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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Coercion and the “Taxation is Theft” Argument

I see one of the latest responses to one of my previous posts is this:
“You statists simply refuse to analyze human activity as voluntary on the one hand or the result of hostile force and/or fraud on the other, the Rothbardian test. That is because unsophisticated people understand the difference quite well and would see what a nest of theft and fraud the Keynesian program is.”
I am well aware of the difference between forced and voluntary behaviour, and the simple truth is that you cannot live in a world without some degree of reasonable force and coercion (the operative word being “reasonable”). For example, your wife or child is about to walk in front of a speeding car, and there is no time to yell a warning. Do you:
(1) Use coercion to stop them from being killed or injured by grabbing them, or

(2) Do nothing because coercion is always wrong.
If you do what any normal, moral human being does, you do (1), and that course of action can be defended as a moral and right thing to do on many ethical theories. If you choose (2), on the grounds that nobody can be subject to involuntary coercion at any time, you are revealed as an utterly immoral idiot, to my mind. The crucial point is that when coercion occurs it must be justifiable. To say that coercion is reasonable is to say that it is justifiable in a convincing way, on some grounds.

We are told by some Austrians (perhaps not the more intellectually sophisticated ones) that nobody should be subject to involuntary coercion at all, and usually they appeal to natural rights arguments and nature. But I doubt whether such libertarian concepts really are consistent with nature. Take this libertarian insistence that we must be free from any coercive authority, done without our consent. This is a radical violation of one fundamental part of human nature: the relationship of parents to children. How can you raise children without using coercion without their consent? You can’t. The alternative is letting children run wild. Reasonable coercion is necessary, in so far as it does not conflict with the legal rights that all human beings are given under the law.

But to return to the comment above, it is a typical version of the “taxation is theft” argument.

First of all, how would Austrians know that all people who pay taxes regard this as theft? It is natural to dislike paying taxes, but evidence suggests that many people – a majority – think it is the moral thing to do:
“The IRS Oversight Board conducted an independent poll in 2005 that found 96 percent of the respondents agreed ‘it is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.’

The Pew Research Center in a similar study in 2006 found 79 percent of the respondents said that cheating Uncle Sam was ‘morally objectionable.’

Certainly, Americans pay they taxes because they have to: ever since 1945, taxes have been automatically withdrawn from pay-checks. But people also comply because they think it is fair. Polls show that most Americans think only ‘a few’ people cheat on their taxes. Paying taxes, just like leaving a tip, is a social norm” (Maxwell 2000: 146).
Yes, Americans might dislike paying tax, but it appears a majority think it is both fair and right, just as you might dislike looking after a troublesome, obnoxious teenage child, even though you recognise that this is the right thing to do and the law says you must do so as a parent.

With regard to modern taxes which pay for public goods, it appears to me that it is the Austrians/libertarians who are in the minority. But, of course, just because a majority of people think something is moral, this does not necessarily make it so. You need a defensible moral theory to justify some action as right. This issue cuts right to questions about philosophy of ethics.

If two people (a libertarian and Keynesian, say) wanted to seriously debate, they would have to ask:

(1) Is there an objective theory of ethics?

If one person does not believe in objective ethics, then the debate collapses into whether ethics is objective or subjective. Also, anyone who believes that morality is subjective can just appeal to David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement and come up with some contractarian theory in which, if a majority of people assent to living by certain rules, then this is perfectly defensible ethics. If one takes David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement as a method for ethics, then modern social democratic states already have a majority that supports basic principles like progressive taxation, so it appears to have ample justification.

But the statement “taxation is theft” seems to require that some objective ethical theory is true, however, so:

(2) If both people agree that ethics is objective, then what ethical system is true?

Our morality cannot be justified by an appeal to nature: that is why most natural rights/natural law based ethics collapse, and why natural rights ethics in the Rothbardian or Randian tradition won’t fly.

