If it’s stupid to vote against one’s self interests, then it was stupid for white men to vote to grant the franchise to non-white men, and later women. It’s stupid for the non-poor to vote for welfare. It’s stupid for the non-rich to not vote to confiscate property.
Government isn’t just an economic calculus of self-interests, it has a moral dimension as well. If you think it’s morally wrong to take more than a third or a half or whatever figure of someone else’s income, even if you would benefit from it, that’s not stupidity, it’s a moral choice. I’d benefit from stealing, but I don’t. Does that make me stupid?
People in the south, people everywhere, (the OP excepted) know that we need taxes. That doesn’t mean they must agree with your opinion of what the tax burden should be, on whom it should fall, or what the revenue should be used for.
The current government can do whatever they want at whatever time they want. Eventually they may be voted out, but that does not change the arbitrary nature in which they wield power at any given moment.
Right now we pay governmet to protect our property rights. In absence of government we could pay a private protection service to do the exact same thing.
A corollary to your assertion is that whenever powerful people can take property from others, private property is not possible. You seem to be neglecting the fact that this is the basic function of government. They take money by force because they are the most powerful group.
I have an alternative assertion. With a government, you cannot have private property because what you have will simply be taken from you by a powerful government.
While I think you dramatically overstate, I do agree with some kernel of this observation. One of the eye opening aspects of the period of 2000-2008 was just how much of the functioning of the government apparently rested on people following tacit or implicit rules. The understood limits of the executive suddenly became a lot less understood, and that was troubling.
No, this is false. You keep sidestepping this, but the government takes money because they are authorized to do so. We, the people, have authorized them to do so, and they do it in the manner prescribed, following due process, and subject to modification by we, the people.
My private property will simply be taken? It’s never happened to me or my family. I guess I’m just due, huh?
Except that you could also pay a private invasion service to take other people’s property, and there’d be no appeal to that invasion. Under a government, you don’t get to do that.
Yes, they do–but they also prevent anyone else from doing it, and they give you a voice in how that seizure of property occurs. Without a government, anyone could do that, without your getting a say in how it’s done. So there’d really be no such thing as private property then unless you were personally part of the biggest army, and then other people wouldn’t have property private from you.
Fundamentally, the government does “own” all of our labor. At any moment they could confiscate our wealth with the stroke of a pen. The only reason they don’t do this is to prevent insurrection.
Ultimately, a constitution is a piece of paper. The government’s courts decide which rights we actually have. The thousands of prisoners in our jails haven’t been protected from enslavement any more than the Japanese in WWII.
Taxes can only be called a fee if they are voluntary. They aren’t.
You’re benefitting from the presence of kleenex whether you choose to or not. Your world would be much snottier without them. Why can’t they legitimately take the fruit of my labor?
As an aside, I am put at risk by the military’s silly adventures. The police also arrest those who do me no harm and could conceivably do the same to me. They also arrest those who don’t pay what you call “fees”.
One of the stranger arguments I’ve heard. The pledge of allegiance that i recited as a minor bound me contractually to pay taxes?
Ireland for around 1000 years since at least the 7th century is a commonly cited stateless society.
A person cannot “authorize” the taking of money from another. This would implicate him in the act of theft and make criminals out of the majority.
Do you earn a paycheck. You better hope they don’t plan a highway throught your living room.
Is it really ours if it can be taken at any moment by fiat? I’d say no, it’s on loan if anything.
That is one of the common defenses of government offered in this very thread. Where ya been?
The vast majority of people are moral. There are a few bad apples who might try to start up a rogue firm, but that would ultimately be a failing business model and the protection firm that most support would easily dismantle this small force.
How quaint.
What makes you think a private protection service couldn’t be arranged in a democratic manner similar to our government?
You are correct, ours is not a fully voluntary society. Because a fully voluntary society is impossible. How does that private court system work, again?
This is not innate. People are not inherently good; Transcendentalism is hokum. Morality works when there are incentives to be moral, and it breaks down when there are incentives to be immoral. It’s a social construct that exists to make society possible, and nothing more.
Where everybody lived in peace and harmony with each other, respecting the individual’s self-worth and entering into mutually-beneficial free contracts, right?
Not really a good cite for your shaky to the point of delusional premise.
No one loses everything due to taxes? They won’t seize your property for failure to pay? See, the nice thing about owing private lenders is that they can’t take your primary residence. The government can, and will.
I don’t have the time to go into it but if you’re genuinely interested there’s an essayby economist Bob Murphy that deals with the fundamentals in relatively short order.
In summary, one would purchase a general insurance. This would mean that the insurer vouched for your trustworthiness. An individual or business without such insurance would likely have a hard time finding folks willing to engage with that person. When signing such insurance you would likely agree to submit to arbitration with some established court. If you failed to submit, you would be dropped from your insurance and find it hard to make a living, as you would now be a sort of outcast with no protection.
In Ireland, for many years, your kinship group served as a type of insurance and they picked up the tab in the event you could not pay your debts. Also if you were killed they would be entitled to a large sum. If you continually defaulted on your debts you would be disowned and without the protection of your kinship group. Without this protection, it would be acceptable to kill you, so it basically became a banishment sentence to be disowned by your kinship group.
I made no claim as to *why *most people are moral because it matters not. There would even more incentives to be moral in absence of government. Government acts immorally, thereby undermining society’s morals.
So suppose A, B, and C decide they need a road. Taxes are taken such that A pays $200, B pays $300 and C pays $500.
Building the road helps A get to work where he earns $1000, B uses the road to get to the hospital and save his life, value unknown, and C uses the road to get his fruit to market and earn $3,000.
Who in this scenario is not getting his money worth out of the taxes?
Is this, finally, our long-awaited example of Farnabytopia? Interesting. To a first approximation, the political system of medieval Ireland was competing warlords – not unlike the stateless Somalia example. One difference is that the Christian church provided some stability in Ireland. It raised money via simony more than via taxation – simony isn’t “extortion”?
Even if government did nothing else, defense is one area that is one thing that shouldn’t be left to private individuals. If a neighboring country decides that they are going to invade, an army funded by taxes is going to be more useful in securing individual liberty than individual being left to their own devices.
You may wish to read what happened to the great Irish libertarian utopia after the 7th century to find out what happened next. When a land with no effective centralized army meets an aggressive, expansionist neighbor, you may find that the inhabitants of the former would think that the “extortion” of paying taxes to maintain a defense force may increase individual liberty after all.
Bah, who needs insurance? I’ll just steal whatever I need, and kill you if you try to stop me. Better still, I’ll get a whole band of like-minded fellows together to do it. I never signed anything saying you can take me to court for stealing or harm me in any way.
It matters if you’re changing the incentives that underlie it. Yes, there would be a morality in the absence of government, but it would be different, and to my sensibilities inferior. What you do in such a society is much more closely linked to what you can get away with than what’s right. If you’re backed by a powerful clan or faction, there are no disincentives to evil. Yes, that can be true of government as well, but democratic government is accountable to others in a way that clans are not.