When you use a word in a too broad sense, it loses any significant meaning…
Yes. but by this definition, so is the act of forcing you to stop your car at the red light. This too restrict your freedom of action.
Well, my point is simply this: There seem to be a lot of people in the U.S. who have not experienced life in other Western Democratic countries and yet seem to consider their opinions about these countries and their deficiencies, which as near as I can tell are informed only by what conservative propaganda tells them, to carry some weight (so much so that they just throw around casual statements like “socialized, rationed medical care” as if this constitutes a valid commentary). In my opinion, all these commentaries tend to show is the poster’s own ignorance.
I mean when Sam Stone complains about issues of single-payer health care, I may not be in complete agreement with him, but at least I know his opinion is based on some reasonable knowledge. I have zero evidence of that fact in your case.
It also takes a particular form of arrogance to say, “My country does things better than your country” when you are basing this opinion more on ignorance of the other country than on any real knowledge of how things work in that other country. [This is obviously truer of countries that have advantages by some measures, say, have a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate, than your country.] Of course, it could be that you have actually arrived at your opinions by doing extensive research on the comparative health care systems and so on and so forth…And, if you do, please share them with us.
Well, I sure as hell hope that none of your life objectives entail driving around on public roads, using police protection to help protect your property, buying products that meet basic safety standards, etc., etc. … Because, if they do, I don’t know why the hell you expect the rest of us to pay our taxes to help you meet your life objectives while you apparently want to freeload (or call anything short of freeloading “at least partial slavery”). Geez!!!
P.S.—One of my life objectives is to breathe clean air and I value this highly. Please send me a check for $10,000 to cover the pollution costs that you have imposed on me by driving around in your vehicle, heating your house, etc. [I.e…this is another issue that we haven’t even gotten into…namely that your free choices often impose 3rd party costs on other people.]
Well, my point is simply this: There seem to be a lot of people in the U.S. who have not experienced life in other Western Democratic countries and yet seem to consider their opinions about these countries and their deficiencies, which as near as I can tell are informed only by what conservative propaganda tells them, to carry some weight (so much so that they just throw around casual statements like “socialized, rationed medical care” as if this constitutes a valid commentary). In my opinion, all these commentaries tend to show is the poster’s own ignorance.
I mean when Sam Stone complains about issues of single-payer health care, I may not be in complete agreement with him, but at least I know his opinion is based on some reasonable knowledge. I have zero evidence of that fact in your case.
It also takes a particular form of arrogance to say, “My country does things better than your country” when you are basing this opinion more on ignorance of the other country than on any real knowledge of how things work in that other country. [This is obviously truer of countries that have advantages by some measures, say, have a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate, than your country.] Of course, it could be that you have actually arrived at your opinions by doing extensive research on the comparative health care systems and so on and so forth…And, if you do, please share them with us.
Well, I sure as hell hope that none of your life objectives entail driving around on public roads, using police protection to help protect your property, buying products that meet basic safety standards, etc., etc. … Because, if they do, I don’t know why the hell you expect the rest of us to pay our taxes to help you meet your life objectives while you apparently want to freeload (or call anything short of freeloading “at least partial slavery”). Geez!!!
P.S.—One of my life objectives is to breathe clean air and I value this highly. Please send me a check for $10,000 to cover the pollution costs that you have imposed on me by driving around in your vehicle, heating your house, etc. [I.e…this is another issue that we haven’t even gotten into…namely that your free choices often impose 3rd party costs on other people.]
jshore,
Oh come on. You set up a society that makes everything property or otherwise illegal to live on, pave the way between these places, and then extort money from me in some fabricated protection racket to pay for the whole affair.
But, you’re right, I’m free to use those roads, and thank God for that as using those roads is about the only way you’ve left for me to live at all.
DB: *A lot of people toss around this idea of a social contract as if it is a given. Could someone please direct me to the text, I’d like to read it over, especially the part about how it’s my obligation to contribute to the general welfare. A contract is an agreement, and requires acceptance by both parties. *
Other posters have already dealt with the “implicitness” of the social contract.
I am aware of the Constitution, which is acceptable as a contract, even though it is not.
(
It is acceptable even though it is not? Grok not understand this.)
Note that the Preamble to the Constitution addresses the question of the “general welfare” explicitly:
Promoting the general welfare is one of the explicitly stated goals of our nation as a society; as a citizen of this nation, you share in the common obligation to support that goal. Can’t get much simpler than that.
