Mnrchst
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Posts posted by Mnrchst
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Yeah, I know. I wanted to start a new thread becuase of how old that one was.
"it follows from the non-agression principle coupled with an examination of the nature of man and the world."
How so?
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I've read/heard a few justifications for this, but I'd like to hear it promoted succinctly. Specifically, how it is a logical consequence of Rand's ethics.
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If our good government didn't have the power to tax us in order to fend off the invaders, we would all lose our lives...every rational one of us would be against letting that happen.
I think this is a pretty weak argument. You're just saying that two wrongs make a right, and appealing to our understanding that one of these wrongs is much less wrong than another.
First of all, those people you're taxing aren't the ones doing the invading--it's not their fault. Could you repel the invaders by taking their stuff? Perhaps, but who produced that wealth? They did.
Second, you're implying that people have to be forced to give up as much as possible to win. What if this requires that you have total socialism? Does that mean no one deserves to enjoy the fruits of their labor?
Finally, I'd like to point out for the sake of the discussion that even if this argument validates the idea that we should have taxes in some situations, that is very different from Grame's argument for (a little) taxation as long as we've a need for military/courts/police.
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YOU CANNOT CLAIM TO HAVE THE MORE REASONABLE ARGUMENTS AND THE GUN TO COMPEL ME TO SUBMIT TO YOU SIMULTANEOUSLY.
This is nonsense. Suppose I'm a serial killer and someone pulls a gun on me and tells me about how naughty I've been.
Well?
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Can consent be made subject to the collective action of voting? You have the power to do so. You have the right to make that agreement. The real question is do others have the right to hold you to your agreement to abide by the decision of the group? Yes, so long the agreement is not an abdication of your rights.
This whole debate is over what people have the right to. You appear to be arguing "You've agreed to having people vote on stuff and make it the law that people will have to follow or face the consequences of force used by the government, therefore, if the government uses force against you because people voted for them to do that, then it doesn't violate your rights."
That's pretty much just argumentum ad populum. "Hey, 75% of people in the US decided we should tax you, so it's moral, and you've consented to it being moral because you think people should be able to vote on the law and force others to abide by it."
But the whole point of this discussion is what the law should be.
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The claim is that any tax imposed to finance the war is not a rights violation. I would tackle that claim first.
I understand, but he said "Justified wars by proper governments are not initiations of force but responses to initiations of force" as an argument for taxation (which doesn't follow) and not as if someone was arguing against governments ever going to war (I'm pretty sure that didn't happen).
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The protection of my rights in that situation is not independent of the judgment of other men. The very entity which is charged with defending my rights relies crucially on other people recognizing their own rational self-interest and funding the government...
All this does is invalidate one argument for no taxes--it doesn't prove that there should be taxes.
...how can such a law system actually be effective if its funding is crucially dependent on the independent judgment of members of society? Those who don’t understand property rights would refuse to fund this objectively proper law system, and the rich would be at the mercy of the masses, same as in anarchy, through a more indirect route.
It can be effective if enough people understand why they need to fund the government. Your argument appears to be "some people won't contribute to the government, therefore, let's take their money by force." How is that moral?
Just because there are going to be free riders doesn't mean there should be taxes. In fact, in any society free from coercion, free riding and an increase in the wealth of the society go hand in hand (people will free ride off the minds of the most productive-wealthiest). You're basically saying "What if there isn't enough money donated for the government to work?" Then this means that too many people are stupid, which will result in a sub-optimal society under any form of social organization.
I can throw this back at you and say "What if, under your preferred model of social organization, a bunch of people start going around murdering people?" Wouldn't this mean that your life is in jeopardy? Of course it is, but does that mean that we need Big Brother to watch over us?
In any society, your life/prosperity/rights are subject to the judgement of others. Heck, even if you lived in a society that organized 99% of the way to how you'd want it, there still might be some laws which you think are immoral. Does this mean we should get rid of voting?
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The governed have already taken receipt of services rendered and have thereby consented.
So Ayn Rand should never have advocated getting rid of social security?
