Very well then, setting aside the moral dimension, I would further note that a purely voluntary society is impossible, because there is no way to perfectly isolate the effects we have on each other into yes-or-no voluntary choices. Imagine something as simple as the stench of your new fish cannery spoiling the aromas around my summer home…what voluntary choice did I make that justifies the externality of your stench?
Since in this scenario the property was acquired illegitimately, i have no right to defend it as my property.
What if you inherited it from your dad, who inherited it from HIS dad the dictator? How far back may we trace the provenance of property to determine whether it was acquired legitimately?
I think Will’s got it mostly wrong, but he is right about one thing: taxation implies the use of force, even deadly force. What happened to those tax protesters in New Hampshire? Their house was surrounded by men with guns and they got their power cut off.
Now of course we need taxes. There isn’t a country around that doesn’t tax. But all spending should have to meet a certain bar: Are we willing to use force to justify this program? IMO, most of what the federal government does doesn’t meet that standard. I certainly wouldn’t kill for NPR, or to force people to participate in Social Security or Obamacare(letting people voluntarily be part of these programs is fine though).
Step 1: State simplistic and implausible scenario as Truth.
Step 2: Completely ignore Human Nature and real world consequences of said scenario.
Step 3: Declare Moral Victory.
In the past, mafia style “protection” did actually protect you from both the mafia “protecting” you as well as any of the other mafias acting in the area and some of the unaffiliated actors. It may or may not have also given you some benefit as to red tape and bureaucracy.
The Sicilian Mafia rose up in the aftermath of feudalism in Italy as a form of loose government in order to protect property from bandits as well as to provide other protection services.
What an utterly bizarre proposition. How do you justify it?
And that’s precisely the point, I think: when there’s no government, people spontaneously fill the void with institutions that act like government. They are terrible and incompetent and brutal a lot of the time, but they provide the same fundamental service that Leviathan provides. If you don’t want mafiosos coming around demanding protection money in arbitrary and self-serving manners, you get them under your hell as much as you can by voting the mafioso in and out of office and putting checks and balances on them that prevent them from going overboard in their abuse of you.
Without thugs, government becomes useless. Without thugs, government cannot function.
I’m taking grant proposals for eliminating thugs.
The Mafia IS feudalism.
In the absence of civil authority, order is maintain by thugs. Over time the power relationships between bands of thugs solidify since it’s generally in everyone’s best interests to keep fighting to a minimum. Of course, turf wars still break out from time to time when one thug thinks he has the opportunity to gain an advantage, but in general you get a stable hierarchy of thuggery, with the capo-of-capos sitting at the top of the pile and everyone else swearing loyalty to the thugs above.
This is how Europe was organized from the 5th to the 18th Centuries – a hierarchy of mob bosses called the aristocracy. And there’s a strong push to return to that system now. In the absence of a strong central government, the vacuum is filled by a feudal hierarchy of the rich and powerful.
The push is to question how strong the central government needs to be to avoid a vacuum for extralegal tyranny, not to create the vacuum.
Taxation may or may not be immoral, but before I can get interested in this premise, I’ll need to hear in what specific ways the OP feels he is harmed by taxation. In other words, prove measurable damages and maybe I’ll listen.
Tell me, OP, have you ever been bona fide extorted ? I mean, by the Mob, the Triads, Yakuzas, people who know about extortion ? If so, what did you get in return, exactly ; and did you have any input on how your extortion money was spent ?
I’ve had my shit taken from me a coupla times. Well, not ALL my shit, but a lot of my most important shit. I’m still here.
I dispute your assertion.
I was watching a documentary on the Medicis recently, and was amazed by how reminiscent of the Mafia their style of government was. Not so much the “protection racket” aspect, but lots of the “we’ll do you a personal favour now and expect some loyalty in return later”.
Are contracts extortion? They are also backed up by the threat of force, kidnapping, or robbery.
Let’s say I agree to buy a fridge from you, COD. You deliver the fridge. Then I decide that I don’t want to pay, which, as a free individual, I must enjoy the right to change my mind.
You take me to court and win your case. The court orders me to pay you, but as a free individual, I refuse. I reject the power of the state to intervene in the affairs between me and you. Then the options are that someone either comes to rob me (either of my fridge or my money) or maybe I end up in jail for contempt or something. Either way, that’s a crime against a free person.
Therefore, contracts are robbery. It doesn’t matter how long contracts have been around through history, as a free person, I should not be compelled to do something I no longer care to do.
Same thing with taxes.
That’s not hard. Fork over 25-50% of your income or else.
Before we define taxes as extortion, lets first define ownership. The government can’t extort something from you unless you own it in the first place. You may claim to own your car or your house, but that is just because you are backed up by a band of thugs who will only let you use these items and will prevent me if I try to use them, even if you aren’t using them at the time and my need for them is greater than yours!!. All property is theft. Since you claim to be against theft you must be against individual property.
Some may claim that, we have always have property, or that civilization would collapse without property. I would say that we just haven’t tried it yet so we don’t really know and furthermore theft is immoral and so as a moral society we should reject it. Further, I never agreed to the other peoples ownership of things, why should this be forced on me. So all arguments to the contrary are bogus.
Even animals have ownership, they have territory. it’s what we naturally do. besides, when everyone owns a goat, who gets up in the middle of the night to care for it when it’s sick?
The nanny of course.
I’m a bit surprised at the knee jerk reactions to the OP. Taxation does share a LOT of similarities with extortion, in particular extortion mechanisms like protection rackets. If a mafioso says you pay him a hundred dollars a week or your business gets wrecked, and the taxman says you pay him a thousand dollars a year or you go to jail, those are significant similarities. One cosmetic difference between the two is that in modern times, taxes are levied by democratically elected governments. Extortion by a majority approved entity is still extortion though.
The only real difference between extortion and taxation is that governments provide services which are non excludable and have significant externalities - i.e if your government keeps an army and police force that brings peace, law, and order, the benefits of peace accrue to everyone, and it is fair that everyone pays to keep the army. So the “taxation is similar to extortion” argument is not a good argument for scrapping taxation. However, it is a very good argument for keeping taxation as low as it can be while still providing services which are clearly essential, non excludable, and provide significant externalities.
Animals also operate in groups in which group members are expected to contribute to the common good. Hence efforts to eliminate taxation go against the natural order.