“, would it be harmful for people to investigate living without taxation?"
> I'm sure you could guess what my response to this would be from my other post.
Having me guess your position is risky. I am not immune to the Internet plague that has people projecting their various attitudes or caricatures of their intellectual opponents onto others.
>I see taxation as retroactive adjustments in property holdings. Do I think we should live in a world in which each person decides, individually, whether to contribute towards public goals and projects like roads, police, courts, and a welfare minimum? No.
But that is not the question. At the most basic level, the question is why would you object to other persons investigating alternatives. Does this put persons who do not participate in danger? Or are you just being stodgy?
On a different level, the question is not whether we should fund shared benefits, but which benefits should we fund and how should we fund them. Unless the status quo is immune to all criticisms, we could at least consider the possibility of improving things. Most of the public services you mention are recent innovations, should we stop innovating?
You may not want to live in such a world, but no one is forcing you to. Why do you wish to prevent others from trying it out? If an artificial anarchist island appeared in the middle of the ocean, would that destabilize the rest of the world?
> I think we should decide together, collectively, the terms under which people have exclusive control over things, and how the burden of contributing towards public goals should be distributed.
We should or we do?
And we could not do that without taxation?
Do the differences between the various jurisdictions in the world disturb you? Or does the nation state have something special about it that gives it immunity to this principle limiting diversity?
> I think collective action and free rider problems would prevent public projects from being funded, and holdouts would hold large public projects hostage.
Assuming you see that as a bad thing, why do you think people would find it attractive? Or are you just hoping to prevent my imagined volunteers from making a mistake they would regret?
>I just think periodic retroactive adjustments to property holdings is both necessary and a good thing.
Is this a moral principle; a scientific principle; or is it your subjective evaluation? Something else?
Necessary for what, and good by what standard?
21 comments:
Hi Dave - it's XX from Disqus following up. Thanks for the link, and the conversation. I almost exclusively initiate online conversations with people who disagree with me, and it's always a pleasure when the conversation is both thoughtful and civil, as it has been with you.
I'll just jump in at the beginning of your post, if that's ok. The first quoted section asks whether it would be harmful for people to investigate living without taxation. I think this all depends on what we mean by taxation. I proposed at one point that taxation is a retroactive adjustment of property rights. I also suggested (at the end of the above, conveniently) that retroactive property adjustments are a good thing. I'll explain why I think so. Maybe one way of making the point would be to ask - what would it be like if property rights were absolutely inviolable? I don't think there are many of us who couldn't come up with SOME contrived example which would justify violating property rights, however we define them. Then, any justified retroactive adjustments in the real world would depend on how closely the real world examples resemble the contrived example in relevant details. I think David Friedman makes this point quite well in the "Problems" section of "Machinery of Freedom." Friedman, of course, is a consequentialist/utilitarian libertarian, rather than a rights based libertarian.
Otherwise, the question of whether people should be able to explore societies without taxation seems to me to be mutually exclusive of other views of ownership. If, for example (and maybe I'm repeating myself) I think the world belongs to all people (in the way that a corporation ultimately belongs to all shareholders), and all "owners" are really more like "trustees," AND taxation is like the trustees' fiduciary duty to the true owners (among which counts the trustee), then what would a "taxless" world be but a world in which a trustee can shirk his fiduciary duty? Or, said in a different way, what would a world in which retroactive property adjustments were absolutely prohibited be but a world of absolutely inviolable property rights? Suppose a fatal disease inflects the majority of humanity, and the only cure lies below your basement? Is a world without taxation one in which you have an absolutely inviolable right to exclude all others from their cure?
Thanks for your reply. I also appreciate being able to sharpen my ideas in a discussion with someone who sees things differently but doesn’t see that as a reason to stop giving reasons and start calling names.
The first quoted section asks whether it would be harmful for people to investigate living without taxation. I think this all depends on what we mean by taxation.
