8 ms·

Property is a basic human right in exactly the same degree and for exactly the same reason as prohibition of slavery. People have a right to the product of thei

by astine 10y ago

Property is a basic human right in exactly the same degree and for exactly the same reason as prohibition of slavery. People have a right to the product of their own labor and the benefits that entails. The right to provide for oneself is a really basic thing. One might argue for exceptions, but one can also argue for exceptions to the right to life. They are both still basic human rights.

Frondo 10y ago
Fair, but by definition, what you owe in tax is not your property. It's everyone's, in the form of the government.
- ColanR 10y ago
  Actually, it's a necessary infringement upon your right to property for the good of the many.
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  > what you owe in tax is not your property So you're saying that it does not violate my rights when someone else claims to own an arbitrary portion of my income? With 25% taxes, I work for 3 months of the year for someone else. If I choose not to pay, then people with guns come to lock me up. How is that not slavery? > It's everyone's, in the form of the government. Government is not society. Government is a group of people who consume the productive output of society by force.
  - ska 10y ago
    "Your income" doesn't even make sense outside of the context of the government and tax system it was created in. Starting from the assumption of the converse is a fundamental error that derails many potentially useful/interesting discussions in the area before they get off the ground. jonathanstrange is right: Property rights are a complex issue, attempts to align them with "basic human rights" have limited success, and invariably muddy the waters.
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      Again to the desert island: You and I are on an island. You have money (or coconuts, or whatever). We agree that if I work for you, then you will give me some payment. That payment is my income. How does that example depend on the state or a tax system?
      - ska 10y ago
        You missed the point; I must have been unclear. I'll try again. The income you and I have today is inextricably tied to the system of government, taxation, and trade that we are in. You can't talk about holding one fixed and changing the other in any meaningful way. Now the toy examples - two guys on an island have some of their own problems. If it's just you and I on an island we won't bother with currency or payment (this is part of why it's a toy model). Their tends to be furious hand-waving between this sort of example and a "real" economy, and part of the reason for that is much of the mess as it scales up in practice (e.g. in actual history) tends to be creation of exactly the sort of institutions OP is trying to elide. I'm not sure I buy it, but there is at least an argument to be made that they are necessarily tied together. You can talk about purely theoretical systems with a different basis - but they are completely different systems. Ones that nobody has actually worked out how to implement, for that matter, though there is lots of theorizing. Always worth remembering that the majority of economic theorizing seems to have a fairly loose connection to the observable world. Fwiw: the desert island scenario, along with Smith's bartering villages are flawed enough to be probably best avoided.
        clarkmoody 10y ago
        Natural rights should hold in simple and complex examples, without resorting to utilitarian arguments. > The income you and I have today is inextricably tied to the system of government, taxation, and trade that we are in. Yes, that is our current context. > You can't talk about holding one fixed and changing the other in any meaningful way. Yes, the world is complex. I simply wish to see one with more voluntary interaction and less coercion. Too few hold liberty as a political value, settling for lesser subjective things such as "fairness."
  - dgacmu 10y ago
    I really hope you're not serious - having to provide for the support of common infrastructure and needs is very, very different from the condition of slavery, something that our country has a very tarnished history of. You're free to choose another place to live. You're free to choose how you earn your living, or even whether or not you do earn a living. Nobody will beat you senseless if you decide to take a vacation this week. Nobody has absolute control over every detail of your life. You can marry and associate with whom you choose. You can object to paying 25% of your income, hand out tracts to that effect, and vote for politicians who may change that. You can't be bought and sold.
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      > having to provide for the support of common infrastructure If that were the only way taxes were spent, then taxes would be very low indeed, and we may not even need to have this discussion. > and needs Taxes pay for way more than "needs." Do we need to bomb people in the Middle East? If there no other way to pay for things than by the threat of violence? > You're free to choose another place to live. Am I? The United States must grant permission for you to renounce your citizenship, and until then, they claim taxes on your income no matter where derived. The government also controls the movement of people and may detain me if I attempt to leave the country. Of course I must also have the consent of some other government to gain entry and a work visa. I did not freely choose to live in my country of birth. I did not consent to the obligations of taxes. > You can object to paying 25% of your income, hand out tracts to that effect, and vote for politicians who may change that. You can't be bought and sold. But in the end, you must pay...
