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By what standard? This just sounds like boilerplate pragmatism. So what if socialism brings the best outcome by this standard you aren't elaborating on? Does that mean you'd support socialism? Does all of Rand's work go out the window? She didn't say "Minarchism creates a good outcome by some vague utilitarian standard" she said "I know A, so now I know B, so now I know C, etc" First, doesn't this mean that if the % of people who want the elimination of taxation immediately gradually increases to 51% over several years that it is then moral for taxation to be eliminated immediately because people saw it coming. Also, where do you draw the line? Should we have subsidized slave owners if we eliminated slavery? Should we eliminate taxation gradually over 100 years instead of 5? If not, why is 5 better than 100 and also 0? Also, even the gradual transition of O-ism would be one hell of a big change in many ways, so I'm not sure where you draw the line on "too big of a change" and "not too big". Is there anything government does that you'd like to end abruptly? If so, how is that not as bad as slavery? That says nothing about whether or not this change would work out well. Doesn't this mean you're in favor of eliminating taxation immediately as long as you think there's already charities set up to take care of the transition? In Ominous Parallels, Peikoff argued that what did the French in was that there was no clear philosophy driving the revolution, so I don't see that as a good example.

Yes. So what? No one can predict what people will choose to do. Suppose that transitioning to an O-ist society (gradually) leads to outright socialism. Does that mean we should oppose O-ism? Suppose that transitioning to an O-ist society (gradually) makes all the socialists here go on murder rampages. Does that mean we should oppose O-ism? This is like arguing that it isn't immoral for a criminal to take your money because you gave it to them. The best thing for us to do is do what is moral. So why is eliminating taxation immediately necessarily immoral regardless of how people react? If you can't answer that question, I don't see how I can be convinced that we should't. I don't see how it matters how people react to X. All I think matters is whether or not X is moral based on what it is.

I don't know why I have to tell you this again: I'm currently opposed to copyrights. I am NOT advocating a new type of copyright. What I'm saying is that if copyrights are justified on the grounds that people get control of their ideas, then this must apply to ALL new ideas, even if they are very similar to other ideas. I don't see how a book which is similar to another is a "new idea", but if it's very similar, then it isn't. Simply re-writing 4 pages of a 400 page book can make the story significantly different.

I'm not asking about that. I'm not asking about that. Yes (as long as it's temporary, maybe 5 to 20 years).

Couldn't you just as easily say that figuring out that we need to live in a moral society doesn't tell us what it is (anarchy vs state). Once we figure out that there are ways of figuring out how to live in a moral society in political terms, why can't we include eliminating taxation? And if we can't, why is your position any better than mine? Why wouldn't it be better to eliminate taxes over 100 years instead of 5 years? Finally, suppose you're right that there's no real way to know how long it should take to eliminate taxes--that's there's no objective answer. We can still argue about it (pros/cons). It's like, O-ism can't tell us how to rule on a verdict in a court case, but that doesn't mean we can't argue about it. So, I'm open to the idea that there's no objective answer on this question, but I'd still like to debate it anyway, even there isn't an objective answer (and I think there is). Of course, I'd like to first determine whether we can get an objective answer on this issue.

There's two problems here. One, you're still not explaining how it would be immoral if we eliminated taxes overnight. All you're saying is that doing so "might not work so well" (which means what exactly?) Two, your analogy is begging the question. Yes, if we discover a country is "probably" a security threat, it doesn't mean we need to go all in. But we haven't established that eliminating all taxes at once is "probably" going to cause problems. I think your point about a "slight" reduction in taxes validates my argument. There's probably only going to be a slight reduction in the money being spent on dependents. Observe that the vast majority of people say that one of their biggest problems with eliminating taxes (in principle) is "But what would happen to the poor?" This demonstrates that they want money being allocated to them. So that's what they'd do. I doubt they wouldn't want to fork over the few extra bucks it would take to keep the dependent well off when they've eliminated all their spending on things they have no desire to support (which would almost always add up to way more than the necessary different to keep the dependents well off--some military spending, subsidies, miscellaneous pork barrel, etc.).

