For clarity's sake
Because Xon and I, ever since we first met back in sixth grade, have enjoyed having ideological and philosophical debates - and, every once in a while, a sports-based one - let me briefly address his comments from this post.
... if there is a surplus then the gov't in effect 'owes' a refund (morally, if not legally) to the people from whom that money was confiscated by force.
..........
While I disagree that it is "ridiculous" to have philosophical and ethical concerns about taking money from other people by force and using it in a way that YOU think is best ...
It would seem to me that by using language like 'confiscated by force' - as well as previous discussions we've had - that you've set yourself up in a difficult-to-defend position here. If you're a libertarian, and you recognize that government has some measure of responsibility in providing for, say, defense and infrastructure, it's logically inconsistent to use this type of language.
That is if taxation is confiscating money by force (particularly if the taxpayer has to have some measure of consent in the spending of said taxes), then any usage of those monies is unethical or immoral, is it not? It wouldn't matter what the expenditure was, the money was 'confiscated' and, according to your argument, not the government's to spend no matter what the project was.
Wouldn't a more consistent manner of approaching this issue be along the lines of arguing about how the private sector can 'do it better' (or, in my case, how a good balance of public expenditures and private investment can 'do it better') rather than use overblown and hyperdramatic language?
... if there is a surplus then the gov't in effect 'owes' a refund (morally, if not legally) to the people from whom that money was confiscated by force.
..........
While I disagree that it is "ridiculous" to have philosophical and ethical concerns about taking money from other people by force and using it in a way that YOU think is best ...
It would seem to me that by using language like 'confiscated by force' - as well as previous discussions we've had - that you've set yourself up in a difficult-to-defend position here. If you're a libertarian, and you recognize that government has some measure of responsibility in providing for, say, defense and infrastructure, it's logically inconsistent to use this type of language.
That is if taxation is confiscating money by force (particularly if the taxpayer has to have some measure of consent in the spending of said taxes), then any usage of those monies is unethical or immoral, is it not? It wouldn't matter what the expenditure was, the money was 'confiscated' and, according to your argument, not the government's to spend no matter what the project was.
Wouldn't a more consistent manner of approaching this issue be along the lines of arguing about how the private sector can 'do it better' (or, in my case, how a good balance of public expenditures and private investment can 'do it better') rather than use overblown and hyperdramatic language?
posted by Jmac at 6:47 AM
21 Comments:
I appreciate the chance to clarify.
When I said that I have "concerns", I wasn't being coy and that wasn't a euphemism for "I think it is across-the-board, absolutely, immoral." I meant simply that it is an eyebrow-raising situation, morally speaking.
I do think some government is necessary (I am not an 'anarcho-capitalist), and that gov't has to be funded somehow. But at the same time, we need to realize what it means to fund a gov't. This is a necessary thing to do, yes, but this doesn't mean that we should be excited about it. It should give us the willies. My "concern" is as much with modern-day politicains, who don't even see the problem.
"That is if taxation is confiscating money by force (particularly if the taxpayer has to have some measure of consent in the spending of said taxes), then any usage of those monies is unethical or immoral, is it not?
No, I don't think this follows at all. It could be that raising tax money for certain purposes is a 'necessary evil', or that raising money in this way accomplishes some good purpose which cannot be attained in any other way. I am not, contrary to the impression I might sometimes give, an ideologue--I believe that politics is about weighing various political values together, and that there is no one proritization of political values that is "right" above all others. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions, for instance, about whether it is an acceptable political exchange to give up some convenience and freedom in retrun for additional security at airports. That's a debate worth having. I don't simply say, like a hard-core libertarian might, that "I have a right to liberty, and rights cannot be violated, therefore the airport security has no right to check my bags if I don't want them to." Or some such.
But, look again at the hypothetical part of your first sentencd in that quoted bit: "That is if taxation is confiscating money by force..." Wait, though. Stop and think about this. Taxation IS confiscating money by force. How else could we describe it? I really don't see how there's room to debate that one. I do see room to debate whether, even once we've recognized this fact, that while it makes us uncomfortable to go around taking people's stuff to use for purposes with which they might not agree, that this is still something that needs to be done, for the good of the republic. Or whatever. That's a discusssion worth having, and we are having it right now. But I don't see how one can disagree with the basic definition of what taxes represent. Taxes simply ARE forcible confiscation of property. Which is why I have 'concerns' about it. We need to look the thing squarely in the face when we decide what to do, and not simply dismiss this 'libertarian' concern as whacky and then glibly justify every "good deed" that we want to do.
We need to realize that every time we do something 'good' with tax dollars, we did it at a social and moral cost of confiscating other people's property. That might be our only option, when all things are said and done. But we should at least have a little pause over that point.
"It wouldn't matter what the expenditure was, the money was 'confiscated' and, according to your argument, not the government's to spend no matter what the project was."
Yes, but again this might just be a 'necessary evil.' Consider free speech rights. We have the right to say whatever we want, except in those cases where the courts have ruled that we don't. Now, purists might try to say that rights are, by definition, things that cannot be violated, and so therefore even yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre should be permissible. But this is not my approach to political morality, generally speaking. I say that yes, rights are a central value of any 'liberal' political order, but that there are also other central values as well, and sometimes the different central values come into conflict. When this happens, it might be permissible to curtail rights a bit in order to accomplish a different goal. But I also think that such situations are 1. pretty rare, and 2. morally ambiguous enough that they should at least keep us up at night.
Just show me that you're at least kinda sorta struggling over the fact that universal health care violates people's property rights. That's all I'm asking. If you still want to advocate it, then very well. But at least see where the 'libertarian' is coming from here.
And "health care" was just brought in for an illustration. I know that's not our original conversation thread was about.
It's good to know you're not an ideologue for the sake of being an ideologue, and folks should know that you and I have solved many of the world's great problems through discussion and compromise (even if they typically involved us standing in an aisle at Barnes and Noble and hold no relevance in the actual policital settings ... still).
No, I don't think this follows at all. It could be that raising tax money for certain purposes is a 'necessary evil', or that raising money in this way accomplishes some good purpose which cannot be attained in any other way.
