Is Coercive Taxation Justified?

[Jake_Ellison]

Jake_Ellison: My point here is that you seem fundamentally to be saying the government would not have to violate anybody's rights in order to do what is objectively necessary secure and protect a proper (or best-of-all-possible-worlds) society if that entire society was so rational that they voluntarily obeyed the commands of the government.

Not what I'm saying. What commands? Not only did I not mention commands, I specified the proper role of government, and it did not include giving commands to anyone.

I agree. I also think having a society this rational (let alone getting from here to there) is so unlikely that it isn't worth considering.

There's nothing rational about "following commands". It is the opposite of rational. If you, instead of attacking Mark K above, would've done what he asked, and looked at how Ayn Rand arrived at the concept of individual rights (it is described in Galt's speech in AS, and elsewhere), you wouldn't have to make wild guesses about what I consider rational, or why the role of government is proper the way Rand described it.

Thus the government finds itself torn between violating its citizen's rights to some extent or abandoning the best possible approximation of a proper society it can achieve, given the available means. Maybe there's a false premise in here somewhere, but if you're going to claim that the downfall of Western civilization is preferable to a modest tax, I have to disagree. I kind of like Western civilization.

The false premise is that forcing people to act one way or another (and thus act against their mind, be irrational), is sometimes preferable( more practical) to allowing people to be 100% in accordance with their own rational mind- be free. There is northing you have named (or anyone has ever named, to my knowledge), to support that claim.

The false premise, put another way, is that thugs (sometimes) make better decisions than productive, free men.

The implication of this premise (put either way) is that being a thug is acceptable, as long as it is practical. But there is no way of measuring if a thug is really practical or not, since the thug can simply take from others, who are lesser thugs, and stay on top, until there's no heap to stay on top of.

That is why no one can prove that Obama is incompetent and misguided (except using concepts such as rights, which most people, just like you, consider expandable or even unpractical), at least not until the economy lies in ruins. If everyone was free, and able to rely only on their own mind, and yet he would be clinging to the ideas he holds now (altruism, style over substance, pragmatism), we would point to him being in a state of helpless poverty, and everyone would see that he is indeed wrong and unpractical. Instead, he is, with the same ideas that would make it impossible for someone to thrive in a free society, the most powerful man in the World, imposing his ideas on vast amounts of people who are his betters.

[edit]

If you feel a connection with some of Rand's ideas that you know of, or at least with some of the people who are , if only half-assed, promoting her ideas (Limbaugh, Ron Paul, whatever), I expect you will take the time to read Atlas Shrugged. It is long, but it is an exciting mistery, with heroic characters who's actions have consequences on a global scale, with love stories and sex scenes etc. Plus, it is a vehicle for Rand's impressive ideas.

So, unless you have ADD, you won't get bored with it. One thing is for sure, reading AS or Ayn Rand's non-fiction are the only two ways of understanding and then judging her philosophy. Having arguments on a message board is not a way. So, I'd be happy to discuss anything Ayn Rand related that you have actually read, until then, I won't be replying any more in this thread. (there are threads about other subjects on this board, not just philosophy, of course, so don't take this as a threat of mine to ignore you unless you read Ayn Rand)

Edited April 6, 2009 by Jake_Ellison

[avgleandt]

avgleandt: If by "standing between you and the source" you mean where she is physically standing, then I cannot understand why this is a justification for use (not sure it would count as initiation) of force against her, but my example is not. In both cases, she is not the source of force, and we ask whether the fact that she has NOT done something (move, lend you the gun) means you may use force to alter what she is doing. On the other hand, we could read "standing" in the metaphorical sense, and say that by not lending you the gun, she is standing between you and resolving your situation favorably, in which case again her actions seem no different from obscuring your line of sight to the target.

In any case, you say that you would take the gun because it was an emergency. Me too. Why is it wrong for the government to take a bunch of guns in response to an even bigger emergency?

To clarify: Keanu's Law says simply: "Shoot the hostage." Or rather, "You may shoot the hostage in the situation described, and the moral responsibility falls on he who initiated force."

