You forgot to tell him to cut his hair and quit smoking dope. You call that discipline? These woolly-headed libertarians will be the downfall of society, I tell ya.Originally Posted by haymarket martyr
- Join Date
- Oct 2001
- Posts
- 1,656
You forgot to tell him to cut his hair and quit smoking dope. You call that discipline? These woolly-headed libertarians will be the downfall of society, I tell ya.
Matt,
To show you that I am not being flippant, I will try to outline how I see the moral implications of high taxation on the rich.
Suppose you lived in a neighborhood in which your apartment and car were repeatedly broken into and your stuff stolen. If you could move I imagine you would.
Now the rich, by virtue of being rich, have a lot of freedom. If they perceived high taxation as theft, they would move, just as you or I would move from the crime-ridden neighborhood. Yet rich Americans in the 1950's and 1960's, who were taxed far more harshly than today, chose to remain in the country.
This doesn't mean they liked paying high taxes, anymore than my college buddy whose apartment was next to railroad tracks liked the noise. If they thought the 1950's taxes on the rich (or the noise) was an unjust violation of their rights, they would leave, rather than put up with this injustice.
I gave a reason why the rich don't leave. Taxes don't affect their enjoyment of their property, unlike getting your stuff ripped off, and so they stay while you would leave.
High taxes do affect relative power, and it was concerns over the relative power between groups (Management vs. Labor, White vs. Black, Native vs Immigrant) that led to the modern anti-tax movement.
Quite true. I recall in an earlier discussion you referred to money as a medium of exchange and as having value only in terms of what it can buy.
Application of these concepts means that (1) it is possible to assign a money value to property and (2) the value of this money can only be in terms of what it can buy.
As I noted before, for the very rich, the money value of their property exceeds what they could ever buy with it in their lifetimes (that is their expenditures to achieve security, freedom and fun). Everything else has no absolute value--unless you ascribe to the idea that money has value in terms of the power in confers over others. I sense that this application of money is not one which you wish to support.
Given this, a significant fraction, perhaps even a large majority of the property of the very rich has no value that you acknowledge. Can the loss of that which is valueless, be properly considered as theft?
Very well done, Brian
from Kurt
Nah - I care much more about what is IN Matts head than what is ON it. At least the hair part.You forgot to tell him to cut his hair and quit smoking dope.
OK, wow. There are quite a lot of posts addressed to me that deserve more than one-word answers. Give me a few days.
If you cannot understand the context of the discussion then I'm afraid you'll have to stop participating.
There are 195 countries on this planet and they all share something in common......Rich people are in charge.
(if I am wrong please point to the world map)
The concept of marginal utilityarises. $1000 as a one-time infusion of cash might not solve all the problems in the life of a poor person, but it can certainly meet some needs and some strong desires that might otherwise be denied or deferred. It might get some dental work, replace some ragged clothes, allow one to replace some electrical objects that don't work anymore, work badly, or might be dangerous (frayed cords). It might replace some bad box springs and alleviate some backaches. For a millionaire, $1000 as a windfall doesn't mean much.
A government that imposes regressive taxes might be taking food off the table or compelling someone to turn the heat down to at the least discomfort and at worst danger. It might force people to defer medical or dental care. If it taxes the rich it reduce the bid-ups on truly scarce objects (like mansions, original Botticelli paintings, and the like).
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Another thing that all 195 countries have in common is that all of them are hot. There isn't one of them that doesn't have a temperature above absolute zero. Finland only thinks it's cold.There are 195 countries on this planet and they all share something in common......Rich people are in charge.
(if I am wrong please point to the world map)
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/
The Order Master (volume one of Refuge), a science fantasy. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZZWEAS
Smashwords link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/382903
I addressed this up-thread in post #1664 and referenced it in post #1762. This thread is moving fast, so I can understand if they got buried.
The short response is, yes, that income results from injustice, but the cure you propose is likely to backfire (and technically has already, since it fueled the popularity of conservative economics).