OK, but I'm still wrestling with the contradiction it seems. As currently defined, 'confiscate' means to seize without compensation, which is why the choice of that word fails.
There is compensation in the form of services. You drive on the roads. You live in a society governed by law and that law is backed by law enforcement officials. You were educated in the public schools and are (were?) employed by a public institution. You pay into Social Security and will receive it down the road.
As you have noted, you may not agree with those investements and expenditures, but I can't see how you could argue that you didn't receive compensation for it.
You can say you didn't agree with the form of compensation, but can't argue that it didn't exist. And you can't argue that you didn't have the ability to say that you don't agree with the form of compensation, as you can vote and lobby and write your representatives.
Again, as you also noted, this is a democratic society made up of individuals who hold differing views on how best to accomplish these things. And the system we have is electing officials to represent us, and sometimes those decisions they make don't always reflect our views or wishes.
Again, your concern to me would hold better weight if you argue, as you often do, that your system of doing it is 'better' but it doesn't make sense to argue that your monies are being 'confiscated' because they aren't.
Just show me that you're at least kinda sorta struggling over the fact that universal health care violates people's property rights. That's all I'm asking. If you still want to advocate it, then very well.
Well, again, that is a rare example to use since under something such as a single-payer system you would pay in and get universal coverage, so I don't see any violation at all actually. But, then again, a more appropriate example, I would imagine, would be public education (not that I wish to go through a meandering discussion about that specifically).
For instance, we all pay property taxes which help fund our local schools. These schools are open to every child regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status, health, etc. Parents who opt to send their children to private school or homeschool them do so by choice, but I don't believe that means they shouldn't have to continue paying to support a school which is universally open to their child.
I mean, in a pseudo-analogous example, I pay for home insurance coverage in case of fire knowing that ...
- my premiums help fund the pool of insurance which others are in and draw from;
- if my house did catch fire, I would need to use that insurance.
Xon, I like the cut of your jib.
(I've never really understood what that meant, but I think it fits here.)
JMac, I never intended the word 'confiscation' to be taken so literally. Perhaps I should have consulted dictionary.com first, but all I meant by confiscation was "taken." Taxes are the taking of other people's property. And I would add that it is a taking which is done without particular regard for how the takee would prefer the money to be spent.
I'm not denying that gov't offers a certain kind of 'compensation,' though I do think (in the same spirit of arguing from the dictionary) that it's straining a bit to use the word "compensation" here. But, yes, the gov't uses our tax dollars to do stuff, and every person in the society has the ability to make 'use' of at least some of that stuff the government does. I wouldn't quite call this 'compensation,' but whatever.
If a guy knocked on your door and said "Give me fifty dollars," and he made it clear that was not asking, he was telling, would you be okay with that? If he said that he wanted it in order to do some good deed for somebody else, would that make it better? If he sent you a teddy bear that he won while visiting Six Flags on an admission ticket purchased with your 50 bucks, and so he has not 'compensated' you for your loss, would that make it better?
Saying that we get 'compensated' because, hey, the gov't does stuff (that we didn't necessarily ask for, or want, or need) and we get to take advantage of that stuff, does not remove the original moral problem that it is (usually) wrong to take someone else's stuff by force.
Saying that if we don't like what the gov't does we can vote to change it doesn't remove the moral problem either, I don't think. Again, if a gang broke into your house and took 200 dollars, but told you that you are allowed to submit suggestions as to how they should spend the money and that they really will take your suggestions seriously, it's still theft. It's still wrong. It's still a problem for politicians to openly advocate doing this sort of thing on a widespread basis for every good deed they think needs to be done (not to mention all the things that aren't even good deeds, but are just blatant special favors for lobbyists or for their own constituencies) without even considering the property rights (without which we can have no other rights, by the way) involved. "X is good, therefore we should do X by taking a bunch of people's money from them." This assumption lies behind almost every word out of every politician's mouth, and it is almost never even recognized as an underlying assumption, much less justified.
Again, please note that I do think that this sort of thing (doing X by taking money from people) can be justified in certain circumstances. If it couldn't, then I would be an anarchist. But not all the time, not as the solution for every problem that comes up in society, and not without at least wrestling with the fact that, no matter how good the deed you think you are doing, you are also incurring a cost in the violated rights of your citizenry.
And one more thing about universal health care, b/c unfortunately I don't think we are yet connecting with what each other is saying here.
I said that universal health care requires a violation of property rights, and you said that that's not a 'good example' (i.e., no it doesn't) b/c you get insurance coverage from the money you are forced to put in. But, again, this misses the whole point of what a 'property right' is. Property rights mean that the owner of property has the right to dispose of it as he thinks best. Universal health care takes some of his property, which he has not chosen to dispose of in that way, and uses it for a government-run health insurance system. The fact that the person can get insurance coverage out of the system does not undo the fact that his rights were violated in setting the system up in the first place.
Stealing (let's not say that taxes are exactly the same as theft, but just to use an analogy involving the taking of property) is wrong, right? And it is wrong even if the thief uses part of the money to do something for the person he stole from. That's great and all, but it doesn't justify the initial theft.
I know this is just Ethics 101, which is why I'm so flabbergasted that you won't concede this point.
If a guy knocked on your door and said "Give me fifty dollars," and he made it clear that was not asking, he was telling, would you be okay with that? If he said that he wanted it in order to do some good deed for somebody else, would that make it better?
But, again, this analogy fails because it doesn't mesh with the existing form of democratic government we have now. If I had willingly chose to participate in an organization where I understood I was one voice out of many, and I agree to abide by the guiding principles of this organization, then he wouldn't be 'taking' my money, even if I disagreed with it.
I had entered into a contract of agreement with this organization and it was expected that I give this man $50, then I would do so even if I disagreed with how he would spend it. If I didn't like how he was spending it, I would say at our next meeting 'gee, there's a better way to do that' or I would say 'gee, that organization up there looks like that do things my way, so I'm going to go work with them.'
... does not remove the original moral problem that it is (usually) wrong to take someone else's stuff by force.
