Truth-Bringer: Taxation is part of the social contract, plain and simple. I fail to see how it constitutes theft. The government protects your rights and generally aids society with your tax monies. Sounds like you're paying for a service you have implicitly agreed to by living and working within whatever country you live in.

To help me understand your argument. Do you, for instance, think all forms of taxation are theft? Payroll tax, social security, sales, etc?

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/soc-cont.htm#H2

Ah...the mythical Social Contract...the Holy Grail of Statists and Collectivists everywhere. One problem though - it doesn't exist. All contracts must entered into KNOWINGLY and VOLUNTARILY. There is no "society" to contract with -that's the reification fallacy. If every individual human being on earth suddenly dies, does society still exist? No.

Collectivizing into a group grants no new rights to the group. No collective majority has the right to deprive a minority of rights - and the smallest minority on earth is the individual.

So the Nazis protected the rights of the Jews and aided them with tax revenue? The Soviet Union protected the rights of its citizens and aided them with tax money - or did it subjegate them with tax money? The list goes on and on. Governments have killed more human beings in history than any other group on the planet, by far. You need to do a little more research:

http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/rape8.shtml

I didn't agree knowingly and voluntarily to any such service. If the issue is territory, when did the State get the right to the land? If you're going to say "well you can get out of the "contract" if you just leave" - my reply is "why doesn't the State just leave?"

Any money or property taken by threat of force or force is theft, regardless of the terminology used to describe it.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Truth, given that your various extreme riffs on individual rights mean that government above the town level would be impossible to sustain (and perhaps even town-level government wouldn't work), how would you best describe yourself? What I've come up with is Libertarian anti-Zionist anarchist.

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

LOL, that's not accurate. I describe myself as a Libertarian - if you want to get more descriptive on foreign policy, then pro-neutrality. I advocate a federal government relegated to defending individual rights - the only legitimate function of government - as was done under Jefferson, minus slavery. But I'm certainly willing to experiment with other options, as long as no one's rights are violated in the process.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

What is the problem people have with grasping that if some people become wealthy through inventing things that other can use, that we all benefit from this?

If someone were to invent a food replicator a la Star Trek tomorrow, and become the richest man or woman in the world because of it, why would you care? YOU BUY THEIR PRODUCT AND YOU NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT FOOD AGAIN - YOU NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT COOKING AGAIN - AND THEY JUST SOLVED THE WORLD HUNGER PROBLEM. So who cares if they get rich??????????? They just made everybody's life a lot easier.

You guys have to get over your envy, jealousy and other negative emotions and see that there's nothing wrong with the free market. The fastest advancements are, as Einstein said, made by the individual laboring in freedom.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Truthbringer: Just because the social contract has some unique features does not mean it is not a contract. In fact, the contract for the United States is explicitly written up in the form of the Constitution.

Also, specific examples of governments that abused their powers do not prove that governments are inherently bad(no more so than corporations who abuse the environment and their workers prove that all corporations are bad). And I would suggest that religious/ethnic wars have killed more people than governments.

As far as your argument about leaving... You are both free to leave, and free to attempt to modify the existing social contract by voting. If you had a lease for an apartment, and you discovered that some of your landlord's policies were repugnant to you, would you demand that your landlord leave?

I agree with you, Truth-Bringer, that the free market was a good idea. It is a powerful tool for making everyone's life better. However, there are many things it does NOT do well. Among other things, it deals poorly with environmental issues, health care(see cable tv infomercials), social safety nets, education, etc. We can argue about the desirability of those things, but it does not change the fact that the free market deals poorly with them.

And this brings me to a question for you. If a government should have a minimal role like defense, how is the government paying for it? Would it be a voluntary contribution system? Some kind of use-fee arrangement? I would like to be clear on your view, because when I first read it it seemed.... contradictory.

Defining contract:
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=contract

Free market environmentalism:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/E...reeMarket.html
A note: This url is pro environmental free market practices, yet admits current practical difficulties with it. And this would require fairly massive, invasive government intervention to implement.

Education:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/ed...rssnyt&emc=rss

Health Care:
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCw...are%20world%22

Social Safety Nets:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTE...282761,00.html

The Constitution is in fact not a valid legal contract either, and in truth binds no one to anything. I happen to like many things about the Constitution because it was an attempt to create a limited government that protected natural law and invidual rights, but it was a flawed document from the beginning. Lysander Spooner destroys the argument that the Constitution is a social contract here:

http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm

I'm not saying do away with Constitutions, I'm just saying they must reflect a full protection of individual rights or they are in truth null and void. As long as people do not use force or fraud to deprive others of rights, they should have unlimited right to voluntary contracts.

Certainly doesn't prove they're inherently good either.