Just ribbing you . . . it's always amusing to see someone from the "don't trust anyone over 30" generation dress down a youth for not experiencing the real world yet.from Kurt
Nah - I care much more about what is IN Matts head than what is ON it. At least the hair part.
My GenX friends frequently joke about "Kids these days" when referring to some dumb behavior by Millenials only 10 years younger than us. There's also my personal favorite, following criticism of a Millenial with " . . . and get off my lawn!"
Kurt -
okay.... but in all seriousness, I do believe that actual real life experiences do change a persons views from idealistic to pragmatic. Its easy to hope for the system to come crashing down when all you have invested in that system is nothing or next to nothing. Ante into the pot and then see how much you are willing to lose for your idealism. (and I don't mean you but everyone)
Fruitcake
it is your job to explain what you mean. nobody can engage in an intelligent discussion with you unless you clarify what these terms mean to you. Why are you afraid of taking a position and making it clear? Why are you attempting to hide behind vague and general terms like a child hiding behind his mothers skirt? Do you even know what these terms are that you are using?
Terms like "small government" and "social welfare" have become such meaningless cliches that their exact meaning has been muddied. They can mean different things to different people. What do they mean to you? That is the key question since you have used both small government and social welfare in your posts.
All this however misses the point.
We live in a representative democracy which has been constructed by our Constitution and laws passed over the past two centuries. The American people elect representatives who make laws for them. Those laws are in place and reflect the will of the people. These political decisions about such things as what government programs to have or not have, the scope of them, the cost of them, and other things have been made by more than just one person typing out words on a message board.
In the end, if you have a better idea, offer it, explain it, and detail how you are going to get this enacted into law. Otherwise, its all just words on the screen and mean nothing.
Last edited by haymarket martyr; 10-13-2009 at 09:53 AM.
And I'm objecting to you calling an unsupported assertion as "playing God," or whatever. I did not support my assertion because it was meant to show that I do not think you can take away people's rightfully owned property because you are worried about the effects that inequality of wealth has. (For what it's worth, I do value equality of wealth.) What do you want reasons for? Why I think some property is rightfully owned (the included caveat implies it), or why I think some property can be rightfully owned (explained earlier in this thread, but it doesn't appear relevant to my response.)? Again, I think the God quip was unwarranted.
Proudhon embraces conceptual tension, contradiction, and non-absolutism. Furthermore, his views change in each of his works with little mention of why this is the case. Translations of Proudhon are also less than stellar, so I find it very hard to get a grip on what he's trying to say. As Kurt noted, he has also said that property is liberty and that property is impossible.Asserting one's preferences does not constitute reasons. You are an anarchist who chooses to believe that property is rightfully owned, and so taxation constitutes theft. Other anarchists have chosen to believe that property as theft.
As far as I can tell: Proudhon thinks property is theft because goods, on a fundamental level, have collective origins, but at the same time, property gives us freedom to go about our lives.
A lot of things affect relative power, but I think we should be focusing on either the injustice itself, or the sorts of actions that enable this injustice to occur. Obviously anarchism has something to say about concerns over this relative power (e.g., how the State reduces accountability, props up big business artificially, keeps labor in check, is historically anti-immigrant, sexist, and racist, etc). But if you're into seeking common ground, you're not going to get anywhere with me by advocating that we indirectly moderate one injustice while directly exacerbate another.
Brian's question? As I told him, I misread it.
