Immigrants make you richer.

[pErvinalia]

Alliteration Fallacy.

[Hermit]

A weren't litterin', ociffer. Honest.

[JimC]

I'm still waiting for immigrants to deposit a few thousand in my bank account!

[Blind groper]

A comment on taxation.

Seth hates being taxed, but so does everyone. Seth calls taxation theft, and he is right, because the definition of theft and the definition of taxation are so very similar.

However, despite all that, we have no choice. Taxation is necessary. 100% necessary. Out of the 195 countries that exist in the world today, approximately 195 tax their citizens. What percentage is that?

A society cannot exist without taxes. No government can do its work without taxes. There can be no law and order, or national defense without taxes. There can, for that matter, be no laws, since taxes support the legislature. We need taxes, even as we hate them.

So taxes make better societies. It is a small step to use tax money to support the means of helping the citizenry via health care, education, social welfare and so on. This is what Seth calls socialism, and also calls Marxism. He is correct that it is socialism, but he is quite wrong in calling it Marxism. The two are not synonyms.

It is also true that the nations found by international surveys to be happiest are somewhat socialist, and though Seth will deny this, the happier people are by far the majority in those nations.

With those surveys, the USA comes pretty much at the bottom of western nations, except when the people doing the survey allow high scores for higher average incomes. Since the USA has higher wages and salaries than most nations, this allows a somehwat higher rating. But it still rates pretty much at the bottom for 'happiness index' as long as earnings are not given too high a rating.

[pErvinalia]

I don't consider taxation 'theft'. I consider it a duty that I owe to a (somewhat) civilised society.

[Hermit]

I don't consider taxation 'theft'. I consider it a duty that I owe to a (somewhat) civilised society.

Exactly. It's the price you pay for living in a society.

The argument that taxation is theft is a bit disingenuous anyway if you allow compulsory taxes for such things as national armies. Lolbertardians seem to be in favour of that, so they not so much argue that taxation is theft. They just argue about what compulsory taxes may be used for. As for me, I'd love to see military forces all over the world having to rely on voluntary contributions only.

[Seth]

Were they listened to when the Arapaho were forced out of Colorado at Sand Creek?

I assume you are familiar with the story, coming from that area?

Probably not. The Sand Creek Massacre was perpetrated by one John Chivington, who was a virulent Indian-hater and racist, who assembled a corps of militia, who were mostly Indian-hating racists (though several refused to participate in the slaughter of women and children), who were not very hard to find in the west at that time, given the fact that various Indian tribes (not including the Arapahoe and their chief, Black Kettle) were slaughtering and torturing settlers all over the west at the time.

Which as a Libertarian, I assume you'd agree the Native Americans had every right to do. Defending their property, and all that.
A good case study for Libertarianism.

Yup. But they lost the war, and they are dead now, so their claim to the land expired with them. Whether the war was moral or within Libertarian principles is irrelevant to the status of title to the land today.

My question remains (irrespective of who the guilty parties were).
If property rights are sacrosanct to Libertarianism, why aren't Libertarians fighting for the return of this property to their rightful owners?

Because the land belongs to the living, not the dead, ergo ipso facto the current owners are the rightful owners. If the Indians have a beef about how things turned out two centuries ago they should encourage their ancestors to take the matter up with the ghost of Andrew Jackson. No one in any Indian tribe alive today was dispossessed of any property they held title to by anybody else alive today. If, perchance, they actually were, then they have a claim against the trespasser, but they'd better make it before they die. As I said, death wipes out title to property which therefore cannot be claimed by remote descendants who never occupied the land. To do so is to perpetuate endless war and conflict, which cannot be permitted.

Title settles on he who occupies the land when the previous owner dies. And yes, this means that "squatters" can gain title to land by occupying it in an "open, notorious" manner for either a statutory period of time or because the true owner did not make efforts to eject the trespasser from possession before he dies.

Thus, it behooves the occupant to arrange for continued occupancy and claim of title to the land prior to his or her death, lest title be abandoned and claimed by someone else willing to occupy and use the land.

[Seth]

You're as much the beneficiary of "stolen property" as you claim I or any other Libertarian is. More so in fact because you support a political and legal system that facilitates the forcible extraction of property from the few to serve the needs of the many, and you can't say you don't.

What a curious train of thought. Let's say that all profit is theft, profit being the difference between what an employee gets paid in money and kind and the value of his/her labour. None of the money I received comes from the employment of others.

