From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 21:13:49 MDT
On Thursday, August 29, 2002 9:38 PM Damien Broderick
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
>>All government employees are paid out of
>> taxes. This includes Marines and all other
>> servicemen and women. I.e., they are net
>> tax receivers. Since they are paid out of
>> taxes, they are receiving stolen goods.
>
> As usual, I remain puzzled by this strange
> assertion. If most voters (which is to say,
> most adults in `western' democracies and
> republics) agree that tax is theft or extortion,
> might they not be expected to take one of two
> immediate steps?
I'm not sure about other countries, most qualified adults in the US
don't vote, so anything the majority of actually voting people agree on
would only apply to them, no?
> First, resist it by refusing to pay.
Since tax avoidance and resistence is quite high, I assume that many
people do just this. High profile arrests are used, for the most, to
scare those at the margin.
> Second, vote
> overwhelmingly for the first candidate who
> declares an intention of abolishing taxation.
I agree somewhat with your following point. Most people pay mainly
because they don't see an alternative. Also, on candidates running on
the abolition of taxes ticket, generally in most places candidates
promising to cut taxes do get elected or should good numbers in
elections. However, most people who vote don't vote on one issue, but
either on a constellation of issues or personal appeal.
That still doesn't explain everything. After all, one would expect,
after a while, just by randomness, for taxes to be abolished somewhere
democratically. Here, I agree with Hoppe. Democracies (and republics)
basically create a class society and because of the dynamic of this
society, it's hard to break out of taxation and public spending. The
former is so widely distributed that no one group or person feels enough
localized pain to invest time and effort against it, while certain
groups (net tax receiver) at the benefit strongly from it. The nature
of the system, too, is, again per Hoppe, such that each person views
himself as a potential tax receiver, so few are against taxation in
principle, just against being taxed in this or that way.
> I see so little evidence of either option that I'm
> inclined to view the grumbling compliance of
> most taxpayers as endorsement of the view that
> this is an acceptable way of handling certain costs.
Endorsement is not the same as acceptance. If someone isn't aware of
the alternatives that doesn't mean he endorses the path he's taking.
Feudalism went on for ages not because people thought it was the
greatest system ever -- else why all the peasant uprisings? -- but
simply because no one saw any choice in the matter. It only stopped as
a rival system and way of looking at things evolved.
> Of
> course, one might surmise that most people are
> too stupid and cowed to be allowed a serious
> choice, or too frightened of armed and brutal reprisal,
> or that the definition of theft is written in the fabric
> of the cosmos and requires no endorsement by
> mere fickle humans.
It's more a matter of being consistent. If one treats property rights*
consistently, then either taxation is theft or there is no such thing as
theft -- and therefore no property. We're back to La Boettie's argument
regarding government. It goes something like this. If a lone man
steals from you, he's a robber. If he's part of an organized effort,
suddenly he's just the taxman. (Similarly, one ship attacking others on
the high seas is a pirate. A fleet of such ships is a navy. One man
killing another is murder. Thousands of men killing each other in
uniforms is a war.)
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
* This does not mean one has to accept this or that foundation for such
rights. However, if the foundation is merely governmental recognition,
then these are truly not rights, but mere priviliges to be taken away at
the descretion of said government -- and anything goes at that point.
The only thing to do, then, is to make sure you either are friends with
those in power or enter a state of vonu -- unless, of course, you can
outgun a government...
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