4 ms·

Justice: fair distribution of the world's resources and an opportunity for a decent life, for everybody. Taking as much as possible is what the wealthy do.

wyager 11y ago
"Fair" meaning "as I see fit", right? >Taking as much as possible is what the wealthy do. There's a difference between taking and earning. Some wealthy people take wealth (e.g. steal it), but most of them earn it. Bill Gates didn't take any of my money, but he earned some of it, because I decided that a product his company sold was worth the price. Taxation, on the other hand, is not earned money; it's taken.
- redblacktree 11y ago
  Please see section 12.2 here[0], quoted below, for a refutation of the idea that "taxation is theft": """Consider the argument "How can we have a holiday celebrating Martin Luther King? After all, he was a criminal!" Technically, Martin Luther King was a criminal, in that he broke some laws against public protests that the racist South had quickly enacted to get rid of him. It's why he famously spent time in Birmingham Jail. And although "criminal" is a very negative-sounding and emotionally charged word, in this case we have to step back from our immediate emotional reaction and notice that the ways in which Martin Luther King was a criminal don't make him a worse person. A philosopher might say we're equivocating between two meanings of "criminal", one meaning of "person who breaks the law", and another meaning of "horrible evil person." Just because King satisfies the first meaning (he broke the law) doesn't mean he has to satisfy the second (be horrible and evil). Or consider the similar argument: "Ayn Rand fled the totalitarian Soviet Union to look for freedom in America. That makes her a traitor!" Should we go around shouting at Objectivists "How can you admire Ayn Rand when she was a dirty rotten traitor"? No. Once again, although "traitor" normally has an automatic negative connotation, we should avoid instantly judging things by the words we can apply to them, and start looking at whether the negative feelings are deserved. Or once again the philosopher would say we should avoid equivocating between "traitor" meaning "someone who switches sides from one country to an opposing country" and "horrible evil untrustworthy person." Our language contains a lot of words like these which package a description with a moral judgment. For example, “murderer” (think of pacifists screaming it at soldiers, who do fit the technical definition “someone who kills someone else”), “greedy” (all corporations are “greedy” if you mean they would very much like to have more money, but politicians talking about “greedy corporations” manage to transform it into something else entirely) and of course that old stand-by “infidel”, which sounds like sufficient reason to hate a member of another religion, when in fact it simply means a member of another religion. It's a stupid, cheap trick unworthy of anyone interested in serious rational discussion. And calling taxation “theft” is exactly the same sort of trick. What's theft? It's taking something without permission. So it's true that taxation is theft, but if you just mean it involves taking without permission, then everyone from Lew Rockwell up to the head of the IRS already accepts that as a given. This only sounds like an argument because the person who uses it is hoping people will let their automatic negative reaction to theft override their emotions, hoping they will equivocate from theft as "taking without permission" to "theft as a terrible act worthy only of criminals". Real arguments aren't about what words you can apply to things and how nasty they sound, real arguments about what good or bad consequences those things produce.""" [0]: http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#moral_systems http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#moral_systems
  - wyager 11y ago
    I never never even used the word "theft". I said that taxation is taking, as opposed to earning.
    - redblacktree 11y ago
      The implication is the same.

wyager 11y ago

"Fair" meaning "as I see fit", right? >Taking as much as possible is what the wealthy do. There's a difference between taking and earning. Some wealthy people take wealth (e.g. steal it), but most of them earn it. Bill Gates didn't take any of my money, but he earned some of it, because I decided that a product his company sold was worth the price. Taxation, on the other hand, is not earned money; it's taken.

redblacktree 11y ago
Please see section 12.2 here[0], quoted below, for a refutation of the idea that "taxation is theft": """Consider the argument "How can we have a holiday celebrating Martin Luther King? After all, he was a criminal!" Technically, Martin Luther King was a criminal, in that he broke some laws against public protests that the racist South had quickly enacted to get rid of him. It's why he famously spent time in Birmingham Jail. And although "criminal" is a very negative-sounding and emotionally charged word, in this case we have to step back from our immediate emotional reaction and notice that the ways in which Martin Luther King was a criminal don't make him a worse person. A philosopher might say we're equivocating between two meanings of "criminal", one meaning of "person who breaks the law", and another meaning of "horrible evil person." Just because King satisfies the first meaning (he broke the law) doesn't mean he has to satisfy the second (be horrible and evil). Or consider the similar argument: "Ayn Rand fled the totalitarian Soviet Union to look for freedom in America. That makes her a traitor!" Should we go around shouting at Objectivists "How can you admire Ayn Rand when she was a dirty rotten traitor"? No. Once again, although "traitor" normally has an automatic negative connotation, we should avoid instantly judging things by the words we can apply to them, and start looking at whether the negative feelings are deserved. Or once again the philosopher would say we should avoid equivocating between "traitor" meaning "someone who switches sides from one country to an opposing country" and "horrible evil untrustworthy person." Our language contains a lot of words like these which package a description with a moral judgment. For example, “murderer” (think of pacifists screaming it at soldiers, who do fit the technical definition “someone who kills someone else”), “greedy” (all corporations are “greedy” if you mean they would very much like to have more money, but politicians talking about “greedy corporations” manage to transform it into something else entirely) and of course that old stand-by “infidel”, which sounds like sufficient reason to hate a member of another religion, when in fact it simply means a member of another religion. It's a stupid, cheap trick unworthy of anyone interested in serious rational discussion. And calling taxation “theft” is exactly the same sort of trick. What's theft? It's taking something without permission. So it's true that taxation is theft, but if you just mean it involves taking without permission, then everyone from Lew Rockwell up to the head of the IRS already accepts that as a given. This only sounds like an argument because the person who uses it is hoping people will let their automatic negative reaction to theft override their emotions, hoping they will equivocate from theft as "taking without permission" to "theft as a terrible act worthy only of criminals". Real arguments aren't about what words you can apply to things and how nasty they sound, real arguments about what good or bad consequences those things produce.""" [0]: http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#moral_systems http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#moral_systems
- wyager 11y ago
  I never never even used the word "theft". I said that taxation is taking, as opposed to earning.
  - redblacktree 11y ago
    The implication is the same.