But the amenities and benefits that you enjoy do. The involuntary servitude of many in fact.

As for taxation, being the forcible extraction of property according to you, money is being stolen from me, rather than by me.

The notion that all profit is theft is an irrational Marxist idea. Your labor as an employee is worth exactly what you agree to get paid to perform it, and not a penny more. If you price yourself out of the labor market by demanding more than the employer is willing to pay, that's your problem, not the employer's. Profits are the reward for the inherent risk of investing capital in starting and operating a business. The worker doesn't bear those risks because he invests nothing but his labor, for which he is paid as he produces it. If the business fails, the worker loses nothing, having been paid for whatever labor he has input as the first call on any remaining business assets in a bankruptcy. The notion that he "lost his job" is specious because it presumes that he has obtained some vested right to have a job that he can be unfairly deprived of by the employer. That's not the case. There is no "right" to demand payment from someone else unless you are providing something to them of equal value which they have requested that you provide. If I don't want to buy your encyclopedias, or your vacuum cleaners, or your plastic Tupperware, you have no claim on my money merely because you want me to pay you. Likewise, if your labor is surplus to my needs as a manufacturer or businessperson, you cannot demand that I continue to employ and pay you merely because you want a job.

You have to input labor that is both cost-effective and profitable for me in order for me to employ you. If you don't, for whatever reason, then our contractual relationship is over and you may go your way, having been paid in full for what labor I requested you perform.

Yes, your money is being stolen from you by redistributionary taxation. Not, however, by taxation that levies your fair share of the public amenities that you make use of, like the roads and police.

It behooves me to mention again, for the umpteenth time, that "taxation" is not a single monolithic thing that one either agrees or disagrees with. The specific kind or purpose of taxation is what categorizes it as just or unjust, with redistributionary taxation, meaning taking one person's money in order to directly transfer it to another person (as in welfare or "free" medical care funded by me) without consent of the payer, being the objectionable and immoral category, while taxation to pay for public amenities the individual uses, such as roads and sewer systems, is not inherently objectionable, although it may be depending on the precise structure and use of the tax and how it was approved.

Libertarians believe in general that there should be no involuntary taxation, but that citizens can certainly agree to bind themselves voluntarily to paying taxes for projects and causes with which they agree. This agreement becomes a binding contract on the individual, failure to abide by which constitutes an initiation of fraud on the public.

The key here is that when it comes to funding the expenses of government and public amenities, Libertarians believe that such funds must be provided voluntarily by each individual if they are to benefit from the tax. If one does not wish to contribute to a specific government service or project, then one may not be compelled to contribute to its existence. On the other hand, if one does not contribute to that service or project, one may not make use of or benefit from that service or project. An option in such cases is a user-pays fee system that allows individuals to pay only for those services they need or desire on an as-used/needed basis.

This system ensures that government can never outgrow the will of the people and become the sort of self-perpetuating behemoth that it is now because if it grows too large and it wastes taxpayer money, taxpayers use the power of the purse to shrink the size of government by denying it funding in a very real and direct manner.

Compulsory taxation is what creates and supports bloated, inefficient government. Government needs to be run like a business. Legislators and government employees need to provide services and amenities that people are willing to pay for voluntarily, and a primary role of government should be advertising and explaining to people why it is in their rational self-interest to contribute to a particular project or service. If they do so properly and the service or project is truly needed and wanted, then people will voluntarily contribute to it. If it's not, then the project doesn't go forward because it doesn't have the necessary capital to do so.

It's not for legislators to decide how best to spend the individual's money, it's for the individual to decide how much of his or her money they are willing to contribute to the just, reasonable and necessary expenses and needs of the government. The obligation of the government is to considerately ask for and wisely spend that money which taxpayers contribute to specific causes and programs.

If the taxpayers don't want to fund it, then politicians must simply walk away from the idea or do a better job of convincing the public to contribute.

[pErvinalia]

Were they listened to when the Arapaho were forced out of Colorado at Sand Creek?

I assume you are familiar with the story, coming from that area?

Probably not. The Sand Creek Massacre was perpetrated by one John Chivington, who was a virulent Indian-hater and racist, who assembled a corps of militia, who were mostly Indian-hating racists (though several refused to participate in the slaughter of women and children), who were not very hard to find in the west at that time, given the fact that various Indian tribes (not including the Arapahoe and their chief, Black Kettle) were slaughtering and torturing settlers all over the west at the time.