Again, how is this not inconsistent? If it is wrong to take someone's else stuff by force, then how is any expenditure of those monies justified? It's either right to do or wrong to do so. If it's wrong, then don't do it. If it's right, then do it, but do it so it provides an efficient result.
If we start saying 'it's OK to plan streets with public money' but 'it's not OK to provide health care for children with public money' we're not discussing taxation, but rather how to spend the revenue.
Your problem is either with taxation, which I think is very problematic, or with the use of those funds, which is something worthy of legitimate debate.
Saying that if we don't like what the gov't does we can vote to change it doesn't remove the moral problem either, I don't think.
OK, but what's the point then? While I think you're off-base with regard to this being a moral problem (what's 'immoral' about a government providing for its citizens, for instance), that's neither here nor there. With this one line, you've set up - as you often do - a catch-all which makes your line of argument undefeatable.
'So I have the ability to voice my concerns ... I can elect people who think just like me ... I can lobby folks to come around to seeing my line of thinking ... oh woe is me! The sheer immorality of it all!'
Seriously, I don't mean to be glib, but how else are you supposed to effect change?
I know this is just Ethics 101, which is why I'm so flabbergasted that you won't concede this point.
OK, but it isn't. In your mind, fine ... you've developed this worldview which views public expenditures as 'bad' and that taxation - the form of raising revenue which every society has taken advantage of since the dawn of time - is 'evil.' I think that's off base, but, hey, to each his own, right?
But you've already conceded that we sacrifice some things for 'necessary evils' ... and some of these things include law enforcement or infrastructure. My direct example was of a fanciful single-payer system of health care that would provide universal coverage to all citizens at all levels.
This provides benefits to all citizens and would, under your definition, could classified as a necessary evil, would it not? Again, your disagreement with it would stem over efficient use of resources.
Because if it doesn't, as I've noted earlier, then your argument is inconsistent.
If something is unethical or something is 'wrong' then it's wrong across the board, wouldn't it be (if we talking ethics)?
That is ... if a system existed which everyone was enrolled in and everyone got equal and complete coverage ... how is that different than support of the government building roads and providing law enforcement.
My point being that an argument could be made that private entities could do that latter as well, so why spend public money on them?
You're setting up an unequal argument where your differences lie with the expenditure, not the method of funding them.
If taxation is possible to fund roads, then it must be possible to fund health care. The only question, then, is how effective or efficient would such expenditures be.
Several things...
1. I tend to view free-market arguments with a jaundiced eye, because they in effect are not really about a free market, but about a market which maximizes opportunity to earn money for individuals, but does very little to ensure a minimum standard for the individuals of that society. They also tend to ignore the fact that one's property is given value and regulated and otherwise enhanced by government involvement. So, unless you want a state of nongovernment in which there are no roads, no schools, no healthcare, no oversight of food production or environmntal hazards, no libraries, etc., that are not paid for by consortia of private users, then you're not really advocating for a free market.
2. "Confiscation" is a loaded term with which I disagree. And I can relate to your wanting to have government do more of the things that are to your advantage and inclination. Likewise, my taxes would probably be cheaper if I didn't pay for services I don't use, like schools and elder care and whatnot. But that is not how it works because the role of government is to make a good faith effort at ensuring a fair chance for the entire population to have a reasonably equal shot at justice and freedom and all that. And so I pay for elementary schools and I pay for any number of social services that I probably don't personally see the value in. But I also pay for parks and law enforcement and a justice system and public libraries and the Pell grant and the child welfare system and other things that I value. But since we're all in a cooperative governmental scheme in which my needs and your needs and the needs of every citizen are taken into account, we don't get to dictate the narrowing of benefits to smaller groups. Also, one benefit of governmental taxation is that it allows us as a society to invest in the future as well as the present -- and that ability is key to our success.
They also tend to ignore the fact that one's property is given value and regulated and otherwise enhanced by government involvement. So, unless you want a state of nongovernment in which there are no roads, no schools, no healthcare, no oversight of food production or environmntal hazards, no libraries, etc., that are not paid for by consortia of private users, then you're not really advocating for a free market.
Niki, I agree, and I am fine with there being no government involvement in any of those things.
JMac, we're back to square one. In my origianl comment I said,
"No, I don't think this follows at all. It could be that raising tax money for certain purposes is a 'necessary evil', or that raising money in this way accomplishes some good purpose which cannot be attained in any other way."
Now, on the one hand you responded to this by saying that you appreciate that I am not an "ideologue just for the sake of being an ideologue." But then you yourself go on to interpret the libertarian principle of private property...like an ideologue would. If X is wrong, or morally problematic, then it's always wrong and nothing you do with the money matters and there are no exceptions. No, that's not my view, nor is it inconsistent of me to reject that view.
Again, per my original comment, I believe that in politics we have to weigh different political values together. You cannot be absolutely committed to one value over all others. Such blinkered commitment is the hallmark of the ideologues that you and I are both trying not to imitate.
So, the principle is that taking other people's stuff is, in general, not a morally acceptable course of action. Why not? Because people have the right to dispose of their property as they see fit. Or because God says so. (Insert your particular moral justification of property rights here).
But does this mean, then, that it is ALWAYS wrong to take people's stuff? Are there no exceptions? This is not what the principle means at all (again, unless we are giving it a rigid absolutist ideological interpretation). So what's the inconsistency on my part? I think we shouldn't go around as a general rule taking people's stuff from them, but I also think there are exceptions. Certain governmental programs constitute valid exceptions, but most don't. Not inconsistent of me to say this at all.
So back to my quote from my first comment that I cited above, you are having trouble seeing how "If it is wrong to take someone's else stuff by force, then how is any expenditure of those monies justified?"
But I already provided examples of this in my first comment. As I said there, sometimes there is more than one moral principle/value in play, and so you have to prioritize one over the other.
Consider free speech. We both agree that free speech is a 'right,' or something like that, and so we both agree that it is generally wrong/immoral to force a person to keep his mouth shut. But we also, I'm sure, grant that there are exceptions to this. Sometimes there are other values/principles at stake which justify curtailing someone's right to free speech. Is this a 'good' thing to do? Only in the indirect sense that it is a necessary means to achieve a good end, but we should feel kind of conflicted about doing it even if it is necessary. Follow?
