no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Comments on Comments #6

February 15th, 2008

In comments # 5 I continued the discussion of why I (generally) do not “hate the troops.” Franc replies:

Your argument seems to be that ignorance of morality is an excuse to be immoral. This does not seem very defendable to me. After all, the facts about the morality of the military are easily accessible to all. If they were not, you might have a case (as in for instance the fact that ignorance of the law should be an excuse, since every point of law is not easily accessible to the average person), but not here.
If you surrender your moral compass, either by joining the military or by putting faith in the government, then you should be blamed for everything that follows. You have abdicated your mental independence, and that’s a cardinal sin.

(I hope you mean a “cardinal sin” figuratively, because the essence of religion is abdication of mental independence!)

I do not support them, but that doesn’t mean I want them to die. I do not hate them, and that doesn’t mean I excuse their actions. Most of these kids (and they’re mostly kids) have been brainwashed to the point where they’d probably point a gun at your or me, if they were ordered to do so. They wouldn’t do this on their own. If monsters they’ve become, it’s because of the State—they’re victims, too, pawns as they are.

I do not mean that their actions should be excused, nor do I mean to suggest that ignorance is an excuse for immorality. But it certainly mitigates these factors, IMHO. People are bound to make grievous errors in judgment when the foundation for their decisions is a lifetime of propaganda. I deny that the facts about the morality of the military are easily accessible to all, precisely because I don’t believe for a second that the plain facts about “morality” are easily accessible to all. Living rightly is a conscious decision which requires knowledge of the right way to live, and practice/repetition or right actions. Sure, most people have some inkling of what it means to be moral, and what decisions are or are not right. But morality isn’t, I don’t think, something entirely innate, it is a learned behavior.

One’s moral compass can only be calibrated by consistent application of right reason and action. (If this goes any further, I’ll have to dig up my notes from Ethics class…) The State’s interference is like a magnetic field which imperceptibly alters the indications given, and sends you off course.

This post at Tranarchism brought me back to Tyler’s post at Marginal Revolution, questioning the validity of a gold standard. (see my previous response) This time, I perused the comments.

Bernard: “What is all this business about legal tender? All it refers to is something that must be accepted in payment of a debt. If you owe me money, what is it about “legal tender” that prevents me from accepting gold in payment if you offer it?”

Bernard, nothing prevents you from accepting gold as payment. Capital gains taxation, however, is an impediment. But more generally, legal tender laws preclude you from enforcing a gold-denominated contract. As creditor, you may be forced to accept paper dollars (i.e., legal tender, for all debts, public and private) at an unsatisfactory, but statutory exchange ratio.

Mike: “The biggest problem with the gold standard is that once the central bank commits to maintaining convertibility at (say) $800 per ounce, the central bank becomes vulnerable to a bank run.”

He then encourages people to read up on the real bills doctrine. I think Mike needs to read up on the gold standard. There is no practical need for a “central bank” or “lender of last resort” where notes are backed by specie and fully convertible.

Also related to gold, George Reisman has responded to critics (I count myself among them) of his recent post on the insertion of gold clauses into contracts.

What the insertion of gold clauses into existing contracts signifies is the use of government power to determine the purchasing power of what is paid and received in the fulfillment of contracts in a way that diminishes the further such use of its power.

As an aside, the logistics of this are sketchy, at best. I still maintain that the insertion of gold clauses is effectively an ex post facto order, which is facially unconstitutional. Limited government proponents (I assume Reisman is one) should be consistent with their reverence for the constitution. Furthermore, expecting the government to voluntarily restrain itself through legislative or regulatory processes is patently absurd: if the government were so inclined, it could simply stop the presses and refrain from “determining the purchasing power of what is paid and received”, in the first place!

Of course, as Reisman argues, no creditor lends money anticipating the future cash flows to be decimated by inflation. But similarly, no debtor has the ability to create money out of thin air, and then to lend it at for a profit! I just don’t see the justification for protecting the banking cartel’s Dr. Jekyll from its counterpart, Mr. Hyde. If we are interested in protecting small, non-institutional lenders, e.g., land contract vendeor, inter-personal loans, etc., from the negative side effects of declining purchasing power, we can do so by eliminating impediments to free contracts. As a policy proposal, I would begin by removing the obligations imposed by “legal tender” laws, a step which must necessarily be followed by reducing or eliminating the capital gains tax which must be paid on transactions denominated in certain terms (e.g., precious metals).