Are there topics we should not investigate? Philosophers, scientists and legislators have come to something like a consensus about the ethics of experimentation. Would conducting experiments regarding taxation necessarily violate those? (Looking back at the beginning of our conversation, what do you think of scientific ethics? It isn’t exactly positive law, though I suppose there might be some laws on the books. But it is more formal, enforceable and intersubjective than persons subjective moral institutions.)
I proposed at one point that taxation is a retroactive adjustment of property rights. I also suggested (at the end of the above, conveniently) that retroactive property adjustments are a good thing. I'll explain why I think so.
You have done that to my satisfaction, I think I understand your opinion. I am more curious about whether or why you think experimenting with alternatives would be a bad thing.
It seems blgger places a rather chintzy word limit. Damn.
Maybe one way of making the point would be to ask - what would it be like if property rights were absolutely inviolable?
I welcome the digression, but if there is a connection you left it for me to try to make it explicit. We could argue that if property rights are violable, then taxation is no big deal? But that can’t be what you mean, because a) you also claim property rights are inviolable, it's just that you prefer common ownership to private ownership and b) you don’t consider taxation an embarrassment or anomaly but a benefit.
I am so tempted to take the bait and rant about where Friedman is wrong. Skip this paragraph if you are bored. I don’t remember if Friedman used the word “inviolable”, we both should quibble with that. “Absolute” is good enough, even laws we agree are beneficial are not inviolable. The question is, does the law say where the line between a violation and a non-violation lies? Friedman says that in principle there is no difference between me points no a flashlight at you and me firing a megawatt laser at you, if ownership is absolute. I agree, but what is the problem? The problem seems to be that if I was the litigious sort I could can go around suing everyone for assaulting me with their photons if they happen to illuminate me. But what happens next? In a sensible society, my case would be thrown out because no harm had been done. (I am not a lawyer or I could cite the fancy language for what a valid tort claim requires under common law, one of which is that someone has been harmed.) In the worst-case scenario, I would be awarded a fraction of a cent in damages for the harm done me by these photons, and I would pay court costs several orders of magnitude larger than the damages. So I guess I am saying that the principle can be absolute if the mechanism for enforcing it is practical. I guess we could make it even more extreme. Assault does not require that harm has been done, just touching someone without permission is technically considered assault. But wait, that law is on the books now! And yet the courts are not full of frivolous cases. Am I cheating? I’m not sure what point Friedman ultimately wanted to make, but my point is that I like the idea of having legal concepts that are simple and clear, and mechanisms for enforcing them that are practical and punish frivolous disputation. A better argument that might be deployed against absolute property rights (maybe Friedman made this point too, it's been a while since I read him) would be in the area of risk. If property rights are absolute, that could be interpreted as I have the right to set up some extremely dangerous situation on my own land using only things I own, and my neighbors would have no grounds to object until an accident cause damages or injuries. I don’t have a simple answer for that.
Usually if something isn’t “absolute” it is “relative”. If ownership is relative, what is it relative to? I would say the community that enforces it. We can imagine two communities having a dispute over the ownership of some resource that is not a contentious issue within each community. X thinks they own it and Y thinks X doesn’t own it. But that just means there is cause for a dispute, which could be resolved. Once it is resolved, is the ownership still relative?
Okay enough of that rant.
I don't think there are many of us who couldn't come up with SOME contrived example which would justify violating property rights, however we define them.
My question would be, does that mean no longer categorize it as a violation, and the owner has no grounds to seek restitution, or does it just mean that sometimes we would prefer to violate a property norm than accept the consequences offered by the alternative?
I think the pro-tax argument might benefit from sticking to the idea that people somehow incur a debt to the government and the tax collector is just like the bill collector or the repo man. If I don’t pay my loan, the car isn’t mine any more, because I signed a contract to that effect. I haven’t read Nagel and Murphy yet, but I think this is consistent with their idea. And Dan Moller tried to explain an idea along this line in his book, Governing Least. I don’t agree with Moller, but he is trying to make the case both that property has moral significance if anything does, but that in some cases taxes are justified.