I call B.S. on the consent thing. How can consent even be made when under duress and without any reasonable alternative? Now, if the government takes your money it is stealing; if they take their money they are merely reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. But the radical libertarian position is that the State is illegitimate; so there is no possible way that they could have any decent claim to what is yours. (Maybe someone else does, but it ain't the State!) So if the libertarians are right, then the government is taking our property without our consent. The pro-tax statist, then, needs to provide reasons as to why the State could have a claim to what we normally regard as ours. I just happen to think these reasons don't stick.In America, taxation is not the taking of property without consent. Property rights in America are not and have never been absolute. As a property owner you are still subject to the Law, even when on your property. When one acquires property in America, one tacitly consents to be bound by the laws of the jurisdiction within which the property lies.
from Matt
Could you explain why this is not a baldfaced absurdity on its face? We live in a democratic republic where the people freely participate in frequent elections for that governement. The people have all sorts of avenues to express their willingness to throw out the government and work for the change you seem to advocate for..... but they do not do this.But the radical libertarian position is that the State is illegitimate;
What the heck is ILLEGITIMATE in a democratic republic where the people can change the government in a short amount of time?
If that is the libertarian position, it is simply over the top hyperbole and is wrong in view of the actual facts of American democracy.
You live here of your own free will. You can leave anytime you desire. you know the rules of the game. But still you make a decision to stay and live by those rules. You have given your consent every single day and hour you remain here.How can consent even be made when under duress and without any reasonable alternative?
I still think that business of "rightful" ownership is the crux of a lot of the disagreement. On what basis is something "rightfully" owned? This is not a simple question, and deserves better than a simple answer.
First off, and to repeat from way back, "ownership" implies coercion and threat of force. To say "this is mine" is to say, "I alone am entitled to use this, and anyone else who does so without my permission will be punished." That is what defines property. The threat of force may be made by the owner, or by the community or the state on the owner's behalf, but it must be made, otherwise there is no property.
On the very simplest level, therefore, property is the seizure of unowned goods and the assertion of privileged use backed by a threat of force.
If we wish to apply less barbaric rules to who owns what (and generally we do), then we must restrict the application of force to those instances which comply with those rules, and refuse to do so otherwise. Also, the situation becomes much more complex when all goods are owned, and so acquisition of property becomes the transfer of goods from one person's ownership to another's, rather than the seizure of unowned goods. In that case, we establish rules whereby property may "legitimately" be transferred, apply force to protect those instances, and apply it to discourage all other forms of property acquisition, which we thereby define as "theft."
Thus, it is somewhat inaccurate to call "theft" the acquisition of property without the owner's permission. Rather, theft is the acquisition of property against the rules governing such acquisition. Sometimes property can be acquired with the owner's permission and still be stolen. We use a different word than "theft" in such cases -- we call it "fraud" -- but it's essentially the same thing. Also, sometimes property can be acquired without the owner's permission without it being theft. For example, if a lawsuit grants a sum in judgment, it's safe to say that the sum is taken without its owner's permission, but this is not theft. The only consistent rule is that if property is transferred against the rules for such transfer, it is not legitimate and may be corrected by force.
Now let's consider the way wealth is produced and ownership of it acquired in our economy. (Again, it's important to consider the real world in the process of forming our moral judgments. Moral principles formed outside that consideration are the equivalent of pure mathematics, and may or may not apply to the reality we actually experience.)
Wealth is produced collectively, always. People work together to create wealth, applying thought and effort to natural resources. The resulting wealth is divided among those who work to produce it, according to rules. It's impossible to say in any definitive fashion how much person A contributes to the production of wealth as compared to person B. Thus, a common libertarian principle, that of ownership deriving from labor to add value, becomes useless as a practical matter, for we are never in any real-life case able to determine how much of the wealth produced is generated by one person's labor compared to another's. A different principle than this is required.
In actual practice, we determine ownership by who owns the natural and man-made capital required to produce wealth, not by those who work to add value. The people doing the labor to create the wealth are not entitled to a share of it a priori; it belongs to the owner of the capital, who must buy labor if he needs more of it to produce the wealth than he can supply on his own, but the wealth ultimately produced still belongs to him. In that way, the workers in effect receive a share, but that's not how we think of it. Rather, the work to produce the wealth is treated as a commodity, and is transferred to the owner of the capital just like any other commodity, in exchange for an agreed-upon price. The owner of the capital then owns the labor as well, and so owns the wealth produced with both. Often, this system results in severe inequities. One may rejoice in those inequities as Fruitcake does, or attempt to ameliorate them through government action while accepting the fundamentals of teh system, as Bob Butler would do. One may also propose a more radical change that would hope to eliminate the inequities at the source.
