Do you view taxation as theft?

[Souron]

Yes, and all Governments are unethical. Therefor we not only have a right, but an obligation to avoid our taxes.


Yes, but what makes you think the child would compromise it's ethical concerns by entering into the social contract?

I don't think any modern liberal democracy is so unethical to justify not paying taxes.

 

[ParkCungHee]

How many people do you think someone has to murder before they're considered unethical?

 

[Borachio]

I love a riddle!

Is it one?

Or is it none?

 

[Cutlass]

That might certainly be the ethical justification offered, but in terms of actual politics it seems to me largely nominal. Your concern is with the state, with the claims it can make of us, with the obligations we have to it; just look at the deeply illiberal notion of popular sovereignty you offer in the discussion with Park, in which "you haven't left yet" is taken as consent to rule, and consent to rule taken as consent to violence. (A logic, frankly, not very distant from the traditional defence of marital rape.) Simply because this is at times constructed in reference to some "People" doesn't change it in any real way, because "the People" is a fiction that only comes into being as the reflection of an already-existing (or at least already-hypothesised) state. (Hobbes, at least, was willing to make that explicit.) Actual people, concrete individuals as something apart from your heterogeneous People, are a nusiance, at best a sort of livestock to be fed and watered, and more usually a threat to themselves and to others. The extent of your liberalism is that you don't actually advocate building a wall to keep them in.

If you are trying to change it in ways you feel are right, that's all to the good. If you're withdrawing yourself, for whatever your personal reasons, then you're just being part of the problem.

Park's position is defacto the same position that people have which says that it's OK for children to starve, because it's wrong for me to be a part of feeding them. Now whatever the reason for his position, I don't frankly care. He's entitled to his own position. However the effect of his position is dead children. You wrapping it up in philosophical arguments is irrelevant to what we are really talking about here, which is dead children.

The reference was more about your pessimistic view of the human capacity for self-organisation and the demand for a sweepingly-empowered state, rather than Hobbes specific endorsement of absolute monarchy. (That's not even one he was himself utterly rigid about, being willing to accept a parliamentary system (albeit oligarchical) if it offered the best route to social cohesion.) Man is a wolf to man, you are very quick to tell us, and the Leviathan is the only escape we have, general illustrated with some reference to Somalia. It's a classically Hobbesian outlook.

People suck. I don't see why you of all people don't grasp that.

Then why is it acceptable to do so through the medium of the state?

"Acceptability" isn't even part of the conversation. The two options are "do it through the state" and "don't do it".

 

[Winston Hughes]

"Acceptability" isn't even part of the conversation. The two options are "do it through the state" and "don't do it".

Indeed. Taking the issue closest to my heart, it's ridiculous to think that without functions that are entirely dependent upon state power (such as taxation and rights legislation), it would be possible to maintain any remotely acceptable level of provision and protection for the disabled. The only places where such provisions and protections exist - or have ever existed - are those where the state offers them itself, and enables/encourages other organisations to make additional contributions. Examples of what happens when the state is absent (or when it doesn't care) are numerous and pretty much uniformly horrific.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Park's position is defacto the same position that people have which says that it's OK for children to starve, because it's wrong for me to be a part of feeding them. Now whatever the reason for his position, I don't frankly care. He's entitled to his own position. However the effect of his position is dead children.

You're in the same boat too, considering you're unwilling to use personal violence to save children's lives.
On he other hand you are in the position that it's OK for children to starve, because you support forcing children to starve to death.

 

[Cutlass]

You're in the same boat too, considering you're unwilling to use personal violence to save children's lives.
On he other hand you are in the position that it's OK for children to starve, because you support forcing children to starve to death.

And you get this from where?

 

[ParkCungHee]

And you get this from where?

Well, let's start with Iraq
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/mal-n26.shtml
Since we've turned support for the government into a yes/no equation, I don't think you can reasonably say you're opposed to it. As a matter of practicality, you supported it for years, and continue to support it.
Therefor, yeah, you've got plenty of starving children you're responsible for.