Again, if a person is committed to moral principle A, this does not mean that they are being 'inconsistent' if they believe that there are circumstances in which principle A can be violated. There are at least two obvious cases:
1. A is in conflict with some other principle(s) B, and B is deemed to be more important than A.
2. Violating A is the only way to achieve some undoubtedly worthy goal.
In both of these cases, it is conceivable that a reasonable ethicist might choose to violate principle A, and his doing so doesn't make him 'inconsistent' at all, unless we assume that it is always wrong to act against a moral principle. (But then this gives us a real problem expalining the classic philosophical conundrums in which two moral principles are in conflict with one another.)
Nicki makes the point I was going to make: living within the state is about cooperation; it is about community. More illustrative analogies to taxation, then, emphasize the plurality of taxation rather than the burden upon the individual.
For example, is it theft for a union to collect dues from its members? Is it theft for a neighborhood to collect dues from the people who live within it? Is it theft for a church to collect tithes from the people who regularly worship?
Certainly there are social mechanisms, such as shame or ostracism, which amount to physical force keeping people paying their dues and tithes. So, while there is an absolute freedom to not pay one's tithe, there is the mitigation of being known by one's friends and peers as the cheapskate attendee, and eventually one's membership in the church or association is publicly questioned. But I don't think it is eyebrow-raising to pay one's tithe to the church, anymore than paying dues to be a member of Kappa Alpha is eyebrow-raising, morally speaking.
Which makes me think that Johnathan is right in pointing out that your argument, Xon, is retroactive on the basis of what the money is being spent on. You have used the word 'justify' to signal a reparation of a moral and social harm that mitigates the harm done by producing something reasonably expected to make it right, but then you also argued that even when doing something for the person stolen from, a theft is still a theft and still a wrong. This makes me think that the occasions when you'd think taxtheft "can be justified" have nothing to do with the doing something for the person stolen from—or else your own argument is inconsistent, because as Johnathan points out, if the social harm is ineluctably a part of the act of taxtheft, then it is completely irrelevant—by your own argument of robbers and extortionists winning state fair teddy bears—what is done with the money taxthieved. But what are the circumstances and occasions where you do think the harm is mitigated by the necessity ("necessary evil") in taxthievery? I notice that you've conveniently left them out through casual implication, but if there are any actual circumstances and situations you could produce, I think the only way you could consistently argue the taxtheft is justified is if you argue along lines of the mitigation of the social harm: on the one hand you keep intact the fact that taxtheft is a social and moral wrong, but you also come to endorse the necessity in having the state do something with that money which otherwise could not be done.
But that's precisely what makes your own argument retroactive: the development of the argument arises in those situations where you feel the funds collected are not spent on a necessity. Yet if there exists any situation in which mitigation of the harm done is possible, then it becomes all the more probable that there are other works available whose mitigation of the harm becomes palatable. I take it this is your own recognition when you speak about the willingness of politicians to taxtheive for the sake of all kinds of "greater goods," to the point perhaps where there is no good cause left unfunded, no matter how small or narrow the cause.
But I come back to the original point, which is what I take is Nicki's point. Is the state a collection of individuals or is it a society?
To support my claim in the penultimate paragraph, you just wrote: "Certain governmental programs constitute valid exceptions, but most don't. Not inconsistent of me to say this at all."
And that's the point, I think, Johnathan was making. This is really about what you think is valid for the state to do, and as any true philosopher would, you'd rather topple the giant by breaking his clay feet than argue about the way he walks. By defeating the entire enterprise of state activity by removing the moral propriety of the way it collects funds, you've dramatically undercut any moral or social positive that would serve to return and give approval or justification to the fact the funds were collected, and not given.
Nobody is forced to be in a union, a neighborhood association, or a church, though.
Charles,
Lots of good questions, though I still think by and large that you are missing my point.
As to whether "the state is a collection of individuals or a society," the state is the political machine that governs within a society. So I would say "neither." There is a common move in these discussions-among-liberals (recognizing that you aren't really a liberal, Charles)where the choice is put between those who make the "individual" central (libertarians, classical liberals) and those who make "society" central (communitarian liberals, egalitarian liberals, etc.). But this fuzzies up the actual choice, because the dispute between all these kinds of liberals is a dispute about politics, i.e. about the proper setup and operation of governing institutions. Somehow we have come to associate "society" with "government," but this doesn't follow at all. I myself am all for society, I believe that society trumps individuals all the time, etc. But I am very skeptical of government, which is not the same thing. So, the state is government, which operates within a society (which is not merely a collection of individuals).
"Which makes me think that Johnathan is right in pointing out that your argument, Xon, is retroactive on the basis of what the money is being spent on. You have used the word 'justify' to signal a reparation of a moral and social harm that mitigates the harm done by producing something reasonably expected to make it right, but then you also argued that even when doing something for the person stolen from, a theft is still a theft and still a wrong."
Right. Stealing from a perosn in order to do harm to the person stolen from is not much of a justification for the theft. Though I'd be open to exceptions even here, I cannot agree with JMac's argument, which was to simply cite the fact that "compensation" is received by the one stolen from as though this by itself made the theft no longer a theft. That argument--that if the person who has been forcibly removed from his property gets some kind of compensation, then the person hasn't been stolen from--is what I was rejecting.
"This makes me think that the occasions when you'd think taxtheft "can be justified" have nothing to do with the doing something for the person stolen from—or else your own argument is inconsistent, because as Johnathan points out, if the social harm is ineluctably a part of the act of taxtheft, then it is completely irrelevant—by your own argument of robbers and extortionists winning state fair teddy bears—what is done with the money taxthieved.
Again, this is right, more or less. I don't want to rule out any and all exceptions, though. I was responding to JMac's contention. I don't take compensation to be a sufficiently mitigating factor to justify theft. That's all.
"But what are the circumstances and occasions where you do think the harm is mitigated by the necessity ("necessary evil") in taxthievery? I notice that you've conveniently left them out through casual implication, but if there are any actual circumstances and situations you could produce, I think the only way you could consistently argue the taxtheft is justified is if you argue along lines of the mitigation of the social harm: on the one hand you keep intact the fact that taxtheft is a social and moral wrong, but you also come to endorse the necessity in having the state do something with that money which otherwise could not be done."