      - dgacmu 10y ago
        Call it theft, call it extortion - whatever your preferred perjorative is. I'm simply arguing that it's not slavery - and that terming it so deemphasizes the real horror of actual slavery, current and past.
        elastic_church 10y ago
        Your primary argument is that basic human rights can't be compared to other basic human rights because of the magnitude of certain ones you find more objectionable? The slave trade was abolished, I don't think you really need to write a thesis on it. Everyone accepts that, and now would like to elevate attention to more nuanced inequalities.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    So if we say all taxes are theft, then we are left with no way to force everyone to contribute to public goods. The normal response by anti-tax people is that all of the roles of government should be funded by opt-in systems, where you agree to pay a fee to get the service. However, this doesn't work for a lot of public goods that suffer from free loader problems; you can't prevent people from benefiting from the good if they don't pay. Take, for example, roads; either roads are public, and a freeloader can choose not to pay and use them anyway, or they are private toll roads, and a person could be literally imprisoned because every road to move around requires payment to use. An even more obvious example is something like pollution control. Society has an interest in preventing people from dumping toxic waste into rivers and lakes, so we create restrictions. However, someone has to enforce those restrictions, and that requires funding. Without taxes, we would have to volunteer to pay money for the enforcement; however, why would I pay? I get to enjoy the clean water whether I pay or not, so why not just freeload? This will mean enforcement funding will not be there, and people can just pollute as much as you want. You need a way to get everyone to contribute for public goods, which is why we need taxes.
    - aminok 10y ago
      >So if we say all taxes are theft, then we are left with no way to force everyone to contribute to public goods. An income/sales tax is not "all taxes".
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      > public goods / roads a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others You assume a road is a public good. Sunshine is a public good. A road is not. It's hard to imagine a society not oriented around roads, since the government has been building them for so long. But lots of people have an economic interest in using and maintaining the roads. > An even more obvious example is something like pollution control. Ah, the good old, "Libertarians can't handle externalities." Well there is lots of free-market scholarship on pollution and courts going back decades. If you're actually curious about it, I can point you in that direction. If you've already made up your mind, then there's no point elaborating. One quick aside: during the Industrial Revolution, government courts sided with industry in pollution matters, granting them the right (sometimes monopoly) to pollute. Plaintiffs were ignored by the government in pollution cases, since industrial progress was more important than their health. So government actually made pollution worse...
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    It's not slavery because you could choose not to work at all and pay no taxes. In fact, in most first world nations, the effective tax rate on the lower income brackets is 0. Even more so, they are often so unsure of their ability to judge whether you are unwilling to work vs unable, they'll give you money in the form of social benefits if you are poor, just in case. You have the choice in these nations to live (albeit a modest life) without working at all. That's the opposite of slavery. It's closer to aristocracy!
    - aminok 10y ago
      >It's not slavery because you could choose not to work at all and pay no taxes. It's conditional upon you choosing to work, but the demand made upon you is illegitimate nonetheless. You choosing to work and consequently earning income does not grant someone else a moral right to force you hand over a share of that income to them (to labour for them). >You have the choice in these nations to live (albeit a modest life) without working at all. That's the opposite of slavery. It's closer to aristocracy! Given it's a life dependent on income forcibly redistributed from others, it's similar to the life of a slave owner, but a very poor one that shares the loot with millions of other co-recipients.
      - noonespecial 10y ago
        All of that is true, and I nearly entirely agree. I hope we find a better system. But it's not slavery because you are not forced to produce on threat of death. My issue was the devaluation of the term "slavery", not the legitimacy of the confiscation. If you consider it entirely illegitimate, then what was described is armed robbery.
        aminok 10y ago
        I agree with you. It's not slavery, even while sharing some of its characteristics. It's certainly not as tyrannical or brutal.
