Capitolism: Harnessing the Power of Stupid

[J’raxis 270145]

Nobody forces you to buy cigarettes for example, you can always grow your own tobacco, make your own paper, and build your own matches.  If you want to voluntarily pay the tax, you get to take advantage of society, and its probably cost effective for you to do so.

You'd need to be careful how your sales tax is implemented. In many current implementations of taxes on products, they expect you to pay the tax even if you didn't buy the product. The British, for example, have been going after people making their own biofuel, for not paying the gasoline tax.

[J’raxis 270145]

Look, I love you guys, but you are just plain wrong about this.

Did you see my last post in the thread you started? This is what I mean how it's really counterproductive to be arguing with people when you agree with them 95%. Figuring out exactly how a free state would raise revenue, if at all, is something we won't really have to worry about for a long time.

[EthanAllen]

Look, I love you guys, but you are just plain wrong about this.

Did you see my last post in the thread you started? This is what I mean how it's really counterproductive to be arguing with people when you agree with them 95%. Figuring out exactly how a free state would raise revenue, if at all, is something we won't really have to worry about for a long time.

You would have to change the fundamental tenet of libertarianism (the right of self-ownership) though.

[EthanAllen]

It becomes a voluntary tax when you dont have to pay the tax to survive.

Geez-

Why not make it easy. A flat tax on income and everyone gets a basic income guarantee for goods and services needed for survival? (Charles Murray's latest proposal)

the problem I have with a flat tax on income is that there is no mechanism by which the individual can protest and revoke his support of the system.

Agorism or secession!

[jsorens]

The marginal income tax works by taxing income only above a certain amount. I don't know what the minimum bracket is, but let's say it's $30,000. You don't need more than $30,000 to live. So if you make under that amount, you don't pay taxes, but if you make over that amount, you start paying on your additional income. Seems to fit your schema quite nicely.

Not really.  There is no way for me to determine how much food or clothing or shelter you might need to survive, so to tax you on any wage would be a possible infringement on your right to own 'yourself'.

That's a bit of a stretch. 

If you are profiting from the labor of someone else, thats a different story, and I dont have a problem putting a marginal tax above a certain income on that activity.

A frail, retired grandmother probably needs her investment income to survive. (Which is profiting off the labor of someone else.)

Being forced not to do certain activities if I don't want to pay taxes is still force, and it's still a violation of rights. If I want to buy something from a neighbor that he lawfully owns, he and I consent to a bargain, and the government can come with their guns and imprison for failing to give them a cut, that's coercion no matter how you slice it. By saying it's not coercion, you're either saying that: a) my money is not mine to dispose of, it's the government's, or b) that item my neighbor wishes to sell is not his, but the government's. So much for property rights.

Nobody is forcing you NOT to do anything, and nobody has a inalienable RIGHT to trade.  If there were an inalienable right to trade, there would be no way for society to force people to make recompense when they commit fraud or deceit.

I don't follow. The problem with fraud, morally speaking, is that it's an infringement on the right to trade. (BTW, "inalienable" means that a right can't be alienated, even voluntarily, which is a narrow category by most accounts. You probably mean, "indefeasible.")

You talk about lawful ownership, but Im not sure you have considered what that means.  History shows us that one can only own what he can enforce ownership of, in a society with no law, that means he who kills fastest and most efficiently owns the most.  It is the development of laws themselves, and the enforcement mechanisms that come along with them, that gave rise to the legal right of ownership or alienation of ownership at all. 

Well, this is a separate subject. I'm speaking of the law of morality, not the law of the jungle. The fact that people will steal from me or kill me if I'm too weak to defend myself does not mean that it's not wrong for them to steal from or kill me. By the same token, the fact that people will steal from me or kill me if I'm too weak to defend myself does not mean that it's not wrong for a group of people calling themselves the "government" to steal from me under the pretext of protecting me.

Without the system there to enforce your property rights, your property rights will only last as long as your skill in killing those who would take your property is greater than all comers. 

What this valid point demonstrates is that it is in my best interests to consent to a protection agency, most likely the government, to help me defend my rights. (I'm not an anarcho-capitalist.) However, if government takes my property despite the fact that I have, however foolishly, not consented to their protection, it's still wrong. (I'm not a statist either.)

[EthanAllen]

it is in my best interests to consent to a protection agency, most likely the government, to help me defend my rights. (I'm not an anarcho-capitalist.) However, if government takes my property despite the fact that I have, however foolishly, not consented to their protection, it's still wrong. (I'm not a statist either.)

Very nicely worded Jason!

Can I borrow these words without attributing them to you (maybe I'll make some slight alterations) or do you have a copyright on them?

[jsorens]

it is in my best interests to consent to a protection agency, most likely the government, to help me defend my rights. (I'm not an anarcho-capitalist.) However, if government takes my property despite the fact that I have, however foolishly, not consented to their protection, it's still wrong. (I'm not a statist either.)

Very nicely worded Jason!

Can I borrow these words without attributing them to you (maybe I'll make some slight alterations) or do you have a copyright on them?