In my opinion, the workable objective theories of ethics that are not obviously flawed are Rawl’s human rights ethics, or rule consequentialism/utilitarianism (as in Brad Hooker, 2000, Ideal Code, Real World, Oxford University Press, Oxford). Some claim that a modern form of Kantian ethics is defensive, though I have my doubts.

Since taxes are levied to provide public goods and services (e.g., universal health care in all industrializied nations except the US), it is not difficult to justify them morally under Rawl’s human rights ethics or rule consequentialism.

Also, since in every ethical system some values will conflict, where does human life and the preservation of human life rank in these systems?

The belief that taxation is theft obviously implies that property rights are absolute or at least high in value. But why on earth should property rights rank above human life? Under rule consequentialism even the initiation of force involved in taking wealth might be perfectly justified, e.g.,
(1) If a village of 100 people has one well which is in the possession of one man, who suddenly refuses to give water to anyone else, and there is no rain or any other water and people are dying of thirst, can the dying people use force against the man (but not kill or wound him) to take what water they need just to survive? (leaving him of course with his proper share).
If a person said “no,” I would conclude that the person is morally bankrupt (since I regard rule consequentialism as defensible theory). If “yes,” then it is obvious that rule utilitarianism allows the use of reasonable force to take some reasonable amount of property, if people's lives or welfare are at stake.

In fact, utilitarianism as a moral theory was also held by Ludwig von Mises, who rejected natural rights, and used utilitarianism to justify a minimal state and limited interventions like fire regulations:
“There is, however, no such thing as natural law and a perennial standard of what is just and what is unjust. Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong. “Thou shalt not kill” is certainly not part of natural law. The characteristic feature of natural conditions is that one animal is intent upon killing other animals and that many species cannot preserve their own life except by killing others. The notion of right and wrong is a human device, a utilitarian precept designed to make social cooperation under the division of labor possible. All moral rules and human laws are means for the realization of definite ends. There is no method available for the appreciation of their goodness or badness other than to scrutinize their usefulness for the attainment of the ends chosen and aimed at” (Mises 1998 [1949]: 716).

“Economics neither approves nor disapproves of government measures restricting production and output. It merely considers it its duty to clarify the consequences of such measures. The choice of policies to be adopted devolves upon the people. But in choosing they must not disregard the teachings of economics if they want to attain the ends sought. There are certainly cases in which people may consider definite restrictive measures as justified. Regulations concerning fire prevention are restrictive and raise the cost of production. But the curtailment of total output they bring about is the price to be paid for avoidance of greater disaster. The decision about each restrictive measure is to be made on the ground of a meticulous weighing of the costs to be incurred and the prize to be obtained. No reasonable man could possibly question this rule” (Mises 1998 [1949]: 741).
Perhaps is time for Austrians to attack Mises as an “evil” statist who advocated using coercion to enforce fire codes?

Progressive taxes and Keynesian macroeconomic management of an economy are justifiable on utilitarian grounds. As for the libertarian minority who disagree, there is no reason why a minority of people with a debased sense of morality should not pay their share.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Maxwell, S. 2000. The Price is Wrong: Understanding What Makes a Price Seem Fair and the True Cost of Unfair Pricing, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J.

Mises, L. 1998 [1949]. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn.

29 comments:

  1. LK, Bob Roddis lost that argument when he tried to shift to ethics. He couldn't stick to the topic, and had to change the subject from economics to ethics.

    What is the point of arguing with a person who does not know the difference between a value-free subject and a values-based subject?

    That he shifted to the coercion argument is virtually a sign that he acknowledged that his position is untenable from a value-free perspective, and that the opponent is wrong, because his values contradict.

    Your mistake here was to address his weak non-argument, where you should have ignored it. This whole coercion argument is not worth addressing.

    It's nearly as bad as progressives who argue that "greed" caused the recession or that "the plutocracy is attacking the middle class". It's all rhetoric, no substance.

    You and your blog are superior to all sides of irrational debate that take place on most of the internet. Don't fall to their level.