Regarding the appalling display of force against a quadriplegic man, commenter dwz says: “Pathetic. Ssimply pathetic.” Exactly. Although it’s not nearly as bad as this old incident in Detroit, where an emergency operator refused to dispatch anyone to a house where a five-year old boy was calling and reporting that his mother had passed out, because the boy was unable to put his mother on the phone. The boy’s mother, Sharon Turner, died of heart failure.

Kip wants to know if he’s saying it right: “Gnarly, dude!” in response to a snowboarding video I recently posted. Sounds good to me, Kip.

Citing my post, “Taxation is Theft!”, Stephan contributes Competition in Bads.

Proposing government by democracy is like saying ”Let’s have a competition to find out who’s the best at whipping the slaves! And the winner gets to be the slavemaster”. This is precisely what we don’t want.

Right! We don’t want to provide an opportunity for the most cunning, calculated, power-hungry con-artist to succeed at defrauding 300 million people. That is precisely what the democratic process is.

Note to regular readers: I will be on vacation from Thursday, 2/21 through Tuesday, 2/26. I may or may not pay attention to the interwebs during that interval.

Submissions to the blog carnival are due NLT 2/27.

Comments on Comments #5

February 10th, 2008

Tony and Kip, Esquire like my new puppy. So do I. I’ll be posting pictures and/or videos on a weekly basis. She hasn’t been crated at night, yet, so I don’t think she ever will be, although until she’s housebroken, she’ll be in the crate during the day. She is a quick learner, having already mastered “sit,” and she seems to understand that if she takes a piss, she gets a biscuit. Border collies and Shepherds are both smart dogs, so I imagine her breeding (or is it “mutting”) has something to do with that.

From Comments #4, Eric Sundwall responds to our off-topic discussion on worker/owners:

As a former employer and small business person, my experience is that most employees don’t want to own. They prefer consistent hours and pay. They don’t want the responsibility. That’s fine as long as a contract satisfies everybody’s needs. The reason why I stopped hiring and buying buildings and whatnot was the government. I did not want the hassle and frustration of maintaining operations to the state’s satisfaction.

Thanks Eric – I think many people can identify with this. Conceivably, of course, your problem was not with ownership, per se, but with the Government constraints upon your ownership, preventing you from effectively satisfying your needs, your employees’ needs, and your customers’ needs all at the same time.

“I did not want the hassle and frustration of maintaining operations to the state’s satisfaction.” Most people don’t. The State strangles man’s entrepreneurial spirit, and at the far end of the spectrum (socialism), entrepreneurship isn’t possible.

Franc responds to my inquiry about the nature of self-management with his own blog post. I understand the basic premises, but I find his brief analysis to be lacking. He has recommended that I listen to a podcast, and I have actually downloaded it onto my MP3 player. I listened to it today in the car, but I need more time to digest it. I don’t disagree with many of his premises, for instance, that the state is evil, and that corporations as we know them receive massive benefits that enable them to concentrate power, and that this concentration of power is evil. I follow the argument this far. I think I just don’t understand the idea of “self-management,” what does it mean, for instance, to suggest that workers can set their own wages? Maybe I need to read more. References appreciated in the comments section.

For now, I will reiterate my position: I don’t find anything inherently wrong with a coordinative hierarchy. Some people will be better implementers, others will be better planners, forecasters, and organizers. I think that hierarchies based on merit or skill or knowledge are perfectly acceptable, and follow necessarily from the division of labor and comparative advantage in a freed economy.

In Catching Up Around the ‘Sphere, regarding anarchists who don’t “hate the troops,” Franc responds:

‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ is one of the stupidest things ever said. How can you hate an idea independently of a person? Ideas do not exist independently of people. It is because of the people who believe in them that ideas survive and flourish. The idea in itself is neither good nor bad, and there’s no point in hating an idea. Only people deserve hate.

