Okay, so that means you would need to pay no taxes at all, right? In that case, who could decide to have a road built so that you can drive your car to the other side of the country? No control at all necessarily means complete chaos, unless you are all alone on the planet…

Oh, don’t be ridiculous.  My brother lives in a group of houses connected by a road.  The houses were all built by the people that own them, and so was the road.  The problem you describe, driving across a country, was solved a long time ago by people with wagons.  Geez.  Wagons!

Are you equating the ability to drive across a country with order?  I would think a better measure of order is the ability for a person to be able to find the means to peacefully co-exist with his or her neighbors.  I’ve been doing that on my block without any police help for several years.

In fact, the highway system has created a great tool for corporations to move goods from where they are produced to the people they advertise into buying those goods, but they have been a great detriment to local communities, local farms, everything local.  Where private parties have built roads for their own benefit, they often are happy to share them with visitors, and those roads serve excellent purposes.  And sometimes they are toll roads, which is really how the highway system should work.  That way, those who put the money up to build them will recover their cost and keep building ONLY when the roads prove to be useful to many people.

But yes, no taxes.  Don’t you think all the really valuable things government does would be provided by businesses interested in providing them to people in return for cash?  It’s a basic principle of economics.  If it’s valuable, people will be willing to pay for it.  In fact that is a good working definition of valuable.  If people are only willing to get it by taxing other people, then it must not be all that valuable.  Do you see what I mean?  When the government makes something “free” - or rather forces everyone to pay for it whether they want it or not, people will find a use for it, overuse it, and the whole value equation goes out the window along with the extra cash from citizens to cover the cost of government waste.  Again, I say, BLECH!

Dave Scotese - 06 May 2009 06:20 AM

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

I don’t mind at all being ridiculous.  Do you?

“My brother lives in a group of houses connected by a road.  The houses were all built by the people that own them, and so was the road.  The problem you describe, driving across a country, was solved a long time ago by people with wagons.  Geez.  Wagons!”

Holy cow! Are you saying the the highways over there have not changed a bit since wagon time?   Sure hope you don’t drive a Ferrari, then…  

“Are you equating the ability to drive across a country with order?”

Anything and everything can be associated with order.  Suppose there is no government at all in the US and the highways need to be enlarged. Who would collect the funds to do so? A private company? Okay, then if it’s a private company, who would be in charge to make sure the privately owned company is not run by someone like Madoff (who would take the dough and put it in his private account in Switzerland to buy a nice big diamond for his wife instead of using the money to pay a private company who builds roads)?  And who would make sure that “Madoff” is punished for what he did?

 

“I would think a better measure of order is the ability for a person to be able to find the means to peacefully co-exist with his or her neighbors.  I’ve been doing that on my block without any police help for several years.”

Oh, so in a way, you are “governing”, then.  Have you thought of expanding your know-how to other blocks, entire zones, the whole city, the state?  You’ll need to be elected! In fact, you’re a politician! See! 

“In fact, the highway system has created a great tool for corporations to move goods from where they are produced to the people they advertise into buying those goods, but they have been a great detriment to local communities, local farms, everything local.  Where private parties have built roads for their own benefit, they often are happy to share them with visitors, and those roads serve excellent purposes.  And sometimes they are toll roads, which is really how the highway system should work.  That way, those who put the money up to build them will recover their cost and keep building ONLY when the roads prove to be useful to many people.”

ONLY when the roads prove useful, you say??? And what if they prove to be lucrative??? Is that a good enough reason???

“But yes, no taxes.  Don’t you think all the really valuable things government does would be provided by businesses interested in providing them to people in return for cash?”

No!  I really think you should have a federal medical insurance program in the US, for example.  I also think that if you a had state-owned retirement program, where you are taxed so much per month depending on your income, you would be much better off.  Suppose you have a handicaped child, what do you do if you have only a private insurance for his care, and there is no government?  You pay a few million bucks? Great!  And what happens when your business is not doing well and you can’t pay for the private insurance?

“It’s a basic principle of economics.  If it’s valuable, people will be willing to pay for it.  In fact that is a good working definition of valuable.  If people are only willing to get it by taxing other people, then it must not be all that valuable.  Do you see what I mean?  When the government makes something “free” - or rather forces everyone to pay for it whether they want it or not, people will find a use for it, overuse it, and the whole value equation goes out the window along with the extra cash from citizens to cover the cost of government waste.  Again, I say, BLECH!