Then, any justified retroactive adjustments in the real world would depend on how closely the real world examples resemble the contrived example in relevant details.
Justified in what sense? Does positive law need a justification?
I think David Friedman makes this point quite well in the "Problems" section of "Machinery of Freedom." Friedman, of course, is a consequentialist/utilitarian libertarian, rather than a rights based libertarian.
I think legal rights, legal obligations and legal principles are all the same thing looked at from a different perspective. We have dismissed morality as subjective. I guess we could all in principle agree on theories of social science, which are supposed to be based on fact.
Otherwise, the question of whether people should be able to explore societies without taxation seems to me to be mutually exclusive of other views of ownership.
I really need this clarified, I am tempted to interpret it uncharitably. Clearly we are considering different paradigms of taxation, which are incompatible. What does that have to do with whether someone should be allowed to investigate? I guess the naive optimist would say, who can object to knowing more? If the experiment finds goods stuff, we all benefit, and if it finds bad stuff only the participants in the experiment pay the cost. Will such experiments destabilize society? I suppose we could say Shenzhen destabilized China.
Do you object to the experiment out of concern for the participants, or for the bystanders?
If, for example (and maybe I'm repeating myself) I think the world belongs to all people (in the way that a corporation ultimately belongs to all shareholders), and all "owners" are really more like "trustees," AND taxation is like the trustees' fiduciary duty to the true owners (among which counts the trustee), then what would a "taxless" world be but a world in which a trustee can shirk his fiduciary duty?
Is that duty a positive legal duty or a moral duty?
Well, even if we accept your rather loaded framing of the question, then we would know what the outcome of the experiment looks like. Then we could substantiate claims that it would be terrible or great. Those who prefer a taxless world could move there or imitate them, and those who found the experiment disappointing could change their minds and come back to conventional reality.
Or, said in a different way, what would a world in which retroactive property adjustments were absolutely prohibited be but a world of absolutely inviolable property rights?
Absolutely prohibited? Where did that come from? Do you imagine that the status quo is so terrible that people will unanimously abandon it given an opportunity? Or maybe there will be a “race to the bottom”? I thought you were arguing that people like taxation (or at least, they like things that we can’t get without taxation). I think we are discussing a world where retroactive property adjustments are an option rather than an unavoidable reality, not a switch that turns them on or off for the whole planet at once. Then we could see how things play out, and if the supporters of taxation are correct, everyone will prefer to pay taxes and have the government spend them to maintain shared infrastructure, charitable giving, etc. Or possibly some hybrid would result.
Suppose a fatal disease inflects the majority of humanity, and the only cure lies below your basement? Is a world without taxation one in which you have an absolutely inviolable right to exclude all others from their cure?
As we noted before, even the most carefully enforced positive laws are not inviolable. I do in fact have a positive legal right to exclude others from my basement (or would if I had one). Although that is the case, I doubt that I would succeed in excluding all others if as a consequence of that exclusion the majority of humanity would die. That seems like the practical outcome - exclusion will fail. My question is, shall we repeal the existing positive law or amend it so that persons who need to invade basements to save the world can do so without violating it? What do you think this thought experiment demonstrates?
to the extent that a "state" is a conventionalized system of enforced rules (even if that convention is enforced by informal methods, such as shunning and shaming), then there are no rights prior to a state, or some analogous social arrangement, which enforces rules even against people who would like to opt out of them.
A conventionalized system of enforced rules sounds more general than a state, especially if informal enforcement counts. That is just an organization or culture, depending on the degree of formalization. Most definitions of the state refer to legitimate violence, but non-state actors can engage in violence in some circumstances.
Private security guards can engage in some legitimate violence, and ordinary persons can spar with each other while studying martial arts, etc. So violence may be important but does not determine what is a state. What is special about the state?
Employees of the state adjudicate cases involving the state as a party. This is unique.