But if one does propose such radical changes, its incumbent on one to pay attention to real-world, practical reality, and consider how such a radically new system would work. Because if it would not, it doesn't matter how righteous and principled it is, it's still a bad idea. That was the problem with Marxism: great in concept, but flawed in practice.
I want to add here that anarchism, as I see it, suffers from a misunderstanding quite analogous to that of Marx. Marx' most basic mistake was the belief that all conflict was class conflict, and so if social classes were eliminated through economic egalitarianism, all conflict would disappear, the state's raison d'etre would be gone, and the state would wither away. In fact, while some conflict certainly IS class-based, not all of it is, and so the elimination of social classes does not eliminate conflict; moreover, social classes tend to form over time without constant collective effort to prevent this -- all of which keeps the state from withering away as predicted.
Anarchism suffers from a similar error, the belief that all aggression and economic inequity derives from the state. Quite obviously some aggression and some economic inequity does, but not all nor, I would say, even most of it, and the state acts to suppress more of these things than it causes.
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/
The Order Master (volume one of Refuge), a science fantasy. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZZWEAS
Smashwords link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/382903
Another Perspective
Brian goes on to challenge Matt's ideas on property and taxation. I fear I desire to do so from a different angle. This time, I'll try to put on my philosopher's hat, and try to keep it on.
I'll start with a series of premises. I've stated variations on the themes often enough. Man is a social animal. He forms groups. These groups share similar values, and often have rules which enforce said values. Said groups generally have leaders. Said groups generally claim and defend territories.
All the above are strong tendencies, not always true. Exceptions can be found, but the tendencies are very strong. Most of these tendencies -- excepting that man has a vaster capacity to create values and rules than most animals -- can be found in many species of animal. If one looks at man's history, one can see how all these behaviors have been survival traits at various points in man's history.
I will define the State in perhaps an unusual way. A group of men that shares values, rules, leaders, and a territory is a State. For example, if a bunch of anarchists sharing values of disliking coercion made a set of rules forbidding coercion and saw that these rules were followed within a given territory, that would be a State. (Don't ask me how they would enforce their rules without coercion.... but let's just say.)
A State might be legitimate, illegitimate, or something in between. I'll propose some criteria which might suggest where on that curve a given State might be. I'm wide open to other criteria, or alternate wording. The earlier criteria might in my opinion be more important.
- If the state cannot maintain a monopoly on use of force within its territory, there is a problem. I'm not sure calling it 'illegitimate' would always be the correct label, but its status is in doubt.
- If in order to maintain a monopoly on the use of force the State must violate international human rights standards, it would not be legitimate.
- If there are significant and persistent acts of civil disobedience, protest, and the like, to the point that the consent of the governed is clearly not present, the state loses legitimacy.
- When few if any other States recognize a State formally -- exchanging ambassadors, arranging trade and the like -- it is likely not considered legitimate by the international community.
- If some student of philosophy declares himself God, and then declares the state illegitimate according to some standard he makes up, then... Well... That's pretty much irrelevant.
Now, all these criteria aren't necessarily the most moral of all possible criteria. However, they reflect the real world. Again, I'm open to other criteria. This is a first draft.
If a state is pretty much legitimate by the above standards, it would be able to define its own values and rules reflecting things like taxation, property and coercion. Any argument attempting to void a given State's values and rules within its own territory would properly have to be made on the basis of its own values and rules. Thus, assuming the State of Anarchia exists, it cannot invalidate the laws of the United States save through the legislative or judicial authorities of the United States. Well, international courts might have some say.
