an act of contempt for all who came before you, to evolve, strive and dream. It's a life without purpose.
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Oct 14, 2014 07:33
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Man, I missed a good meltdown. Wonder who paid for his account
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Oct 14, 2014 07:45
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Torka posted:Man, I missed a good meltdown. Wonder who paid for his account You're not supposed to start with a meltdown though. The buildup is part of the excitement. Guy was popping off like a mormon handjob.
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Oct 14, 2014 07:47
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Caros posted:Jrodefeld is playing missionary. Shiranaihito is... I don't know, honestly. Shira is here to make us really miss Jrod. At least I was positive he read posts (of users he didn't have on ignore) and would actually respond to people who took him seriously. Sure, I'm still not clear on how Libertopia would handle going to war with a neighboring state, but I believe him when he says he enjoys being here and arguing with people. Shira just seems mad to be here, frustrated that people don't say what he wants them to say (IE mass conversion to Libertarianism), and just seems like he never has been on an internet forum outside of Molyneux's or something. "Guys I'm right, I am so right, just think about how right I am... wait you don't agree? loving TROLLS!"
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Oct 14, 2014 07:50
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Caros posted:I have to admit that I am largely just... puzzled by Shiranaihito. He's just another teenager with shallow opinions who doesn't understand anything beyond some basic talking points and the fact that he is right. The fact that he's a 30-something man on the outside just makes that first bit more depressing.
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Oct 14, 2014 08:36
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DrProsek posted:Shira is here to make us really miss Jrod. At least I was positive he read posts (of users he didn't have on ignore) and would actually respond to people who took him seriously. Sure, I'm still not clear on how Libertopia would handle going to war with a neighboring state, but I believe him when he says he enjoys being here and arguing with people. I'm gonna have to disagree with you, I don't think he wanted us to agree with him, not right away anyway. I honestly believe that he thought he was here for a debate. What he really wanted was for us to be the strawmen he thought we were and for us to put forth very weak talking points that he had heard Molyneux take down on his radio show so he could parrot them and take us down. He wanted this to be a power fantasy, where he's the smart libertarian übermensch benevolently casting NAP pearls before us swine. Unfortunately he's not half as smart as Molyneux, and Molyneux himself would get ripped to shreds in this thread.
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Oct 14, 2014 13:07
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shiranaihito posted:You realise that not everything the government says (through the mainstream media) is true? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98 Did we somehow all miss this part where he came out as a 9/11 truther? Or was it just I who only noticed it now.
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Oct 14, 2014 14:38
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VitalSigns posted:Did we somehow all miss this part where he came out as a 9/11 truther? Or was it just I who only noticed it now. I saw it but he'd gone by the time I read his magical posts so I didn't think it was worth mentioning.
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Oct 14, 2014 14:43
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What's with the libertarian/an cap obsession with shunning? It's like they want to take high school and make all of life like that. Are they those people where high school was the best time of their life and they want to recapture it? Or was it the worst time so they vastly over-estimate the effectiveness of shunning? But I think the need to constantly make sure I'm popular enough to continue being allowed to live is one of the most horrifying thing about an cap ideals. That they can imagine that paying my taxes limits my personal freedom more than having to suck up to the local church (on pain of not being allowed to access the vital resources they control) is mind boggling.
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Oct 14, 2014 15:00
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The shunning is probably the most effective part of Libertarian society. Your DRO is in charge of the shunning. If you're a criminal or a bad customer,you're added to the public shun list and anyone who has a contract with that DRO is contractually required to ban you from their property and never do business with you. And like credit bureaus today, other DROs will see that and take it into account when deciding whether to take you as a customer and at what rate. Crime would be heavily discouraged because anything you do that would make it difficult for your DRO or cost them money would result in an instant death-sentence-by-expulsion-from-civilized society. Oh, did I mention that if you think your DRO isn't providing you quality service or is abusing their power, you can simply take them to court and make them spend a bunch of money defending themselves at trial? Easy.
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Oct 14, 2014 15:07
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Basically implied by the crapping on Libertarianism is: What you have chosen to believe has meaning, well, it doesn't really have any meaning. Saying that pisses people right off. Also when somebody says "I believe in particular end X", well, often implied is that end X justifies means A,B, and C. Not everybody has thought those implied things through. So when A,B, and C are talked about and are objectionable (or even horrific) that also pisses people off.
Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 15:22
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VitalSigns posted:The shunning is probably the most effective part of Libertarian society. Your DRO is in charge of the shunning. If you're a criminal or a bad customer,you're added to the public shun list and anyone who has a contract with that DRO is contractually required to ban you from their property and never do business with you. And like credit bureaus today, other DROs will see that and take it into account when deciding whether to take you as a customer and at what rate. Crime would be heavily discouraged because anything you do that would make it difficult for your DRO or cost them money would result in an instant death-sentence-by-expulsion-from-civilized society. So high school. Only with real death instead of social death. Although to clarify, when I mentioned shunning as weak I meant "against groups" in my head but didn't write it. Death by unpopularity is clearly devastating to individuals but *groups* generally don't care if another group shuns them due to in/outgroup dynamics. So all the wittering about how group A would never do a horrible thing that harms group B and benefits themselves for fear that those other guys will shun them is ridiculous. So shunning is too effective against individuals but not effective enough against groups. What backstory creates people to whom this isn't blindingly obvious?
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Oct 14, 2014 15:59
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McAlister posted:What's with the libertarian/an cap obsession with shunning? It's like they want to take high school and make all of life like that. Are they those people where high school was the best time of their life and they want to recapture it? Or was it the worst time so they vastly over-estimate the effectiveness of shunning? Left anarchists also think shunning is a good idea for handling crime, so it's not just a crazy libertarian belief, it's also a crazy fringe leftist belief.
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Oct 14, 2014 16:02
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on the left posted:Left anarchists also think shunning is a good idea for handling crime, so it's not just a crazy libertarian belief, it's also a crazy fringe leftist belief. The question remains. How does anyone who wants to replace our nice impersonal justice system with a popularity contest think this is a good idea? Are they home schooled? Did they not see the popular kids get away with bad behavior constantly while the unpopular were socially punished for existing? How brain damaged do you have to be to not realize that a system where basic ability to live requires good social standing is far more oppressive than a state? That the people who care the most about controlling how you conduct your life in minute detail aren't random paper pushers at the Capitol but rather your next door neighbors and the church down the street?
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Oct 14, 2014 16:09
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McAlister posted:The question remains. How does anyone who wants to replace our nice impersonal justice system with a popularity contest think this is a good idea? The whole point of libertarianism is that the people at the top have disproportionate power and no checks on the abuse of their power. Libertarians believe that they'll be the one on top. If you want to talk about analogies to adolescence, this is closely related to the myth of the high school nerd (who inevitably makes millions) getting to lord it over the varsity quarterback (who inevitably works at the gas station) later in life. Libertarians tend to buy into this myth like crazy, to the point where they assume any deviations from it are a fault that will be corrected in Libertopia.
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Oct 14, 2014 16:32
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BrandorKP posted:Basically implied by the crapping on Libertarianism is: What you have chosen to believe has meaning, well, it doesn't really have any meaning. Saying that pisses people right off. Also when somebody says "I believe in particular end X" well often implied is that end X justifies means A,B, and C. Not everybody has thought those implied things through, so when A,B, and C are talked about, and are objectionable (or even horrific) that also pisses people off. You wanna take another go at adding in some proper syntax and grammar there, sport? I think you might be missing some really important qualifiers that would make this more clear and readable. I have no idea what "well often implied" means.