We’ve all pretty much been lied to for our entire lives, through government schools, the mainstream media, and other propaganda machines. And we’ve all been instructed that those lies are the truth. I can’t fault them for believing that 2+2=5, when that’s all they’ve ever been told. I can hate the mistakes people have made, without hating the person who made those mistakes. I can hate the system, and the people who have perpetuated that system, but I have a hard time hating the general population, most of whom are merely the State’s collateral damage. A person is not evil if he supports the troops (NB: I do not) or if he is one of the troops, without understanding the moral evil of his actions. He is effectively a robot, doing what he’s been programmed to do. What he has been programmed to do, of course, is evil. But until he is consciously aware of that fact, no moral decision is really possible.

The bottom line is that without the State’s indoctrination, these decisions would likely never have been made: a million or so disparate and (mostly) underprivileged adolescents wouldn’t band together and form an army on their own. The troops, for the most part, are the product of the system. Can we change their minds, and the minds of others? Yes. And I believe it starts with an understanding of why people have made these decisions.

There are probably some people who would say, “Well, I still support the troops even though they’re doing something bad. If you don’t support the troops, you must want them to die, and I don’t want them to die.” I think there’s a term for that sort of argument, something along the lines of “denying the antecedent,” but I’m not positive. In any regard, I don’t want them to die, either. I want them to come home to their friends and families, and to get an honest job producing things of value, with the rest of us. I don’t want them to be pawns in the government’s game, any more. I pity them, and the position in which they’ve found themselves. But unless they’re aware of the moral implications of their acts, I can’t honestly hate them.

Libertarian Jason loved Taxation is Theft! I occasionally contribute to his blog, Yearning to Breathe Free, although it is generally more focused on local libertarian politicking. I don’t have a problem with that, but I am an infrequent contributor because I’m not local to LJ, and I’m not involved in politics in my own locale.

Responding to the same post, Franc (who has been active here, lately) criticizes my tax burden.

It’s kinda hypocrite to speak against something while financing it, now is it?

He also recently blogged, “Being against war and paying your taxes is … absurd.”

I disagree with the position that it’s hypocritical to pay taxes, while simultaneously calling them theft. It would not be hypocritical of me to call a car-jacker a thief and denounce his malicious acts, even though I would probably support his acts by giving him my SUV. To me, paying my taxes is an easy way to stay out of jail. It’s an easy way to avoid having your assets seized without contest. And it’s a good way to avoid a showdown that can only end in your death, if you try to defend your natural rights. As libertarians are fond of saying, there’s literally a gun to your head. And I don’t want the person on the other end of that gun to pull the trigger. Paying my taxes is currently a survival technique. I’m not the one taxing people, I’m merely paying them because in many instances it’s not negotiable, and in other instances, I’m only responding to the gun. Franc argues that I should more consciously avoid the gun in the first place – point taken.

The most effective way to do this is of course through tax avoidance or tax resistance. But that effectively means quitting my job, defaulting on my loans, and giving up nearly everything I enjoy in life. This burden is tremendous enough that in many cases, the opportunity cost of not paying taxes dwarfs the costs of compliance. There are, to be sure, myriad ways which I could nominally reduce my tax burden, but most of them, I think, only perceptibly diminish your own quality of life, and not the government’s ability to finance wars—since the government can (and will) monetize as much debt as it needs, restricting my own income is like trying to drain the ocean with an eye-dropper. Of course, if everyone rejected taxes, this would drive the system into failure almost immediately. But whether to pay taxes is a prisoners’ dilemma.

As Rothbard argues in Power & Market, paraphrasing Calhoun,

[T]here are two groups of individuals in society: the taxpayers and the tax consumers—those who are burdened by taxes and those who benefit. Who is burdened by taxation? The direct or immediate answer is: those who pay taxes.