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If there is any correlation at all between the largest corporations in any market and the most efficient corporations and the most efficient corporations reduce their expenses including their taxes, then we can count on the largest corporations not paying taxes beyond token publicity stunts.
Until their consumers boycott their products and buy them from competing corporations that pay the government more.
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Brian9, on 01 October 2010 - 02:10 PM, said:Why do you think people have to be forced to protect themselves?
Because there is a real and totally legitimate economic incentive not to do so.
So your standard for morality is wealth and not rights?
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At the ethical (personal) level an initiation of force against you imposes a cost. Either you surrender to the superior force and they take what they want or you pay the cost of resisting in time, effort, and expenses. If no one happens to initiate force then the cost never manifests.
At the political level the creation of a government entails forethought, planning and a continuing expenditure of money to provide for a military capability, payroll for civil servants, managing government property and payment of national debts. The government is continually resolving conflicts both foreign and domestic on the basis of its monopoly on retributive force. The government merely transfers the real costs imposed by the actual initiators of force to its taxpayers.
But what if the government is fighting a foreign nation that it shouldn't be fighting. Now you're forced to pay them and the money is being spent poorly. Just because 90% of the people in your country want to fight a war with a nation (thereby being enough to get a declaration of war) were this other nation doesn't pose a threat to the O-ist nation doesn't mean you should be forced to pay for it because the its the government that's doing the fighting. Not having taxation creates a check against the stupidity of most of the people in your society.
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I think that if your contribution is entirely up to you there is a powerful incentive to want to negotiate over it
Yes--to get a good government. If the police/courts are corrupt, then you can withdraw financial support of the government until the problem gets solved to your satisfaction.
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If it is a war measure it is a mistake to classify it as a violation of rights. Justified wars by proper governments are not initiations of force but responses to initiations of force.
So what if the war is justified? We're debating how it should be financed.
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Ninth Doctor, I'm honestly can't follow you train of thought in your first post. What's the point? What is your question/objection/argument?
All I can say is (1) It makes no sense either to argue "You haven't figured out how to implement X, therefore, it is immoral" or (2) "The Confederation failed, therefore, anything similar to it will always fail."
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I should add that I don't think taxation is as strong a rights violation as slavery.
So what?
taxation isn't a good comparison, because taxation is used to support infrastructure that you probably would want in a capitalist society anyway, while slavery isn't something you'd want at all and only supports unjust labor practices.
This is ridiculous. Slavery could be used to support infrastructure that you probably would want in a capitalist society.
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And anyone can take what DonAthos just said about slavery and apply it to taxation if they want to know my view on the elimination of taxation.
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So you see no moral problem with taking credit for someone else's work and pretending you were the one who did it?
That's not what we're talking about.
First, Atlas Shrugged is a bad example because it's been around for a long time. Also, if I make an exact copy of Atlas Strugged and put my name on it (in the place of Rand) and distribute it, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm literally claiming her work. And if I actually did, no one would believe me.
What you appear to be talking about--taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own--doesn't necessarily entail a property rights violation. If you either stole some of their (physical) property with the information in question, or you obtained it by invading their privacy (perhaps you snooped a digital copy on their computer), that's one thing. But let's say someone reads you a story, and you're able to memorize it, and then you go off and tell people you did. Is it immoral? Sure, but it shouldn't be illegal.
What I'm asking is how copyrights can be justified if they entail preventing people from distributing similar ideas they came up with. If someone writes a book and I make changes to it, those changes are a product of my mine.
You can say most of the work was done by the other person, but
(1) it doesn't change the fact that the new version is a product of my mind
and
(2) what about inventions that are only somewhat different derivations on a hugely innovative invention? Clearly, most of the work was done by the person who made the very innovative invention, and you've just figured out a few tweaks that still yields an invention (because it can do something that no other invention pulled off). O-ists support patenting this. So why should someone get a property right that prevents people from doing the same thing and distributing the use of that idea (copyrights)? If I make a few changes to a book, most of the work was obviously done by the author of the original, but it's still a new book--it's different from beginning to end, and that's a product of my mind.
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you keep saying "new work" when you really mean "something that is only slightly different, but mostly someone else's old work".
