Taxation (split topic)

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The way to get to "taxation = thievery" is just denying the social contract, which is a concept invented by Locke a few hundred years ago, and arguably it was partially to defend a new conquering king at that. I don't see why philosophical anarchism is insane at all, then again, I think your notion of sanity is just out and out nonsense, as to me it just reeks of the biases of some dude embedded into certain cultural characteristics and ideas.

In any case, I am not sure that relatives are people we are always happy to have. Not only that, but everyone's gotta have a black sheep.

I assume you and ruveyn live within a society that provides national defense, postal service, a reasonable amount of infrastructure and maintainance of such, police protection, regulation of proper business practices etc. For an individual to adhere to the belief that these things come without cost and taxation to cover that cost is beyond any sane reasoning I can envision.

Umm.... Sand, for taxation to be legitimate and not theft, one must uphold the social contract. For government to be useful, one just has to claim that government is useful. One can deny the social contract but hold government to be useful. All that one is saying is that government does not have the right to tax, but that the services provided are worth it to some extent and such a position carries no contradiction. If that sounds weird, take the view that government is a necessary evil(I would imagine that you've heard of it before), necessity argues that it is good that the government exists, but evil argues that governmental actions are such that they contradict some social/moral standard by their nature.

In any case, I did not think that ruveyn was an out and out anarchist(as opposed to upholding a tenet of philosophical anarchism). Even if ruveyn *was* an out and out anarchist, this still would not argue him to be insane, simply because the unpopularity of a belief does not have anything to do with mental stability. There are some very stable, and reasonably successful people who hold to anarchistic beliefs. I believe that Penn Jillette holds to some anarchistic ideas, but I could also list a number of academics.

I don't have to go fishing for expert opinion to confirm that I find government services extremely useful in all sorts of ways, private and public, and if you persist in the delusion that without government we would be in a less evil situation than we are with it then let me at least have the privilege of considering your speculation beyond sanity whatever the way the rest of your mental structure operates.

And insofar as my relationship with ruveyn is concerned let me at least indicate that we all have an extremely distant relationship of some kind to the tyrannosaurus rex but it makes me somewhat uncomfortable to include it in amongst my relatives.

Improve your reading comprehension. What does the term "necessary evil" mean? It means "evil, but necessary", which doesn't even disagree with the idea that governments provide useful benefits on net, it only argues that the methods they use are problematic.

In any case, I haven't argued much that would show me sane or insane.

As for public experts go, well... honestly, an issue emerges that if you can find an intellectual niche that is robust enough, you are likely not crazy.

Except for defense (which is a collective matter) the other services could be provided better and cheaper by private firms. Especially postal services. The government has been jealous in asserting its constitutional monopoly on first class delivery and distribution of mail. But most mail is e-mail and most packages are delivered by private carriers. We don't need no steeenking government to deliver the mail.

Roads are provided by government because they have the legal power to seize land. It is called eminent domain. Land theft can be a very handy power to have.

ruveyn

Well, frankly, I am not competent to certify you and I'm not trying to. Merely indicating your assertion that government services, whether they are at maximum efficiency or not, do a very useful job for the nation and to append "evil" to that service because it requires financial support strikes me as not rational. All you have to do is examine the type of remuneration by the private companies in Iraq hired by the US government and figure out how efficient they might be and what type of corruption is involved
in comparison to how those services were provided by the armed services themselves and at what cost.

Examining the efficiency of General Motors and the other auto firms and the plethora of private financial institutions which totally screwed up the economy I sincerely wonder how you can place such confidence in private industry which by its basic nature is designed to get as much money as possible for as little service and product as possible. That's the nature of business and the corruption of the legislature by political donation ensures that there is a tight group that sees to it that business gets what it wants and screws the government and the nationas much as can be managed.

This confusion on your part must be a failure to divide the functions of service provision and funding. They are not the same. Even if X requires Y, X != Y. So, one can attack Y as bad, while still arguing that X is good, and admitting that X requires Y. The only consistency issue would emerge is if one claimed that Y must be gotten rid of.

The issue isn't "requiring support" the issue is that you will be punished if you choose not to give a certain amount of money that the government tells you that you should pay it. If you reject the right of the government to demand a certain amount of money from you according to it's wishes, then this is problematic.

You can say "X is a good thing" but say that the method of financing, Y, is a bad thing, but that viable alternatives to Y do not exist. Thus say that taxes are theft, but that government promotes a public good on some level. You can say that X requires Y, and that Y is bad, but X is good.

The point about mercenaries still does not mean that Y(taxation) is non-bad or even good. It just means that viable alternatives do not exist and are worse.

Of course, it's a matter of opinion, but I rather agree to the idea that everybody is responsible for paying taxes and those who would refuse to contribute to the general public good should be forced to contribute whether they like it or not. Voluntary taxes that you seem to regard as a fantastically great idea strikes me as loony. But here we go again rating psychological competence. I don't find it helpful to get into mathematical symbolism when direct reference suffices.