I want to live in a society where it is every man for himself, but we voluntarily chose to provide each other support.
You are free to do so if you can find such a society and they’re willing to take you in. You are also free to try to change the structure of this society, by its constitutionally-appointed change mechanisms, into one that is closer to your ideal. But since most of us don’t share your view of the possibility of a successful society based on your asocial premise of “every man for himself”, you’re not likely to have much luck with that approach. Your best bet is probably to collect some like-minded libertarian types with enough money for some serious offworld-habitat R&D, and go colonize an asteroid somewhere.
If forcibly taking a portion of the product of my labor restricts my freedom, then it is an act of slavery.
Ah, that libertarian verbal magic where “my” money is always “the product of MY labor” and nothing else! 
Some of us, though, are more aware that the acquisition and retention of “our” money depend on a lot of things in addition to OUR labor. We depend on society in innumerable ways for the basic framework of employment, education exchange, property security, etc., that makes it possible to get and keep “our” money in the first place. To say, once our efforts within this societal framework have enabled us to get our hooks on some money, that it’s entirely “ours” and society has no moral right to any part of it—that would seem selfish if it weren’t so (excuse the expression, but this is really how it strikes me) laughably childish.
I got today my first spam from USA:
The capitalists over-there seems to use commie-slogans, or what do You think about the head-line?
Fire your boss & work from home
If these figures are right even to 50%, the “every man for himself”-policy will lead to a very serious situation. In any modern high-tech country.
Chumsky wrote:
I agree to that.
Just want to add:
If we do not “need” to pay taxes, except for roads, army and police, it will lead to a catastrophe where even bin Laden will go out of business.
Just magine some million people without work and food rallying down the streets…
Or does someone really believe the people will think: “C’mon guys, let’s go to the forrest and pick some mushrooms and try to get some education from each other at the camp-fire!”?
Happy day-dreams.
If you did not redistribute wealth you would end up with a lot of pissed poor people which would cause a revolution.
the private ownership of land is slavery.
how did the “owner” get it? if you say he bought it, then how did the previous “owner get it?” ultimately you are back to WAR. large scale theft. might makes right.
TOTAL WAR FOREVER? makes for a messy society.
must keep the lower classes brainwashed so they don’t revolt. i think they call it education, but they don’t require accounting. must keep the lower classes ignorant in the approved manner.
if there is redistribution, how do the people doing the redistribution get that power? back to political, economic and military power games.
Dal Timgar
So show me a society that has succeeded without this “fabricated protection racket.” There has to be a balance between individualism and communalism. Either extreme is doomed to failure.
Which is why I wrote: It’s a policy decision, that we “promote” by saying Thing X is a “right”, Thing Y is not (even though it’s good and worthy a thing for all to have).
Distributive Justice in a Pure Service Economy
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/service
Distributive Justice in a Pure Service Economy:
How the Truth of Libertarianism Follows from the Wrongness of Slavery
1996, two pages, 20p, ISBN 1 85637 351 7
By Bryan Caplan www.capital.demon.co.uk/LA/philosophical/capserv.txt
djbdjb: I see nothing new there. It simplifies to the point of neglecting the actual realities of our complex society. For example:
(1) How did the hypothetical surgeon acquire his skills? Did he go to a medical school on roads paid for by society? Did he go to a public school or a school that had any government grants? What about the hospital that he works in? The patients and how they get to his office?
(2) Who gets to define what government policies are redistribution? Are you going to throw out all of corporate and patent law? All of these have distributional implications!
One of the truisms in modern solid state physics is that you cannot always understand how a complex interactive system behaves by a purely reductionist philosophy. It is an approximation at best, and sometimes a very bad one, to adopt the independent electron approximation. I think this is probably even truer in a complex society of human beings. People get this strange idea in their heads that any money they earn is fundamentally “theirs” by right, whereas this is really only an approximation that we have adopted…i.e., that we can completely separate one person’s property from another’s when they have acquired that property through the complexity of our society. While the idea of maintaining individual property rights certainly seems to be worthwhile(e.g., from the point of view of providing individual incentives that seem important for a successful society), one should not imbue this with too much fundamental reality.
First, I want to point out the misleading nature of the word slavery has already been discussed. Taxes obviously do not share in some aspects of slavery (e.g. having a choice of what work to do, and a choice between various levels of income and amount of work). The question is whether redistributive taxes are fundamentally unfair in taking away money that you are entitled to, which is in some ways equivalent to taking some of your time.