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  2. Hmm. I'm here because I'm an MMT guy and all. But I've also been somewhat educated in Objectivism (Rand), due to some personal relations. I figure if you ask them, they'd say that coercion is needed and just in certain cases (for example imprisonment of criminals). But what are these cases? They do certainly hold that taxing is theft I believe. I personally do find it hard to argue against that, given some rudimentary insight in their thought system. Of course, you're not targeting Objectivism specifically in this post - if you would have, you would have had to rewrite large part of it (or else, this post would have been seen as a huge straw man argument).

    We're all trying to be rational, many of us. The part about "debased sense of morality" is a bit off-putting and disheartening to me. Oh well, I wish I was as absolutely sure about everything as you are. But they do have some very interesting points, these objectivists. (And yet, I'm still interested in MMT as well. "Given that we do have a coercive tax-based economical system, what can we do to improve it?" etc.)

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  3. So-called libertarians are not against coercion anyway. They are against coercion that violates "legitimate property rights" - taxation is coerced theft and evil, rent is not. The government censoring your speech is wrong, a property owner doing it is not. The material action may be the same -- if you don't pay your taxes, after all, violence is used against you, but it is also used against you if you don't pay your rent --, but everything changes according to arbitrary titles. To quote Bentham, "How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave". And you don't do it by any means other than the threat of force.

    This reminds me of Alf Ross's criticism of doctrines such as "to each his own", namely that they are meaningless because they depend on previous norms that establish what is "one's own" beforehand. I think the main evidence for that is the libertarian debate over intellectual property - those who support it say that enforcing it is legitimate, those who don't say it is violence. In short, their "legal philosophy" boils down to "violence is illegitimate, except when it is legitimate."

    To which my answer is, really?

    For this and other reasons, I don't think libertarian "legal philosophy" is worth of much attention. I also think the main mistake critics of it do is to let them frame the discussion.

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  4. Lord Keynes,

    I think overall this post is pretty good. Certainly your use of Mises at the end was fantastic. Would it be easier to accept the phrase, "Taxation that is not voluntarily entered into is theft" as opposed to simply "taxation is theft?"

    I think the weakest parts of your arguments was attempting to equate the use of force by pulling someone out of traffic as the same thing as the use of force used to extract taxes.

    I am certainly fine with attempting to define an objective code of ethics and as a base would assert humans prefer being alive over being dead. As such it should be immediately clear why your earlier analogy is invalid.

    Having said that, it really seems to me all the arguments against the libertarian "taxation is theft" slogan boil down to claiming some people would pay taxes anyways. That seems like a red herring to me. Or by redefining taxation as goods people gladly pay for. Well obviously that would not be theft. But taxation that requires one party to pay another party for a service involuntary seems like the very definition of theft. Which I suppose explains why that is never addressed and instead we see this relentless barrage of qualifiers attempting to make force not force and theft not theft.

    Taxation as defined as one group of people paying voluntarily for services is obviously not theft.

    Taxation as I, and I think most libertarians understand it, defined as government requiring payment for services that if you refuse to pay they will imprison you or steal your property, is theft.

    Why there is such a debate over semantics is beyond me.

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  5. "But taxation that requires one party to pay another party for a service involuntary seems like the very definition of theft."

    Yes, some people get coerced. Did you not bother to read the end:

    "As for the libertarian minority who disagree, there is no reason why a minority of people with a debased sense of morality should not pay their share."

    The coercion is justifed.

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  6. Gotcha. Tyranny of the majority at the expense of the minority. As that logic allows for the murder of all redheads if it is deemed to increase social welfare, I am sorry I can not follow you there.

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  7. "Tyranny of the majority at the expense of the minority."

    Completely wrong:

    "But, of course, just because a majority of people think something is moral, this does not necessarily make it so. You need a defensible moral theory to justify some action as right. This issue cuts right to questions about philosophy of ethics."

    Looks like you never read the post.