The state can modify, repeal or create positive law; the persons impacted by the law may not write contracts with their “victims” to alter the character of the law. Clubs can impose arbitrary rules on their members, impose obligations upon them, or enforce the rights im0lied by this. So the state's ability to grant formal rights or privileges is not unique. But a club can’t decide who is a member on the basis of their location. Members of a club must join voluntarily and intentionally, and can resign. States claim authority within a particular territory, and the only way to evade that authority is to leave the territory (even this is not always sufficient). The state claims a monopoly within its territory. They claim the rules they enforce take priority over any private arrangements made among persons or other organizations.
I feel like this ought to be easier to summarize.
Woah - there's a lot here since I last visited.
So, I suggested that the question "should we experiment with a world without taxation," is equivalent to asking "should we experiment with a world in which private property rights are absolutely inviolable." I also offered an example in which a life saving resource is found beneath private property. This was just an attempt to find an extreme, undeniable situation in which a private owner (in my view) should not be able to unilaterally decide to withhold what would normally be that owner's private property from others. I also said that a taxless society is mutually exclusive of other views of ownership. I'll try to make my point clear. (Part 2 to follow.)
As I said before, I see property rights as powers granted to each person by the (enforced) behavior of all others. In the typical libertarian/classical liberal view, people acquire ownership over external things by performing some ceremonial act with respect to that thing, which, under a certain view of property, gives that owner "sole despotic dominion" over whatever it is the owner "mixed labor" with (or perhaps homesteaded, or simply claimed first, depending on the theorist). What is most distinctive of the typical libertarian view, from what I can tell, is that the act of acquiring property - of removing it from its unclaimed "negative commons," is unilateral. The ownership relation is one that arises through some authority higher than the consent of those around the claimant. Maybe it is a "natural law." Maybe it follows from "argumentation ethics," if we accept Hoppe's argument. In any case, this ownership relation is something that focuses primarily on the relation between an owner and property. I'm looking at things from another perspective. Like Morris Cohen, I think of the ownership relation not as one primarily between a person and things, but between people with respect to things. I don't think that a person's relationship to property is independent of the consequences of the owners claims for those who will be forcibly excluded from accessing the things the owner controls. Since I think that ownership claims are granted to each person by all others, I don't thing the rules of ownership should give individuals a right to control property that is completely insulated from the needs of others. It seems to me that a taxless world does just that. It would give owners unilateral control over things. This is the only way I could conceive of a taxless world. Once property is claimed by a private owner, that owner alone, unilaterally, gets to decide what happens to it, regardless of what else is going on in the world. This is why I likened a taxless world to a world in which people's property rights are absolutely inviolable - their control over resources cannot be overcome by the needs of others. That is all taxes are. People determine that certain things need to get done (we need to build roads, courts, hospitals [which are admittedly public-private-nonprofit hybrids], orphanages, etc.) And we need to adjust people's property claims over the currently existing resources in order make those things happen. Taxes are the adjustment of claims over existing resources. An income and wealth tax is no different that imminent domain, in my view. We need city plans that make sense, and sometimes private claims to exclusive control of land is going to have to give way for the sake of the city as a whole; and we need to build schools, and acquiring the funds is a kind of imminent domain over existing resources - wealth - that is analogous to imminent domain over real estate. So, when we ask "Why shouldn't we allow some people to experiment with living without taxation," I hear "Why shouldn't we let some people make their property exempt from the kinds of property holding adjustments that are absolutely justified (in my moral view) in extreme cases (such as when a vital resource is found under a private home)?" Money, is, after all, a lifesaving resource. The reason we shouldn't even experiment with this is that doing so would be wrong in principle (in my moral view). Individual property claims are made real by the use (or threat) of exclusionary force on ALL non-owners (regardless of whether all agree on the specific terms of ownership), and the use of exclusionary force can't be justified (in my moral view) independently of the consequences for the people who will be subject to that exclusionary force. (Part 3 to follow.)