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      Then you are a tax consumer, living off the productive output of others. Your agents within the state apparatus extract income from the rest of society by force and give it to you. Aristocracy, indeed. (This assumes that the government has crowded out private charity, which is the case in most developed countries.)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - BeetleB 10y ago
    >With 25% taxes, I work for 3 months of the year for someone else. If I choose not to pay, then people with guns come to lock me up. How is that not slavery? Because they will not come with guns if you choose not to work. I do not think you understand slavery, where you cannot choose not to work.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    Correct, it does not violate your rights that you are obligated to pay a portion of your income to the rest of us, in the form of the government. That is part of the terms of your citizenship here, an agreement to which your parents consented on your behalf when you were too young to consent. If you refuse to pay the tax, people with guns do not come for you. Your wages may be garnished, or money taken from your savings accounts, because that money you owe in tax is not yours. It's all of ours, to use for public goods and services, to be shared by all of us. People who refuse to pay tax are stealing from all of us. People who don't like the tax arrangement in this country are free to 1) try to change it or 2) leave. I welcome both options. Stealing from us, that just makes me angry.
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      > If you refuse to pay the tax, people with guns do not come for you. Seriously? People get put in jail for tax evasion all the time. Certainly lots of guns involved in that process. > money taken from your savings accounts Not theft? > public goods and services, to be shared by all of us No. Tax money is distributed to favored interests. It is not shared among all. So what portion of your property do I have a right to? Which part of your home or possessions may I come and direct to my purposes? Or to "the rest of us" even? May I go to your fridge and distribute some fruit to your neighbors or to the homeless? How is a claim to income different than a claim to your other property?
      - Frondo 10y ago
        People rarely get put in jail for tax evasion, and never for simply failing to pay. The vast majority of people who do not pay tax--who steal from the rest of us--simply have it taken from their accounts or paychecks by the legal machinery we've established to do so. And again, garnishing paychecks or withdrawing from accounts is not theft, because it is not your money. Remember, by definition, your tax obligation is not yours. It never was. Keeping it from the rest of us is stealing from us. And last.... "So what portion of your property do I have a right to? Which part of your home or possessions may I come and direct to my purposes? Or to "the rest of us" even? May I go to your fridge and distribute some fruit to your neighbors or to the homeless? How is a claim to income different than a claim to your other property?" Great questions! That's what the democratic process is for, for us to settle those questions. Right now, we have one set of answers to those questions. We won't always, because laws are always changing to reflect the society that writes them. Hey, if you reeeeeally hate taxes, maybe you can make some pamphlets and get enough of us on board to vote in your new tax-free system.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Flipping your argument around a bit, you work from 10am to noon every day in order to have civilization. Starting at 10, you put in about twenty minutes of work defending you, your family, and your possessions from other, less scrupulous folks (defense). Then you spend about forty five minutes putting a little bit aside for your future self (SS, Medicare). After that, another 15 minutes of work provides insurance against becoming catastrophically poor and sick (Medicaid). The rest of the time covers everything else: building infrastructure so you can move around, inspections so that you, your food and your medicine are safe (FDA, USDA, OSHA, EPA), regulations so that you can save and invest with confidence (SEC, CFPB), and the like. You maybe spend thirty seconds, maybe a minute on research (which forms the basis for new treatments that keep you alive, lays the groundwork for new products that delight you, and even helps you understand your place in the universe). At the stroke of noon, you spend an instant working on some things that perhaps you're not sure about (National Endowment for the Arts, NPR (maybe)), and then you're back to making money for yourself. I would argue this is a fantastic deal!
  - vannevar 10y ago
    Alright, Hank Rearden. Let's see you build a steel plant by yourself, starting with two coconuts and a bit of twine. Then we'll talk about your God-given property rights. In the meantime, as long as we rely on the patent system, banking system, courts, and police to build and maintain our businesses, I'm fine with the government coming and 'stealing' some of our profits.
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      > patent system, banking system, courts, and police If that's all the government funded, then taxes would be very low indeed. > some of our profits But it's not "some" is it? It's over 50% in places.
      - vannevar 10y ago
        Taxes also go to things like healthcare, because most of us recognize that living in a world where having people dying in the street is sub-optimal. And most people who are in a 50+% bracket are still getting a bargain, because their personal effort and skill contribute much less than 50% of their income.
