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> But taxation is a violation of the right to property, and policing restricts all sorts of freedoms. That's true only if you are 'liberal' (to the extreme). T
by atmosx 12y ago
> But taxation is a violation of the right to property, and policing restricts all sorts of freedoms.
That's true only if you are 'liberal' (to the extreme). Taxation is what gets you public health, schools, streets in places where you go once a year. It's what keeps remote villages connected to the mainland.
In a sense, it's what society is all about. Otherwise we would be still living in the jungle like monkeys.
So since your view is open to interpretation, better be cautious using strong terms like if you're talking about maths IMHO e.g. "[...]taxation is a violation of the right to property [..]"
- bayesianhorse 12y agoIf you read very closely, I said taxation and policing are necessary for a good compromise. If a government takes away people's money, then their right to property is violated, in my (not that liberal) view. But I just require very good reasoning and solid participatory control over that "taking away". Russia for example regularly expropriates some citizens, and always with an outwardly reasonable and legal justification. But in Russia there is no participatory control over the instutions doing this...
- tormeh 12y agoThe right to property is granted by the government. Your rights are the claims you can back with violence, and as long as you leave the violence to the police your rights will be defined by the government.
- aianus 12y ago> That's true only if you are 'liberal' (to the extreme) No, it's quite literally true. Taxation is armed men taking your money by force. We've just agreed that it's worth it to violate property rights to some degree for the greater good.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoFrom its city-state inception, taxation is you giving money to the state, so the state ensures that armed men don't come and take your money by force. 10,000 years ago you were completely welcome to live outside of the city-state if you wished where everything is taken and kept by force; you'd just have a shorter/harder life at it.
- michaelt 12y agoProperty rights don't exist in a vacuum - they're made by us humans in our heads, just like intellectual property. Get rid of the government and you could take my house just by showing up with a bigger gun than me. Only thing I could do is get together with my friends and neighbours to form an armed gang for mutual property rights enforcement, AKA a government.
- chii 12y agoand speaking of rights to property - that's not a right, it's a privilege. The only rights a human has is the same as what any animal would have in the wild - the right to kill or be killed. Human society exists to grant those privileges so that it allows more people to live - an evolutionary advantage. People have been brainwashed, or deluded into thinking that those "rights" they enjoy is somehow divine and inalienable.
- aianus 12y agoThat's just semantics. It's called the UN Declaration of Human Rights, not the UN Declaration of Human Privileges. By the way, Article 17 section 1? Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoI believe these rights to be inalienable, if only by convention. But even Psychology and Neuroscience has picked up on a tendency of humans to not like other humans suffering. In a sense, hurting someone else hurts us also. In that way, a society which respects individual's rights is not acting on a whim, but rather on a biological predisposition - even if it is weak.