skulkingscavenger said: I personally like to draw a distinction between pointing out that [institution X] is theoretically morally impure according to some abstract epistomology and believing [institution X] is harming your practical interests to an extent that would justify spending the resources necessary to abolish [institution X]
Oh sure. But I’ve seen a few people say that it’s fine to benefit from taxation while still opposing it on principle, and I think that’s weak. Typically the same people will point out that welfare creates a constituency that benefits from it and will agitate against it being repealed. Yet they don’t apply that logic to their own use of government services!
If George Mason University takes government funds, then it will hire more researchers and administrators with that money (presumably, hopefully). Then reducing government redistribution will require getting rid of people and scaling back their research programs, something they will bitterly oppose.
The only principled course of action in this case would be for them to subsist entirely on free market fees and donations, which they claim would lead to better outcomes for society as a whole anyway.
Unless they think Bryan Caplan is full of shit, in which case why are they putting him in front of students…
The principles they endorse imply the elimination of many government programs (and the ancaps among them want to eliminate all of them), something that would eventually lead to at least cuts to GMU, and presumably they’re smart enough to understand that, so that implies that they wouldn’t oppose cuts when they come.
As for the more general principle of benefiting from taxation while opposing it in principle, the question is what the baseline is. I benefit from taxation in the sense that I’m better off if I use some government services than if I don’t, but I’d be even better off if there were no taxes and no government services altogether. So as long as taxes exist, I’m going to use some of what they go to, but there’s no contradiction in doing that while calling for their abolition.
Wait, wait, wait. If people benefit from some taxation, then that taxation in particular is resulting in something good for them. Why oppose it? Because it’s TAXES? Do people seriously just castle every chess game and hope that strategy does something regardless of the consequences?
What’s the higher principle at work, here? What is worth giving up on the benefit to oneself and others, even in theory?
They benefit relative to not using the service but still paying the taxes, but not relative to neither the tax nor the government-provided service existing at all. So the preference ranking is: no tax and no service > tax and I use the service > tax and I don’t use the service.
Ah! Makes a ton of sense. However, it is really lousy for showing one’s displeasure with an arrangement. Proving one can manage without government assistance and management alters the way the debate works, I’m sure. “Taxes and I don’t use the service” option avoids accusations of hypocrisy, as well, since no one’s position is improved on the government penny while the benefit is phased out.
My brain has this ethical æsthetic. Taking government money feels disgusting, filthy and impure, the same way I’d expect stealing things from an independent food cart vendor might, even though I’d only be taking what the system should give me anyway (I want the state to basically tax people for a reasonable UBI and not much else; if I use corporate welfare to get less money than the UBI I’d want to implement there logically should be no problem, but it’s still yucky).
Then there’s the fact that I’m poor (YGM) and thus don’t really have that much of a choice; I’d love to survive without getting in bed with the state but it’s not really a realistic option because the state also makes surviving artificially expensive by eg. limiting the housing supply and banning contracts with which I could borrow money from future-me with less risk of getting in inescapable debt if future-me doesn’t end up as wealthy as I’m expecting. And it’s also caused me a lot of psychological harm from being terminally dependent on a thoroughly abusive system for years, and in any just world it would owe me big reparations for that.
But I’m totally planning to make a big deal of calculating all the services I’ve received from the state and spitefully paying them back to the penny once I can afford it, just for the sake of a grand gesture, and then I’m going to whine massively about how they are still going to try to impose bullshit and mob rule on me.
2 months ago · tagged #bitching about the country of birth #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time · 89 notes · source: argumate · .permalink
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xhxhxhx reblogged this from argumate and added:It might be hard to lobby the council governments of Australia. It’s a responsible country, after all. It’s a democratic...
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In the libertarian paradise the idea is not to vote for what can and what may not be done, but to decide individually...
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@xhxhxhx bringing down the citation hammer :)Yes, councils are state bodies. But they often work at cross-purposes to...
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socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from voximperatoris and added:Left-libertarianism may appear naive from an absolutist propertarian perspective, but it’s more coherent as...
voximperatoris reblogged this from tentativelyassembled and added:I don’t think corporations have a tendency to grow or merge beyond the point where they reach an efficient size. But...
tentativelyassembled reblogged this from voximperatoris and added:Corporations seem to tend towards growing / merging, but I guess those have slightly different pressures than homeowners...
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wirehead-wannabe reblogged this from voximperatoris and added:I mean, I might agree with this more if there was better competition among HOAs. I am not a homeowner, but I would...
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skulkingscavenger said: I think at this point it would be helpful to try and define a general principle for distinguishing tasks that in practice should be performed at a collective level. zoning, roads, and military seem to be popular examples. I’m not as grounded in game theory as I probably should be, but on the face of it all of these are symptomatically susceptible to the free-rider problem. I don’t think the free-rider problem by itself should be considered a hard limit though.
collapsedsquid reblogged this from argumate and added:I personally go with this. Homeowners really want control over their neighborhood, and in the absence of government,...
anotherpersonhasclaimedthisus reblogged this from argumate and added:When did ya’all agree land could be “owned”?
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I’m not so sure zoning itself doesn’t fall prey to as many flaws. In my city there are strict limits on minimum home...
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