This is an interesting blog entry you've put in the main Sift Talk.

What if you were born there?

>> ^gwiz665:

What if you were born there?


Oh, well, um... well, you can just leave if you don't like the rules, so, you know, like yeah... It's the same. I guess, like, the way you should look at this and stuff is just, you know, um, if you don't like the rules, change them or leave or whatever, you know, kind of like how the slaves couldn't do that and should've just left, and the Jews in Germany and stuff?

@blankfist - If I have erred in the way I have posted, I apologize. This is a topic I have seen sprout up across a wide variety of comment threads and sift talk posts, so I wanted to get my thoughts down. If there is a more appropriate way of posting this, please let me know how to do that. I mostly post in video comments, and am not very familiar with sift talk protocol. I'd very much like to hear people's thoughts on what I've written, since it seems to not be the way most opponents view the debate.

@gwiz665 - I thought I made it pretty clear. Stay and accept things, stay and try to change things, leave, or leave and try to change things from afar so that you will be more likely to return. Just because you are born in a given place doesn't mean you are stuck there. The alternative to this way of thinking is to believe that you should be excused from the rules that everybody else is following because you were born there, which doesn't make any sense to me.

@blankfist - That was very well articulated, thanks. I'm speaking about the modern world in western countries, where anybody can emigrate at any time (assuming they have paid for services rendered). I am adamantly opposed to any society who seeks to prevent people from leaving unwanted conditions. If you have anything to add (aside from insults and unsupported bias) I'd love to hear it.

At the risk of coming off as a horribly condescending know-it-all prick, let me bring you up to speed. The main Sift Talk page is reserved for posts about VideoSift itself, be they bug reports, feature requests, public humiliation of annoying members (actually, we don't do that anymore), specific video posts that contain content that pushes the envelope of VideoSift's posting guidelines, etc. The channel talk pages are where posts such as this belong, and they are quite visible in "Latest Channel Talk Posts" sidebar. Click the "modify post" link, and uncheck the box to include this post in the main sift talk area. (In a bit of historical irony, blankfist once got mad at me for telling him to remove his own politically oriented talk posts to the appropriate channel pages. He will, of course, deny this.)

As for taxes being theft, you are near the mark, but missing it slightly. That miss is exactly the kind of opening that libertarians are looking for. Whether one is born into citizenship, or emigrates to it to escape worse conditions, is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people cannot afford to simply pick up and move to another country (never mind the fact that unless you plan on moving to someplace like Antartica, taxes are collected by all nations). There are also cultural and familial ties to be considered. Also, the political power that the average citizen wields is miniscule, and if exercised at all, is incredibly unlikely to change the fundamental structure of the society in which they live. The notion that an individual can so dramatically change the social structure in which they live is absurd.

A libertarian (or anarcho-capitalist, in netrunner's lingo) will tell you that a citizen should not be required to make such drastic changes in their life to change which services they consume, and from whom they purchase them. A libertarian would say that all such transactions should be voluntary. What the libertarian will not tell you is by what mechanism you can intelligently decide for which services you want to pay, nor the mechanism by which service providers may sell them. The natural consequence of such a situation is something like feudalism. The strongest and best security services will locally dominate their markets until every competitor is driven out. At that point, local security forces will either align with or come into conflict with neighboring forces. Ultimately, you would be in exactly the same situation the libertarians decry now - you are de facto forced into an agreement with the local authority to purchase protection, and any other "services" they deem requisite for all citizens. Only, in the voluntary society situation, you have no legal recourse to a higher authority like the Supreme Court and its interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. No doubt, interpretation of a 235 year old legal document is plagued with problems, but at least it does give a reasonable foundation from which to work.

I always find it funny that libertarians use the word "theft" to describe the compulsory transactions enforced by government. One can argue the legitimacy of the transactions, but they are transactions. As you note, taxes pay for roads, common defense and security, schools, hospitals, etc. It's not like the government simply takes the money and pockets it (except in cases of illegal corruption, which is correctable). They may not spend it wisely or efficiently, but they do spend it in the interest of the people. The word the libertarians should be using is "extortion", which is of course exactly what taxes are. Pay me some money for your protection, or something bad might happen to you. Libertarians, though, seem incapable of distinguishing between extortion for criminal profit, and extortion for the common good. All they can see is extortion, and to them that is bad, independent of ideology.

^Well said.

So the real challenge to the anarcho-capitalist would be to describe a possible society in which extortion in one form or another is absent. I honestly can't think of one.

Exactly. Welcome to the life of primates. Or is it vertebrates?

Social behavior is by definition coercion of the individual by the group.

>> ^MaxWilder:

So the real challenge to the anarcho-capitalist would be to describe a possible society in which extortion in one form or another is absent. I honestly can't think of one.