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  8. Get it?
    Rule consequenialism is a defensible moral theory and it justified coercion in the case of progressive taxes, just as it justifies using force to save your wife from stepping in front of a speeding car or stopping people from parking in ambulance zones in front of publci hospitals. It does NOT justify "murder of all redheads if it is deemed to increase social welfare" or any such thing, because suc a rule/principle of murder clearly does not tend to increase social welfare/happiness.

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  9. "But taxation that requires one party to pay another party for a service involuntary seems like the very definition of theft."

    Taxation is certainly not voluntary.

    So?

    Me not being able to remain on one trace of land arbitrarily designed as "your house" is involuntary as well.

    That taxation is involuntary is not an argument, really. Every norm is. Or else they wouldn't be norms, they would be customs.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, it's not voluntary. If you live in the real world, you would know that you can't ensure order and progress based on voluntarism when you're running a surplus producing society with millions and millions of people. Even hunter-gatherer tribes had to appeal to arbiter (the council of elders) in disputes between themselves. Blaming government for ills is like blaming knives for stab-murders.
      The idea is that through taxation, a representative government creates demand for its currency - thus all people are willing to sell stuff and work in order to obtain government IOUs in order to be able to pay their taxes and fines etc. Before the government can tax and or loan its own currency, it needs to spend it first into creation - and hopefully it will spend it on public purpose (securing boarders, police, firemen, hospitals, social centers, roads, bridges, railways, schools etc).

      Delete
  10. Non sequitur. How does it follow that taxation is justified from your argument? Simply because you believe coercion is the right thing to do in one case (the "wife and child" example) it doesn't mean that taking people's for x purpose is justified.

    And you know what, people are perfectly free to donate their own money to the US government. After all, according to you a "majority" of people will do so.

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  11. Taxes are the price you must pay for taking resources from your neighbors. The government is just the way that we choose to do the collecting.

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  12. Dear Lord Keynes,
    I have more than a few objections to your article, which claims taxation isn’t theft. I would start off by saying that claim is partly correct. As it is actually closer to robbery, the act of taking property by force of threat of force.
    It’s positive that you acknowlegde the difference between voluntary and forced behaviour. But you arrive at the incorrect conclusion that it is impossible to live in a world without ‘reasonable’ coercion. You give the example of people about to walk in front of a moving car, and the only way to save their lives would be to use force in order to stop them. After this, you reach the conclusion that, coercion is ‘reasonable’ in this case and because of this, coercion against people can be justified. You however, are missing a crucial point in this line of reasoning. Because after you use force to save your wife and child from being hit by a car, it’s their decision to voluntarily regard this use of force as (un)justified. In this example they would obviously view your use of force to save them as just. In short, they don’t view themselves as being coerced in any way. Obviously, no coercion has taken place, and the Non-Aggression Axiom was not violated in this scenario. A libertarian could have chosen option (1) without a second thought. And your claim that libertarians are ‘utterly immoral idiots’ is clearly misplaced.
    Now if we alter this scenario a bit, and say that person A is walking in front of a car in order to commit suicide, and you again would choose the ‘moral’ choice by pushing him aside, in the process breaking his shoulder. Would you be responsible for it? According to your logic, absolutely not. You made a ‘justified’ action by saving his life, but the actual justification lies with person A, if he regards your use of force against him in order to prevent his suicide as ‘coercion’, then you would be fully liable for his damage, and he could rightfully demand restitution. But whether he regards your use of force as coercion or not, is fully his choice.