"Usually if something isn’t “absolute” it is “relative”. If ownership is relative, what is it relative to? I would say the community that enforces it. We can imagine two communities having a dispute over the ownership of some resource that is not a contentious issue within each community. X thinks they own it and Y thinks X doesn’t own it. But that just means there is cause for a dispute, which could be resolved. Once it is resolved, is the ownership still relative?" When I asked whether ownership could or should be absolutely inviolable, I meant "should a person's sole despotic dominion over property ever be violated or limited?" Are there times in which an owner shouldn't have unilateral control over access to resources. The specific terms of ownership will always be relative to the societies and institutions that enforce the rules. We probably agree on that.
"I welcome the digression, but if there is a connection you left it for me to try to make it explicit. We could argue that if property rights are violable, then taxation is no big deal? But that can’t be what you mean, because a) you also claim property rights are inviolable, it's just that you prefer common ownership to private ownership and b) you don’t consider taxation an embarrassment or anomaly but a benefit."
Its true that the question of whether taxation is a violation of property rights depends on our initial or fundamental conception of property rights - or rather, what we mean by "property rights." From one perspective (as I think we've discussed) taxation is an aspect of property rights, rather than a violation of them. NOT paying taxes is the violation of property rights, while enforcing taxation is an enforcement of property rights. I think we agree that "positive law" is just the controlling, operative, actually existing and enforced rules, and if by "property rights" we mean "the property rights that the positive law enforces," then no, taxation does not violate property rights. If by property rights we mean a particular relation of control that arises through unilateral acts, and which is somehow more fundamental than the positive law, then taxation does violate (those) property rights. It all depends on what we mean. Regarding our obligations - we obey the positive law because we want to avoid the consequences of violating it. We will judge the positive law to be "good" if it prevents things we deem "bad" and permits things we deem "good." At each point along the way we must be concerned with what we think the positive law OUGHT to do, not just what it does. I think we agree on that. But I just though I'd mention is again with respect to the above quote. (Part 4 next.)
"As we noted before, even the most carefully enforced positive laws are not inviolable. I do in fact have a positive legal right to exclude others from my basement (or would if I had one). Although that is the case, I doubt that I would succeed in excluding all others if as a consequence of that exclusion the majority of humanity would die. That seems like the practical outcome - exclusion will fail. My question is, shall we repeal the existing positive law or amend it so that persons who need to invade basements to save the world can do so without violating it? What do you think this thought experiment demonstrates?" The thought experiment just attempts to ask whether there are situations in which the needs of non-owners should (morally) overcome a private owner's claim to something that might otherwise uncontroversially "belong" to the owner. I'm not sure that the fact that the positive law giving the owner exclusive control over the lifesaving resource wouldn't be upheld in practice has any bearing on whether the think that the positive law OUGHT nonetheless to grant an inviolable power of control, as opposed to a power of control that can, under the positive law, be overcome. If it is wrong for the owner to have the power to withhold lifesaving resources, a law attempting to grant that power would still be wrong, even if it were unenforceable, wouldn't it? (Pat 5 Next.)
As to whether private security guards can engage in legitimate violence, I think this depends on what we mean by "legitimate." The security guards' actions are still governed by the law, and if they do something illegal, they will be prosecuted. Private security guards to not take the law into their own hands.
The question of legitimate violence is a question every proposed scheme of resource management must face - private and public. You said above that the state claims a monopoly of force over a certain territory. What makes it any more or less controversial for a private individual to assert a monopoly of force over a certain territory? Every private claim over the earth necessarily excludes other from accessing the earth - by force if necessary. And if I am born after the earth is fully owned, I will be subject to the force that the various owners decide to impose on me. If I want to travel from point a to point b, I am subject to the claims of the various owners on the way. But why? Because they got there first? And, if you and I want to trade titles to property, it isn't enough that WE agree that we own the property we trade - we need to know that ALL other people in the world will either accept our claims willingly or will be forced to accept our claims. How do we decide which rules will universally determine who owns what? You propose the negative commons view; I'm a native american and claim that my family has been using for generations of religious ceremonies what you unknowingly believed you have justly homesteaded. Who is right? Doesn't the resolution of this dilemma HAVE to apply to ALL people in order to give any ONE person security? And if so, is there any better way of deciding the rules that must necessarily apply to us all than to give each person an equal voice in writing those rules - i.e. a democratic state?