I’m still burdened by taxes, so I count myself among the injured parties. I’m not going to go all primitivist, and move in to the woods, or go dumpster-diving for food. Short of those alternatives, it’s not possible to exist without paying taxes. You can rent an apartment, and nominally not pay taxes. But your landlord pays them, and you pay him. You can live with your parents, but they’re paying taxes one way or another, too. The difference between paying some taxes, and paying more taxes is merely one of degree.

Although not part of that discussion, I will also redirect my readers to this post at FSK’s Guide to Reality:

The corporate community can afford to pay me about $40/hour after taxes. In the anarchist/agorist community, so far, I have not found any viable alternatives. I’m not going to work for $5/hour or less, just to stop supporting the state. I should be able to simultaneously pursue my self-interest and work against the state. For now, I’m working for free in my blog, and working in a corporate job. When the anarchist/agorist community is advanced enough to hire me at a decent rate, that’s when I’ll work there.

Although I’m not earning anything near $40/hour after taxes, I agree with FSK’s sentiments. I’m not going to work for $5/hour or less, just to stop paying taxes. I could stop paying taxes entirely, and spend the money instead, but most of those transactions would probably be taxed. I don’t distinguish one form of taxation as better or worse than any other.

Some people argue that we need to effectively stop lecturing people, and start living our ideals. We should be making sacrifices since we so often demand sacrifices from others. This is a point that I cannot dismiss, and hope to address in forthcoming posts.

Taxation is Theft!

February 6th, 2008

I notice that some people happen upon this blog by the following search query: “taxation is theft fallacy.” I’m unsure as to whether they are looking for evidence that the argument “taxation is theft” is a fallacy, or if they have some other motive for stringing those four words together in that order. Maybe they need an introduction to boolean search?

If it wasn’t theft, it wouldn’t be called a tax, it would be called a market transaction. Coca-cola doesn’t tax you in order to suppy you with soda, Nintendo doesn’t tax you in order to provide you with a Wii. Either you want these things, and value them more than other things you could buy, in which case you purchase them and fork over the cash—or you don’t want them, or don’t value them enough to justify their purchases in light of the opportunity costs. With taxes, generally a service is “provided” with little to no regard given to how much you actually use or benefit therefrom, or even whether you wanted it in the first place. And then you’re forced to pay. The fallacy is that taxes are somehow either justified and/or necessary, after all, we do need the police. Right?

Ask yourself a few questions:

Would you, under any circumstances, voluntarily purchase the services of a group of men whose jobs it would be to kill or kidnap you when you refuse to continue providing for their armaments and training?
Would you, under any circumstances, voluntarily purchase the services of an organization which states in no uncertain terms that in the event you decide to stop buying from them, you will forfeit your house?
What if an organization like one of the above tried to assert a claim against you? Would you submit your dispute for arbitration to an organization owned or operated by the very same individuals?

In case you’re not following, the organizations alluded to above are the police, the government-in-general (i.e., planners, lawmakers, figureheads, etc.) and the courts. Now ask yourself, which is the fallacy: “taxation is theft,” or “taxation is justified and necessary?”

Who will help the poor? What about our security?

Try again.

The house I am purchasing at the end of the month, property taxes alone amount to an additional 40% or so on top of the mortgage payment. For an extra 40% annually (probably far less than that) I could fortify the same house with bullet-proof lucite, gun-turrets, overhead sprinklers, a panic-room, an alarm and security monitoring system, and so on. I could hire a consultant to evalute areas in which I could reduce my exposure to riske (grounding the outlets, sealing the basement, etc.) I could mitigate whatever risk remains, with a robust insurance policy.

I already give up an enormous proportion of my salary in taxes. Adding property taxes to this mix will simply increase my burden. Add to that sales taxes, sin taxes, capital gains taxes, and depreciation due to inflation, and there isn’t very much left over. Some quick calculations (even assuming a generously low income tax burden of 25%) indicate that I’ll be giving up somewhere close to 60% of my income in explicit taxes and depreciation. This of course, does not account for the implicit taxes passed forward by the businesses who make and sell all of the things I buy. My true tax burden is probably nearer to 80%. Think about that. Tax Freedom day comes in November if you’re lucky.

Nobody has yet been able to satisfactorily explain how taxation is anything other than a ransom for permission to live.