  - turc1656 10y ago
    I get your point, but there's something you aren't taking into account. You expect there to be public roads, bridges, and other infrastructure in your country, right? You also probably expect there to be armed forces to protect the nation, police officers and other LEO individuals to enforce the law as well. You also may expect some forms of public transportation and schooling as well. These are public goods that we all benefit from and share the cost of. That is what taxes are supposed to pay for. That's why it's not slavery. You are paying for those things that damn near everyone agrees they want. As for social programs where money is simply redistributed from one citizen to another - that's a whole other story. I agree with you there that is slavery. Those citizens can vote themselves money from your pocket and if you disagree - the guys with guns show up and take it anyway, and maybe even lock you up for disagreeing.
    - clarkmoody 10y ago
      Many of those things are not "public goods" by the economics definition (see my reply to a sibling). > You expect there to be... That's why it's not slavery. You are paying for those things that damn near everyone agrees they want. If those things are important to me, then I will pay for them. Just because someone else "expects" certain things doesn't mean I do. Everyone manages to put shoes on their feet without the government. And charity could certainly take care of the rest without shoes. Taxation is not a prepayment for services rendered. Or an insurance policy. Or a usage fee. > social programs ... I agree with you there that is slavery Excellent. Then let's agree to move in the direction where government only does the "public goods" stuff. Once we get there, we can disagree again on how far we want to go.
      - turc1656 10y ago
        Agreed. I would love to be in a spot where the government abolishes all social programs and only supplies the so-called public goods that we communally benefit from. If all we had to argue about in terms of taxation was the public goods, we'd be in a great spot.
akgerber 10y ago
Wealth is not necessarily the product of one's labor— especially in large quantities.
- vannevar 10y ago
  Not only is it not necessarily the product of one's labor, but at the high end of the wealth spectrum, it is certainly not the product of one's labor. http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-talent http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-t... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/why-luck-plays-a-big-role-in-making-you-rich https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/why-luck-...
  - aminok 10y ago
    The old "it was luck that got them their wealth, so it's morally acceptable to rob them" argument.
    - vannevar 10y ago
      Not just luck, but the infrastructure that surrounds them and permeates every transaction. Luck alone gets you an extra coconut to take back to your mud hut, not a billion dollars and a super yacht. So yes, it's moral to charge them for that. It is not moral for them to take those services and benefits and not pay for them.
      - aminok 10y ago
        Ah the old "they benefited from living in this country, so the country has a right to rob them" argument. Self-righteous demmaogogues love to propose robbing successful people and spreading their wealth.
        vannevar 10y ago
        Ah, the old "taxes are robbery" argument. Libertarian romantics dreaming of their Randian Utopia, blissfully unaware of how wealth is actually created. Wealthy people are not necessarily successful people, unless your sole measure of a person is how much money they accumulate. Seems like a rather impoverished viewpoint.
Balgair 10y ago
Yes, but not all humans have a concept of 'property' the same as all other humans, nor do some humans have a concept of 'property' at all. Look at Marxism, that idea of 'property' is very different than in capitalism. It is thought [0] that up until ~4k BC that no-one had an idea of property and we were all just gathering and hunting our way through life. If that is true, then the idea of 'property' is relatively new to humans as a species. So, we must define 'property' in a better way than I think is currently done. Unfortunately, the act of defining exactly what 'property' means can lead to conflict, such as the 50+ years leading up to the Civil War. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society#Prehistoric_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society#Prehistoric_...
- aminok 10y ago
  >Yes, but not all humans have a concept of 'property' the same as all other humans, nor do some humans have a concept of 'property' at all. And some human beings don't have a concept of 'self-ownership' and think slavery is justified.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    Well as it happens, I don't base my objections to slavery primarily on a notion "self-ownership", but rather on simple consequentialism. Slavery tends to lead to abuse of the enslaved, and allows no recourse for those under it. And consequentialism also leads me to believe that defending property rights so far as to allow people to deny food to the starving, is not a good idea. (And to be honest, to me the libertarian notion of "self-ownership" feels like a reverse-reasoning epicycle to try and base everything on property rights. I'm not sure it even makes sense: Surely if you own yourself you should be allowed to sell yourself?)
    - Balgair 10y ago
      Interesting side-point there. I've heard the argument from libertarians that communism is evil because then you don't own your body, the collective does. I've always found that to be just a strange argument to put forth (logic of the conclusions aside) and if the situation arises, then there are obviously much larger and more fundamental issues to deal with. Like, that issue of what you can or cannot do with your body in a society is one that all societies have and have always had, regardless of the 'system' in use. It's not logic that applies there, it is humans acting like humans (typically as dumb asshats), so trying to ham-horn in property laws to define communism as evil is silly. Dumb humans are the root cause.