No, I'm talking about MORALITY. It sounds like you're arguing from pragmatism/consequentialism instead of Rand's style of ontology. Consider this: if a socialist system could get you the "best" society by your standard, would you want it? Couldn't you use the same reasoning to say "Let's not eliminate slavery overnight. Let's do it in 2 years--now people have 2 years notice." You may respond that "Slavery is immoral," but you also agree (I assume) that taxation is immoral. So why are there immoral things you want to eliminate now, and immoral things you want to eliminate gradually? That's true. It could also help it a lot (if the new CEO is better). That's a poor analogy. In your analogy, the dependent is the employer (because they need to adjust to a change). Well, the employer MUST do the work of finding a replacement. With the situation we're discussing, the dependent doesn't necessarily have to change anything--they might still get the exact same check in the mail, administered by the exact same people. What they have to deal with is the possibility that they won't get the same amount. But, they always have to deal with this possibility. There's no guarantee they'll get the check every month (perhaps, for example, if the debt ceiling debate wasn't resolved, they wouldn't have for at least one month). There's no reason to think they won't get the money they're used to--it's up to the people (those who want to donate can make up for the loss of those that don't). In fact, it's entirely possible that they would get more. Your argument seems to be that people should get what they expect. The problem is, life is unpredictable. Things happen that people won't expect all the time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make large changes immediately. If a morally bad system can be replaced with a morally good one, then I think that's what we should do. There's no guarantee that next year people won't vote for a system where's there is both taxation and an elimination of all handouts to the poor. If the poor don't get as much money as they're used to, I'm not sure how that's immoral. Yes, it will make their life harder, but you also have no wealth being taken from someone by force (which is supposed to be immoral). How would an immediate change be immoral and how is this reconciled with the immorality (in principle) of taxation? One, we don't have to (we can keep funding the same people sending checks). Two, why can't we set up the charities ahead of time, so that they're ready to go at a moments' notice once people's views get closer to ours? Can't we get a list of everyone on SS+medicaid+whatever from the government? Couldn't a charity send a $1 check to every SS recipient in the near future to prove a point?

It's not relevant--I'm discussing morality (in a political context), not strategy. And the ONLY way we will eventually eliminate taxation is if 51% want it gone. Just because we could argue that we should eliminate taxes immediately doesn't mean we couldn't also say "And it would be almost as good if we did it gradually over 5 years" and manage to convince people that we should do it over 5 years instead of right now. It's not like if everyone who is against taxation in principle (right now) started arguing that we should eliminate it immediately instead of gradually over 5 years that we'd never get to a point where legislation was enacted to eliminate taxation gradually over 5 years. Finally, I'll add that even if it were true that I could advocate X and get X and be happy that I got X, I'm not going to advocate X if I want Y (even if X is better than the status quo). I don't lying is a good means of getting things done.

This is extremely vague. Also, look at it this way: Some guy: "JASKN, I'm not going to keep saying the same thing five different ways. We just disagree. I think you are posing your questions in the context of a fantasy land. And that's why I think we must always have taxes, strong antitrust legislation, a ban on the sale of hard drugs, and a good minimum wage." You: "But here are my arguments. If you're not addressing them, why are you so sure you're right?" Some guy: "Look, you're just living in a fantasy land. I really don't know what else to say."

"If you created something with your mind, it is yours just the same as if you create it from raw materials with your hands." But you're not including a book which is very similar to one which already exists. Why does this book not get included? It was created by someone's mind. I think patents work because a patent doesn't exclude someone from making a new invention. Copyrights seem to me to be an attack on the mind, because they limit the ideas people can come up with and distribute (similar ideas). Once you recognize a copyright, you're stopping people from creating/distributing similar ideas. With patents, there's nothing preventing someone from coming up with a very similar invention. I'll also add that I don't think the cure for cancer + a little sugar counts as a patent, because the sugar isn't a part of creating anything new--it doesn't cure cancer and it's already been discovered/invented. With books/stories any small change fundamentally changes the whole thing. If, for example, Atlas Shrugged is given a few additional scenes, what the book does has been changed--it's telling you a story and the story is now different. This means that any book/story is an intellectual creation by whomever came up with the particular version in question, and once you recognize this, the idea of excluding people from creating unique ideas which are similar to yours breaks down.

I doubt there would be backlash if people generally decide that taxation is, in principle, immoral. But let's suppose there is. So what? Does this mean we shouldn't advocate lowering taxes gradually if we knew there would be a backlash to that? It's like you're saying "Let's only advocate whatever people will like."