Sorry for the long delay replying.
“As to whether private security guards can engage in legitimate violence, I think this depends on what we mean by "legitimate." The security guards' actions are still governed by the law, and if they do something illegal, they will be prosecuted. Private security guards to not take the law into their own hands.”
I have no disagreement with that. My point was that security guards and bodyguards can in some cases use violence. Perhaps your response is that the state gets to evaluate such violence, acting as a gatekeeper of sorts, and so...? I guess you were responding to my comment “violence may be important but does not determine what is a state. What is special about the state?” I don’t think this implies that security guards take the law into their own hands or are equivalent to a state, just that there are instances where they are allowed to use violence without a law being broken. Hence no monopoly. I am not a lawyer, maybe that is wrong and security guards and bodyguards can be prosecuted for assault any time the touch someone. But the other example, of martial arts students sparring, can make the point on its own if need be.
The question of legitimate violence is a question every proposed scheme of resource management must face - private and public. You said above that the state claims a monopoly of force over a certain territory. What makes it any more or less controversial for a private individual to assert a monopoly of force over a certain territory?
I wasn’t commenting on a controversy, I was quibbling with your comment about a state being a “conventionalized system of enforced rules (even if that convention is enforced by informal methods, such as shunning and shaming),” and your conclusion that “there are no rights prior to a state,“ If you define a state like that, the conclusion follows, but doesn’t really say anything, because then the Boy Scouts is a sort of state.
. The ownership relation is one that arises through some authority higher than the consent of those around the claimant.
This is true only if we have already assumed that the object was already owned in common by others. If it was genuinely unowned, it would not be subject to the consent of some participants in the social customs. If there is some authority that can give me consent to take off ownership of something, that thing is owned by that authority. So the question becomes, are there any things that are unowned at all, or has our community somehow established a claim to it already? Maybe there are competing claims from other communities? Or maybe it doesn’t have to be a community, maybe someone else can just decide I need their consent to take ownership of this thing?
I don’t feel like I need to take a position here. Since pretty much everything has a specific owner now, the issue doesn’t seem “live”. Some communities might want to claim to own everything in common and have authority over what is taken into private ownership, others might not.
, this ownership relation is something that focuses primarily on the relation between an owner and property.
Not really. If anyone is going to use a thing, other uses will typically be excluded. This is about who does and doesn’t get excluded and their willingness to cooperate voluntarily (or lack thereof). That is not where I part company with you and Cohen.
I don't think that a person's relationship to property is independent of the consequences of the owners claims for those who will be forcibly excluded from accessing the things the owner controls.
This is just a complicated way of saying we should all own everything in common and allow specific persons to act as stewards for particular things so long as that is convenient to us, and then reallocate them as we please. I doubt we can know much about the ultimate consequences, but it seems pretty clear that no one has really demonstrated the sort of precognition required to fulfill that idea reliably..
Since we believe morality is subjective and law is positive, how do we argue that the status quo should be changed? Or is that(everyone owns everything in common) a description of the status quo?
Since I think that ownership claims are granted to each person by all others, I don't thing the rules of ownership should give individuals a right to control property that is completely insulated from the needs of others.
Can we make this more explicit? Even the extreme position does not completely insulate owners from the needs of others. They are still part of a society and influenced by people around them. What is the principle that we should apply here? To each according to their needs? Is this just your subjective preference, or does it have some additional persuasive force associated with it?
It seems to me that a taxless world does just that. It would give owners unilateral control over things.
I think you’re making more assumptions there than just taxlessness. We could imagine a taxless dictatorship that made owners completely helpless, because although they paid no tax the dictator could order them to do whatever he liked at their own expense. So we have to make some additional assumptions to get to the place where owners of things cannot be coerced.
