An argument I recently had with a socialist

[Alchemy]

Probably a losing proposition, but every once in a while I'll argue with actual socialists and Marxists.

 

Basically, I made the statement that all taxation was theft and that if I could change one thing about the philosophy of the US it would be for people to realize that their money, wealth, income, etc was property. In much the same way somebody from the government could not force their way into your house and take your coffee table (because the guy down the street doesn't have one), nobody, government or otherwise, has the right to force you to part with your money.

 

Of course, he took issue with this and asserted that he didn't see how taxation was theft in that people can get involved politically to try and change the tax laws or simply leave the country and refuse to participate. He also asserted that because they benefit from paying them, that also means it's not a form of theft. He added that if the person being taxed was completely okay with it, that it was not theft in that theft cannot exist with consent.

 

I argued that theft was a moral absolute in that it was immoral and any amount of justification or sanctioning of the act didn't make it any less so. Basically, just because you're okay with people mugging you (out of some twisted sense of social justice) doesn't change the act in and of itself and it does not all of a sudden make it morally okay. Or because you sanction having houses burglarized doesn't mean that if yours get's hit, it's suddenly not theft.

 

He spat back that if a person consents to being stolen from, it's not theft and it's certainly not morally wrong. He went on to say that my problem was that I was mixing ethics and economics. He then made snide remarks about how surprised he was that I didn't understand a simple word like consent. 

 

I asked him hypothetically, if the same person who was okay with getting mugged or having their house robbed, decided that it was perfectly okay with the same happening to others, did he consider THAT to morally okay too. 

 

He made a remark that he worries for my community if I didn't realize how stupid that was and went on talk about all that socialism had done for the world for the last 2+ centuries. 

 

It got a bit ugly after that. 

 

 Any thoughts? Was my reasoning sound or flawed? 

[softwareNerd]

With one qualification, I'd agree with him on the idea of consent. If one adds in the communication of that consent, the nature of the act does change. Consent plus communication make the key difference between being assaulted by a bully versus (say) participating in a boxing match. In the sport, people consent to participate, and they also agree about other details: like allowable levels and methods of fighting.

 

If someone wants to be burglarized but does not tell anyone, the burglar is still a burglar. But, no harm is done really: since both sides end up happier. With democratic governments, if a citizen believes the government should take $10K of his money as tax, and the government takes $10K, no harm is done. Presumably that voter has been voting on this basis too. 

 

If the person consents, there's really not much point deciding whether to classify it as theft or not. Since both sides are happy, what's the problem. In fact, Rand suggests government should be funded by some type of voluntary tax (one might change the term "tax" in this case, but that simply confirms that being voluntary changes its essential nature).

 

I agree that it is quite different when you want someone else to be taxed. There's no consent there, that's imposition of force. This is what we have today. We no not have a dictatorship taking from people by force. We have a democracy where people have voted (indirectly) for the system we have, and -- despite all their complaints and differences, the resulting government comes from crude some form of "averaging" across all these different opinions. In the U.S. taxes are taken because enough voters agree that they should be taken. That does not make them right vis-a-vis those who do not want them taken.

 

As an analogy, at one point -- despite their differences -- the citizens of the U.S. decided slavery was right, or that alcohol sales would be banned. These things happened without the consent of the victims. So, they were wrong.

 

 

 

 

[Spiral Architect]

I know your pain as I've been round this to.  I have a friend who is a socialist and it's at the point we simply don't talk politics or philosophy or we wouldn't be friends.

 

This is the classic collectivist argument in that you do have a choice in your taxes because you vote.  Or basically mob rules.  We are not individuals part  of the group therefore we exercise choice by group.   Ultimately it is an assault on free will since they have to deny it in order to ignore the fact they are imposing their choice on you and forcing you to obey their edicts.  Group think normally allows them to get around this.   In my experience you are done as either they don't have a leg to stand upon or they deny free will which disqualifies them from conversation at that point (since volition is required for cognition). 

 

Since I live in Michigan and until recently we had a ban on gay marriage I would just say that "Sam [a gay friend] chose to not get married then"? Of course that is different when it's your pet talking point.  Put some times a concrete example sets up the abstract argument for those who are not use to such level of debate. 

 

As for Marxists - Don't bother.  If they really want to support a monstrosity that recorded 140 million dead "workers" enforcing the "worker's paradise" through social policies so everyone can own nothing and everything at the same time, in one century...  Well they are in Walt Disney Land and not worth the time.  They have already insulated themselves to reality. 

[Spiral Architect]

And welcome to the board!