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  13. Next you claim that the intellectually unsophicticated(notice the excessive use of Ad Hominems here) Austrians claim that nobody should be subject to involuntary coercion. But as I have shown in the above example, the wife and child voluntarily accepted the use of force as justified, or in other words, not as aggressive. No ‘involuntary coercion’ has taken place. After this you argue that the notion that nobody should be coerced is incorrect because children often get coerced by their parents. But you forget the fact that children are not self-owners, but instead they are ‘potential’ self-owners. This means that the responsibilities and rights to take care of the children are to be homesteaded by the parents(or other potential caretakers).
    In short, the caretakers, having homesteaded the rights to take care of their children are fully responsible for their health, and can make use of coercion in order to further this. Think about a parent grabbing his baby about to climb out of a 10-story window, the giving of flu-shots to a small child, or performing a vasectomy. If the child is grown up and decides to accept these actions as non-aggressive, then obviously no aggression would have taken place. If however, the grown-up person regards it as aggression, it is for example very well possible that someone would regard a vasectomy as unjustified force, then he could rightfully demand restitution from his parents.
    Let’s now return to your ‘taxation isn’t theft’ argument. First, you start off your argument by saying that a large amount of people don’t regard taxation as ‘theft’, but see it as a ‘civic duty’. This obviously twists around the question of what theft is, ‘The taking of someone’s property without their consent’. The fact that 96% of people regard taxes as ‘civic’ duty doesn’t mean that taxation is any less theft. You follow by admitting that people obviously pay their taxes because they ‘have to’. Which I would explain as, ‘because deadly force would otherwise be utilized against them’. You yourself reached the obvious conclusion that taxation isn’t voluntary in any way. If any of these 96% of people happened to change their minds and decided not to pay taxes anymore, they wouldn’t be able to do so without deadly violence being enacted against them. Conclusively, taxation is the involuntary taking of someone else’s property with the threat of force, and could correctly be called robbery. You can’t logically argue against this claim. The only thing you could do is argue whether yóu perceive this kind of robbery as morally right or wrong.

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  14. Finally, you try to justify the use of aggression on grounds of rule utilitarianism, a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right insofar it conforms to a rule that leads to the ‘greatest good’. Illustrated with the following example: “If a village of 100 people has one well which is in the possession of one man, who suddenly refuses to give water to anyone else, and there is no rain or any other water and people are dying of thirst, can the dying people use force against the man (but not kill or wound him) to take what water they need just to survive? (leaving him of course with his proper share). If a person said “no”, I would conclude that the person is morally bankrupt.”
    Again this example ignores one important point. The fact that the use of force in order for the villagers to get water has to be ‘enough’ for them to actually get the water. So if the owner of the well decides to defend his property against the villagers hard enough, they would eventually have to kill him. You can’t use force, without the ultimate consequence of that force being death. Now, if we change the scenario to a solidary man owning a well. And a large group of people come and demand a ‘fair share’ of his water, running dry his well, would they be justified by forcing him to comply? Lord Keynes, your answer would obviously be “yes”.
    Now, if the man defends his well against the violent invaders, and would be killed as a result by them. Would the invaders be justified by doing this? Again, the death of this man would lead to the ‘greatest good’, so your answer would logically be “yes”. Very well, everyone is entitled to his opinion, but imagine if yóu were that man, your property being violently seized for the ‘greater good’. What if it was áll your property being seized? Or your life itself? As long as it benefits the arbitrary ‘greater good’, would every act of aggression potentially be justified? If your anwer is “yes”, then I congratulate you on your heroic self-sacrifice, but you simply don’t have the right to force others to do so. And if the answer is “no”, you are contradicting yourself, so in either case, no logical proof against the Non-Aggression Principle has been offered. And as I’ve said earlier, you were correct by saying that ‘taxation isn’t theft’. Instead, taxation is violent robbery.

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  15. "...After this, you reach the conclusion that, coercion is ‘reasonable’ in this case and because of this, coercion against people can be justified"

    You have not understand my argument. My argument for taxation is based on consequentialist ethics.

    "In this example they would obviously view your use of force to save them as just. In short, they don’t view themselves as being coerced in any way."

    So if we follow that line of argument, then no one who accepts taxation as a civil duty is being coerced?

    Now if we alter this scenario a bit, and say that person A is walking in front of a car in order to commit suicide, and you again would choose the ‘moral’ choice by pushing him aside, in the process breaking his shoulder. Would you be responsible for it? According to your logic, absolutely not. You made a ‘justified’ action by saving his life, but the actual justification lies with person A, if he regards your use of force against him in order to prevent his suicide as ‘coercion...