My main argument (which follows) is that some sort of social contract allowing for redistributive taxation is the fair result of a (theoretical) effort to create a “poverty insurance,” a kind of insurance that many people would want if they could get it under reasonable conditions.
You reject a social contract, but presumably you accept other kinds of contracts. Insurance, for instance, is a fair capitalist transaction, in which one person agrees to pay a certain amount of money in return for eliminating a financial risk (i.e. for receiving money if a certain kind of event costs her money). Also, there are contracts where payments depend on future earnings (e.g. an actor is paid a certain percentage of the gross of a film).
In general, people like insurance because they don’t like risks. They buy health insurance, homeowner’s insurance, car insurance (beyond what’s mandated), and many other kinds of insurance against various potentially catastrophic financial losses. If people were given the opportunity, don’t you think they’d buy poverty insurance? Someone who buys poverty insurance and happens to become poor at some point would get a certain amount of money (or food, shelter, etc). Poverty is a catastrophic financial state, one that tends to have many bad consequences (poor health, unhappiness, etc). Though perhaps not as inescapable as cancer or a flood, poverty is not easy to get out of without assistance. Thus many people would want poverty insurance.
Unfortunately, it would not be easy to create a voluntary system of poverty insurance, because of problems with who would opt in to any real voluntary system (vs. who could benefit from some system of poverty insurance) and when they would opt in.
First, who would enter the system? If the payment is based on current income (or wealth), then those with the highest current income/wealth would have the smallest risk of falling into poverty, so they would pay the least. In fact, we could separate people into groups based on their risk of falling into poverty (closely associated with current income & wealth), and have each group pay to cover itself. A smart insurance company would discriminate this way, so this is what would happen in the ideal market. So those just above the poverty level, being most at risk of falling into poverty, would have to pay the most, and so they would be kept down at or near the poverty level. This system would be unpopular for those near the poverty level, and it might be unstable.
So, we need a new basis for the system: future earnings. Once people enter the system, they agree to pay perpetually (or at least for a long time period) based on their future earnings. The payment-earnings scale differs depending on current income (those with higher current income pay less for a given future income) so that those with higher current income might still enter the system. As long as it is not possible to opt out of the contract (at least for an extended period of time), the not-so-well-off people at risk for poverty, who want to get in the system, can do so at reasonable price, since those who happen to make it big out of that group can finance the system.
Now, the “when” part. When can someone opt in? People can’t just opt in whenever they want, since then people would wait until they were in poverty. Perhaps there could be an “anytime” opt-in option, but that would only be for people with an income (or wealth) above some minimum level. Children can’t opt in because they aren’t old enough to make rational decisions. Perhaps there could be an opt-in option at 18 yrs. old. Rates could be based on wealth at that time, but that wouldn’t work well, since most people don’t have much wealth at 18 yrs old, so those who expected to earn much wouldn’t opt in at the high rates. So, rates could be based on future earnings potential. How would that be measured? In part based on marketable skills, in part on personal connections to people in business, in part on family wealth, and on anything else with a measurable correlation (including, possibly, race or sex – so that groups discriminated against in the job-market would have to pay higher poverty insurance premiums – but that’s a side issue).
And there’s still the huge problem of what to do with the children under 18. Coerce everyone into paying to take care of them? That’s what we’re trying to avoid. Perhaps the parents’ insurance could cover their children until the age of 18. But then what about the children of parents without insurance? Let them die if their parents can’t feed them? But there is probably some kind of contract that an insurance company could make with them that would be profitable to the insurance company and would be rational for them, if only they could make rational decisions. If they were the insurance company’s slaves, for instance, that would probably benefit both parties. And there is probably a less demanding (and less morally abhorrent, although we’re trying to ignore morals here to satisfy your question) agreement that would work (e.g. a very large percentage of future income). Although this might not be possible, if the kids got to make a new agreement when they turned 18. So we might have to reduce the scope of the voluntary agreement to not apply to kids born into poverty.
Now, we made every effort to create a system of poverty insurance (which many people would be happy to buy at some point) without violating anyone’s rights to free choice & property. We had to make a choice for these irrational, impoverished babies who couldn’t make choices for themselves, but we can be confident that they’d choose to give (say) 75% of their lifetime income to the insurance company instead of being left to die. Some of these babies are bound to exist, even if parents care strongly about not letting this happen to their kids (which is not always true). If any person chooses not to buy insurance at 18 yrs old, and then happens to fall into poverty, and then has a kid, then a baby like this will exist. We can’t force people to buy insurance or to not have kids just because they’re in poverty, and we can’t force others to help them out of poverty. So these kids will exist, and their lives will suck, through no fault of their own. Interestingly, an attempt to make your system work has created individuals who face a life much closer to slavery than anything that exists under a redistributive taxation scheme.