 

[Cutlass]

Supporting government in principle does not mean that I support every thing government has ever done.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Fine, then opposing government on principle doesn't mean opposing everything the government has ever done.

http://www.casi.org.uk/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html

There, another 100,000 dead children, which I'm told is an acceptable cost for the roads I use, and I have a moral obligation to take part in.

Tell me, if I was an individual person, and I was asking for money, and you knew that I was going to partially use the money for a good cause, and partially use the money for a murder spree, at what proportion of good cause to bullets would you be comfortable letting me have the money?

 

[Cutlass]

Your position in the past, to the best I understood it, was that you opposed all government.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Your position in the past, to the best I understood it, was that you opposed all government.

Yes. You bring me another government and I'll bring complaints against it.

Usually I'm the one accused of defending a utopian vision, but here's where it comes down to the actual, in real life consequences thing:

You're telling me I have a moral obligation to support an institution that deliberately starves 100,000 children to death, because they gave me an education and roads.

 

[Cutlass]

And if there was no government at all, 100s of times that number would have starved.

So is it really better that most of the children born die before the age of 2 of entirely preventable reasons than that we have government who are sometimes wrong?

 

[ParkCungHee]

And if there was no government at all, 100s of times that number would have starved.

So is it really better that most of the children born die before the age of 2 of entirely preventable reasons than that we have government who are sometimes wrong?

So is there any government I don't have a moral obligation to support?

I mean, wouldn't the government existing/not existing in this question here be Saddam Hussein's?

 

[Cutlass]

Most governments suck. But it is exceptionally rare for one to suck as much as chaos. The moral choice is to try to make your government moral.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Most governments suck. But it is exceptionally rare for one to suck as much as chaos.

Yes, but since we only have this hypothetical 100s of times worse then anything, is there any government that you will actually say I shouldn't support? Saddam's? Stalin's? Hitler's? Mao's?

The moral choice is to try to make your government moral.

That seems to be a betrayal of your loyalty to the government.

One other issue: since I'm to be held accountable for the people who would supposedly die from inaction without coercive social organization, shouldn't you also be held accountable for the effects of actual and current inaction?

 

[Cutlass]

Yes, but since we only have this hypothetical 100s of times worse then anything, is there any government that you will actually say I shouldn't support? Saddam's? Stalin's? Hitler's? Mao's?

There are plenty you shouldn't support. Revolt against them, or flee them. If you can do neither, than at least plot to yourself and wait your chance.

That seems to be a betrayal of your loyalty to the government.

One other issue: since I'm to be held accountable for the people who would supposedly die from inaction without coercive social organization, shouldn't you also be held accountable for the effects of actual and current inaction?

I'm not loyal to governments. I'm loyal to people. Government is simply the only tool I have to protect them.

 

[Traitorfish]

As an immigrant, I chose. In your case, your parents effectively chose for you by giving birth to you. You needed the government from day 1. What's the alternative, not make children bound by the law until they are old enough to understand consent, while still allowing them to live on the land?

Even then, there comes a point when a child reaches the age of majority, and not once are they ever asked to volunteer for participation in The People. Doesn't that seem a bit dodgy to you, being signed up for a dues-paying club without ever being asked?

If you leave the country, and renounce your citizenship, then yes it has no special authority. Now that's not practical, so there should be limits on what the government can do.

Why do I have to leave? You say that government authority is conditional on consent, and I'm just as capable of capable of refusing consent here as in another country.

It's not obvious who has more legitimacy in that case. Perhaps the taxpayer can be forgiven for making the wrong call until one authority prevails, and it becomes unambiguous again. Secession is a tricky thing.

Well, what's your criteria for determining legitimate government? If it's legal continuity, then the Westminster government is clearly the legitimate one. If it's popular support, the Republican government is clearly the legitimate one. Is it both, in which case neither was legitimate? Or is it something else altogether?

If you are trying to change it in ways you feel are right, that's all to the good.

You accept that armed insurrection is a legitimate way of achieving political change?

If you're withdrawing yourself, for whatever your personal reasons, then you're just being part of the problem.