    Regarding the case you imagine here, there are many factors that would have to be taken into account:

    (1) is the person committing suicide of sound mind? The mentally ill - and especially the severely mentally ill - are simply no longer fit to make their own free and reasonable decisions. If your reason is gone, how can you make a reasonable decision? Some kind of coercing is still justified in such a case.

    (2) Even if the person is of sound mind, he has no right to kill himself by jumping in front of a car, as that irresponsible act would endanger the lives of the people inside the car, perhaps even of other people if a bad car accident results. Even in this case some kind of coercion is justified to prevent bad consequences.

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  16. "But as I have shown in the above example, the wife and child voluntarily accepted the use of force as justified, or in other words, not as aggressive. No ‘involuntary coercion’ has taken place."

    That is a specious argument. At the time the act happened, it occurred without their consent or warning, and was - even if mild - still act of coercion. Their consent was retrospective - which is what you have ignored.

    "This obviously twists around the question of what theft is, ‘The taking of someone’s property without their consent’. The fact that 96% of people regard taxes as ‘civic’ duty doesn’t mean that taxation is any less theft"

    If each of the 96% of people regard taxes as ‘civic’ duty, then it is not theft to them - they have accepted it as a duty.

    In fact, I can easily use the same argument you've made here with my own example against you:

    This obviously twists around the question of what coercion is: "Violence against the person or compulsion by force to do something".

    The fact that a person would not regard being ‘Pushed out of the way of a speeding car without their consent or prior warning’ as coercion doesn’t mean that this act is any less coercion"!"

    ---

    "Which I would explain as, ‘because deadly force would otherwise be utilized against them’. "

    Please don't say things so foolish. The state does not use "deadly force" against people who do not pay taxes. Prosecution in a court of law is what happens, with a trial and jury, since it is a crime to not pay taxes in our society - just as it is a crime to park in an ambulance zone in front of a hospital.

    Many people freely accept that it is a civil duty and a moral course of action to not park in an ambulance zone in front of a hospital - if you change your mind and do such a thing you can expect to be fined, and there is nothing immoral about that, just as there is nothing immoral about a penalty for not paying taxes.

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  17. And finally your last point: I see no reason why non-lethal force cannot be used in the well example.

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  18. P1
    “You have not understand my argument. My argument for taxation is based on consequentialist ethics.”

    My argument is the fact that taxation is robbery. You can’t logically argue against that. You can however, argue for the morality of taxation base don consequentialist ethics.
    -

    “So if we follow that line of argument, then no one who accepts taxation as a civil duty is being coerced?”

    Absolutely not. Coercion didn’t happen at all in that example. The mother and child weren’t subject to threats or force in order for them to perform an involuntary action. This is exactly what the nature of taxation is.
    -
    “Regarding the case you imagine here, there are many factors that would have to be taken into account:

    (1) is the person committing suicide of sound mind? The mentally ill - and especially the severely mentally ill - are simply no longer fit to make their own free and reasonable decisions. If your reason is gone, how can you make a reasonable decision? Some kind of coercing is still justified in such a case.”

    I ask you to refrain from dancing around the issue. I clearly stated that I slightly altered your scenario, so it is obvious that I address your liability regarding you pushing a person much like the mother and child on the street and breaking his shoulder. But to adress your point (1). ‘Mental Illness’ is a very broad concept, but let’s assume a hypothetical case of absent argumentative ability and diminished responsibility over his own actions. You could use force against that person in order to save his life, since that person could not possibly object to it. I wouldn’t say however, that you wouldn’t be liable for damages you’ve caused him with your push.
    -

    “(2) Even if the person is of sound mind, he has no right to kill himself by jumping in front of a car, as that irresponsible act would endanger the lives of the people inside the car, perhaps even of other people if a bad car accident results. Even in this case some kind of coercion is justified to prevent bad consequences.”