Let’s just use the conclusion instead of the assumptions and think about a world where owners have unilateral absolute legal rights to their property. People can still share ownership of things if that works best. Laws still constrain what people can do to others and their property. So it seems you hear that and think there is some way someone can trick everyone else into a bad spot. I hear that and I think maybe there might be a small part of the world where someone can be safe from the demands and opinions of others. A place where it is safe to be them, whatever their politics, sexual orientation, race, philosophy, religion, etc. A place where they are not relying on the benevolence of a majority or an oligarchy, but a stable mutual social arrangement.
How do we turn this into a trap? We could assume it just won’t work, that less powerful persons' property will not protect them from more powerful persons. Or we can assume that no churches or charities will help those who have so little property or ability to get it that they need help, or that their help will be grossly inadequate.
This is the only way I could conceive of a taxless world. Once property is claimed by a private owner, that owner alone, unilaterally, gets to decide what happens to it, regardless of what else is going on in the world.
Sorry to be repetitive, but that is not Taxlessness. I don’t mind switching topics, but that is a different one.
we need to adjust people's property claims over the currently existing resources in order make those things happen.
Or figure out a consistent way to claim they have incurred a debt. That seems to fit better to me. Maybe it is just terminology. “Adjust people's property claims” is pretty vague and euphemistic. If taxes are legitimate, it's because people have gotten a benefit from the activity of the government and owe a debt to pay for its expenditures. But how do we justify this unusual arrangement? Google and Amazon don’t get to decide how much I owe them or that what I owe them is proportionate to my income according to some complicated formula. What is special about this situation?
Taxes are the adjustment of claims over existing resources.
I’m not sure I can think of a tax that doesn’t count as an adjustment of claims over resources, but I can think of a lot of adjustments to claims over resources that aren’t taxes. Maybe they are involuntary adjustments to those claims? But so is robbery. Isn’t “taxation” specific and euphemistic enough?
An income and wealth tax is no different that imminent domain, in my view.
I agree that income and wealth taxes and eminent domain require a similar sort of power, although they have different rationalizations.
We need city plans that make sense, and sometimes private claims to exclusive control of land is going to have to give way for the sake of the city as a whole;
This makes a lot of sense. It does not establish that this can’t happen voluntarily.
and we need to build schools,
Private schools manage to get built without taxes or eminent domain.
and acquiring the funds is a kind of imminent domain over existing resources - wealth - that is analogous to imminent domain over real estate.
Is there any limit on the amount or purpose this can be applied to? Why only schools and public works? What about mansions for and monuments to public servants?
)?" Money, is, after all, a lifesaving resource. The reason we shouldn't even experiment with this is that doing so would be wrong in principle (in my moral view).
But that is just your subjective preference, right? Why should anyone agree with you?
Are you saying you know what the outcome of the experiment would be or you don’t care, no matter what the outcome was, you prefer the status quo? Who is the victim of this wrong, if volunteers performed an experiment upon themselves? Would you be harmed by having to know it happened?
the use of exclusionary force can't be justified (in my moral view) independently of the consequences for the people who will be subject to that exclusionary force.
In order for something to be used by anyone, other uses must be excluded. Are you just tweaking who gets to do the excluding, the occupant or some bureaucrat? Do you have a plausible mechanism to make bureaucrats behave according to your favored consequentialist formula? Do you even have an explicit formula for them to follow?
Doesn’t this all imply we need a benevolent dictator? And even if such an incorruptible person existed and could be put in power, would your formula really accomplish what you expect? Would it be reasonable to hope they got it right on the first try?
. The specific terms of ownership will always be relative to the societies and institutions that enforce the rules. We probably agree on that.
Yes. When you distinguish absolute ownership and relative (or whatever) ownership, I translate that into my terms as ownership by person or common ownership.