I'm not talking about how liking it is that all taxes will be eliminated tomorrow. I'm asking why doing so would be immoral. People can spend their whole lives dependent on charity with no guarantee the money will keep coming in, but they might still build their whole life around continuing to get it. Does this mean there should be no charity? Of course not. If people want to keep donating to these people, they're still going to get it. There doesn't have to be any fundamental change in their life--money keeps getting sent to them by people. How is this relevant? Are we talking about people adjusting everything in their life? Nope. Not necessarily. They can keep getting sent a check from Social Security (run by the government), which is taking in money from donations. She wouldn't have to change anything. I never said I did. What I said is that (at the very least) most of that money will keep coming in. However, it's probable that all the money will come in--the 90% of people who still send money will generally send more. I think this is a safe prediction because (1) most people in our society care a lot about the non-criminal and/or non-drug-addicted poor living well (2) they would have the money to spend without taking on a higher burden (because of all the government crap that gets cut, like bridges to nowhere and ridiculous subsides--which would certainly exceed the needed amount to cover the difference of some people not donating) and (3) the purchasing power of what comes in for the dependent would quickly go up because of how much better the economy would become. Lets also not forget (4) that the minimum wage would be gone. 3 and 4 aren't going to kick in overnight, but 1 and 2 would. Since these people are getting checks every week/month, it's not like they're going to starve the next day. Also, remember that people can take care of this with a couple minutes of online time or a phone call "Sign me up for X amount for the next 6 months for the XYZ fund, which goes to all the old entitlements and is spent in the exact same way." It boils down to this: Why is it good to keep taxing from the barrel of a gun for a while instead of just ending it tomorrow?

I'm not talking about how likely this scenario is (I know most people will, probably, remain very anti-Objectivism/similar for a long time). WHY is there no chance that such big changes could be made overnight? People have free will.

I was demonstrating the absurdity of everyone getting a copyright for an original (as in unique) work as an argument against copyrights; I wasn't advocating a new type of copyright. So why should you be able to have an original work be your property (assuming we're confident with our brightline between original enough and not original enough). I agree with the first part; I'm not sure about the second part.

"not even realistic for the world today" Not realistic how?

"I'll say it again: these charities don't exist and couldn't exist in time for everyone to transition in the best possible way." What is the best possible way? Why is it the best possible way? Why couldn't these charities exist in time? The government already has this list, so all people have to do is (within a week? a month? however often the checks go out) donate to a charity. To simplify the issue, let's assume it's the same government people doing this, and their salaries are from donations. All people would have to do is go online/make a phone call/mail a check, etc. I don't see this as a huge change/not feasible. This case needs to be made on more moral than utilitarian/pragmatic grounds (which is what it seems to be to me right now). I don't see the adjustment as being all that big. If people want to make the case that these people deserve to keep benefiting from money extracting by the barrel of a gun, that's what I'd need to hear.

Wouldn't the logical conclusion of this be to never eliminate SS? If you eliminate it at any point, many people will be getting a lot less than they paid in. Rand said she wanted all controls out in 3-5 years, which for someone who's 60 years old, basically means they paid into this system for a very long time and get nothing back. Do you object to her position and want SS to be phased out over a period of something like 20 or 40 years? (I'm not saying this would necessarily be worse than the 3-5 years phase out) I assume you're talking specifically about the poor only. This includes all the businesses which get huge tax loopholes (often driving their taxes down to near-zero). I don't see how they'd really be getting "screwed".

Why? Billionaires aren't the only people paying for these things as it is. People can just pool their money together the way they do now (except voluntarily). What if you're a slave owner? How are you going to feed yourself with that much of your income gone? I'm honestly not sure what to say other than I find this too vague to understand. Could you please elaborate?

The other criticisms seem plausible to me, but this criticism is incredibly expansive. Just because we got to wherever we are now incrementally doesn't mean we should do everything incrementally (even Rand said we should eliminate all antitrust immediately). Does it take time for things to improve? Sure. Time would still be going by with the elimination of controls immediately. There have been plenty of large/sudden changes our society has made for the better. This reminds me of how Keynesians said 1946 would be a terrible year for the American economy.

Why does it matter that people act in accordance with them? Should we have kept subsidizing slave owners once their slaves were freed? I don't see how the massive distortions couldn't be solved quickly. If ethanol subsidies ended overnight, then employment would transition to other sources of fuel. If it were detrimental to society (in terms of overall economic production) for a lot of jobs in the ethanol industry to end, I don't see how that would happen in the first place (it would merely become less popular). When you say "adjust", you're implying that something bad would happen if we made this change. I'm not sure what, specifically, this is.