by astine 10y ago

Frondo 10y ago

Fair, but by definition, what you owe in tax is not your property. It's everyone's, in the form of the government.

ColanR 10y ago
Actually, it's a necessary infringement upon your right to property for the good of the many.
clarkmoody 10y ago
> what you owe in tax is not your property So you're saying that it does not violate my rights when someone else claims to own an arbitrary portion of my income? With 25% taxes, I work for 3 months of the year for someone else. If I choose not to pay, then people with guns come to lock me up. How is that not slavery? > It's everyone's, in the form of the government. Government is not society. Government is a group of people who consume the productive output of society by force.
- ska 10y ago
  "Your income" doesn't even make sense outside of the context of the government and tax system it was created in. Starting from the assumption of the converse is a fundamental error that derails many potentially useful/interesting discussions in the area before they get off the ground. jonathanstrange is right: Property rights are a complex issue, attempts to align them with "basic human rights" have limited success, and invariably muddy the waters.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    Again to the desert island: You and I are on an island. You have money (or coconuts, or whatever). We agree that if I work for you, then you will give me some payment. That payment is my income. How does that example depend on the state or a tax system?
    - ska 10y ago
      You missed the point; I must have been unclear. I'll try again. The income you and I have today is inextricably tied to the system of government, taxation, and trade that we are in. You can't talk about holding one fixed and changing the other in any meaningful way. Now the toy examples - two guys on an island have some of their own problems. If it's just you and I on an island we won't bother with currency or payment (this is part of why it's a toy model). Their tends to be furious hand-waving between this sort of example and a "real" economy, and part of the reason for that is much of the mess as it scales up in practice (e.g. in actual history) tends to be creation of exactly the sort of institutions OP is trying to elide. I'm not sure I buy it, but there is at least an argument to be made that they are necessarily tied together. You can talk about purely theoretical systems with a different basis - but they are completely different systems. Ones that nobody has actually worked out how to implement, for that matter, though there is lots of theorizing. Always worth remembering that the majority of economic theorizing seems to have a fairly loose connection to the observable world. Fwiw: the desert island scenario, along with Smith's bartering villages are flawed enough to be probably best avoided.
      - clarkmoody 10y ago
        Natural rights should hold in simple and complex examples, without resorting to utilitarian arguments. > The income you and I have today is inextricably tied to the system of government, taxation, and trade that we are in. Yes, that is our current context. > You can't talk about holding one fixed and changing the other in any meaningful way. Yes, the world is complex. I simply wish to see one with more voluntary interaction and less coercion. Too few hold liberty as a political value, settling for lesser subjective things such as "fairness."
- dgacmu 10y ago
  I really hope you're not serious - having to provide for the support of common infrastructure and needs is very, very different from the condition of slavery, something that our country has a very tarnished history of. You're free to choose another place to live. You're free to choose how you earn your living, or even whether or not you do earn a living. Nobody will beat you senseless if you decide to take a vacation this week. Nobody has absolute control over every detail of your life. You can marry and associate with whom you choose. You can object to paying 25% of your income, hand out tracts to that effect, and vote for politicians who may change that. You can't be bought and sold.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    > having to provide for the support of common infrastructure If that were the only way taxes were spent, then taxes would be very low indeed, and we may not even need to have this discussion. > and needs Taxes pay for way more than "needs." Do we need to bomb people in the Middle East? If there no other way to pay for things than by the threat of violence? > You're free to choose another place to live. Am I? The United States must grant permission for you to renounce your citizenship, and until then, they claim taxes on your income no matter where derived. The government also controls the movement of people and may detain me if I attempt to leave the country. Of course I must also have the consent of some other government to gain entry and a work visa. I did not freely choose to live in my country of birth. I did not consent to the obligations of taxes. > You can object to paying 25% of your income, hand out tracts to that effect, and vote for politicians who may change that. You can't be bought and sold. But in the end, you must pay...
    - dgacmu 10y ago
      Call it theft, call it extortion - whatever your preferred perjorative is. I'm simply arguing that it's not slavery - and that terming it so deemphasizes the real horror of actual slavery, current and past.