." At each point along the way we must be concerned with what we think the positive law OUGHT to do, not just what it does. I think we agree on that.
This is what I struggle with. If personal morality is subjective, how can we evaluate positive law using any intersubjective or objective external standard? What does the positive law owe us? Who is obligated to make the positive law what it ought to be, and how would they find out? How will they be punished if they fail?
?" The thought experiment just attempts to ask whether there are situations in which the needs of non-owners should (morally) overcome a private owner's claim to something that might otherwise uncontroversially "belong" to the owner. I'm not sure that the fact that the positive law giving the owner exclusive control over the lifesaving resource wouldn't be upheld in practice has any bearing on whether the think that the positive law OUGHT nonetheless to grant an inviolable power of control, as opposed to a power of control that can, under the positive law, be overcome. If it is wrong for the owner to have the power to withhold lifesaving resources, a law attempting to grant that power would still be wrong, even if it were unenforceable, wouldn't it? (Pat 5 Next.)
Here is where the terminology matters. Someone, whether we call them the owner or the bureaucrat or the collective, will have the power to withhold lifesaving resources. The power to give is the power to take away. If some receive, others will not. If all receive, they will receive less than otherwise. Implicitly, what you seem to say is that a political process is in less danger of messing this up than actual persons would. Yet the political process is made up of persons.
I think it is an excellent characteristic of a law that it might become unenforceable when we stop wanting it to be enforced, especially if the thought experiment inspiring all this describes a dire emergency, not an ordinary situation. That benevolent dictator apparently must also be omniscient.
Your approach says that no one owes the guy anything for his part in saving the world. I say they at least owe him some compensation for confiscating his damn basement.
. If I want to travel from point a to point b, I am subject to the claims of the various owners on the way. But why? Because they got there first?
Because for anyone to use anything, others must be excluded. Presumably, we want people to use things. Why those specific persons? That depends on a lot of other factors. How would you propose to get around this?
And, if you and I want to trade titles to property, it isn't enough that WE agree that we own the property we trade - we need to know that ALL other people in the world will either accept our claims willingly or will be forced to accept our claims.
That is preferred, but not required. People trade in black markets all the time. It is less convenient, not impossible.
How do we decide which rules will universally determine who owns what?
Universal? You are quite ambitious. I don’t expect anything social to ever become universal. Not that I’d bet against a specific counterexample, more that I think the overwhelming generalization is diversity and disagreement. The hope for politics is in finding what can be agreed upon, not in forcing all to agree on everything.
You propose the negative commons view;
I would like to get a chance to give it a try.
I'm a native american and claim that my family has been using for generations of religious ceremonies what you unknowingly believed you have justly homesteaded. Who is right?
That is a dispute between communities rather than a dispute among persons. Yes, this is a difficult question to answer satisfactorily. If we stick to positive law, then it’s just whatever the law says, right? Who has the upper hand? I don’t find that satisfactory, but it goes back to the question of subjective morality and positive law. I am still looking for the right solution to that. How do we find an external standard to judge the law? I like voluntariness.
Doesn't the resolution of this dilemma HAVE to apply to ALL people in order to give any ONE person security?
That seems like an odd way to frame it. No one has ever been secure, I suppose. While I admit things could have gone better, I’m not sure that this was the critical error people made in the past. That would be very difficult to experiment with using only volunteers.
And if so, is there any better way of deciding the rules that must necessarily apply to us all than to give each person an equal voice in writing those rules - i.e. a democratic state?
That opens a new and welcome digression for our discussion, criticisms of various forms of democracy and considerations of various alternatives.
Why should persons who are uninformed or apathetic have the same voice as those who care deeply and have studied a particular question?
How do we avoid oligarchy?
Would it be more democratic or less democratic if I could choose what polity my home was part of? More specifically, if I could choose to have my land be a part of a different country than it is, or none, or create a new one? Redistricting from the bottom up!
The discussion began in the comments section of this article:https://mises.org/wire/yes-taxation-theft#comment-4700480282
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