Whatsa matter, why you can't attribute them to me?  Just kidding. Err, sure, be my guest.

[jsorens]

That's a bit of a stretch. 

how so?  how am I to know how many kids you have?

Just require them to report it to the gummint.  But if you're making $200K per year in salary, it's pretty clear you're past the survival point, nay?

I don't follow. The problem with fraud, morally speaking, is that it's an infringement on the right to trade. (BTW, "inalienable" means that a right can't be alienated, even voluntarily, which is a narrow category by most accounts. You probably mean, "indefeasible.")

What exactly is the right to trade?  And how does this right exist independent of another person taking part?  Libertarianism is about individual ownership of the self, not about a group, even a group of two.  Once you enter the realm of multiple people, you start complicating things, and unless you plan on killing everyone who crosses you, you need a system of justice to enforce this right.

OK, fair enough. Still don't see how this means that the right to trade is defeasible by something else.

History teaches us that there is no absolute objective morality,

Not sure what "absolute" means in this context. How can history teach us that there is no morality? That sounds like an inversion of the naturalistic fallacy. (That people act evilly does not mean that evil does not exist.)

I am certainly not advocating the government to take your property, I am however, advocating the charging of a fee, in the form of a sales tax, for when you take advantage of the services that government offers.  If you can live your life on your land, manufacturing what you need that isnt required for survival, I see no need for you to interact with society, or pay for government services at all.

What if I don't want government protection but still want to interact with others who also don't want government protection, or don't want to require me to purchase it? Or what if I want government protection, but just not from this particular government? Tough noogies?

(BTW, what gives one particular government the right to become the government to be honored, obeyed, and served with sacrifices of taxation? If the People's Republic of China invaded and imposed its legal system and a sales tax of the kind you propose, would that be all just and good? Or would we be right to resist them? If the latter, then why don't we have the right to resist the United States of America's imposing its will? If we don't have the right to resist them, then is it OK for countries to invade each other & impose legal systems & sales taxes? If it's not OK, then how do you get a government that's OK in the first place? There had to be some group of people invading and imposing for government to get started up in the 1st place.)

Well, I'm off to bed! Hope to continue this conversation tomorrow evening.

[EthanAllen]

it is in my best interests to consent to a protection agency, most likely the government, to help me defend my rights. (I'm not an anarcho-capitalist.) However, if government takes my property despite the fact that I have, however foolishly, not consented to their protection, it's still wrong. (I'm not a statist either.)

Very nicely worded Jason!

Can I borrow these words without attributing them to you (maybe I'll make some slight alterations) or do you have a copyright on them?

Whatsa matter, why you can't attribute them to me?  Just kidding. Err, sure, be my guest.

Just curious - are you familiar with Nock's articulation of the difference between a state and governance as legitimate agency building off of Oppenheimer?

Sheldon Richman did a nice article recently on it over at FEE.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0603b.asp

excerpt:
Nock begins by drawing the contrast between what he called social power and state power. Here he reflects the influence of the classical-liberal sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, whose earlier book, The State, distinguished the only two ways to obtain wealth: the economic means and the political means. As Oppenheimer wrote,

    There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others.... I propose ... to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the "economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means."

    ... The state is an organization of the political means. No state, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery. [Emphasis added.]

Nock picks up from there:

    It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

For Nock, "the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another." Today we tend to associate talk about class exploitation with Marx and Marxism. But in fact liberals (libertarians) developed class analysis before Marx. The theory is attributed to two French liberals, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. In their theory, class and exploitation arise the moment a taxing authority comes into existence, for at that point we have the emergence of two groups: tax-producers and tax-consumers. Taxation is the quintessential form of exploitation. One group labors in behalf of another, the fruits of that labor being expropriated for the privileged class.

Nock (and Oppenheimer) saw this characteristic in all states. But it should be pointed out that Nock distinguished state from government. For him, government grows out of people's desire for freedom, security, and justice, and its interventions are negative. It is what Jefferson (whom Nock admired immensely) had in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. In contrast, a state originates in conquest and intervenes positively in order to appropriate the product of honest laborers for the benefit of the privileged class. This distinction between state and government has been criticized by later libertarians (such as Murray Rothbard), largely on the grounds that any organization that claims the power to tax is to be scorned regardless of what it is called. But Nock was quite insistent. He wrote,

    They [government and state] are so different in theory that drawing a sharp distinction between them is now probably the most important duty that civilization owes to its own safety.

At any rate, Nock, although he sometimes called himself an anarchist, endorsed limited government, complete with taxation, at the township level. He favored the Articles of Confederation, with some changes, leaving few functions at the national level. Higher levels of government would have to ask the townships for revenue. Perhaps the best term for Nock is "radical decentralist."

[EthanAllen]

What exactly is the right to trade?  And how does this right exist independent of another person taking part?  Libertarianism is about individual ownership of the self, not about a group, even a group of two.

Yes, libertarianism is about the absolute right to self-ownership and therefore the foundation of property rights (and the freedom that flows from those rights) is the property that each person has in himself and, by extension, in the fruits of ALL his labor.