      - elastic_church 10y ago
        Your primary argument is that basic human rights can't be compared to other basic human rights because of the magnitude of certain ones you find more objectionable? The slave trade was abolished, I don't think you really need to write a thesis on it. Everyone accepts that, and now would like to elevate attention to more nuanced inequalities.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  So if we say all taxes are theft, then we are left with no way to force everyone to contribute to public goods. The normal response by anti-tax people is that all of the roles of government should be funded by opt-in systems, where you agree to pay a fee to get the service. However, this doesn't work for a lot of public goods that suffer from free loader problems; you can't prevent people from benefiting from the good if they don't pay. Take, for example, roads; either roads are public, and a freeloader can choose not to pay and use them anyway, or they are private toll roads, and a person could be literally imprisoned because every road to move around requires payment to use. An even more obvious example is something like pollution control. Society has an interest in preventing people from dumping toxic waste into rivers and lakes, so we create restrictions. However, someone has to enforce those restrictions, and that requires funding. Without taxes, we would have to volunteer to pay money for the enforcement; however, why would I pay? I get to enjoy the clean water whether I pay or not, so why not just freeload? This will mean enforcement funding will not be there, and people can just pollute as much as you want. You need a way to get everyone to contribute for public goods, which is why we need taxes.
  - aminok 10y ago
    >So if we say all taxes are theft, then we are left with no way to force everyone to contribute to public goods. An income/sales tax is not "all taxes".
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    > public goods / roads a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others You assume a road is a public good. Sunshine is a public good. A road is not. It's hard to imagine a society not oriented around roads, since the government has been building them for so long. But lots of people have an economic interest in using and maintaining the roads. > An even more obvious example is something like pollution control. Ah, the good old, "Libertarians can't handle externalities." Well there is lots of free-market scholarship on pollution and courts going back decades. If you're actually curious about it, I can point you in that direction. If you've already made up your mind, then there's no point elaborating. One quick aside: during the Industrial Revolution, government courts sided with industry in pollution matters, granting them the right (sometimes monopoly) to pollute. Plaintiffs were ignored by the government in pollution cases, since industrial progress was more important than their health. So government actually made pollution worse...
- noonespecial 10y ago
  It's not slavery because you could choose not to work at all and pay no taxes. In fact, in most first world nations, the effective tax rate on the lower income brackets is 0. Even more so, they are often so unsure of their ability to judge whether you are unwilling to work vs unable, they'll give you money in the form of social benefits if you are poor, just in case. You have the choice in these nations to live (albeit a modest life) without working at all. That's the opposite of slavery. It's closer to aristocracy!
  - aminok 10y ago
    >It's not slavery because you could choose not to work at all and pay no taxes. It's conditional upon you choosing to work, but the demand made upon you is illegitimate nonetheless. You choosing to work and consequently earning income does not grant someone else a moral right to force you hand over a share of that income to them (to labour for them). >You have the choice in these nations to live (albeit a modest life) without working at all. That's the opposite of slavery. It's closer to aristocracy! Given it's a life dependent on income forcibly redistributed from others, it's similar to the life of a slave owner, but a very poor one that shares the loot with millions of other co-recipients.
    - noonespecial 10y ago
      All of that is true, and I nearly entirely agree. I hope we find a better system. But it's not slavery because you are not forced to produce on threat of death. My issue was the devaluation of the term "slavery", not the legitimacy of the confiscation. If you consider it entirely illegitimate, then what was described is armed robbery.
      - aminok 10y ago
        I agree with you. It's not slavery, even while sharing some of its characteristics. It's certainly not as tyrannical or brutal.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    Then you are a tax consumer, living off the productive output of others. Your agents within the state apparatus extract income from the rest of society by force and give it to you. Aristocracy, indeed. (This assumes that the government has crowded out private charity, which is the case in most developed countries.)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >With 25% taxes, I work for 3 months of the year for someone else. If I choose not to pay, then people with guns come to lock me up. How is that not slavery? Because they will not come with guns if you choose not to work. I do not think you understand slavery, where you cannot choose not to work.
