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Originally Posted by ashideena";p="
Liberty, I believe you are having a difficulty here. You are misunderstanding what I mean when I say contract. For a brief overview of social contract theory, see http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/soc-cont.htm
And, unlike your so-called "longstanding principle of law", social contract theory has a deep and rich history.
I will reiterate: "someone else" did not earn their money in a vacuum. They earned their money as part of a society, and they receive numerous benefits from society. I think it is only fair that they pay taxes commensurate with both their ability to pay, and the benefits they receive. In lieu of an exact system of measuring their benefits, we tax them based on their earnings. Makes a kind of sense, you might think. The ones who benefit most from the system are obviously the ones who have the most wealth.
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Why is it you have such a problem understanding that somebody else's hard-earned money is theirs, not yours? Or that taking it from them (no matter on what pretense) by force, or the threat of it, is still theft? It's morally repugnant. If your cause is just, you would simply ask if they'll agree to give so much of their money, not use the threat of men with guns.
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First, if it is wrong to take his money by force, what is to stop people from using services and not paying for them? Since obviously it's wrong to strip them of their money by force......
I say that if the man benefited from the stability society obviously afforded him, then HE is the one guilty of theft if he refuses to pay taxes. He uses our roads, he is protected by our police force, he works with those educated by our school system. I would, of course, prefer to see a better system. However, I do not believe Anarcho-Capitalism or Minarchism hold the answers. See 19th century America.
I would like to make a clarification that may help you understand me. I am not ideologically married to the idea of taxes. I merely think that taxation and government services have enough good mixed in with the bad to be supportable as general policies. I simply do not buy your theft argument, since most societies do not straitjacket you into paying. You can move, you can vote. I admit these are less than ideal remedies, but if communism(for instance) proves anything, it is that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
In closing, from http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html
Re: Your force argument
"This is not initiation of force. It is enforcement of contract, in this case an explicit social contract. Many libertarians make a big deal of "men with guns" enforcing laws, yet try to overlook the fact that "men with guns" are the basis of enforcement of any complete social system. Even if libertarians reduced all law to "don't commit fraud or initiate force", they would still enforce with guns." |
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I understood perfectly well what you meant by "social contract." According to the link, it basically means that every individual making up a society (at least by implication) becomes part of it, and cedes to it a certain amount of authority. But, for the purposes of this thread, I'll use my definition of a society---the individuals who make it up as seperate entities.
The first problem with this "social contract" begins with the authority it claims. None of the individuals have the power to "cede" to society (or it's alleged instrument, government) any authority they do not themselves have individually. If someone hires a hit-man to kill his/her spouse, does that absolve them from blame? Not by a loooooong shot. The hit-man was just the scoundrel who did his/her dirty work. Just like the contract between the hit-man and his conspirator, the contract is invalid---the spouse didn't have the right to kill the other, and couldn't cede such a right. Any contract that says so is not only invalid, it's criminal.
The next problem is the fact that the contract provides no recourse to abuses to members of a society by the rest of the membership. "Society" is not only the lawmaker, but also final arbiter of it's own actions. Perhaps now you begin to see the folly, not just of the "social contract," but the fact that society is not an entity.
On topic of this thread, you complain that the rich should be willing to pay more in taxes because they "benefit the most" from it. I say not true. They've provided more to society than society ever gave them. These "evil rich" started and invested in businesses, which gave society products, services and jobs. They gave that "educated work force" a reason for being. It made those roads necessary. They provided the primary reason we have a stable society. Society never "provided" anything on it's own, it had to use the money taken from it's members, and their labor, to "provide" anything you claim it does.
As for your friend Hubens quote, the contract he talks of "enforcing" would be declared criminal if presented in a civil court, as well as being null and void. He mis-represents the Libertarian idea on the use of force---our position is that the only
justifiable use of force is defensive, or (and only if that fails) retaliatory. No Libertarian ever bemoaned the use of force, just the
agressive use of force. This matter of taxation is, indeed, agressive. It is indistinguishable from theft.