While corporations can definitely commit crimes, a corporation is always less dangerous than a government because they do not have the ability to use LEGALIZED FORCE against people. If you say "I don't want to shop at Wal-Mart", then you don't have to. It's just that simple. Wal-Mart can't retaliate and send armed goons to your house to drag you into their store and force you to buy their products, but government can do that if you don't "buy its services". Corporations can defraud people, there's no doubt about it, but so can government. Usually, corporate criminals attempt to buy off politicians so the government will look the other way while they commit crimes. But who does the fault lie with there? With the government. So we need severe penalties - I would say life in prison with no parole - for government officials who do these types of things. THEN, you can clean up corporate crime for the most part.

You might suggest that, but I don't think the evidence is on your side, although sometimes the lines may seem a little blurred. Bottom line - who raises armies? Governments. Who pays and conscripts soldiers? Governments. Who manufactures and/or buys weapons of war? Governments.

People were free to vote in the Soviet Union, but of course they were somewhat limited in their choices... And apparently their "social contract" did not allow them the ability to leave... But regardless, voting in and of itself does not equal freedom. And the majority does not have the right to vote down rights of the minority.

In that case, you VOLUNTARILY agreed to live there. Your landlord wasn't FORCING you to do things in order to stay on the property. And you shouldn't DISCOVER new policies - you should have signed a contract in the beginning with FULL KNOWLEDGE and FULL DISCLOSURE. If your landlord failed to do that, then he violated the contract and he becomes liable. You can sue him and force him to live up to his end of the bargain.

I think the free market is perceived as not handling these things well due to government corruption in the past. If government takes action when someone has a legitimate violation via force or fraud, then there's no reason any of things should be a problem. No system can ever be perfect. But as I said earlier, at many times in the past you've had business owners paying off government officials to have them look the other way when they committed crimes. We need a system that makes government officials more accountable for their misdeeds - because if they're compromised, then there's no opportunity for true justice.

Well, we should have a much cheaper defense because we should remain neutral and have a national militia similar to Switzerland, but without involuntary conscription. We should first repeal the income tax and begin privatizing as many aspects of government as possible. Then we should at some future time repeal all internal taxes and fund the government via a flat tariff. The basic functions could easily be met like this, because inflation will disappear once a precious metals standard is restored to the currency and the Federal Reserve is abolished. Eventually, we should experiment with voluntary user fees if everything else works out as intended.

Pollution is a violation of rights and there should be a mechanism within government to deal with it. The environmental issue isn't that hard to solve if you extend private property rights like England did. All the details are here:

http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap8.html

http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap14.html

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

You have repeatedly asserted that the Constitution is not a legal contract. You are correct, but I am not saying it is a legal contract, it is a social one. Stop using contract as if it has one, and only one, meaning.

By being part of a social contract, ideally you give up a handful of the freedoms you would normally possess(the right to kill freely, the right to take whatever you wish) to gain a defense against others doing this. Government ideally protects you from force. If you live in a country and benefit from the government's protection and tax monies, and do not pay taxes, it is YOU who are stealing.

I was objecting to your fallacious reasoning, not attempting to suggest that governments are inherently good OR bad. They are tools, means to an end. Nothing more.


Your point is well taken, but you over focus on legalized force, as if it were somehow special. There are many kinds of force, ranging from economic, physical, legal, etc. And if a corporation chooses to use it's economic pressure to put me out of business, I have no real way of fighting back. Not even the limited remedy of voting.

Your argument that it's the government's fault when corporate criminals commit crimes is ludicrous. Corporate crimes often occur DESPITE our governments attempts to stop them. Corporate crime involving government corruption IS far more common than I care for, but the difficulty lies in catching those who abuse their power, not in the punishment leveled against them.

No, the bottom line is that ethnic and religious conflicts have driven most wars. What were the Crusades, WWII, and dozens of other conflicts throughout history?

Regarding your point about the Soviet Union, their social contract was invalid and wasn't functioning anyway. They were a dictatorship, not a republic.

In that case, you VOLUNTARILY chose to live in your country. Your country wasn't FORCING you to do things in order to stay on the property(except pay taxes=pay rent). And you have FULL KNOWLEDGE and FULL DISCLOSURE of your government's policies(at least, ideally). And if you disagree with your government's policies, you have a VOICE. You can VOTE.

As far as your argument that we need a system that makes government officials more accountable for their misdeeds- I wholeheartedly agree.

I have no views on a precious metals standard except the minor criticism that a glut of gold or platinum(due to new discovery) could do bad things to the money supply. I agree with your points regarding cost of defense and the proper role of our military/militia.

I think our disagreement consists primarily of our respective ideas regarding "basic government functions" and our ideas of what constitutes force and theft.

Thank you for the civil discussion.

Well, I think you need to show me my signature on that "contract." Can't? Right, because I never signed it. If it were presented to me, I wouldn't sign it. It is a long-standing principle of law that no-one is bound by a contract unless they have entered into it voluntarily and can be shown that such is the case (such as a signature.)

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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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely----Lord Acton

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.

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."[/quote]