- Frondo 10y ago
  Correct, it does not violate your rights that you are obligated to pay a portion of your income to the rest of us, in the form of the government. That is part of the terms of your citizenship here, an agreement to which your parents consented on your behalf when you were too young to consent. If you refuse to pay the tax, people with guns do not come for you. Your wages may be garnished, or money taken from your savings accounts, because that money you owe in tax is not yours. It's all of ours, to use for public goods and services, to be shared by all of us. People who refuse to pay tax are stealing from all of us. People who don't like the tax arrangement in this country are free to 1) try to change it or 2) leave. I welcome both options. Stealing from us, that just makes me angry.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    > If you refuse to pay the tax, people with guns do not come for you. Seriously? People get put in jail for tax evasion all the time. Certainly lots of guns involved in that process. > money taken from your savings accounts Not theft? > public goods and services, to be shared by all of us No. Tax money is distributed to favored interests. It is not shared among all. So what portion of your property do I have a right to? Which part of your home or possessions may I come and direct to my purposes? Or to "the rest of us" even? May I go to your fridge and distribute some fruit to your neighbors or to the homeless? How is a claim to income different than a claim to your other property?
    - Frondo 10y ago
      People rarely get put in jail for tax evasion, and never for simply failing to pay. The vast majority of people who do not pay tax--who steal from the rest of us--simply have it taken from their accounts or paychecks by the legal machinery we've established to do so. And again, garnishing paychecks or withdrawing from accounts is not theft, because it is not your money. Remember, by definition, your tax obligation is not yours. It never was. Keeping it from the rest of us is stealing from us. And last.... "So what portion of your property do I have a right to? Which part of your home or possessions may I come and direct to my purposes? Or to "the rest of us" even? May I go to your fridge and distribute some fruit to your neighbors or to the homeless? How is a claim to income different than a claim to your other property?" Great questions! That's what the democratic process is for, for us to settle those questions. Right now, we have one set of answers to those questions. We won't always, because laws are always changing to reflect the society that writes them. Hey, if you reeeeeally hate taxes, maybe you can make some pamphlets and get enough of us on board to vote in your new tax-free system.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  Flipping your argument around a bit, you work from 10am to noon every day in order to have civilization. Starting at 10, you put in about twenty minutes of work defending you, your family, and your possessions from other, less scrupulous folks (defense). Then you spend about forty five minutes putting a little bit aside for your future self (SS, Medicare). After that, another 15 minutes of work provides insurance against becoming catastrophically poor and sick (Medicaid). The rest of the time covers everything else: building infrastructure so you can move around, inspections so that you, your food and your medicine are safe (FDA, USDA, OSHA, EPA), regulations so that you can save and invest with confidence (SEC, CFPB), and the like. You maybe spend thirty seconds, maybe a minute on research (which forms the basis for new treatments that keep you alive, lays the groundwork for new products that delight you, and even helps you understand your place in the universe). At the stroke of noon, you spend an instant working on some things that perhaps you're not sure about (National Endowment for the Arts, NPR (maybe)), and then you're back to making money for yourself. I would argue this is a fantastic deal!
- vannevar 10y ago
  Alright, Hank Rearden. Let's see you build a steel plant by yourself, starting with two coconuts and a bit of twine. Then we'll talk about your God-given property rights. In the meantime, as long as we rely on the patent system, banking system, courts, and police to build and maintain our businesses, I'm fine with the government coming and 'stealing' some of our profits.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    > patent system, banking system, courts, and police If that's all the government funded, then taxes would be very low indeed. > some of our profits But it's not "some" is it? It's over 50% in places.
    - vannevar 10y ago
      Taxes also go to things like healthcare, because most of us recognize that living in a world where having people dying in the street is sub-optimal. And most people who are in a 50+% bracket are still getting a bargain, because their personal effort and skill contribute much less than 50% of their income.