“

A few paragraphs back you were saying that people in a neighbourhood paid for a road.  Well, that is exactly like paying a tax. It’s for the community.  Maybe one old grunch in that neighbouhood didn’t want the road at all… But the majority did, eh?  So the old grunch paid anyway!

Blur - 06 May 2009 08:01 AM

“My brother lives in a group of houses connected by a road.  The houses were all built by the people that own them, and so was the road.  The problem you describe, driving across a country, was solved a long time ago by people with wagons.  Geez.  Wagons!”

Holy cow! Are you saying the the highways over there have not changed a bit since wagon time? smile Sure hope you don’t drive a Ferrari, then…

My Ferrari goes on the wagon roads just fine.  But seriously, did you miss the point?

Blur - 06 May 2009 08:01 AM

ONLY when the roads prove useful, you say??? And what if they prove to be lucrative??? Is that a good enough reason???

Lucrative businesses are usually those in bed with governments.  If it’s lucrative and not in bed with government, it is indeed an excellent reason, but unfortunately such companies are usually slowly eaten by governments.  The idea of having everyone (every company) produce according to its abilities makes regulation heap all kinds of extra demands onto such good companies, often crushing out of them any will to grow and thrive unless they play ball with the system and provide the rulers with lots of power… leading to lucrative businesses in bed with the government.

Blur - 06 May 2009 08:01 AM

Suppose there is no government at all in the US and the highways need to be enlarged. Who would collect the funds to do so? A private company? Okay, then if it’s a private company, who would be in charge to make sure the privately owned company is not run by someone like Madoff (who would take the dough and put it in his private account in Switzerland to buy a nice big diamond for his wife instead of using the money to pay a private company who builds roads)?  And who would make sure that “Madoff” is punished for what he did?
...
Suppose you have a handicaped child, what do you do if you have only a private insurance for his care, and there is no government?  You pay a few million bucks? Great!  And what happens when your business is not doing well and you can’t pay for the private insurance?

I know that your solution to these problems is to force other people to pay taxes so that they can be used to help my child or cover my insurance or punish the bad guys or build more roads.  How is that different from just stealing from them?  Other than the rulers making the claim - legislating - that such taxation is legal, the actual operation is the same.  I would be ashamed if that’s how I got support.  Do you have a sense of shame when you receive “charity” from people who didn’t want to help you but were forced to?

Suppose you run a business and you need more office space, where will you get the money?  Suppose your dog gets in the house and tears up the furniture, who will fix the furniture and train the dog if you don’t have enough money?  And what happens if you car breaks down?  Do we need taxes for all that too?

No.  People find ways to solve their problems all the time without stealing from others.  If the government got the hell out of the way, we’d see a lot more of that.

Blur - 06 May 2009 08:01 AM

A few paragraphs back you were saying that people in a neighbourhood paid for a road.  Well, that is exactly like paying a tax. It’s for the community.  Maybe one old grunch in that neighbouhood didn’t want the road at all… But the majority did, eh?  So the old grunch paid anyway!

You say it is exactly the same.  Is not having access to a road you didn’t pay for the same as:

... the government blocks all of my bank accounts and throws me straight into jail.  Yikes!

Perhaps you feel that paying taxes is how you “buy” your freedom to transact business with a bank and to live outside of a jail cell.  Is that the case?

“I know that your solution to these problems is to force other people to pay taxes so that they can be used to help my child or cover my insurance or punish the bad guys or build more roads.”

It’s more like your brother’s road - everyone pays and everyone gets.  Instead of paying a private company (they can go bankrupt…) for your medical insurance, you pay a percentage of your income for it to the federal government.  Like I do. Works fine!  That way EVERYONE gets top medical care, whether they are rich or poor, born in perfect health or born with all the handicaps you can think of.

” I would be ashamed if that’s how I got support.  Do you have a sense of shame when you receive “charity” from people who didn’t want to help you but were forced to?”
Do you consider insurance a “charity”???  I don’t.  It’s solidarity.  Maybe I’ll pay for 40 years and never need it, while my neighbour might be sick every two weeks.  But one day I may get cancer or whatever and I’ll be darn glad that I can get all of the best care, no matter how much it costs.  That’s what insurances are for. 

“Suppose you run a business and you need more office space, where will you get the money? “

If I need more office space, then that means my business is doing well, so, no problem, I can afford it!