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Oct 14, 2014 16:36
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on the left posted:Left anarchists also think shunning is a good idea for handling crime, so it's not just a crazy libertarian belief, it's also a crazy fringe leftist belief. What? Where are you getting this? Anarchist Catalonia tried and executed people with revolutionary tribunals. They didn't rely on "shunning" at all. In reality it was the opposite problem from what you're saying here. In the absence of bourgeois protections like rights to privacy, the right to see the evidence presented against you and confront witnesses, etc there was a lot of score-settling and persecution of unpopular groups in the name of revolutionary justice. The issue with right anarchists' ideas for policing isn't that it would be ineffective at stopping petty crime. It's that all of their proposals for handling crime are ridiculously oppressive and tyrannical, but that's okay because you "voluntarily" signed a contract with a DRO to let them put cameras in your home and toss your bunk for any reason and that's way better than being subject to a state-run justice system that has to show probable cause and get a warrant. Pretty similar to the problem of left anarchists trusting testimony based on the proletarian cred of the person accusing you of being a counterrevolutionary running dog of the aristocracy. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 16:37
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I think it's just got to be the natural extension of the Non-Agression Principle (for an-caps) and just general not wanting to interfere with others or look like a tyrant. Shunning kind of comes off as a hyperaggressive version of "I'm not touching you!" I've never heard taxes framed as explicitly not your money/property, just something you're sitting on. It's kind of a neat way to put it. Not sure how much use it'd be in an argument with someone who's claiming taxes are theft, but I'm not really optimistic about anything really being useful in arguments (cf shiranaihito). ^Edit OTOH, I always saw that as being less to do with the specific ideology and more to do with"You're unpopular, no one's going to stick their neck out for you, and gently caress you, I've got a gun/Valhalla DRO." The counterrevolutionary stuff, the trial, etc, is window dressing and ritual. Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 16:58
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Space Gopher posted:
Yeah that's part of the "wasn't popular in high school" option. I mean, I get that their dream of libertopia involves them being top dogs in it. But you can come at that from two different directions. The other direction is if you were very socially privledged in high school such that you design your ideal society on the assumption that people are nicer than they actually are because you personally have never been treated unfairly. They assume they will be top dogs ... Because they always have been . Like that guy in the PACE thread who also went to a PACE school but was one of the elite so he never got "whacks" and nobody jerked around his scoring and he could score himself and blah blah blah. So - from his perspective - it wasn't that bad and he remembers less favored kids complaining bitterly about the unfairness but also remembers thinking they were being melodramatic about it and any hardships they endured were their own fault for not trying harder. Looking back as an adult he realized this was poo poo and that the structure of the curriculum was designed to elevate the favored while stomping on the disliked. But at the time he was oblivious to it. Now, this matters because a vengeful anarchist who mainly wants this system because he thinks it will let him get revenge has different motives than a naive anarchist who can't imagine their perfect moral system being abused. The latter is much more salvageable as a human being.
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Oct 14, 2014 17:20
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shiranaihito posted:Did you miss me? Does anyone else find it weird when people think going on and on about depths of depravity or whatever like they're a character from the Crucible is impressive and not at all awkward and kind of embarrassing? I didn't know whether to laugh or just wince really hard. I also don't know why half of you even bothered with all the effortposts, though. He didn't read any of that and was only interested in getting faux-offended by the one-liners calling him an idiot because that gave him an excuse to bow out when he immediately saw the conversation going in a different direction. I still want to believe he's just a troll though, because the idea that he is both a grown man and grew up in a country with a better social safety net than most of us could ever dream of is even more depressing 
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Oct 14, 2014 17:45
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Who What Now posted:You wanna take another go at adding in some proper syntax and grammar there, sport? I think you might be missing some really important qualifiers that would make this more clear and readable. I have no idea what "well often implied" means. Makes perfect sense to me. But I'll translate from "perfectly readable" to "readable by combative drunks": quote:Also when somebody says "I believe in particular end X," well, often that implies that end X justifies means A,B, and C. Not everybody has thought those implied things through, so when A,B, and C are talked about, and are objectionable (or even horrific) that also pisses people off.
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Oct 14, 2014 18:24
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SedanChair posted:Makes perfect sense to me. But I'll translate from "perfectly readable" to "readable by combative drunks": I haven't abused alcohol since seeing a new psychiatrist three months ago. But hey, thanks for trying anyway, even if you are a oval office.
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Oct 14, 2014 18:58
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Wolfsheim posted:Does anyone else find it weird when people think going on and on about depths of depravity or whatever like they're a character from the Crucible is impressive and not at all awkward and kind of embarrassing? I didn't know whether to laugh or just wince really hard. Not that much effort, most of us were copy-pasting from posts that we'd made earlier. You're right that he wasn't going to respond, we just like the thrill of the chase
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Oct 14, 2014 19:00
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SedanChair is deeply opposed to combative posting. Why can't we all just get along and follow the principle of Non Aggressive Posting?