Mitigation of a social harm, right. The classical liberal "social contract" explanation of government is, more or less, persuasive to me (though I would quibble with it in a number of ways, for our purposes here you can sign me up).
Maintaining a system of justice, for instance, in which those who initiate assaults against the life, liberty, and property of others are hunted down and prevented from further operations, is a task that I don't think can be performed without a government. But since we need the government to do this task, we also need to fund the government. But this cannot be done without coopting property from people, and so we are forced to make the hard choice and to coopt.
And, under these circumstances, I am cheered up by the fact that the service the government provides offers protection to the people who are being taxed. This is a comforting factor, but it is not a justificatory one.
As for whether this is "retroactive" on my part, I don't see that it is. I am not simply reacting to the suggested government program as it comes up, without any prior principle operating upon my evaluation. Rather, I have a principle--forcibly taking people's stuff is something we should normally be loathe to do--and this principle ends up ruling out a large number of government programs on 'moral' grounds. But it doesn't rule all of them out, because I admit the possibility of exceptions. But I'm not just making up what the exceptions are as I go along, so again I don't see how I'm being 'retroactive.'
Finally (for now), it's true that I ALSO question much governmental activity on other non-moral grounds (i.e., economic ones). There is both a moral AND an economic argument for libertarianism. But in this particular conversation I've only been using a moral argument.
One thing that Nicki said that I can't let pass:
"And I can relate to your wanting to have government do more of the things that are to your advantage and inclination."
Well, thanks, but this really isn't my point in this conversation. I don't blame any of this on you, nicki, but it is approaching a pet peeve of mine that anytime someone gives a 'libertarian' argument it is assumed that they are just moaning about government policies that don't directly beneift themselves. But this isn't my point at all. Like most other reasonable and morally-sensitive adults, I am capable of worrying about the needs of others besides myself. :-) But the question is whether those needs, by themselves, justify doing harm. Especially if there are other ways to meed the needs that don't require doing the harm.
Speaking of "social contract" theory, I think you get it a little off, JMac.
"I had entered into a contract of agreement with this organization and it was expected that I give this man $50, then I would do so even if I disagreed with how he would spend it. If I didn't like how he was spending it, I would say at our next meeting 'gee, there's a better way to do that' or I would say 'gee, that organization up there looks like that do things my way, so I'm going to go work with them.'"
I agree that government can be helpfully thought of as the result of a 'contract' that we have all made with one another for our overall betterment. I disagree, though, that we have all entered into a contract to simply submit to any and all demands the government makes for our property, no questions asked. Is this the social contract theory of Locke or Jefferson, for instance? Hardly. It does sound something like the "social contract" theory of Hobbes, but Hobbes was an authoritarian monarchist and probably not the sort of political philosopher you're trying to draw from in this conversation.
To respond to your argument more directly: I forthrightly deny that any of us have entered into kind of agreement to "give the guy 50 bucks if he wants it." The "social contract" has been made for very particular purposes; so that we may mutually cooperate in order to defend our life, liberty, and property from aggression. I have not "agreed" to live under any and all rules that my government might decide to make for me, and neither of you. I have agreed to curtail some of my control over my own life and property in order to fund and operate a government which will protect my basic rights. That's it. I haven't "agreed" to give up control over my own life and property anytime the government gets another "great idea," (such as, say, taking over milk production, for the children of course).
So, I'm unconvinced by your response to my "guy knocks on your door and demands 50 dollars" example. You say that this would be okay if I had already agreed to submit to the financial demands of this man. Okay, sure, but when have I ever agreed to sumbit to such a thing (analogously)?
Seriously, I don't mean to be glib, but how else are you supposed to effect change?
Well, I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything I've been saying. I didn't think we were discussing "how to effect change." Unless, of course, you are suggesting that government is the only way to effect change? Boy, that would make my day. :-)
Sure, nobody is forced to be in a union, a neighborhood, or a church, besides family members and certain other dependents who also share the community cost in the reduction of wages presented by the forced—forced through social and cultural mechanisms of behavioral manipulation, which is a definition we'll adopt for just this—compliance to pay dues and tithes (afterall, isn't that precisely just the complaint and the form of the complaint libertarians have?). But so what? If you mean to say that the willingness to enter into a certain social arrangement obviates any later claim one may have to the moral activities of that social arrangement, I think that's foolish. Just because I married my wife doesn't mean that I can't think her strangling cats or extorting used car salesmen are immoral activities, nor could I excuse my own thuggish behaviors when I join Sur13 because I knew what I was doing when I got into it, nor once I join such a gang and they attack me or steal from me does it make that activity therefore morally harmless or morally ambivalent because I knew a social arrangement like a gang that I willingly join puts me into tight spots.
But, supposing we can concede that something like such a moral evacuation takes place when you willingly enter into a social arrangement, there's still the claim that many do willingly pay their taxes or have their taxes taken from them. What does this mean, then, that you are okay with the forceful removal of one's property by churches or unions, since one wills to be a church or a union, in the context of the people who will to be a citizen of a nation-state?
I suggest it means that there is no objective fact in your own moral framework for saying that the taking of money by force is theft, but there is only the question of whether one wills to be a part of such an arrangement or not, and then whether force is a part of the taking is irrelevant. Which means that the appeal to the taking by force is a rhetorical device, and should be recognized as such.
Certainly, if there are people who do not want to be in the social arrangement where the state takes property and uses it as it deems fit, then they should not use any of the products the state produces with that property. Libertarians and conservatives alike tend to think of "illegal aliens" as the image of such a person who leaches from society without giving anything in return. If a person does not want their taxes to be used for universal health care, because theft is at no time justified by however noble but fruitless the ideal, then let them not use the court systems to handle disputes about property, crime, or contractual obligations. Otherwise, what else is such a noble person than the same so-called parasite as the alien, always taking but always complaining of having to give?