“Suppose your dog gets in the house and tears up the furniture, who will fix the furniture and train the dog if you don’t have enough money? “

For that sort of thing, I have private insurance.  If I don’t have the private insurance and no money, I live with the torn-up furniture and the wicked dog. C’est la vie!

“And what happens if you car breaks down?  Do we need taxes for all that too?”

No, not for that.  That’s private insurance stuff, again.  Federal insurance is ONLY for the medical - the most important.  You can live without a car, the planet will appreciate (plus there are taxis, trains, tramways, metros…) but if you’re really sick, you won’t live long without special medical care. 

“Perhaps you feel that paying taxes is how you “buy” your freedom to transact business with a bank and to live outside of a jail cell.  Is that the case?”

Taxes are always a percentage of my income, so there is no reason why I should not be able to pay them.  If I pay much more than my neighbour for the exact same services,  I’m fine with that!
SOLIDARITY!!!  Hey, we are all humans, right?  And aren’t humans more important than money?

You cannot call it solidarity when I tax you in order to pay for things I think are good for you.  Solidarity has choice - not legislation - as a foundation.

Humans who claim “SOLIDARITY” when they raise taxes because they can’t find enough willing participants to fund something they want… those people just suck.  If they get sick and die, all the better.  The basis of solidarity is choice, not legislation.  Do you see the difference between what you are calling “solidarity” and what solidarity really is?

“You cannot call it solidarity when I tax you in order to pay for things I think are good for you.  Solidarity has choice - not legislation - as a foundation.”

Hey, I was talking about MEDICAL CARE for all - and YES I do think that it is right and good for all, including for YOU! I presume that YOU must be talking about Obama and the fact that he wants to tax the very rich a little more, since more and more americans are getting poor every day. Hey, he has NO OTHER CHOICE! He must take the funds he needs to avoid chaos where he can find them!  I’m sorry to have to say this, but if some very rich people there are very mad because of this, they are just being extremely selfish, and I’m afraid to say, quite stupid. When the amount of poverty in a country increases too much, when despair is all that’s left for a great part of the population, well if you do nothing to stop it, you are going straigt towards a very bloody civil war. People who are treated like dogs soon become wolves - you don’t see that coming? Are you blind?

“Humans who claim “SOLIDARITY” when they raise taxes because they can’t find enough willing participants to fund something they want… those people just suck.  If they get sick and die, all the better.”

Gee, I can’t follow you here because I have NEVER “wished death” like you do here, to ANYONE - even to those I do not agree with or with whom I have no affinity whatsoever.  Guess we must be from different planets…

“The basis of solidarity is choice, not legislation.  Do you see the difference between what you are calling “solidarity” and what solidarity really is?”

You’re right, it’s a choice.  And it’s the CHOICE of the MAJORITY of people, here in France for example, to have federal medical insurance, for ALL.  So we PAY for it. Because we WANT it.  Now if some people here do not agree with the MAJORITY who wants this,  it’s a free country and the doors are open:  they can always go elsewhere.

Where did you get the idea that there would be chaos if the government didn’t do anything?  That’s such a tired and wrong-headed idea.  It’s like the idea that people can’t learn unless they have a teacher.  I think you will see the folly of it if you think about it critically.

I think that if you studied the long term effects of the strategies and behaviors of certain groups, you would see that they are bad.  Now, there are some people who have been so well manipulated that they will not change their views regardless of the amount and quality of evidence showing they are wrong.  Look around.  Perhaps you’ll view me as such a person, and you’ll view my strategy and behaviors (such as disdaining taxes and ‘wishing death’ for certain people, as you so harshly put it ) as having very bad long term effects.  If not me, then most likely some people.  Now, if you can’t say “all the better if that person gets sick and dies,” then I think you have odd priorities.  To place the value of a current human life so far above the quality of life for future generations seems remarkably short-sighted.

Have you read much Rousseau?  How about Voltaire or Nietzsche?

Cher Monsieur,

Vous me paraissez tellement imbu de vous-même, si certain de détenir LA vérité, que cela rend, malheureusement,  toute discussion impossible. 

Oui, j’ai lu, et je continue de lire.  Mais plus j’apprends, plus je doute, et plus je me rends compte que finalement, je ne sais rien, ou du moins, vraiment pas grand chose.  Sauf une petite chose, peut être, que la vie m’a appris: les gens qui sont sûrs de détenir la vérité, même s’ils citent les plus grands auteurs, ont finalement appris encore moins que moi.