Why's that?

Park's position is defacto the same position that people have which says that it's OK for children to starve, because it's wrong for me to be a part of feeding them. Now whatever the reason for his position, I don't frankly care. He's entitled to his own position. However the effect of his position is dead children. You wrapping it up in philosophical arguments is irrelevant to what we are really talking about here, which is dead children.

That's an empirical claim, but it's not obvious what its basis is. To me, it seems obvious that the state is a net producer of dead children, and always has been. There are very few places in the world, at this point, where large numbers of people die through a simple lack of government, but very, very many where they die from an excess of it. To take an historical example, is the death toll during the Great Irish Famine to be attributed to the lack of government, in that very little government aid was forthcoming, or an excess of it, in that the Irish peasantry were prevented from seizing and consuming the more than abundant food supplies that Ireland produced and exported throughout the famine by the presence of a state willing to use fatal violence to protect the institution of private property.

People suck. I don't see why you of all people don't grasp that.

Well, I tend to think of myself as a humanist, so I'm afraid I can't really say it's obvious that "people suck". Most people, as far as I can tell, are basically decent. Naive, scared, ignorant, boring, the sort of things you'd expect from people who spend their entire lives being treated as livestock, but not actually bad. Not good, maybe, whatever "good" means, but not bad. Only people I would describe as sucking without qualification are the very economic and political authorities who you support and protect. So this seems like a bit of a weird angle to me.

"Acceptability" isn't even part of the conversation. The two options are "do it through the state" and "don't do it".

I think you misunderstand me; my point was that you object to private individuals unilaterally harming others, but are not in principle opposed to them doing the same thing through the medium of the state. It's wrong to lock a person in your basement, acceptable to lock a person in prison. I want to know how you go about squaring that.

Indeed. Taking the issue closest to my heart, it's ridiculous to think that without functions that are entirely dependent upon state power (such as taxation and rights legislation), it would be possible to maintain any remotely acceptable level of provision and protection for the disabled. The only places where such provisions and protections exist - or have ever existed - are those where the state offers them itself, and enables/encourages other organisations to make additional contributions. Examples of what happens when the state is absent (or when it doesn't care) are numerous and pretty much uniformly horrific.

Doubtless, the state is the only entity capable of providing these services at the moment. But have we really exhausted all possible forms of social organisation? It's not obvious to me that we have.

 

[ParkCungHee]

There are plenty you shouldn't support. Revolt against them, or flee them. If you can do neither, than at least plot to yourself and wait your chance.

Isn't that selfish? If I revolt or flee, do I need to take a tax form with me? Aren't you supporting 100s of times the death if you depose the government?

In practice, would you actually support me if I took up revolt against the government? If I started planting car bombs, would you say "Oh good, PCH has started doing something constructive?"

I'm not loyal to governments. I'm loyal to people. Government is simply the only tool I have to protect them.

This seems, if not facile then in practice a stupid argument.
I am obligated, according to you, to support the Iraqi government because without them, things would be far worse.

So I am morally obligated to buy guns and ammunition for Saddam Hussein. I am also morally obligated to pay the wages and training of a secret police force to hunt down Saddam Hussein's enemies. I need to pay for the car batteries to strap to his enemy's testicles, to torture them, to reveal more enemies so they can do this again.

These are moral obligations. I am stealing if I refuse to cooperate in this endeavor according to you. So if the Iraqi government can already command me to take part in all of this, why shouldn't it be able to command loyalty.

You've created an ethical model where individual rights exist solely because they are useful to the social order, and what if The People decide that by creating social division, you are creating unwelcome social cost. By what right can you challenge their demands?

 

[Winston Hughes]

Doubtless, the state is the only entity capable of providing these services at the moment. But have we really exhausted all possible forms of social organisation? It's not obvious to me that we have.

It's the only entity which has any hope of performing these services at the present time, or in the foreseeable future. Its legitimacy, and the legitimacy of its acquisition of funds through taxation, rests on precisely this fact: nobody has come up with any remotely plausible alternative.