How do you avoid the responsibility of taxes?

[pieman]

I'm trying to write a paper on laissez-faire capitalism, and the argument I keep running into is that people have an obligation to sustain the government because the government creates the infrastructures that allow them to gain wealth in the first place (roads, patent systems, courts, etc.). It seems to me like the best argument against this idea is that private individuals and companies could do this as a business endeavor, rather than a 'public service' and that just because other people voted to pay for these services doesn't mean I'm obligated to (aka a majority can't vote away the rights of a minority). But this is one of the only anti-capitalist arguments I have trouble beating with clear logic. How would Objectivism counter this argument? Obviously Rand would say nobody has any "duty" to do anything, and that consent is what matters, but when writing a school paper it's hard to write "the wealthy shouldn't be taxed because they don't want to be." I know it's a good argument, but how would you explain it?

[2046]

Well I mean it seems you did understand it in terms of clear logic. From the premises "the government builds roads" and "roads are necessary for wealth" it does not follow "therefore we should pay taxes." It's just a non sequitur. Even if you somehow establish people have an obligation to pay for the things that allowed them to gain their wealth, it doesn't follow because it isn't established that only the government can or should build infrastructure in the first place. (And even if it were, it would only be sufficient enough to prove we should pay taxes for roads and infrastructure, not anything else.)

 

As for the ethical question of "do we have an obligation to pay for things that allow us to gain wealth?" this seems to be quite vague, but why should I be coerced to pay for a monopoly of some good that I had no choice in whether I wanted it or not in the first place? If John told Sam that he was now the only monopoly provider of houses, and the only house Sam could have was the one John built for him, and he had to live in a house that John builds and he has no choice in the matter anyway, therefore Sam owed him a certain amount of his productivity and he should be grateful that John does this, would we accept this state of affairs as just?

 

The entire point of laissez faire is that it seeks to challenge the assertion that government should do anything beyond enforcing property rights. Proponents of free market roads point out a number of ways in which a non-monopolistic transportation system could be superior to a governmental one, such as competition will motivate better service, congestion and traffic will be reduced, encourage more production of roads, have less accidents and crime, etc. Prof Walter Block has to my knowledge the best work on this topic.

Edited January 31, 2014 by 2046

[Nicky]

It is true that roads are not the government's job to build and maintain (because the task does not require the use of force). However, it is not true that the government has no job at all to do.

 

The government's job is to defend individual rights through the enforcement of laws (through the country's political structure, Courts, Police and military). This presupposes a monopoly on retaliatory force, and the need to raise funds to maintain all those structures. 

 

What it does not presuppose is the initiation of force. It does not follow that just because the government needs funds, it should initiate force to collect them. At least some governments, in some situations (in relatively rational societies), could collect those funds through non-coercive means (covered in other recent threads on this forum).

 

There's also an old thread debating whether in some situations, when all else fails, taxation might be justified, to win a war for instance. But the notion that taxation should be the first option, and that all others should be dismissed as "unrealistic", shows a disturbing lack of faith in human nature (people's ability to reason, specifically).

[Harrison Danneskjold]

More fundamental.

Wealth is not gained by roads and bridges; it's gained by reason.  Bill Gates did not amass his fortune because of the available infrastructure.

The argument that "you couldn't have X without the government" is an attempt to deny this by using partially valid, but completely unimportant information, as if it actually deserved to be taken cognizance of.

 

The government should allow people the freedom to think and choose for themselves (and choice is only thought-made-real) because that's the only way a single human being could ever survive, let alone thrive.

Every halfway-logical statist in existence means to stop you from remembering this, because if you forget the purpose of freedom you might just forget why you wanted it in the first place.

 

Freedom is good because thinking is good.  Period.  Roads and bridges are worthless without it.

[Harrison Danneskjold]

p:  Ayn Rand was born in Russia

p:  Ayn Rand was a genius

P:  Soviet Russia fostered genius

 

What's false there?  It's not an error of accuracy but one of importance.

[Hairnet]

There are a lot of things you can do in this paper. This is a pretty big topic and you will have to do your own research but i can give you some leads. 

 

1) You can point out examples of private infrastructure. They exist for sure. 

2) You can look at how government infrastructure is rooted in the military historically and show how this affects our economy. 

3) You can look into how big business manipulates imminent domain laws, discrediting the idea that somehow these laws achieve a public good. The Institute for Justice has done cases on these that show how ridiculous this stuff can get. 

4) Look into how government infrastructure damages the ecology in favor of connected interests. 

[dream_weaver]

p:  Ayn Rand was born in Russia

p:  Ayn Rand was a genius

P:  Soviet Russia fostered genius

 

What's false there?  It's not an error of accuracy but one of importance.

p1: Particular was general.

p2: Particular was general.

C: General is fostered general.

In this case, the general (Russia) fostered a particular (Ayn Rand)

 

Edited: prior/current

Edited February 15, 2014 by dream_weaver