Of course, I think such images are fantasy anyway, but let's suppose we take your claim to Johnathan seriously. We weigh the costs and the principles involved, and decide upon a value.
Why, then, is universal health care not worth the taking of property, but is worth "maintaining a system of justice?" If justice is concerned with maintenance of life, property, and liberty, then why isn't health, the quality of one's life, not worth consideration?
What about, say, environmental protection? Can I dump radioactive waste in my backyard? Does the state have a legitimate interest in that, under maintaining a system of justice with respect to life, liberty, and property? If it does, then why not dumping tires or large bowls to collect stillwater?
What about, say, nudity in my frontyard? Does the state have a legitimate interest in people having sex in my frontyard, for the sake of maintaining a system of justice? If it does, can it collect fees to ensure that people are not having sex in my frontyard or anyone's frontyards?
Perhaps I'm being too facetious here, but my point is just that it seems to me that the problem, again, is a difference of idea of what constitutes justice with respect to life. My stabbing your body is, probably, an unjust act. But what if I do things to the environment, such as throwing up asbestos in my yard next to yours, which also threaten your health?
And what is it, exactly, about life that the state is protecting, that is present in assault but not present in a woman with cancer?
Charles, I don't believe that joining a group leads to a "moral evacuation". I don't know where you're getting that from.
If anything, it's JMac's position that seems like it might be subject to that criticism. It is JMac, remember, who says that we have 'agreed' to let the government do whatever it wants, and if we don't like it, we can vote for different leaders.
My claim that "nobody is forced" to be in those other social organizations is just that your using them to support an analogy to government taxation doesn't work. You brought them up as situations in which collecting 'dues' or 'tithes' is legitimate. And, you said, people are "forced" into those groups in a variety of ways. (I'm thinking of the "quasi-coersion" we talked about in Dr. Davion's class a few years ago). I was simply denying your claim here; I don't buy that people are "forced" into these groups in any way. And so THAT is why those groups can collect dues from their members. B/c membership is voluntary. But taxes are not, at all, like "dues" payed to be in a club. The analogy just doesn't hold. There is a coersion (or, perhaps, a level or kind of ocersion, I don't want to quibble over this point) that is part and parcel of government taxation which is not involved in clubs collecting dues or churches collecting tithes.
I think this actually deflects a good bit of your more recent criticisms, and I know I'm dominating this conversation anyway, so I'll just say one more thing and you can follow up if you think I'm egregiously leaving something important unanswered.
You mention environmental issues. But taking property rights seriously addresses these concerns quite nicely, I think. You cannot cause damage to another person's property, or if you do then you owe them compensation (and it is not up to you to decide what the compensation should be). When you dump sludge in your backyard, but it seeps through the ground and into my backyard, then you have damaged my property and I have every right to seek compensation.
Historically, the industrializing nations of Europe and the U.S. did the opposite of this when a lot of these issues first surfaced. When factories sooted local apple groves, for instance, and the apple farmers sued for damages, the British courts found on behalf of the factories. Bummer. But this isn't nearly so difficult a problem for 'private property' perspective as you seem to think.
Let me clear up my confusion.
I wasn't saying flat out that paying dues or tithes is done by force; rather, I am curious as to why you exclude them, when it seems to me that formally they are similar to taxation. I believe they are similar in the sense that social or cultural mechanisms exist that coerce someone into paying dues or tithes (God loves a cheerful giver, afterall), regardless of what that member wishes done with the payment, and these dues or tithes are collected solely on the basis of one's being a part of some collection of persons. Your response was that nobody is forced into a union or a church, and my parenthetical claim is that there are, in fact, people who are forced into them: children and spouses and other dependents of members, both of whom suffer from the loss of property these dues and tithes are (at least the way "loss of property" is being construed in your argument that taxation is theft). But, sure, not all of the people in unions or neighborhood associations or churches or fraternities/sororities (business or social) or guilds &tc. are forced into them. My parenthetical claim wasn't the substance of my question.
I take it that, for you, voluntary membership in a church or union or neighborhood association somehow makes the particular way these dues or tithes or fees are collected not theft or extortion. But, it seems to me that, formally, they are not different. Money is collected on the basis of being included in some group; it is used to maintain the organization's operation, oftentimes without the explicit approval of every member for every expense; failure to pay results in punishments of various kinds, from ostracism and expulsion from the group to public shaming and tongue-wagging; the loss suffered is not directly compensated or equivalently returned in services; and services received may reasonably be provided elsewhere, possibly even for a better return.
I mean, given your understanding of church polity, do you think a person can be considered a "full member" of a certain local church body if they never tithe to that local body and publicly state that they never will? Would it matter, at all, if such a person claims that a tithe is theft?
(Of course, what is God's is God's, but then what is Caesar's is Caesar's.)
If these are not formally different ways of collecting monies, then it's not clear to me why one receives your complaint as a clear moral harm and the other receives no such complaint. It occurs to me that your response "No one is forced to join a church or union," functions to say that because membership into these organizations was voluntary, then no complaint about the moral impropriety of the act is available. Hence, an evacuation of the moral outrage inherent to the act.
It's like this. I can accept that consensual sex occurs in a marriage. Can consensual rape occur in a marriage? Well, not at all, since rape by definition is not consensual, and it's irrelevant whether or not a man is married to a woman for rape to have occurred. If, by definition, the collection by force of monies is theft (or extortion) and therefore, morally speaking, eybrow-raising, then it is completely irrelevant whether someone willingly enters into an arrangement where they have money taken from them by force on a regular basis. As you argued, the necessity in securing funds for law enforcement for the protection of life, property, and so on (as one example you've given) only works to smooth over our moral concerns with the initial act of theft. It doesn't make it any less a "taking by force," but rather plays itself out in the moral framework as "necessary evil." Not necessary good, or necessary morally ambivalent action. It is still a morally harmful act, but we couldn't have done the greater purpose "any other way."
But you're saying it's not completely irrelevant, but rather very relevant. I don't see why, particularly since, as you pointed out, liberals tend to argue on the basis of the social and social responsibility when it comes to the moral propriety of taxation.