The point of this exercise is to illustrate how Matt creates his own value system and is trying to use it to claim another value system is illegitimate. From a philosophical point of view, he could only do that if he has proven his own value system uniquely true to the point that all conflicting value systems are false. He has not done so.
My system above might not be the most moral of all possible systems, but one can challenge its premises based on observation of the real world. It is not created to advocate for the creation of someone's idea of what the best of all possible worlds might be. It is created as a simplification and illustration of how the real world works. Thus, it is an entirely different beast.
Last edited by Bob Butler 54; 10-13-2009 at 07:19 PM. Reason: Tweak for Clarity
I sure is moving fast and I didn't see this. I'll address it here.
That’s true, but it’s irrelevant.First, this argument exists in total isolation from any question of how income distribution comes about.
Quite trueThe logic of the welfare state and progressive taxation is actually remarkably conservative...
We take it as a given because it already exists. We desire to modify it to distribution that is empirically better for the vast majority of people....in that it tends to take income distribution as a given and then modifies to some "better" distribution.
How so? If I manipulate the conditions of a reaction and so obtain a higher yield, I have obtained a better outcome. I don’t have to know the detailed mechanism of the reaction to know that the outcome is better. We already implemented a flatter distribution in the decades after WW II and the results were better: stronger economic growth, faster rise in incomes and living standards.Alas, it's hard to come up with a coherent description of why a certain distribution is better without also arriving at a critique of how the current distribution came about.
How so? If the logic of progressivism was to protect the wealthy from being lynched, then why would the wealthy oppose it?In the end, the logic of progressivism seems to be more about the desire of the wealthy to keep from being lynched than any real attempt to make economic relationships equitable.
The argument is not an attempt to justify taxation. The rich agree with their taxation. More than any others, were taxation really experienced as theft by those taxed, then it would not be tolerated; they would leave. Late Medieval and early Modern history is filled with examples of exactly this.That being said, the really amusing thing about this argument is that it not only justifies taxation of "status wealth" it implicitly denies the justice of taxing any other wealth.
In actual empirical fact, the very high tax rates of the 1950’s though 1970’s, taxes so high that it was not worth paying CEOs more than 40-50 times average earnings (an eighth of what CEOs bring in with today’s low taxes) did not cause CEOs to leave the country rather than work in America. The same is true of other high earners like pro athletes, who were paid a small fraction of what they earn today because back then taxes would take any larger salaries. Yet they still played.
The argument I made gives an explanation for why the high earners of the past did their jobs for so much less than they do today. The extra money they get today has little value other than keeping score relative to other high earners.
That was not my logic, but rather a straw man you have constructed.By this logic, a truly progressive tax code would be a 100% tax on income over a certain very high level (probably in excess of $250K a year) and maybe a small head tax on every else.
I did not claim this. I claimed that great wealth has both a relative value (status) and an absolute value (power). That is, by taxing the rich the only thing you are taking from them is power, which is pretty much what you advocate, although by a different mechanism.Also, the relationship between high income and coercion, while a positive correlation, is not perfectly regular.
Where do you get this idea? Until quite recently the upper middle class were always aligned politically with the very rich. Both tended to be Republicans in the low-tax 1920’s as well as the high-tax 1950’s.As can be readily seen from recent history, progressive tax systems cause the upper middle class to align politically with the very rich. Breaking that political link, where professionals and small businessmen are driven to protect the privilege of the elite, requires adopting language and policies that don't provoke hostility among them....
The cure you propose is likely to backfire (and technically has already, since it fueled the popularity of conservative economics)
Upper middle class and wealthy people opposed the New Dealers in the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s to no avail. It was not in their power to change these policies. The New Deal policies remained in force until after Democrats screwed the pooch in the 1970’s. The economy stopped working for ordinary people and Democrats did nothing about it. So they were booted out. Republicans did nothing about it when they came to power in the 1980’s, but nobody really expected them to since they are Management's party.