Let me clarify, retalitory force can only be used directly against the initiator of force. Physcial proximity is only important in this example because we are using a gun and hostage is only going to get hurt if he is close. This is not keanu's law of shot the hostage, you are directly shooting at the initiator of force the hostage may or may not get hurt. If you would to steal a gun from alice, you would be initiating force against her. Your need for a gun, food, ect. to even save your life does not give you the right to take away someone elses property. If you still don't understand the difference between using direct retalitory force against initiator, and using force agaist alice, let me know I will attempt to eleborate, or mabye someone else can explain it better, but essentially this difference is the important part.

If I do steal the gun, then I become a criminal and will have to repay, or be punished in someway, the court decides based on alice's charges. So me taking the gun is wrong. Similary if the government breaks your rights, takes your property even in response to a bigger emergency, they become the criminal. Criminal goverments don't have the right to exsist. The only way to punish a government is to dissolve it and reinstate a non criminal government.

[RationalBiker]

My question is: can you do better? Can you build a society which violates your rights less egregiously that will survive in this world against those who would threaten it?

This is the question of the pragmatist, not the Objectivist. You are using the result to justify the method. In addition to the rest of the argumentation you have offered, this also demonstrates that your position is not consistent with Objectivism.

[Marc K.]

Marc K: A robber says to you, "Your money or your life." You respond that rights are a unified whole and cannot be separated. You bleed out in the gutter and die.

The more you speak, the more you make my case. Now you are comparing the government to a murderous robber and you still can't see the problem with your conception of a proper government?

For now, I will say that if your own conception of rights leads you into danger and absurdity for the sake of what you call a perfect, logical, objective deduction of morality, then, I don't know, maybe you did it wrong.

[...] if you want to say that for some person to demand a small share of your wealth for some purpose which is objectively in your interest is to viciously profane your sacred right to life, I am not terribly interested.

I propose a government that does not violate your rights, you propose a government that "must" violate your rights and you call mine dangerous and absurd. What shall we call yours, the mob, the politburo or the reich?

From the sarcasm I gather that you do not consider your right to life sacred, I disagree. I also disagree that it is in my interest to have my rights violated. This is the same contradictory premise that you have been working from all along and you would know that if you bothered to discover what rights are. It seems as though you know that your conception of government is inconsistent with the concept of rights, maybe this is why you don't want to define them. Is this true? Are you intentionally evading the truth?

Also, I didn't say any of what you attributed to me when you said "what call", but I'll only argue the word "deduction". Morality is mostly an induction and the concept of a proper government can be observed and you should take the time to make that induction, it is not hard:

Look at the history of the world. Look at the world today. Look at the history of the US. Compare North Korea with South Korea. Compare Imperial Japan circa 1930 with Japan 1950. Compare the US to Europe. Compare China 1950 with China 2000. What was the difference between the Soviet Union and the US? Are there any generalities you can make?

But I am not willing to rule out a priori that (though we're obviously nowhere near it) there is a best of all possible states, and it's going to violate your rights. I have heard Objectivists, perfectly nice people I love and respect, take up this question, and their analysis could be summarized as: "That thought is evil. Period."

I'll leave it to someone else to describe it as evil. I would describe it as illogical, pessimistic, sad and malevolent -- you think that the way people should and "must" deal with one another is by force, in your mind the "best of all possible states" includes a state that must violate your rights. You can't even imagine that it is possible for a government to exist that doesn't violate your rights? That must be a truly depressing state of mind.

[AllMenAreIslands]

...I am taking a specific position on the ethics of emergencies, namely that emergency expropriation is acceptable.

Except that, it isn't acceptable. We're not talking about an individual using someone else's bike, or gun or whatever for an emergency situation of self-defense. We're talking about legalized expropriation by government, which means legalized initiation of force. As soon as you allow as how there is or ought to be a situation in which it is permissible for the government to initiate force, you've thrown away the entire principle of rational government.

AllMenAreIslands: I considered splitting hairs on this point, but decided against it.

Eh?

Edited June 2, 2009 by AllMenAreIslands