Which as a Libertarian, I assume you'd agree the Native Americans had every right to do. Defending their property, and all that.
A good case study for Libertarianism.

Yup. But they lost the war, and they are dead now, so their claim to the land expired with them. Whether the war was moral or within Libertarian principles is irrelevant to the status of title to the land today.

So if I kill you and take your land, then it's all good in libertarian world?

[Seth]

A comment on taxation.

Seth hates being taxed, but so does everyone. Seth calls taxation theft, and he is right, because the definition of theft and the definition of taxation are so very similar.

Why thank you for finally admitting that.

However, despite all that, we have no choice. Taxation is necessary. 100% necessary. Out of the 195 countries that exist in the world today, approximately 195 tax their citizens. What percentage is that?

Ah, but we do have a choice. Many of them in fact, which is rather the point.

A society cannot exist without taxes.

Well, it's probably true that a society cannot operate properly without a source of income with which to fund the necessary and desirable amenities that traditionally come with community.

No government can do its work without taxes.

Not quite true. No government can do its work without a source of revenue. And therein lies the key to controlling the size and scope of government: the public purse.

There can be no law and order, or national defense without taxes.

Well, in theory there can be through the use of volunteer forces, but practically speaking you're right that such services require a revenue source.

There can, for that matter, be no laws, since taxes support the legislature. We need taxes, even as we hate them.

Not quite. We need revenue sources to fund the necessary or desirable functions and services of government. We don't necessarily need "taxes" as you have admitted they are defined, which is the involuntary extraction of revenue from the citizen against his will. (I presume you'll agree that this is a reasonable definition, if not, let's work that out first...)

So taxes make better societies.

No, revenue sources for desirable and necessary public projects and services make better societies. There's a huge distinction there you need to understand.

The key is the word "involuntary" combined with "taxes." The term "involuntary taxation" is somewhat redundant as "taxation" as used by almost everyone implies a component of involuntariness. I use the redundancy to make a point, which is that there can be "involuntary taxation," where the levy is extracted without the agreement of the taxpayer, and there is "voluntary taxation" where the individual binds himself by contract (which can be created in several ways) to pay a fixed amount in order to fund a service or amenity which he uses, or may use beneficially for his own purposes.

The key to Libertarian thought on taxation is that all taxation must be "voluntary taxation" and that the individual has the authority to agree or not agree to pay a specific tax for a specific project, service or amenity, and that government is required to only offer those services, amenities and projects that it has voluntarily obtained funding for prior to undertaking it. (No deficit spending is allowed)

In this way the society as a whole, and every individual within it, has the power to put a stop to unnecessary, unneeded, wasteful, harmful or politically unacceptable government actions simply by virtue of the power of the free market to fund and defund what the citizenry actually want and need. All this is performed without coercion, force or fraud. If you, as a representative elected to the legislature, want to collect money for a project (or your wages for that matter) all you have to do is communicate successfully to your constituents why you want them to pay for the project. If you don't, you don't get paid. This is a free-market business theory of government operations that makes huge strides in preventing government from becoming a self-perpetuating tyranny.

It is a small step to use tax money to support the means of helping the citizenry via health care, education, social welfare and so on. This is what Seth calls socialism, and also calls Marxism. He is correct that it is socialism, but he is quite wrong in calling it Marxism. The two are not synonyms.

They are, practically speaking, because they both flow from the same fundamental ideology of collectivism. But the real point is that if you want me to contribute money for the purposes of serving the educational, health or social welfare of others you have to ask me to do so and gain my consent by showing me why it is in my rational self-interest to do so. If you can't do that, then your "need" probably isn't really a need at all, it's probably just something you're trying to extract from me to give to someone else so they will vote to keep you in power, and that I do not consent to fund, under any circumstances.

It is also true that the nations found by international surveys to be happiest are somewhat socialist, and though Seth will deny this, the happier people are by far the majority in those nations.

Which people? It's unsupported conjecture to imply that everyone in a socialist state is "happier" than everyone in a non-socialist state.

I think you'll find that each and every one of the surveys you allude to presents the results as a percentage of the people polled, which a) does not ever represent a 100% survey of every inhabitant; and b) by nature shows that some percentage of people polled disagree with your claim.

If you survey welfare recipients and ask them if they like getting welfare, the vast majority will say that they do. But that doesn't justify the burden placed on those who have to labor to provide that freebie. If 90% of people are on welfare and 10% are working like slaves to provide that welfare, is a 90% "in-favor-of-welfare" result of any value whatsoever? No, of course not.