That's why I am confused as to why you think the analogy doesn't hold. As you said, taxes simply are the forcible confiscation of property. Except when it's voluntary, as in a church, union, guild, association, fraternity, &tc. Government isn't voluntary, I take it you're arguing, and you didn't think it undercutting to point out that people vote, or use government services, or participate in government, or petition the government, because none of this removes the moral wrong original to the act of taxtheft: "...it's still theft. It's still wrong."
Hopefully I have made myself clear as to why I am confused to your response. Perhaps your response is just that government is not a collection of persons, a society, as churches or unions or associations are. I think that's not clear, but it is your position. It's not clear to me why a restatement of your viewpoint goes to clarify. You're not a liberal, I get that, but, by the way you construe the construction of the state, it seems to me that one could (like how Badiou does, btw) point to the church disciplinary as the state with respect to the church, to the board of directors as the state with respect to the neighborhood association, to the executive council as the state with respect to the fraternity, and so on. And so the analogy will not only hold, but take on more relevance. Having an interest in political philosophy, I know you're not the kind to think that politics is only what the government does, and there is no political in the church or in the union or in the fraternity. (I think at some point 'church governance' has escaped your mouth in a meaningful way.)
Now, it is the case that we tend not to see payment for services as theft, and we tend not to see the utilities company threatened to disconnect our power or water or gas as extortion, and we tend to say that we willingly entered into a consensual contract to regularly pay for something, and that's okay, even if failure to pay is met with an act of property deprivation.
But you don't take taxation as either tithes or dues or fees or payments for services. As you constructed the framework for the moral judgment, taxation is prior to any action by the state, and therefore is theft. If the gas company started taking money out of my account before I sign up with them, that's theft. If they charge me a deposit for setting up the service, that's an acceptable part of our arrangement for initiating our transactions, even though it's payment prior to receiving the service. If I receive gas concurrent to my paying the bills, that's not morally speaking an eybrow-raiser since we're now doing business. But, even here, I take it this is still all disanalogous to taxtheivery.
So, as I see it, you're not arguing that forcible confiscation of property is taxation, but rather that taxation is forcible confiscation of property, and forcible confiscation of property is theft, and therefore taxation is theft. However, forcible confiscation of property is not theft when one voluntarily enters into an arrangement where forcible confiscation of property is understood, as in such arrangements as conducting business, churches, unions, neighborhood associations, guilds, fraternities, golf club memberships, &tc. Also, forcible confiscation of property is theft but morally justified when such confiscation is necessary for maintaining an activity that otherwise could not be done. Maintaining a road or educating a population is not such an activity, but holding a gun and settling disputes are (even though we have talked before about what a privately funded judiciary looks like, and even though mercenaries and private security are a fact of life). What's missing?
As for my environmental comments, I'm not saying that property rights arguments cannot make sense of such. Was I that unclear? My point, which was hurried due to getting ready to go to work, is that unless you have a very delineating definition of what it means to maintain a system of justice with respect to life, it seems to me that "historically" this is exactly how contemporary governments give a social and moral basis for environmental regulations. It's too obvious to say "my right to swing my fist ends where it hits your nose," but it's not so obvious where my right to produce fiberglass ends, or where my right to leave behind some insect parts or fecal matter on my vegetables delivered to the marketplace ends.
If we understand justice with respect to life as the protection of life from harm and the punishment or reparation for harms done, and we say that this is a necessary function of the state for which the state needs to collect funds, then what prevents the state from regulating how much fecal matter gets to the store shelves or how much fiberglass waste enters the atmosphere, and then collecting the fees to maintain that regulation? If you can accept that such things as serving you feces in your food is also to do harm to you (supposing you didn't volunteer to eat at my restaurant where I publicly state I'm serving rat and cow shit, which of course doesn't mean that I never did harm you, but only that you accept the harm voluntarily, because it's still harm), and if you accept that the state has a necessary interest in maintaining a system of justice with respect to life by preventing persons from doing harm to other persons, then what separates, formally or technically or in principle, a cop who keeps an eye on the crowd to make sure this guy doesn't punch that guy and a health inspector who keeps an eye on a grocery chain to make sure this business doesn't put too much poop in that guy's peas?
Xon, I think I understand. Help me my misunderstanding.
Charles, I believe that a person (adult, anyway) who does not tithe is absolutely a "full member" of the church. But he is sinning by not tithing, and is (theoretically) subject to church discipline.
I take all of the following differences b/w tithes/dues and taxes to be morally relevant:
1. Whatever we want to say about the "coersive" nature of membership in groups like churches, clubs, unions, or guilds, they remain "voluntary" and "uncoerced" in a way that membership in government is not.
1a. All adults are free to disengage from them. (The fact that kids have to more or less be in some groups b/c their parents are is a fact of life, and it doesn't bother me in the least b/c I am not actually an individualist. We are more, as communal creatures, than the sum of the voluntary associative choices that we make. But, be that as it may, the fact remains that adults can, no matter what social pressures might be exerted on them, "choose" to join or not to join, or to remain in or to leave, all churches/clubs/guilds. This simply is not the case with government.)
2. In the case of clubs, unions, and guilds, the "dues" are required, but the act of paying them constitues the act of joining (or staying in) the group itself. IOW, if I want to be in the club, then I express this at least in part by paying my dues. If I don't want to be in the club, then I don't submit to paying the dues. There is a conditionality here which simply does not exist when it comes to government, which is coercive by nature. (The whole point of government is to serve as an institution which has coersive authority to order societal affairs towards some goal.)
"If these are not formally different ways of collecting monies, then it's not clear to me why one receives your complaint as a clear moral harm and the other receives no such complaint."
Right, but this is our disagreement. I don't agree that they are "not formally different ways of collecting monies." On is formally coercive in a way that the other is not.
"It occurs to me that your response "No one is forced to join a church or union," functions to say that because membership into these organizations was voluntary, then no complaint about the moral impropriety of the act is available. Hence, an evacuation of the moral outrage inherent to the act."
Okay, right. The act of collecting money in church is not morally problematic, while the very act of government agents collecting money (at least through most forms of taxation) is morally problematic. This is not to say, though, that there is no room to criticize on moral grounds the way the collected money is then spent, whether in matters of church or state. This is what I thought you meant by 'moral evacuation' originally.