- turc1656 10y ago
  I get your point, but there's something you aren't taking into account. You expect there to be public roads, bridges, and other infrastructure in your country, right? You also probably expect there to be armed forces to protect the nation, police officers and other LEO individuals to enforce the law as well. You also may expect some forms of public transportation and schooling as well. These are public goods that we all benefit from and share the cost of. That is what taxes are supposed to pay for. That's why it's not slavery. You are paying for those things that damn near everyone agrees they want. As for social programs where money is simply redistributed from one citizen to another - that's a whole other story. I agree with you there that is slavery. Those citizens can vote themselves money from your pocket and if you disagree - the guys with guns show up and take it anyway, and maybe even lock you up for disagreeing.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    Many of those things are not "public goods" by the economics definition (see my reply to a sibling). > You expect there to be... That's why it's not slavery. You are paying for those things that damn near everyone agrees they want. If those things are important to me, then I will pay for them. Just because someone else "expects" certain things doesn't mean I do. Everyone manages to put shoes on their feet without the government. And charity could certainly take care of the rest without shoes. Taxation is not a prepayment for services rendered. Or an insurance policy. Or a usage fee. > social programs ... I agree with you there that is slavery Excellent. Then let's agree to move in the direction where government only does the "public goods" stuff. Once we get there, we can disagree again on how far we want to go.
    - turc1656 10y ago
      Agreed. I would love to be in a spot where the government abolishes all social programs and only supplies the so-called public goods that we communally benefit from. If all we had to argue about in terms of taxation was the public goods, we'd be in a great spot.

akgerber 10y ago

Wealth is not necessarily the product of one's labor— especially in large quantities.

vannevar 10y ago
Not only is it not necessarily the product of one's labor, but at the high end of the wealth spectrum, it is certainly not the product of one's labor. http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-talent http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/investing-is-more-luck-than-t... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/why-luck-plays-a-big-role-in-making-you-rich https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/why-luck-...
- aminok 10y ago
  The old "it was luck that got them their wealth, so it's morally acceptable to rob them" argument.
  - vannevar 10y ago
    Not just luck, but the infrastructure that surrounds them and permeates every transaction. Luck alone gets you an extra coconut to take back to your mud hut, not a billion dollars and a super yacht. So yes, it's moral to charge them for that. It is not moral for them to take those services and benefits and not pay for them.
    - aminok 10y ago
      Ah the old "they benefited from living in this country, so the country has a right to rob them" argument. Self-righteous demmaogogues love to propose robbing successful people and spreading their wealth.
      - vannevar 10y ago
        Ah, the old "taxes are robbery" argument. Libertarian romantics dreaming of their Randian Utopia, blissfully unaware of how wealth is actually created. Wealthy people are not necessarily successful people, unless your sole measure of a person is how much money they accumulate. Seems like a rather impoverished viewpoint.

Balgair 10y ago

Yes, but not all humans have a concept of 'property' the same as all other humans, nor do some humans have a concept of 'property' at all. Look at Marxism, that idea of 'property' is very different than in capitalism. It is thought [0] that up until ~4k BC that no-one had an idea of property and we were all just gathering and hunting our way through life. If that is true, then the idea of 'property' is relatively new to humans as a species. So, we must define 'property' in a better way than I think is currently done. Unfortunately, the act of defining exactly what 'property' means can lead to conflict, such as the 50+ years leading up to the Civil War. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society#Prehistoric_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society#Prehistoric_...

aminok 10y ago
>Yes, but not all humans have a concept of 'property' the same as all other humans, nor do some humans have a concept of 'property' at all. And some human beings don't have a concept of 'self-ownership' and think slavery is justified.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  Well as it happens, I don't base my objections to slavery primarily on a notion "self-ownership", but rather on simple consequentialism. Slavery tends to lead to abuse of the enslaved, and allows no recourse for those under it. And consequentialism also leads me to believe that defending property rights so far as to allow people to deny food to the starving, is not a good idea. (And to be honest, to me the libertarian notion of "self-ownership" feels like a reverse-reasoning epicycle to try and base everything on property rights. I'm not sure it even makes sense: Surely if you own yourself you should be allowed to sell yourself?)
  - Balgair 10y ago
    Interesting side-point there. I've heard the argument from libertarians that communism is evil because then you don't own your body, the collective does. I've always found that to be just a strange argument to put forth (logic of the conclusions aside) and if the situation arises, then there are obviously much larger and more fundamental issues to deal with. Like, that issue of what you can or cannot do with your body in a society is one that all societies have and have always had, regardless of the 'system' in use. It's not logic that applies there, it is humans acting like humans (typically as dumb asshats), so trying to ham-horn in property laws to define communism as evil is silly. Dumb humans are the root cause.