Since 1980, Americans have flipped between on party and the other. Neither have restored to good times. But then since any policy change that might actually do this is automatically considered off the table, how can any improvement ever happen?
Yes. Except you didn't say you thought some of the property was rightfully owned. You asserted that the property is rightfully owned, on your authority as Arbiter of what is Good. And that stuck me as hubris.
The power is not the issue for me. What I am saying is you don't take away any of the enjoyment of their property because the taxes come from the large portion of the wealth that is not being enjoyed.A lot of things affect relative power, but I think we should be focusing on either the injustice itself, or the sorts of actions that enable this injustice to occur.
The only thing you take by taxing the very rich is power.
But does it have anything useful to say?Obviously anarchism has something to say about concerns over this relative power (e.g., how the State reduces accountability, props up big business artificially, keeps labor in check, is historically anti-immigrant, sexist, and racist, etc).
Rich people always have a reasonable alternative. Being rich they can afford to live anywhere they wish, and so can leave the taxing jurisdiction if they feel the tax rate is too high. They have far more choice than unemployed workers have about employment.
To summarize: the pro-tax statist needs to provide reasons as to why the State could have a claim to what we normally regard as ours, if the State is illegitimate....the radical libertarian position is that the State is illegitimate; so there is no possible way that they could have any decent claim to what is yours. (Maybe someone else does, but it ain't the State!) So if the libertarians are right, then the government is taking our property without our consent. The pro-tax statist, then, needs to provide reasons as to why the State could have a claim to what we normally regard as ours. I just happen to think these reasons don't stick.
So if the state is legitimate, no reasons are necessary.
I looked up legitmate. Definitions 4 seems to most applicable to this discussion: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards <a legitimate advertising expenditure>
Under your principles the government is illegitimate by axiom "the radical libertarian position is that the State is illegitimate"
Thus, I would have to provide reasons if I believed what you do. But if I believed what you do I wouldn't hold the position that I do.
It's like a believing Christian trying to explain how a single God cannot simultaneously be three "persons". If one is a believing Christian, he accepts the Triune God as an axiom.
In the same way, a believing radical libertarian accepts the illegitimacy of the government as an axiom.
For those of us who are unbelievers, we go more by definition 3:
a : accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements <a legitimate government> b : ruling by or based on the strict principle of hereditary right <a legitimate king>
For us, legitimacy can be empirically determined.
Illegitimate governments typically are those whose rulers believe they need to employ substantial police powers in order to stay in power.
Legitimate governments have leaders who are not afraid to face those ruled in an electon, or if a non-elective government, have leaders not afraid to expose themselves to their subjects.
OK. Snipping follows:
I agree with virtually all of that which I quoted (save your predicted consequences of anarchism), but I don't think you've fully nailed my position, though you are quite close, partly because I haven't presented it just yet. Here's my case for anarchism:You speak of this as if "what all humans ought not to do" is insulated somehow from factual reality. It is not. What ought to be is dependent on what is, and on what can be. It is never the case that what ought to be is also what cannot be.
[...]
It is also never the case that what should not be is what must be. And so in order for libertarian ethics (or any other ethics) to constitute more than a meaningless emotional grunt, one must concern oneself with patterns found in the real world.
[...]
And that brings us back to anarchism. I have asserted something factual: that the state even at its worst suppresses more violence and oppression than it causes, by a large factor.
This observation is pertinent because your stated reason for supporting anarchy is that you object to aggression. But abolishing the state would result in a large net increase in aggression. Therefore, you cannot consistently approve of anarchy, except by denying that claim about factual reality.
The simple claim "aggression is wrong" is independent of that observation. (Although not of other factual observations which might be made.) The claim "the state is wrong because it is an aggressor" is not.
1) Human beings have a right to not be aggressed against. (N.b. A right is something that must be respected regardless of the consequences of respecting it; otherwise they are just utilities. If we have a right to not be aggressed against, then we can't justify any aggression on the grounds that future violations will probably occur in the absence of such aggression, as this would be factoring in the consequences.)