Sorry if I posted in french, but I’m sure that with your great culture, you speak many languages.

Most excellent!

I only wish that those who hold authority over us would do the same.  I seek argument all the time because I trust myself to adjust my perceptions and beliefs and behaviors according to the good points that others make.  It is that assumption that there’s always a chance that the truth is different from what we see that provides us with the opportunity to see it, and that imbu of which you have written that prevents it.  It is why I have these discussions.

Please, if you can find your way to providing me with evidence, quoting classics, or whatever, to inform my opinions, I would very much appreciate continuing our discussion.

The questions I have asked are honest.  Perhaps you have looked around and never found strategies and behaviors that have bad long term effects.  You did mention that capitalism is rotten from the inside…

And about the chaos thing - I mean no disrespect to you by calling the idea tired and wrong-headed.  I used to hold many such ideas, but I never blamed myself.  The friend who challenged those assumptions in me helped me discover where they came from.  Having discovered it (my father was a government employee, and public school provides a lot of them too), I became very angry with a system that is destroying us (Check out John Taylor Gatto’s book) and now I work to reverse its course.  This is why I asked where you got the idea that without government, chaos ensues.

Anyway, sorry if I offended you.

If you are seeking arguments to oppose yours (yours are from Marx & anarchists) try Rousseau (Du contrat social).  There are many others who have good arguments in favor of Law, Government (the State): Hobbes, Machiavel…

There’s one little citation (don’t remember who said it though ) that I find particularly interesting:  “La liberté de chacun s’arrête où commence celle des autres”. 

Now if that’s not the easiest and best argument in favour of Law, Government, State… eh?

You did not offend me - you offended yourself by becoming impatient, and nasty.  Like a teenager!   Funny too, cause this whole topic (law & liberty, state = the ennemy of liberty)  is TYPICAL of what we could find at a philosophy exam for baccalauréat (that’s the exam that ends high school here - public high school of course :-D)

But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. - Thomas Jefferson, 1819

Rousseau’s arguments have always struck me as foundationless.  He seems to start with an idea someone somewhere invented and found a bit useful, like the idea that children - infants, I mean, newborns, have no innate characteristics that make them different from others.  He viewed diversity as a product entirely of the environment, and as a bad thing that led to much difficulty.  He also seemed to hold happiness and comfort in much higher regard than pain and struggle.  He never addresses the fact that the pleasures in life are largely defined by the absence of its opposite, and that when that opposite is never experienced, neither can the pleasure be experienced.

Hobbes and Machiavelli I have not read enough.  The idea of wielding the weaknesses of those around me for the purpose of maintaining my own power is too offensive to me.  I should probably bear down and get through it anyway.  Do they provide reasons for tyranny other than the maintenance of the current power that is in the hands of the tyrant?

I do not oppose law, or government, or state, except when it is tyrannical.  Forcing people to support you financially is tyrannical.

Your quotation is as good an argument against law, government, and state, as it is for them.  The difference is who defines the boundary between the free individuals.  In my mind, the most efficient and effective way to maximize the freedom is for those individuals themselves to define it.  I think that governments have usurped this role for most people.  Who do you think should define them?

“Your quotation is as good an argument against law, government, and state, as it is for them.”

Not at all. In an anarchy, each individual is free to do as he pleases, right?  Now suppose your neighbour parties every single night and makes terrible noise, while you are always trying to read and you hate parties… then where is your liberty, your right to read and have peace & quiet?  You can only have liberty if there are LAWS:  a law that would oblige your neighbour to have LESS parties so that you can have SOME peace and quiet.  The liberty of each individual is ALWAYS limited by the liberty of another individual.  Unless you live alone on an island.  You will always need to abandon a small part of YOUR liberty to respect the liberty of OTHERS.  Well, unless you are some kind of beast and you just walk up to your neighbour’s house and shoot him dead the very first time he parties…  

We’re talking about “law, government, state” in a DEMOCRACY, right?  In a real democracy, laws are voted by all, no? Governments represent the will of the majority of voters, no?

Sure, “STATE” is an abstract concept and concretely, we only see the MEN who represent that concept.  It of course happens that they serve their own interests instead of serving the interests of the people who elected them. That’s why public schools are so important:  education. An educated population will know that the government they elected should be serving them, and not the contrary.