Once we're assimilated we'll look back and laugh at these conversations... hah! didn't we realize that resistance was futile!

Seriously though, capitalism is a tenuous situation. In pure form its completely inhuman. Gotta take the edge off with some extortion for the common good, and a list of community rules that include keeping corporations from being considered peopl...woops!

"Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
– Ambrose Bierce

Taxation is money owed for services, but those services and goods are mandatory and paid for under threat of violence. The mafia uses a similar technique, offering protection to certain businesses for a percentage of their earnings. What's the difference? The difference between the government and the mafia is the process of voting for or against those who rob you and to a lesser degree what is taken from you.

Sure you can all justify taxation saying it's for services rendered, but that doesn't make it any less a theft. Just like how the war isn't any less a series of murders just because it's wrapped in nationalism.

Voluntaryists (anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, anarchists, etc.) believe services and goods shouldn't be offered under threat of violence. If Verizon sent you a phone in the mail with a letter that detailed a compulsory phone service you must pay for, and if you refused they'd send men with guns to your home to detain you and throw you in a cage, would you not think that's extortion and completely wrong? Well, that's exactly what taxation is according to your examples: exaction for mandatory services or goods.

Just because all of you are in agreement and enjoy stroking each other's egos in the process, doesn't mean your argument is sound, moral or right. It just means you like pressing your will onto others by force if necessary. To me, that's an indefensible position, but apparently not to you.

>> ^blankfist:

"Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
– Ambrose Bierce

It seems to me that you should really turn the sharp end of that quote on yourself blankfist. You don't seem to realize that your own supposed principles should be viewed in that same cynical light.

Let's try to talk about sorting right and wrong, at its most basic level.

I'm basically a hedonist at heart. I say that morality is about maximizing pleasure, and minimizing suffering. Not all pleasures are created equal -- the base pleasures of the flesh rank below the more erudite appetites of the intellect, and those rank below the high pleasures to be found in helping others achieve greater heights of pleasure.

When it comes to designing social frameworks in which people coexist, I think we should try to maximize the net pleasure of all the people involved. I have been persuaded by history and philosophy that this requires a notion of inalienable human rights, and the use of a legal and political system to uphold those rights.

I have also been persuaded that market economies can be both economically efficient and while retaining a great deal of individual economic choice, so I'm willing to entertain including a legal definition of claims to inanimate objects known as "property". I think for a market to function, people must be allowed to purchase and sell property within it, and I think all people should have the right to participate in it, and enjoy the fruits that can be earned within it.

But I also think the overall economic scheme known as a market should be subservient to the overarching goal of maximizing pleasure for everyone in society, and not that society should be subservient to the rules of the market, regardless of its effect on the happiness of the people within it.

I also think that where markets run afoul of intrinsic human rights, like a person's ability to stay alive, or freely express themselves, markets must bend to the higher callings of these intrinsic human rights, rather than vice versa.

The bottom line is that morality can never become a license for me to ignore the effect of my actions on other people -- morality demands that I must always weigh the effects of my actions on everyone, everwhere, and ensure that I am always serving to maximize utility pleasure for society as a whole.

>> ^blankfist:

Voluntaryists (anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, anarchists, etc.) believe services and goods shouldn't be offered under threat of violence. If Verizon sent you a phone in the mail with a letter that detailed a compulsory phone service you must pay for, and if you refused they'd send men with guns to your home to detain you and throw you in a cage, would you not think that's extortion and completely wrong? Well, that's exactly what taxation is according to your examples: exaction for mandatory services or goods.


This is the exact thing you don't seem to get.

Let's say, hypothetically, that all government services became voluntary. At the beginning of the year, you sign up for the services you want, and only pay for those. It would follow that many people would not support any, since there are a lot of idiots who don't think about the future.

How is the military supposed to defend only those who have paid for it? How are prisons only supposed to operate for those who have paid? How are food inspection services supposed to function only for those who paid?

Public schools would fail, leaving a generation of ignorant kids pulling down our economy. (Yeah, this is kinda happening anyway, but it would get much worse.) Fire fighters would be in the awkward position of letting houses (and forests for that matter) burn down while trying to protect nearby structures from flying embers. Police would have to pick and choose who to defend, who to pursue.

And those are just a few possibilities I can think of off the top of my head. Pick any government program and think about what would happen if some people paid and some didn't. I have no doubt that it would work in some cases, but in many it would be catastrophic.

It would render us a third-world nation, just like places in the world where these government programs are not in place at all. Everything runs by bribes.

The only way to get people to work together is to incentivize beneficial behaviors, disincentivize destructive behaviors, and mandate funding of the system to produce those incentives and disincentives. That may technically be extortion, but there is no way to have a healthy society without it. And I certainly don't want to live in a society without it.