Principled stances on taxation:
- “Taking property is theft!” (Anarcho-Capitalism)
- “Claiming you own property is theft” (Anarcho-Communism)
- “Taking property is theft, but acceptable for the Greater Good” (Various consequentialists)
Unprincipled stances on taxation:
- “You CAN own property but taking it isn’t theft because of a Social Contract that you never agreed to.” (Unprincipled capitalists, e.g. most modern ideologies)
- “Claiming you own property is theft, but if you use the car that Comrade Iosef drives, the police will get you even though it isn’t Comrade Iosef’s car” (Unprincipled communists, i.e: “communists.”)
Surely you can’t define theft without a concept of property, thus you can’t define property in terms of or in opposition to theft.
If you accept a consequentialist position on taxation then the debate is over:
“People would prefer to hang on to things, but there are reasons why we have to take things away from them, for the greater good”.
In practice most of the social contract viewpoint comes back to this anyway, as people wouldn’t defend a social contract if they thought it gave bad outcomes.
I prefer the rational, factual, logical stance on taxation:
Taxation isn’t theft because you’re paying the government for resources or services you voluntarily chose to use by not changing your lifestyle to not use those resources/services. Because there is literally no moral difference between paying the government to provide those resources/services and paying a private company to provide those resources/services. And if you choose to live a lifestyle which uses those resources/services, you’d just be paying a private company to provide them if the government didn’t do so.
So it’s got nothing to do with the Greater Good or a social contract. It’s just business. The business where if you want/need something, you’re expected to pay the person who is providing it to you if they choose to be paid for it, which does not magically change when the person providing it that chooses to be paid has a government title.
Now, people are certainly free to try to argue that nobody should have to pay for things they want/need and/or nobody should be allowed to expect payment for the resources/services they provide, but those ideas would have to apply to literally everyone, not only to people in the public sector.
(Also money is not property anyway, money is a medium of exchange of property, but an exploration of that fact is outside the scope of this particular topic.)
No. No. This is exactly, exactly, the unprincipled stance of the social contract, even if you say that it isn’t.
I already proved it’s not via explaining how reality actually works. Reality doesn’t magically stop being reality just because you don’t like it. *shrug*
John is not chosing to use the service “Get shot by the police,” so any argument that it’s not theft because he chose to use that service and has to pay for it is super skeevy.
So why are you making that argument, then?
You cannot equip a large mass of people with guns, explicitly charge them to hurt you if you don’t do what they say, then hurt you anyway, then claim that it’s a service you have to pay for. What the actual
So why are you making that claim, then?
[1] I already proved it’s not via explaining how reality actually works.
[2] So why are you making that argument, then?
[1] You really really didn’t.
I really, really did.
[2] … so why are you making that argument then?
Post with that argument has your username on it as the author, dude. If you honestly think that I am you, you might want to go see a shrink about that.
1: “Prove” is a word. Words mean things.
Indeed they do. And I proved my point. Still waiting for you to prove yours.
Otherwise, whenever you say nothing but “you really didn’t” I will respond with nothing but “I really did”. Ball’s in your court.
2: That literally never happened, unless you are referring to the part where I was enumerating unprincipled ideas.
So you’re saying this post never happened? Or that it was somehow magically written by me even though it has your name as the author? We got a live one here, folks.
… did you miss the “not” in that post that makes it mean the exact opposite of what you’re trying to engage with?
Oh, no, I got that you think the idea that “equip a large mass of people with guns, explicitly charge them to hurt you if you don’t do what they say, then hurt you anyway ” is a service, is skeevy.
What I’m wondering is why you’re saying that’s a service if you already know it’s skeevy to say that’s a service.
And then you went totally off the rails to ask me why I made a point that you were actually the one making, and now I’m honestly confused. Like, I don’t fucking know why you think “equip a large mass of people with guns, explicitly charge them to hurt you if you don’t do what they say, then hurt you anyway“ is a service. You’re the one who said it, you tell me why you think it’s a service.
I’m wondering why you’re implying it’s a service.
I can’t explain something I didn’t do, sorry.
You may have forgotten. It was here:
Taxation isn’t theft because you’re paying the government for resources or services you voluntarily chose to use by not changing your lifestyle to not use those resources/services.
That’s the skeevy bit. The bit where you said taxation isn’t theft because the things taxes pay for, like being shot by the police, are services.
You’re literally the only one in this convo who has said getting shot by the police is a service. It’s kind of fucked up that you think that, but you seem to know it’s fucked up to think that, which makes me just thoroughly confused that you’re saying stuff you know is fucked up.
But hey, I guess that it’s perfectly acceptable for you to try to put your arguments in my mouth and I’m a “troll” for pointing out that I’m not the one who said those things, because lol intellectual honesty, what’s that, lol.
I suspect the actual service is supposed to be “discouraging people from breaking laws and punishing those who do, because (insert rationalisation here)”, and because of the fucked-up police militarisation/God-given right to own firearms thing the US has, that service translates into a risk of getting shot by the police.
So:
I am a convicted criminal. The state has decided that I may not decide for myself whether or not I use estrogen, instead it has appointed someone who is not me to make those decisions. That person decided that I would not use estrogen. I used estrogen anyway. The state found out. I got convicted.
@jeysiec, I cannot choose to live a different lifestyle. If I tried, I’d die. Furthermore, this “service” is not a service I would ever buy from a private company. The state forces lots of such nonconsensual “services” down my throat because it can. Because I get shot if I resist too hard.
And I cannot change the location of my lifestyle either, because turns out essentially every place has a state or a similar bunch of bandits. If I tried to start my own state, I’d get shot. The services are not only bundled with lots of unwanted bloatware and malware, but they are also monopolized. Competition is not allowed, and thus the services are way shittier than they would otherwise be, and the prices way higher.
If preventing monopolies is an important service of the state, why doesn’t it prevent its own monopoly?
Even if I were to grant the assumption that I owe the state for the services I’ve used because they are artificially subsidized and thus I haven’t had a genuine choice; what moral justification can you give for the rest? Perhaps I might owe the state 10 000€ in taxes, but what right does it have to take 20 000€ instead? The only justification I see is that it has guns, and I don’t, and thus the state gets to decide.
1 month ago · 133 notes · source: shieldfoss · .permalink
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nentuaby reblogged this from michaelblume and added:This is… So silly. If the consequentialist position sounds wildly different from the “unprincipled capitalist” position...
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I go with “Claiming you own property is theft but acceptable for the Greater Good.”
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brin-bellway liked this- anotherpersonhasclaimedthisus said: I mean even if you discovered these universals people would still complain about their illegitimacy. Games these days have “artificial difficulty” after all.
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sinesalvatorem reblogged this from shieldfoss and added:Tag yrself I’m a principled consequentialist.
neoliberalism-nightly reblogged this from argumate and added:I mean if that’s your claim then you should just said earlier. I don’t see how it is sneaking stuff in since you have to...
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