2) The essence of the State is aggression.
3) The State should be abolished.
This follows. If the State is conceptually aggressive, and aggression is not a mere feature of the State, then the need to get rid of aggression come what may commits us to getting rid of the State, as the State is aggression. If the State were only aggressive part of the time (i.e. initiatory wars, taxation, etc.), then we would be committed to abolishing such features of the State, but not necessarily the State itself.
Now, the absence of the State isn't inherently aggressive per se. If the consequences of anarchy inevitably led to worse sorts of aggression, then (accepting premise 1), we are committed to opposing these individual acts of aggression, even if the aggression you suppose, though it might not be ever-present, might be a worse sort of aggression, just like murder is worse than throwing a punch at someone. However, we are not committed to rejecting the conclusion that the State should be abolished unless we can reject premise (1) or (2).
Now, if you're right about the inevitability of anarchy descending into a state of affairs in which aggression is commonplace and systematic, then we might think that the claim "the State should be abolished" is unintuitive, and probably wrong. Premise one seems more vulnerable to your claim than premise two (and personally, I'm more confident in premise two, anyway, having only come around to accepting the NAP recently), so we might charge that the inevitability of the pervasiveness of aggression in human interaction undermines the idea that we have a right to not be aggressed against.
I think it does, but for slightly different reasons than you, though I'm having trouble understanding your position on this. If humans, by and large, cannot overcome the notion of aggression as being a pervasive feature of life, despite the fact that we are in control of what what we do, then adherence the good life probably allows for aggression in specific scenarios. (But I'm extremely uncomfortable, almost ill, even mentioning this idea because it seems fundamentally inhuman to me.)
I think you misunderstood me here. When I was talking about mere assertion of another ethical/political system, I meant just that -- a mere assertion. It doesn't take logical form, and is not a coherent argument. That is to say, it is not an argument at all.On the contrary, either of those is a perfectly valid response. One can show that political system X has features and benefits A, which make it superior to politicaly system Y, and the same with ethical system Q over ethical system R. An absolute refutation of political system Y or ethical system R -- e.g., refuting a divine-authority system of morality by trying to prove that God does not exist -- is not necessary. It's enough to show that an alternative is better.
If consent is a necessary constituent of legitimacy, and the State is conceptually incompatible with consent, then the State is illegitimate. Your elections don't address that.
The fact that I live here has nothing to do with my consenting. The State, on a conceptual level, doesn't even offer me the opportunity to refuse its rule over my person. It's not in the business of consent: if it were, then it wouldn't even be a state.You live here of your own free will. You can leave anytime you desire. you know the rules of the game. But still you make a decision to stay and live by those rules. You have given your consent every single day and hour you remain here.
Brian, that's a strawman of both Marxism and anarchism. All conflict and all aggression? Surely you jest.
Last edited by Matt1989; 10-14-2009 at 01:24 AM.
Well I'm sorry that you were rubbed the wrong way because I didn't add the word think. But I'm rubbed the wrong way by you calling me out on it and making unwarranted inferences. So just drop it please.
Nope.But does [anarchism] have anything useful to say?
That isn't anything like what I said. My idea was that the pro-tax person needs to establish why the State has a claim to what you nominally own. It doesn't follow from the State's legitimacy the justification for taxation.
I don't know what this definition means. When I say the State is illegitimate, I mean its existence is unjustified by moral law. 3a is the most applicable.I looked up legitmate. Definitions 4 seems to most applicable to this discussion: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards <a legitimate advertising expenditure>
OK, but then you're not operating on the same page as those arguing if states are legitimate or not.For those of us who are unbelievers, we go more by definition 3:
a : accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements <a legitimate government> b : ruling by or based on the strict principle of hereditary right <a legitimate king>
For us, legitimacy can be empirically determined.