    I wanted to include this in my original critique, but I thought it would just be a red herring, since the issue was the justifiability of stopping a suicide. I agree that the car could be a reasonable objection, as the self-killer’s actions can very well be considered aggressive. A more fitting scenario to answer the question, less susceptible to red herrings would be a person hanging himself in his own appartement by his own choice. Do you view a forceful action in order to prevent him from committing suicide justified? In short, would you be liable for aggression?

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  19. P2
    “That is a specious argument. At the time the act happened, it occurred without their consent or warning, and was - even if mild - still act of coercion. Their consent wasretrospective - which is what you have ignored.”

    You are not really making a coherent argument at all. You’re misunderstanding what coercion actually means, ‘Forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats of force, intimidation, or the actual use of force.’

    You see the difference here? In your scenario, actually no coercion has taken place. Instead of that, force was applied to the two persons walking towards the road. But whether this force is considered as aggression is for the receiver to decide. For example, you can easily surprise-slap your boy/girlfriend on his butt without him/her considering it as aggression. Performing this act on the butts of strangers however, could be very well be considered as ‘aggressive force’. It has to do with the question whether the use of force is considered ‘aggressive’, in the case of slapping, sometimes. But the act of coercion (like for example rape) is by definition always considered as aggressive.
    --

    “If each of the 96% of people regard taxes as ‘civic’ duty, then it is not theft to them - they have accepted it as a duty.”

    That is most certainly not the case. First, perceiving something as a ‘duty’ doesn’t imply it as a voluntary act at all. Duty is ‘the binding or obligatory force of something that is considered morally or legally right.’ Or in short; Something that somebody is required to do by moral or legal obligation(even by force).

    So looking at the definitions of ‘duty’, can we deduce that perceiving taxes as a ‘civic duty’ make it a voluntary action? Certainly not. Arguing otherwise does also justify the frequent wife-beatings in Islamic countries, where many women accept the receiving of the beatings their husbands as ‘a woman’s duty’. Again, there isn’t a case of it being ‘voluntary’ here, even though the women perceive receiving beatings as their ‘woman’s duty’. The same holds with taxation, it’s not a voluntary act, but it’s considered a duty to accept it.
    -

    “In fact, I can easily use the same argument you've made here with my own example against you:

    This obviously twists around the question of what coercion is: "Violence against the person or compulsion by force to do something".

    The fact that a person would not regard being ‘Pushed out of the way of a speeding car without their consent or prior warning’ as coercion doesn’t mean that this act is any less coercion"!"

    Does it? Because I can’t find a case of coercion in this scenario. Nobody was being forced (By intimidation, the use of, or threats of force) to perform an action against their will. That’s what coercion is. In this case, force was used by Person A in order to pull his kid and wife from the street. Do they consider this use of force as aggression? That’s entirely up to them. Were they threathened or forced into performing an action, or did coercion take place? Unfortunately for your case, no.

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    Replies
    1. (1) you have not refuted the fact that at the time the act happened it was coercion: any consent was retrospective.

      (2) "First, perceiving something as a ‘duty’ doesn’t
      imply it as a voluntary act at all. "


      That argument can apply to all immoral acts that are illegal, so it has no force against the present example.

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    2. (1) For the second time: Coercion is forcing an other party to -> áct <- against their will. Pulling someone towards you is not coercion.

      (2) How in the world does it apply to that? The very definition of 'duty' contradicts the voluntary aspect you described to it.

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  20. “Please don't say things so foolish. The state does not use "deadly force" against people who do not pay taxes. Prosecution in a court of law is what happens, with a trial and jury, since it is a crime to not pay taxes in our society - just as it is a crime to park in an ambulance zone in front of a hospital.”