How is a work slightly different from another not a new work? How is it not the product of a person's mind?
would it be okay for someone to, say, copy the entirety of Atlas Shrugged word for word, give it a different title, and publish it as their work?
Sure. Why not?
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There is no "inherently immoral," it's always within a context. So, within the context of America today, yes, it is immoral to eliminate all forms of government intervention, all at once, with no warning for the populace. Even that, however, drops the context that it will never end abruptly. People take time to change their minds...
I think I get it now: you're saying that if 90% of people woke up tomorrow and decided to end all taxation now, it would be immoral to make that change because of what it would do to the 10%. However, if more and more people gradually reached this view, then it would be moral to pass legislation that immediately ends all taxation because the 40ish% of people who oppose such legislation knew there was a good chance such legislation would pass for at least a few months, if not years, ahead of time.
So my question now is why it would be immoral to end all taxation immediately if 90% of people woke up tomorrow and reached this conclusion (virtually impossible, I know, but please indulge me).
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Do you believe that a man owns himself, by right, that his mind and his body is his?
Yes.
Doesn't that extend to the products he produces, as well?
Only if the ownership doesn't prevent others from owning their products. In other words, with patents and land, I'm not preventing someone from owning another patent or another piece land. However, because it's easy to make changes to a book/song, then the only way a copyright can have the effect of property ownership is if it applies to other ideas as well.
In other words, I think people should only own property that doesn't prevent others from owning different products.
What value would someone's labor have if they had no claim to what they produced?
Just because I'm opposed to some products being property doesn't mean I'm opposed to all products being property.
Furthermore, we can already agree that there are some very original ideas that shouldn't be property (like the phrase "for shizzle dizzle", a very unique drawing, a fashion style, etc), even though we might think people have a moral right to owning it.
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there is an answer, just good luck figuring it out.
What I meant was "Does philosophy answer this question?" The consensus here appears to be that it can't.
I don't think that's true. I think that taxation should be eliminated immediately for moral reasons. I've responded to every objection so far.
It appears Eiuol at least agrees with me that eliminating taxation immediately wouldn't be inherently immoral, even if s/he's not convinced it would be inherently moral.
Is there anyone who wants to argue it would be inherently immoral?
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I'm thinking the issue is you want an answer to whether it is or is not immoral in all circumstances, universally. There is no such answer. The best possible answer without analyzing methods to be employed is "it depends".
So where do we draw the line between what is always good/bad and what depends on context? I assume thinking rationally is always good.
Also, if we establish that there's no objective answer to this question, what, then, do you think would be the best? 5 years? 10 years? If not immediately, why not immediately?
why there was chaos was due to poor planning.
So you'd support the immediate elimination of taxation as long as there was sufficient planning to deal with its effects?
You might say that's what you've been advocating, but let me draw a distinction:
Scenario A: Legislation is passed that gradually eliminates taxes over 5 years, giving people sufficient time to plan for how to deal with the change.
Scenario B: Legislation is passed that immediately eliminates taxes and there was sufficient planning done ahead of time for people to deal with the change.
In either case, there has been sufficient planning to deal with the change.
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The idea that if 51% of the population likes a policy, it can automatically be implemented, or if 51% of the population dislike some policy, it can automatically gotten rid of, is incredibly naive.
I never said that. And the "51%" was a simplistic way of saying "enough people". (the whole Senate doesn't get changed every 2 years, for example, so that wouldn't automatically translate to a governing majority). My point is that if the idea of getting rid of all taxes immediately keeps getting more and more popular, exceeds 40%, and is growing at a rate a 5% per year, then people would start to anticipate the elimination of taxation.
So to ask about these kind of fantasy camp scenarios, like eliminating government controls and taxation overnight, is just a kind of game.
I sincerely hope you haven't bothered to read my posts, because I've already explicitly addressed this. I am NOT debating how likely ANYTHING is. I'm debating what is and is not moral.
Why is eliminating taxation overnight immoral?
copyrights
in Political Philosophy
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Also, I don't see how copyrights can be reconciled with freedom of speech, which I see as a consequence of NAP/not using force against the mind.