With those surveys, the USA comes pretty much at the bottom of western nations, except when the people doing the survey allow high scores for higher average incomes. Since the USA has higher wages and salaries than most nations, this allows a somehwat higher rating. But it still rates pretty much at the bottom for 'happiness index' as long as earnings are not given too high a rating.

You'd have to cite specific surveys for me to be sure, but I'm quite certain that every one of them is highly biased towards socialism and against the US as a deliberate attempt to make socialism look good, and therefore the results are questionable at best, as I illustrate above.

And there are other measures than "happiness of the majority" by which the operations of a society must be judged.

[Seth]

Were they listened to when the Arapaho were forced out of Colorado at Sand Creek?

I assume you are familiar with the story, coming from that area?

Probably not. The Sand Creek Massacre was perpetrated by one John Chivington, who was a virulent Indian-hater and racist, who assembled a corps of militia, who were mostly Indian-hating racists (though several refused to participate in the slaughter of women and children), who were not very hard to find in the west at that time, given the fact that various Indian tribes (not including the Arapahoe and their chief, Black Kettle) were slaughtering and torturing settlers all over the west at the time.

Which as a Libertarian, I assume you'd agree the Native Americans had every right to do. Defending their property, and all that.
A good case study for Libertarianism.

Yup. But they lost the war, and they are dead now, so their claim to the land expired with them. Whether the war was moral or within Libertarian principles is irrelevant to the status of title to the land today.

So if I kill you and take your land, then it's all good in libertarian world?

No, that's an initiation of force (but you can try), and society (or my friends, neighbors and community) would be justified in using force to prevent you from doing so or to eject you from the land if you succeed. But once I'm dead, and you are dead, the sins of both are washed clean and the land belongs to he who occupies it without initiating force or fraud. So yes, if you kill me and successfully defend your occupation of the land against attempts to eject you, once you die those who occupy the land after you gain clear title to it because THEY have not initiated any force or fraud in obtaining title through occupancy. It is MY obligation, and/or the right of my contemporaries and community to defend my title against an initiation of force or fraud. If I cannot or do not choose to do so, my distant descendants cannot come back two hundred years later and make a force-or-fraud claim on my behalf because they have suffered no injury over what happened centuries ago. Just because they WANT to regain occupancy and title of the land doesn't give their claim any weight.

[JimC]

I don't consider taxation 'theft'. I consider it a duty that I owe to a (somewhat) civilised society.

Exactly. It's the price you pay for living in a society.

The argument that taxation is theft is a bit disingenuous anyway if you allow compulsory taxes for such things as national armies. Lolbertardians seem to be in favour of that, so they not so much argue that taxation is theft. They just argue about what compulsory taxes may be used for. As for me, I'd love to see military forces all over the world having to rely on voluntary contributions only.

In addition, some form of political equilibrium on taxation tends to occur in any given society. If a government taxes to excess and/or is very inefficient with its finances, it will be in trouble come the next election, same with one that reduces taxes to the point where public spending on things the majority values is crippled.

Having said that, although it is true that a significant role for taxes is various forms of social welfare for poor people, spending to excess in that area not only reduces the government money available for valuable public infrastructure, but can create welfare dependency, and reward lazy shits. Balance is all...

Most governments around the world are not, however, doing a good job in one area - taxing giant global corporations. They have the power to shuffle money and launder funds that major crime gangs can only envy from a distance...

[rainbow]

Yup. But they lost the war, and they are dead now, so their claim to the land expired with them. Whether the war was moral or within Libertarian principles is irrelevant to the status of title to the land today.

Force and Fraud are OK in Libertarianism, as long as you get the benefit out of it.

...if others try, shoot them full of holes.


What amazes me is that you can't see the hypocrisy in this.

[Seth]

Yup. But they lost the war, and they are dead now, so their claim to the land expired with them. Whether the war was moral or within Libertarian principles is irrelevant to the status of title to the land today.

Force and Fraud are OK in Libertarianism, as long as you get the benefit out of it.

...if others try, shoot them full of holes.


What amazes me is that you can't see the hypocrisy in this.

I would if it were true, but it's not.

[pErvinalia]

It is. You claim that there is some fundamental natural right to property, yet all it really comes down to is who has the bigger guns. It's the same as always, Seth. You profess principles but it always comes down to those with the most guns wins.