As long as we’re making choices for these newborn kids, we ought to see if there are any better options. Once we know which kids will be born into poverty and which won’t be, then the only way to make it profitable for a company to save the kids’ lives is to take most of the kids’ earnings. What if look at the situation from the point of the view of the kids, before they knew their parents financial status. Presumably taking away this information does not change entitlements or any important moral aspects of the situation. Even if the unborn/newborn kids know all about their genetic makeup, they face a risk of poverty in childhood, and, assuming they get through childhood ok, all but the exceptionally talented face doubts over poverty in adulthood. So, if they were rational, they would agree to taxes to help children born in poverty, and to guarantee minimum standards of education so that they could translate their genetic advantages into marketable skills and income (among other reasons).
What about adult poverty? All but the extremely talented few would face a similar risk of adulthood poverty. They could not ignore adult poverty as the result of individual choices, since, from the rational point of view of an unborn/newborn baby, many of the main causes of that poverty, including poor education & a bad early childhood environment, are caused externally. Hence many unborn/newborn babies would want adult poverty insurance.
So, we have lifetime poverty insurance, with payment a proportion of income, for all but a few genetically advantaged individuals, based on voluntary choices that would have been made if they could have been. And of course it is impractical to have some sort of genetic test to get out of paying taxes for those who are genetically gifted and would not have agreed to the taxes had you been given the choice before you were born.
So, what do we have? Redistributive taxation, at least to keep people out of poverty.
Obviously, there are other arguments for taxation, based on less stringent demands than “no rights violations” (where the government taking someone’s property without consent is a rights violation).
I really don’t get what you’re trying to say. We could think up a different way of providing a remedy when a right is wronged, but it too would cost money. The government can’t just sit around and hope that no one violates our rights.
What I was trying to say (poorly) is that the statement that “All rights require government action and expenditure to be realized” is false. My right to live exists with or without a government. My right to defend my life does not need government, let alone an action or expenditure.
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You are assuming that no one wants to be in poverty (probably should define "pverty in order to put aside disagreement over its meaning), but I know at least one person who choses to have a very low income and is quite happy with it. She’s not the only one out there.
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You are assuming that redistributive taxes actually keep people out of poverty. It hasn’t worked so far. I imagine the counter-argument to that is that we must not be redistributing enough (or in more populist terms, “we’re still taking from the poor and giving to the rich”) wealth, but this ignores human nature. Some people are lazy and while they may be happy to have a handout, it does not spur them to take care of themselves. Sure, there are people who work hard and through no direct fault of their own end up in dire straights, but we already have a non-coercive system of charities that deal with that. Are they perfect? No, but substantially better than any government program has ever been. If I had to pay fewer taxes, I’d also give more money to charities.
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What in this system prevents someone from freeloading in order to collect the poverty insurance? Gosh, I get food, shelter, healthcare, and whatever else would be paid, so why should I work? Poverty insurance doesn’t work because it creates a disincentive to work, just like redistributive taxation. You end up creating not a dichotomy of the “haves” and “have nots” but of the “producers” and the “freeloaders.”
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Based on future earnings? You’ve got to be kidding me. What’s predictable about that?
The fallacy in this line of questioning is the assumption that without government intervention these things would not exists.
And yet we do have private schools. And yet we do have roads paid for with use-fees, not taxes. And people do go to school with private funding (personal, family, scholarships and grants). And private hospitals do exists. And all of these exist despite the fact that we have massive government at all levels.
Do you believe that without government subsidization of college costs, most of the people who paid for college with this subsidization would not have gone? I don’t. If there is a demand for education, it happens. That we have removed the direct consumer of the education from bearing the full cost of education is a significant factor in the unrelenting rise of higher ed costs. In other words, if it isn’t my hard earned dollar paying for this, why do I care what it costs? Subsidization removes the incentive for education consumers to demand the best value for their dollar. As long as we believe the government will pay the lions share, what do we care?
I don’t follow the bit about corp and patent law. Please explain.