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Oct 14, 2014 19:01
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VitalSigns posted:Did we somehow all miss this part where he came out as a 9/11 truther? Or was it just I who only noticed it now. Libertarianism and conspiracy theories tend to go hand in hand, so it wasn't that surprising (to me) when it happened They also loooooove their comeuppance fantasies. The Bitcoin threads are full of that stuff. "When bitcoin becomes the one true currency and the financial systems all collapse, you'll be a penniless starving pauper and die in the streets while I live in a space mansion with a thousand adolescent sex slaves, YOU'LL BE SORRY THEN"
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Oct 14, 2014 19:03
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Rockopolis posted:I think it's just got to be the natural extension of the Non-Agression Principle (for an-caps) and just general not wanting to interfere with others or look like a tyrant. I think you can at least get it off the ground (in their eyes) by drawing a connection to debt collection. A person has willingly entered into contract to take out a loan from a bank, but is having trouble paying it back. The bank decides they'd rather not bother, and pass the duties of collecting the loan off to a collection agency. The agency then does all the work of collecting the money, garnishing wages, or what have you. They keep a slice, the rest goes off to the bank. Now the agency is the one doing all the work, haven't they earned that money? Why don't they get to keep it? Is the passing on of the remainder to the bank theft? Well, no, because without the bank making those loans in the first place the agency wouldn't have any work to do at all. So some portion of this money that the agency is taking in is never theirs to begin with. The way this plays out is that a business is reliant on certain things the government does to operate at all, and by the work that all the employees do they get money from the business. Yet without the government, that business might very well never exist, so some portion of the money earned by each employee gets passed back to the government. And everyone winds up being subjected to taxation law of some sort or another because that's true of basically every transaction that takes place. There's some obvious wiggle room in that not all transactions are taxed the same way, some not at all, there's some things you could do to reduce your tax burden if it weren't for those pesky laws, what's a good rate to set all this stuff at anyway and so on. If that's where the argument goes, then the principle of taxation has been agreed upon, and now it's just a difference over price.
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Oct 14, 2014 19:15
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I've never thought that social contract arguments are particularly effective in countering libertarians, ancaps and their ilk. Say what else you will about those folks but they're right that the government is based on force, and if you go back far enough in history pretty much every state begins with some kind of invasion or conquest, following which there's a long period of time where administering the spoils of that conquest resulted in the creation of a state. The trouble with the libertarian critique is that it's basically a millenarian cult. They think that if you follow their prescriptions then we'll enter some kind of fantastical new world where human relations aren't fundamentally government by force and coercion. Or, even worse, they are so obsessed with their fantasy morality that redefines 'force' and they literally declare that their system is moral regardless of the consequences. Obviously anyone living in the real world isn't going to be very enthusiastic about a system with objective awful consequences just the 'None Aggression Principle' says any other system is bad. Another problem is that they fail to recognize how over time the populations subject to state control have been able to force concessions from their rulers such as the protection of labour rights, agencies that regulate financial fraud or crucial utilities, etc. They frame these things as part of the problem rather than recognizing them as imperfect but necessary ways of establishing a functional society. And, of course, they have totally insane ideas about property, how it is created, what it really is, and how it interferes with their silly philosophical ideas about force and aggression. But I think it is better to focus on those defects in their thinking rather than making some equally silly claim about how taxes are the voluntary fees you pay for the services the state gives you. That kind of liberal apologism is just as deluded as anything the libertarians say. I mean really all you need to do is talk about DROs to illustrate how to any sane person that voluntarists are crazy. You don't even need to point out that in practice the DROs would turn into Mafia type organizations. You can literally just read out what actual voluntarist philosophers have said the DRO system would look like (basically a totalitarian nightmare worse than 1984 but run by private insurers rather than a state).