Ah but G.M. did not screw up anything but their own business. The great American public bought Japanese cars! Whatever you say about G.M. is not true of Honda and Toyota. Nor is it true of V.W. of BMW both of which are privately owned and capitalized. G.M. and Chyrsler went a-begging for government hand-outs and now they are paying the price.

What brought the economy to a sorry state was the Federal Reserve and government policy (aided and abetted by the crafty Mr. Greenspan) that provided loans to any living abortion that could breath and keep warm. Bad loans to incompetent borrowers. That is what finally unhinged our economy and it was promoted and abetted by government policy. G.M. has been loosing market share for going on 30 years. It wasn't G.M. that killed Fannie Mea and Freddy Mac. It was your precious government and the Fed.

In the mean time Intel and Microsoft, both privately owned firms flew skyward. They didn't need any steeeenking government handouts. Even the sometimes troubled MacIntosh is viable.

The entire point of private firms is that they will go belly up if badly run and not rescued by government subsidy. That is a strength, not a weakness. The weak sisters go to The Wall. The strong flourish. It is Economic Darwinism in action. Whereas government is definitely Too Big To Fail. It will just fleece the taxpayers as needed. Nothing short of a revolution or a breakdown such as ended the late and unlamented Soviet Union will stop a government. Government is a dinosaur which is just too dumb to go extinct.

ruveyn

Well, the issue is that if you deny the social contract, then you cannot say that you OWE taxes, you agreed to nothing. Denying the social contract isn't a rather difficult or crazy thing to do, and a lot of people implicitly do it, as really it is a post hoc justification. Not only that, but saying that these people should be forced to contribute doesn't mean that the use of force is a good thing.

I didn't claim voluntary taxes to be a fantastically good thing. Here's what I said:
"You can say....that the method of financing, Y, is a bad thing, but that viable alternatives to Y do not exist." Which means that voluntary taxes are a non-functional idea to maintain X, but Y itself is bad. This says nothing about voluntary taxes, I never even said the idea was a consideration.

Now, you can start questioning my sanity, but honestly, I am not the one who has such great difficult recognizing such utterly simple ideas, and who has such reading comprehension problems that I am literally inserting ideas into another person's writings.

I find mathematical symbolism helpful if the situation is supposed to be gut crunchingly simple but the other person doesn't appear to get it, or if I just want a little additional clarity.

No. It was the repeal of the Glass Steagall act under Clinton that removed government supervision of financial finagling so that private financial firms could bundle irresponsible mortgages and sell them as high value. That was private business at its finest out to screw the public with sleazy mortgage deals sold through scam artists employed by the banks. Government stepped aside to permit business to do its nastiest and it certainly fulfilled the bill.

One doesn't have to go far the discover how fond the world is of Microsoft.

The Japanese firms were competitive because the companies operated in a country that provided national health insurance, another government function, and the companies did not have to support their workers' health needs.

i got in trouble with the IRS a few years ago and it was awful. i thought about killing myself thankfully i just paid them off but damn they got twice what i origionally owed them. now that im on disability i guess social security sends them all my earnings info so im not filing taxes this yarr

I wonder why you keep blovating about a social contract as if it were some sort of paper everybody signs when reaching voting age and can opt out of at will. We are born into a society that takes care of a portion of our needs and demands compensation for that care and whether those exercises are sufficient and the payment is proper is an ongoing determination of the citizen-government relationship and it is not stealing anymore than private property is stealing since that is an accepted tradition in our society and not handed down by the laws of the universe. Whether it is x, y, or z or alpha, beta, or delta or any other letters of any other alphabet it is not an optional arrangement.

Umm.... are you just *trying* to show how many stupid errors you can make when interpreting me? Denying the social contract is denying the philosophical idea of a social contract, it has nothing to do with denying a literal contract. Anyone who is familiar with the idea can recognize this, and recognize that a person can reject this intellectual foundation.

"demands compensation", ok? But an issue is whether "demanding compensation" is just if one cannot opt out of it. As for the citizen-government relationship, one just simply has to say that the individual citizen has no speaking power towards the government. I mean, you are presuming democratic government when you do this despite the historically anti-democratic nature of many governments, you are presuming that democracy is effective despite arguments that it is not, and you are presuming that democracy is personal when it is clearly impersonal. I mean, I personally have no power against the government, although the government has power against me.

In any case, the issue is the following: 1) a person can still take a Lockean view of acquisition without taking a Lockean view on the social contract, 2) one can argue that private property is founded in human psychology and not just a particular trait of a particular society, 3) one can argue that defined lines for private property are just emergent from individuality attempting to assert itself. In all 3 arguments, one can argue that the government is not just for it's taxation. In the first case, it is stealing your labor, in the second case, it is violating your psychologically conditioned personhood, and in the third case it is undermining your individual expression. In all cases, taxes are a bad thing.

In any case, I am not sure what exactly you are trying to pull off with a string of mischaracterizations and poor argumentations, as you have to prove that no sane person can lean towards philosophical anarchism, but your arguments do not seem strong enough to do that.