5 ms·
Taxes aren't violence, they're dues for engaging in the external economy.
by kaonashi 13y ago
Taxes aren't violence, they're dues for engaging in the external economy.
- cobrausn 13y agoNo anarchist here, but try not paying your taxes for long enough and the violence will come.
- kaonashi 13y agoIf you try to walk into a baseball game or a movie without paying, it's called theft. If you try to participate in the economy without paying your dues, likewise it's theft and you will suffer the punishment.
- tsotha 13y agoTaxes have very little to do with the economy.
- kaonashi 13y agoThey're the gradient in the system that drives economic activity. If you must acquire a particular currency to pay taxes to avoid jail, then you will offer your output in that currency.
- cobrausn 13y agoSo, we are in agreement then? Taxes are enforced with violence.
- kaonashi 13y agoBeing enforced with violence and being violence aren't quite the same thing.
- burntsushi 13y agoThere is a clear owner of a ballpark or a movie theater. Nobody owns the economy in a similar way (not even the government), so your analogy doesn't hold up.
- kaonashi 13y agoThe economy is owned by its participants.
- burntsushi 13y agoAn economy is not a scarce resource, which means it cannot be owned in any meaningful way. An economy is an abstract concept referring (roughly) to a collection of actors that exchange goods in some geographic location.
- kaonashi 13y agoThis points to weaknesses in the concept of ownership.
- burntsushi 13y agoNot at all. Ownership as a concept is useful specifically for non-violent resolution of conflict over scarce resources. If something is neither scarce nor a resource, then some other construct needs to be used. (For example, in intellectual property law, the term "copyright infringement" is used instead of theft.)
- kaonashi 13y ago> Ownership as a concept is useful specifically for non-violent resolution of conflict over scarce resources. But you outlined precisely when it breaks down: when 'ownership' cannot be determined because the thing in question is a communal resource.
- 13y ago