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> - You were signed into that contract by your parents when you were born, as they had the legal authority over your rights to decide on your behalf. > - As so

> - You were signed into that contract by your parents when you were born, as they had the legal authority over your rights to decide on your behalf. > - As soon as you legally become an adult, you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time. By remaining in your country, you consent to its social contract, so you pay taxes to the government by your own will. This is where you're wrong. By saying "you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time." you could justify any political system, including monarchy, dictatorships, etc. as long as people can leave the country. You might as well say: "If you don't like the country you were born in, just kill yourself." because you're rejecting the discussion about justice entirely. > - There's a free market of countries with open borders; people can vote with their feet in this market and migrate to their preferred one. You have no obligation to pay taxes at any one of them, but they have no obligation to accept you nor provide you with services if you're not willing to play by their rules. That would work if switching countries had a negligible cost. Switching to another country is not as easy as choosing a pair of shoes.

TuringTest 7y ago
> you could justify any political system, including monarchy, dictatorships, etc. as long as people can leave the country Exactly! Can you point at how precisely this is "wrong"? I thought that was the essence of libertarian free-market capitalism as described by people who propose it, that any possible consensual arrangement is valid as long as it is entered without coertion and it doesn't affect third parties? (Sometimes, even when it affects third parties; I've lost count how many times free-market proponents will skip over the topic of externalities, abandon the conversation when politely pointing them to the externalities involved, or simply insisting that those externalities could be magically solved by applyinng more private property to the problem). It's not a system I personally believe in, but the people proposing it always put it in those absolute terms, with "private property" being an absolute moral value, and any system (like taxes) which limit it being considered evil; so hey - what's wrong with exploring it to its ultimate logical consequences, just from an unconventional angle? Or maybe rationalism is only valid when you use it to arrive to the same exact consequences that you started with?? Playing devil's advocate to show the contradictions of an ideologic system is a valid argumentation strategy. > You might as well say: "If you don't like the country you were born in, just kill yourself." because you're rejecting the discussion about justice entirely. Not at all. I'm merely exploring a definition of justice different from "private property good, government intervention bad" that I inferred from your comment considering tax-supported social programs as a "steal". > That would work if switching countries had a negligible cost People proposing free markets as the ultimate moral good typically do not take into consideration these concerns of the cost suffered by the people who least benefit from applying the immutable axioms; in my experience, they will justify people suffering poverty because they have a plausible way of escape by engaging in private initiative and consensual contracts. So how exactly is that way of thinking, that I have often encountered in the wild, any different from my thought experiment above?

TuringTest 7y ago

> you could justify any political system, including monarchy, dictatorships, etc. as long as people can leave the country Exactly! Can you point at how precisely this is "wrong"? I thought that was the essence of libertarian free-market capitalism as described by people who propose it, that any possible consensual arrangement is valid as long as it is entered without coertion and it doesn't affect third parties? (Sometimes, even when it affects third parties; I've lost count how many times free-market proponents will skip over the topic of externalities, abandon the conversation when politely pointing them to the externalities involved, or simply insisting that those externalities could be magically solved by applyinng more private property to the problem). It's not a system I personally believe in, but the people proposing it always put it in those absolute terms, with "private property" being an absolute moral value, and any system (like taxes) which limit it being considered evil; so hey - what's wrong with exploring it to its ultimate logical consequences, just from an unconventional angle? Or maybe rationalism is only valid when you use it to arrive to the same exact consequences that you started with?? Playing devil's advocate to show the contradictions of an ideologic system is a valid argumentation strategy. > You might as well say: "If you don't like the country you were born in, just kill yourself." because you're rejecting the discussion about justice entirely. Not at all. I'm merely exploring a definition of justice different from "private property good, government intervention bad" that I inferred from your comment considering tax-supported social programs as a "steal". > That would work if switching countries had a negligible cost People proposing free markets as the ultimate moral good typically do not take into consideration these concerns of the cost suffered by the people who least benefit from applying the immutable axioms; in my experience, they will justify people suffering poverty because they have a plausible way of escape by engaging in private initiative and consensual contracts. So how exactly is that way of thinking, that I have often encountered in the wild, any different from my thought experiment above?