The problem is keeping 'government' in check, the solution is not to abolish it, but to bind it with the chains of an active and assertive citizenry.

I personally think the root cause is the neo-classical revolution in economics that swept away the moral study of political economy based on 3 factor (land, labor, and capital) distributive justice (who and under what conditions and obligations to those excluded, gets access and use of the natural and social commons) for the study of the amoral, supposedly objective hard science of 2 factor economics (labor vs. capital) based corrective justice (voluntary trade of subjectively determined "like kinds" w/contracts).

[EthanAllen]

Having the right to the fruits of ALL of your labor means you get to keep what you produce.

As I said, "and the freedom that flows from those rights" includes the freedom to voluntarily trade with anyone else based on each individual owner's subjective determination of like value so that each is better off after the transaction.

As there are real costs to maintaining stable opportunities for these exchanges, and someone has to bear them, why not require those who benefit from them to pay the cost of providing these opportunities.

But you haven't shown exactly how any costs are externalized in this voluntary transaction and thus not borne solely by the parties to the transaction that would violate anyone else's absolute right to self-onwership.

What is the mechanism to transfer these costs like economic rent is?

[jsorens]

At any rate, Nock, although he sometimes called himself an anarchist, endorsed limited government, complete with taxation, at the township level. He favored the Articles of Confederation, with some changes, leaving few functions at the national level. Higher levels of government would have to ask the townships for revenue. Perhaps the best term for Nock is "radical decentralist."

It sounds to me as if Nock endorsed government at a low enough level that it enjoys real consent to an actual social contract, in which case taxation is no longer a violation of rights (e.g., the community association). I endorse his distinction between "government" and "state" if that is indeed the basis of his distinction. There are "governments" everywhere - corporations, nonprofits, & so on. Their only legal powers (should) come from contract.

[EthanAllen]

At any rate, Nock, although he sometimes called himself an anarchist, endorsed limited government, complete with taxation, at the township level. He favored the Articles of Confederation, with some changes, leaving few functions at the national level. Higher levels of government would have to ask the townships for revenue. Perhaps the best term for Nock is "radical decentralist."

It sounds to me as if Nock endorsed government at a low enough level that it enjoys real consent to an actual social contract, in which case taxation is no longer a violation of rights (e.g., the community association). I endorse his distinction between "government" and "state" if that is indeed the basis of his distinction. There are "governments" everywhere - corporations, nonprofits, & so on. Their only legal powers (should) come from contract.

It seems more like a hybrid of classical liberalism and civic republicanism, like Jefferson's model of ward republicanism, where a citizen acts as their own legislator even though majority may rule. Remember civic republicanism didn't view individual freedom the same way as classical liberalism. CR believed that individual freedom was achieved by practicing virtuous behavior within in small-scale, face-to-face, deliberative bodies whereas CL believed that free will, reason, and a subjective evaluation of self-interest allows individuals to voluntarily contract with any other individual to the betterment of both.

It seems to me that Nock was saying that by definition a state hands out privileges to further "paper" or law-based property as class interests against those being excluded that violates their labor-based property rights. This is a very similar argument to mutualism on the left and southern agrarianism & catholic distributism on the right although their prescriptions are different. Mutualists gravitated to occupancy and use standards to eliminate most of the economic rent (closer to pure anarchism) and SA/CD advocated a much stronger role for government (maybe because they are comfortable with authority/hierarchy via religion) to protect families & communities.

Nock's Georgist background led him to define local governance as legitimate authority because by definition it required an obligation to those being excluded by privilege (community collection of economic rent) to uphold their absolute right to self-ownership. The landowner's right of self-ownership stayed intact because they contributed no labor towards the creation of economic rent. Exclusive use in an inelastic scarcity market like land compels those being excluded to labor (force) as the location that they occupy in proximity is made higher. The reason why local governance as legitimate authority (LGLA) has to have a monopoly on power over a specific region is because the economic rent, which results in compelling those in proximity to the location being used exclusively, is spread over a geographical territory.

[EthanAllen]

It is not self evident that the right to ownership of the self, and to the right of the fruits of ones labor entitles one to the right of access to social networks that have been built and maintained by others.

What exact social network are you referring to?

I, as an individual, grow apples. My neighbor, as an individual, makes maple syrup. One day we are chatting on our property line and he says to me "Hey, I would love some apples...would you like some maple syrup?" and I say "sure, what did you have in mind?" He replies: "How about a pint of my maple syrup for a bushel of your apples?" I say: "Make it a quarts and you got a deal!"

Where is the social network you are referring to? I go fetch a bushel of apples and meet him back at the property line and we exchange goods - free trade.

the problem here is not so much one of externalities as it is one of free riding.

What is the difference? Aren't the just two sides of the same coin? If I am free riding then I am benefiting without pay the costs. If I am externalizing then I am benefiting while forcing the costs on others.

What specific costs am I not paying by trading my apples for my neighbors maple syrup?

[CNHT]

And someone my age, who has provided for her own maintenance after working a full career, should not have to pay a second tax on anything she gets from that, at all.