    This is merely a misunderstanding of my point. You assume that the person will comply with the state violence. The state has a monopoly on the use of deadly force, meaning that if, for any reason, it fines, taxes or forces a person into court for failing to comply, it uses any force necessary in order to archive that goal. If anyone refuses to comply, and resists the initiated force against them, the state will be needing ever-increasing amounts of force in order to make the person to comply, if the person defends himself hard enough, and the state agents have to resort to deadly violence, then the state justifies this. This is the logical implication of questioning the legitimacy of initiating force, if the retaliator resists hard enough, lethal force would be needed and therefore justified (according to the state).

    Secondly, you already assume the legitimacy of the state prior to making an argument to justify it’s legitimacy. A legal system declaring something as Legal/illegal does not imply morality. Slavery was legal once, interracial marriage was illegal once, marital and spousal rape were not considered illegal once(and even currently aren’t always enforced).
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    “Many people freely accept that it is a civil duty and a moral course of action to not park in an ambulance zone in front of a hospital - if you change your mind and do such a thing you can expect to be fined, and there is nothing immoral about that, just as there is nothing immoral about a penalty for not paying taxes.”

    Parking issues anywhere are subjects to property rights. And I already addressed the issue with the use of ‘duty’ to justify aggression.
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    “And finally your last point: I see no reason why non-lethal force cannot be used in the well example.”

    That’s not the issue at all. It is about the legitimacy of the initiation of aggression. If someone initiates force against someone else, the other person could be expected to retaliate against the initiator. If the initiator of aggression was really ‘justified’ in using this aggression, then if the retaliator resists hard enough, even potential deadly force must be fully justified. Somebody setting up a limonade stand and resisting federal regulations, coupled with refusing the state agents to destroy his limonade stand with all his might, can eventually be expected to be killed as a result. In this scenario the state is the initiator, and any force necessary to destroy the limonade stand is justified by the state, even if the necessary force results in death. It’s quite logical actually.

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    1. (1) your waffling in the first paragraph concedes my original point: people are tried in court for tax evasion.

      (2) it is not the state that makes taxes moral, but a consequentialist moral argument.

      (3) the justification for Rothbardian natural rights ethics is unsound:

      http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/08/rothbards-argument-for-natural-rights.html

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    2. (1) Why is that argument 'waffling'? You've failed to make the case that 'Taxation isn't Theft'. So if taxation ís theft, then fining someone for evading theft is also theft, Capiche? Likewise, forcing someone (with monopolized use of force) to court for evading theft is equally unjustifiable.

      (2) It certainly is not. And I certainly don't believe the ends justify the means.

      (3) Where did I ever mention Rothbard? Anyway, that article deserves a seperate critical look.

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  21. You misunderstand. Rothbardians do not think it is unethical to grab an adult person who is in danger in order to save them, but they do think it should be illegal in a libertarian framework. Not many people would take any sort of legal action against the person who saved his or her life.

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    1. "Not many people would take any sort of legal action against the person who saved his or her life."

      And not many people would take any sort of legal action against the state for the taxes its demands. So therefore - according to your argument - taxes must be moral?

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  22. So, taxes aren't immoral because... there is no such thing as objective immorality?

    Well, there is no need for morals to define theft. Theft is to take something which belongs to someone else without regard for their opinion. If morals don't exist, then theft is not immoral, but taxes would still be theft.

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    1. You only address half of the issue. Taxed don't go into avoid. Government levies a money tax in order to create demand for its own currencies. Then the government spends so that people are ABLE to pay their taxes and also able to net save government currency. By doing so, the monetary system is created. The government currency becomes unit of account, medium of exchange, and means to store value. Everyone wants to obtain wages, profits, and pensions in government currency. In order to defend and enforce things such as contract laws, property rights etc, the government needs resources - labor and materials. The same is true for education, health care, infrastructure, public utilities, research & development, environmental projects et all. So it's not theft if I levy a tax on you and in turn you obtain safety and the means to prosper. The problem occurs when the government, or rather the people in government, no longer serve the public interest - and make a % of the population deliberately poor and enrich themselves on the backs of others.

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