Yeah, I apparently have that strange idea in my head that what I earn by working hard and producing value is mine. Crazy talk, I know. Seriously, do you work? Hard? Do your produce things, thoughts, whatever, that other people value and trade with you for? That which you receive in trade for your hard work, is in not what you have earned? Is in not yours?
Fundamental reality?
That wars occurs to take property is only an indictment of waging war to take property. It is not an indictment of private property. War is not neccessary, nor has it ever been, to distribute property. Property now transfers, for the most part, peacefully and legally in the United States. It conceivably could have always been this way across the world, had societies recognized the benefits of establishing some sort of similar system.
Not to my satisfaction.
I am aware of the Constitution, which is acceptable as a contract, even though it is not.
The Constitution, unlike the mythical social contract (which many leftys I am discovering use as their ultimate fallback when nothing else justifies their social aggression) is written and has provision for change. I can read it and understand it and try to change it. Because I have not explictly agreed to it, I’m not technically bound to it’s terms and that’s what I mean by it not being a true contract. In some future day, I don’t think society will need such a document. Pipe dream perhaps.
Your assumption is that we agree on what “promote the general Welfare” means. I don’t think we do. My idea of promoting the general welfare means getting as much government as possible out of society. Not all necessarily, but a lot of it. I think it is in society’s best interest to have very small government. Others think government should do nearly everything. The interesting thing about my view vs. the “nearly everything” view is that the “nearly everything” view requires us all to pay a lot even if we don’t want it. Where’s the justice in that?
i]I want to live in a society where it is every man for himself, but we voluntarily chose to provide each other support.*
Who is “most of us”? Please look up the definition of “asocial” because I’ve never written or advocated anything like it. However, if someone wants to be asocial, good for him or her, it’s still legal until someone decides it does not benefit the “greater good.” But hey, thanks for the advice. I had no idea my situation was so bleak.
If forcibly taking a portion of the product of my labor restricts my freedom, then it is an act of slavery.
And it is laughably naive that you assume I am not aware that I am not dependent on society. The distinction, however, is that my dependence is mostly voluntary (it would be completely voluntary if I had the choice, but not everything is set up so, yet). I have entered into situations (like education) voluntarily and borne the responsibility and costs of these decisions. In other words, I traded. If I didn’t “give to get”, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now. But I’ve paid, or am paying, for what I received. I shouldn’t have to pay more than I bargained for. I shouldn’t have to subsidize anyone else unless I choose to, and no one should have to subsidize me. Why I should somehow be required to pay for what I do not want, need, or use is beyond me. Justify that please.
Since I have not explictly revealed any sources of factual information for my statement, how can you tell that it was informed by conservative propaganda? Does that not reveal a parallal ignorance? Don’t answer, because I don’t care. It really is irrelevant.
A universal, government funded healthcare system, which Canada has, is in my opinion, socialized. That medical care is rationed does not need a major research paper. It’s all over the news right now, and has been off and on for some time. Here is a quote from a Cato Institute research paper:
“Surgeons in Canada report that, for heart patients, the danger of dying on the waiting list now exceeds the danger of dying on the operating table. According to Alice Baumgart, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, emergency rooms are so overcrowded that patients awaiting treatment frequently line the corridors. Countries with national health care systems also lag far behind the United States in the availability of modern medical technology. It is well documented that in Canada, high-technology medicine is so rare as to be virtually unavailable.”
Sure the Cato Institute is a libertarian-based think tank, so you can dismiss it as biased, but I just read similar stuff in more than one online Canadian newspaper. I’m not going to write a footnoted research paper because the problems of the system are splashed all over the news. The Canadian Health Commissioner just advocated for more money to fix the problems! Solution aside, even he acknowledges that medicine is rationed.
Fianally, I have a friend from Canada who experienced the rationing first-hand. It took him over a month to see a doctor when his knee blew out!
So there’s my evidence. I don’t care if you think it is insufficient or not. I’m not here to change your mind. You can decide for yourself.
I didn’t say “my country does things better…” but it does take some hubris to assume that I am ignorant with no proof.
Gosh, jshore, you mean if I just demonstrate to you that I have performed extensive research then you’ll let me sit at the table? Oh, oh, oh!
If any of these things are required for my life objectives, I will gladly pay for them. I just want to pay for what I use and nothing more.
Mine too, me too. Right, choices we make can and do impose costs on others. Air pollution is an example. And when those costs can be reasonably quantified, they should be charged appropriately. Charged based on use, not wealth.