"If, by definition, the collection by force of monies is theft (or extortion) and therefore, morally speaking, eybrow-raising, then it is completely irrelevant whether someone willingly enters into an arrangement where they have money taken from them by force on a regular basis."
Yes, absolutely! This is the nature of my response to JMac when he cites the democratic nature of government as a justification for taxation. And, so, if you could convince me that the high school French club "takes money by force from its members on a regular basis", then I would raise my moral eyebrow at the French club, too.
But, aha! Doesn't this mean that the voluntary nature of the club doesn't matter, since by my own admission if money is taken by force then I don't care whether you joined voluntarily or not? But see again my #2 above: the paying of the dues constitues the voluntary act to join/remain in the club.
In other words, clubs aren't like this: they aren't joined voluntarily, and one of the things you are volutnarily signing on for simply by joining is the unquestioning submission of your personal wealth to the club's purposes. You are not agreeing to a legally-enforceable contract in which the club has the right to claim your wealth as its own. If you tell the club you don't want to pay, you simply are not allowed to remain in the club. This is still clearly in some sense a 'voluntary' arrangement. But what happens if you tell the government you don't want to pay your taxes? Right. This is a clear difference between the two arrangements.
And so this is what I mean when I say that the club is voluntary. I could have been clearer here originally, but it is the yielding of the member's wealth to the club that is voluntary. I spoke earlier about "joining" the club, but the real issue is whether you have freedom to withhold money once you are 'in' (even if that would then result in your being ejected).
So, again, the difference b/w gov't and clubs is clearly expressed in the simple question of what happens in each case if a 'member' refuses to yield his wealth to the group? In a club, you simply aren't allowed to be in the club anymore. In the government, you are forced to submit, or you are put in jail. The former clearly qualifies as a 'voluntary' arrangement in a way that the latter does not.
"As you argued, the necessity in securing funds for law enforcement for the protection of life, property, and so on (as one example you've given) only works to smooth over our moral concerns with the initial act of theft. It doesn't make it any less a "taking by force," but rather plays itself out in the moral framework as "necessary evil." Not necessary good, or necessary morally ambivalent action. It is still a morally harmful act, but we couldn't have done the greater purpose "any other way."
Yes, but I'm least committed to this particular formulation. If someone wants to say that, b/c of the good done by taxation in this case, that it is not a "necessary evil" but is an actual positive good, then I'm fine with that. My point is just that taking-by-force is a morally complicating factor that must be taken into account, and that in the vast majority of occurrences in the world constitutes an evil act. When a guy coms up at a traffic light and takes a car by force, it's evil. When someone mugs you on the subwya (taking your money by force), it's an evil act. When a city official tells me my garbage can needs to be off the curb by now, and fines me five dollars, it is an evil act. What's the difference?
But, if a person acting as a respresentative of the society of which I am unavoidably a part demands that I pay him money to be used to defend the life, liberty, and property of all citizens in my society, then this is not an evil act. In this particular case, the 'moral eyebrow raisingness' of taking by force is overcome by other factors. Whether you want to call this a 'necessary evil' (my original formulation, but I ain't committed to it) or a 'positive good' or something else, my reasoning process works the same way.
"Having an interest in political philosophy, I know you're not the kind to think that politics is only what the government does, and there is no political in the church or in the union or in the fraternity. (I think at some point 'church governance' has escaped your mouth in a meaningful way.)"
Sure it has, but this is all because "government" and "political" have become highly ambiguous terms. If government simply means the institution charged with any sort of oversight, then of course there are "governments" all over the place. (This is the more classical, and generally-philosophical, definition.) Likewise, if "politics" simply refers to any way in which people might be organized together as a group (so that 'political' becomes a rough synonym of 'social'), then the Church is a political institution, the club is a political institution, etc. But in this debate I'm clearly taking a pretty libertarian position, and in that context the accepted definitions of the terms is a bit more narrow. Here "government" means not just any institution charged with oversight, but one which backs up its oversight with physical violence. And here 'politics' refers to the study and discussion about that sort of coercive overseeing institution. This is how I've been using these terms in this discussion.
With government, the terms of the contract are dictated to us, and we are given no choice of whether to sign up or not nor is there any 'out.' This contract is in force on us, and that's just the way it is. Such 'contracts' are not really contracts in any meaningful sense.
Your questions about the problem of what constitutes genuien protection of life or property being "not so obvious" are good questions. But the "not so obvious" nature of the issue is precisely what vitiates a governmental solution. But this is an "economic" argument, not a moral argument. If a person wnats to couch their support for a particular government program on the fact that it could be construed as a protection of life, then I think they are doing a decent job of answering my moral argument against taxation.
But, as I said, in my very first comment, what I'm most concerned with here is the way that people seem to think of these government prorams almost as needing no justification, and certainly not against any claims about property rights. People haven't even considered the "taxation is theft" argument, or they dismiss it out of hand, whereas the founding fathers (for instance) would have been sympathetic to the sentiment it expresses (while still supporting taxation for various purposes, obviously).
So, if JMac wants to say that universal health care or FDA regulations of how much feces can be on vegetables are necessary government actions to defend the basic right to life of the citizenry, then I'm not simply going to say "Nuh uh, b/c taxation is theft." But that's not how this conversation started. This conversation started when JMac said that the very idea that taxation is a forcible seizure of property ('theft') is "ridiculous." I said that I disagreed that having moral concerns about such taking is properly characterized as a 'ridiculous' concern. Again, my primary motivation in this conversation is to get JMac to see where the libertarian position is coming from, even though he rejects it (which is fine), rather than simply saying "that's ridiculous b/c if it were true then such-and-such."
So, if the argument for the health inspector, or for socialized health care, is couched as a defense of life (which it often is, certainly), then I agree that at that point my response would become 'economic.' Once people at least recognize the basic libertarian moral concern about taxation, then we can get somewhere with the economic discussion. What irks me, though, is people who claim to be 'liberals' that just can't fathom why people would find something morally objectionable to taxation. "Why, whoever heard such thing?" Indeed.
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