Why would anyone starve? Most people object to the idea of no-taxes (eventually) by saying "But what about all those people who depend on the government to like!" This means that even without taxation, most people would still be donating enough money to the poor so they could live. Anyone who would starve would just be the person who no one wants to support (they'd have to be pretty terrible). Just because the charity doesn't exist now doesn't mean it couldn't exist very very quickly. If the government has a list of the people getting help, people can take this list and create a charity for donating to these people ecumenically. There would also be "only for people with Aspirger's, only the elderly of sound mind/body, etc." I don't see how this couldn't happen quickly, or, better yet, how Objectivists could prepare for this ahead of time. You're going have to be more specific. Is your position consistent with the non-aggression principle, or is NAP not something we want overnight? If so, how do you draw the line between inherently bad things, and things which aren't bad because you have to get rid of them gradually?

You haven't established that what you've done is theft.My point is that if there should be copyrights for people's stories/songs because they made it, then I can't see how this wouldn't apply to stories/songs which are very similar to others because they are still unique, and therefore a creation of the person who made the new one. What about when someone makes a book that is different enough that you'd want to copyright it, but still could not have been made were it not for the creation of another book to inspire the author?In essence, why should copyrights only be awarded to works which are not very similar to any other works? How is making a book which is very similar to another not an intellectual creation?And, again, what about when someone makes an invention that is almost identical to another invention, but is still a new invention? Obviously, most of the work was done by the person who invented the previous invention, but we don't deny that a new patent must be made.

Rand said we should transition from the status quo to the tax-free non-government regulated society gradually (over a few years). I'm not sure why we should. Why not just do it overnight? Rand said that this would mean some people wouldn't have time to adjust/they thought that their social security would keep coming indefinitely. I'm not sure how this is a problem. They can appeal to charity. Why does it matter that they thought SS/welfare would keep coming? Would we object to eliminating slavery immediately because people expected to keep getting revenue from it? If initiating force is wrong, why keep doing it if we can stop doing altogether immediately?

I started a thread of patents/copyrights a while back. I started skeptical of both. I'm now convinced that patents are good, but I'm still not convinced that copyrights are good (or that they are bad). I figured I might as well start a new thread on this. Rand's argument is that people should have the right to exclusive control over (some) ideas they have for a limited time. I'm not sure how this can be used to justify copyrights. The only way copyrights can be effective is if they apply to works that are very similar to their own. Otherwise, someone might make small changes to a book and call it new. However, if someone takes someone's book and makes changes to it, isn't THAT their own idea/creation? In other words, suppose someone writes a book, and I like it, but there are elements of the plot I dislike. So I make some changes to it (not minute ones, but they effect the overall story). The new book is similar enough to the old ones (with much/most of it being exactly the same) that it's obvious that it's virtually impossible that I could have written this new book without the old one. Why shouldn't I be able to distribute this book? And if copyrights are good, why not allow me to have this copyrighted because it's new and created by me? Even if it's very similar to the other book, we can just as easily say that this new book could not have been created without me, and that it is a product of my own thought, and therefore I deserve a copyright to this. If so, this would mean a virtually limitless number of copyrights for every minute change and I see no way to justify that. Someone might object that most of the value of the new book came from the work of the person who wrote the original (especially if they are very similar), and, therefore, I don't deserve to be able to distribute/read this idea without permission from the person who wrote the original book. However, this (1) doesn't change the fact that's it's new and I made it and (2) that the original book way very well have not been written without yet another book. For example, let's say someone writes a book with a very novel idea (perhaps it's science fiction). Someone reads this and says "Wow, that's a cool idea." They then go off and write a book with the same idea, but the overall story is very different (so there's no copyright violation). Can't we just as easily say that they couldn't have written that book without the one that first came up with the novel idea, and therefore, that part of the value of this new book came from the old one? Furthermore, suppose someone comes up with a groundbreaking new invention. This is a very new invention, and required a lot of thought to create it. Then, someone invents a very similar invention that is still fundamentally new (it can accomplish something the other invention couldn't). Can't we just as easily say that most of the value of this new invention came from the person with the very similar groundbreaking invention, and that therefore this person shouldn't get a patent for making a new invention? And if we reject this notion, and insist that the new invention should be patented by the inventor on the grounds that it accomplishes something new, and that it doesn't matter how similar it is to any other invention or how much of the value of this new invention came from another inventor, how then can we reconcile this with support of copyright? Finally, suppose I write a new book which is very similar to another one and go around distributing/reading it to people for free. Wouldn't preventing me from doing so be a violation of my right to free speech?

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn036.pdf Thoughts?