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Oct 14, 2014 19:30
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Helsing posted:But I think it is better to focus on those defects in their thinking rather than making some equally silly claim about how taxes are the voluntary fees you pay for the services the state gives you. That kind of liberal apologism is just as deluded as anything the libertarians say. How are taxes not voluntary fees for service? If you don't want to stay in a constitutional democracy anymore, no one will stop you from leaving. At a certain point you're choosing to stay and accept the infrastructure and military protection provided by the state in exchange for agreeing to work within the rules to democratically change policies you don't like. Now the Libertarian could say, "well that's not a real choice because all the good land on Earth is owned by some state or another so it's either live on some reef or in some desert, or to choose among a variety of state prisons", but then that opens up their theory of property ownership to a Georgist critique that the good land and resources have also already been sequestered into private ownership and those born as propertyless trespassers can't make the Libertarian's illusory choice to go homestead themselves a new farm if they don't like the offers presented by the buyers of labor. In that case, wealth and property taxes are simply the compensation paid to the rest of us in exchange for getting to benefit from prior enclosure of land and resources. From another standpoint: what did you think of Caros' HOA question? An inheritor of a property with an HOA easement never agreed to the HOA's right to assess fees by democratic vote of the members, yet they're still presented with the choice of acceptance, working within the HOA rules to change the fees, or getting rid of the property. How does this differ from expecting people born today to work within the constitutional government agreed to by their ancestors?
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Oct 14, 2014 19:47
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VitalSigns posted:How are taxes not voluntary fees for service? If you don't want to stay in a constitutional democracy anymore, no one will stop you from leaving. At a certain point you're choosing to stay and accept the infrastructure and military protection provided by the state in exchange for agreeing to work within the rules to democratically change policies you don't like. Most taxes aren't voluntary in any substantial sense and usually they aren't specifically tied to the service they deliver. They go into the general revenue of the state and are spent on all kinds of things that you may or may not agree with. Claiming you can just change this by voting is sort of asinine given that big questions like property rights don't tend to get voted on in a bourgeois liberal state. And while our society has access to remarkable transportation infrastructure in the form of trains, auto-mobiles, planes and ships, access to this infrastructure is rationed according to money, meaning I'm not simply "free" to move. Usually moving outside your country of birth is also expensive and potentially quite onerous thanks to the red tape you need to navigate. Also you tend to be born into a community of people that you become attached to, so saying "if you don't like it just move" sort frames the question in a sort of ultra-atomized and individualistic way that I think is alien to the way human beings actually live. So while I have no problem telling libertarians to stuff it, the idea that because you can theoretically move your taxes are therefore "voluntary" is pretty silly, because in actuality most people face very serious barriers to moving out of their country. quote:Now the Libertarian could say, "well that's not a real choice because all the good land on Earth is owned by some state or another so it's either live on some reef or in some desert, or to choose among a variety of state prisons", but then that opens up their theory of property ownership to a Georgist critique that the good land and resources have also already been sequestered into private ownership and those born as propertyless trespassers can't make the Libertarian's illusory choice to go homestead themselves a new farm if they don't like the offers presented by the buyers of labor. In that case, wealth and property taxes are simply the compensation paid to the rest of us in exchange for getting to benefit from prior enclosure of land and resources. I agree, the libertarian solutions to the problem of 'the state' are a cure worse than the disease, and Georgism is a comparatively sane philosophy. quote:From another standpoint: what did you think of Caros' HOA question? An inheritor of a property with an HOA easement never agreed to the HOA's right to assess fees by democratic vote of the members, yet they're still presented with the choice of acceptance, working within the HOA rules to change the fees, or getting rid of the property. How does this differ from expecting people born today to work within the constitutional government agreed to by their ancestors? I agree with Caros' statement that "Under our current moral and legal framework your taxes do not belong to you" and I think most libertarians don't have an adequate response to this other than faciley invoking some sort of natural law doctrine that nobody else is obliged to take seriously. But I also dispute the idea that we live in a particularly "democratic" society where things we don't like can easily be changed through voting. We live in a society run by and for property owners, and while centuries of hard fought struggles have earned people some valuable concessions like a social safety net, the ability to vote out specific administrations, and certain rights for freedom of speech, conscience, association, etc. I think it is silly to pretend that our society was established through some kind of social contract when the historical record clearly demonstrates that it wasn't. Describing our society as something "agreed to by... [our] ancestors" is not an accurate description of how actual society's came about.
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Oct 14, 2014 20:21
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