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It’s not a requirement for consumption taxes to driven my morality as a first order effect. It’s entirely reasonable for law to take the moral stance that peop

It’s not a requirement for consumption taxes to driven my morality as a first order effect. It’s entirely reasonable for law to take the moral stance that people should broadly pay for the benefits as participating in organised society, so to ensure the long term upkeep and maintenance of that organisation they derive benefits from. At which point consumption taxes have nothing to any moral judgement about the consumption of various products, but simple calculus that the voluntary consuming those products increases the cost of running our society, and so you should pay a bit more for engaging in these activities. But none of that is judgement on the morality of activity. I personally couldn’t give a shit what drugs you or anyone else consumes. But I don’t particularly like the idea of having pick up the bill later for an activity I didn’t participate in. So if you pay some extra taxes to cover to cost of additional healthcare, then feel free to consume whatever the hell you want.

yunohn 4y ago
> But I don’t particularly like the idea of having pick up the bill later for an activity I didn’t participate in. The repeated grouping of morality/ethics into purely religion/judgement throughout this thread really bothers me. IMHO your argument is an argument of moral propriety of making people pay for others choices. You’re semantically choosing to not call it that is all.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  Nah I’m more than happy to agree that I’m making an argument of moral propriety. There has to be some consistent basis for forming laws, and some sort of coherent social order. But my point is there’s a difference between moral basis for having laws and taxes, and their specific implementation. Consumption taxes are just one approach for implementing a social system build on the basis “fair contribution/usage”, or whatever we want to call it (my views on “moral” behaviour are too nuanced and confused to fit into an internet comment, so let’s just work with something simple). But the taxes themselves aren’t a direct expression of moral judgment themselves, but rather an implementation detail of a broader governing moral system that provides legitimacy to laws and the states rights to enforce them. It might be a distinction without a difference. But if someone is going to call out consumption taxes as somehow more inherently driven by moral judgments than any other part of a system of law, then I think making the distinction is reasonable.

yunohn 4y ago

> But I don’t particularly like the idea of having pick up the bill later for an activity I didn’t participate in. The repeated grouping of morality/ethics into purely religion/judgement throughout this thread really bothers me. IMHO your argument is an argument of moral propriety of making people pay for others choices. You’re semantically choosing to not call it that is all.

avianlyric 4y ago
Nah I’m more than happy to agree that I’m making an argument of moral propriety. There has to be some consistent basis for forming laws, and some sort of coherent social order. But my point is there’s a difference between moral basis for having laws and taxes, and their specific implementation. Consumption taxes are just one approach for implementing a social system build on the basis “fair contribution/usage”, or whatever we want to call it (my views on “moral” behaviour are too nuanced and confused to fit into an internet comment, so let’s just work with something simple). But the taxes themselves aren’t a direct expression of moral judgment themselves, but rather an implementation detail of a broader governing moral system that provides legitimacy to laws and the states rights to enforce them. It might be a distinction without a difference. But if someone is going to call out consumption taxes as somehow more inherently driven by moral judgments than any other part of a system of law, then I think making the distinction is reasonable.