So I was thinking about taxation and all the attempts to justify it when I came up with my own little justification. It still needs some elaboration, but I will let you guys look at it. By the way, I am not saying I agree with what I am about to say, or that it has never been said before.
I should start off by saying that this assumes that property is not a natural right, and that objective ethics do not exist. Under a system of private property, taxation is justifiable because those who are successful in acquiring wealth depend upon the existence of a social construct (private property) for their success. Since these people depend upon private property for their success, it is not unfair to tax some of their wealth in order to help those who were unable to benefit as much from the social construct, or to help society at large. It is even conceivable that some people would be better off if a different form of property were to be adopted. Since some people owe almost all of their success to the existence of private property, what is so wrong with having them give up some of their wealth in favor of those who aren’t helped as much by this very same social construct?
For example, a person who inherits a fortune has clearly benefited from the existence of private property. Why is it unfair to tax this person in order to help build a school for homeless children, some of whom would have been better off under a different system of property?
Now we would also have to take the economic effects of this redistribution into account, but a fairly low rate of taxation obviously isn’t going to destroy the economy. As I said, I haven’t really elaborated on this much, and it seems like you can use the same reasoning to justify absurd things such as forcing pretty girls to compensate ugly girls.
This argument is inherently contradictory. The ethical basis for the taxation rests on the idea that private property is unfair. But if you are basing ethics on fairness, then you shouldn’t have the private property rights in the first place. If you accept private property as ethical, then you accept as ethical that some situations will be unfair. You cannot then say it is unethical for there to be unfairness, because it would then be both ethical and unethical - which is a contradiction.
There may be arguments for taxation of private property, but fairness cannot validly be one of them.
There is no moral or ethical justification for taxation. The power of the army is the power to tax. He who owns/controls the army has the power to tax. It’s not about justice or injustice though.
All this nonsense about social justice and the necessity of redistribution are clever cover-ups and rationalizations for the obvious truth that if you’ve got the power of the military, both foreign and domestic, you can do pretty much whatever you want.
Unless you incite a revolution, in which case, someone else takes over the military and the police and starts the cycle over.
Good point. However, whether or not there is a contradiction depends on your justification for private property. As you said, one can support private property for reasons besides it being fair. For example, I support private property because it allows for the expansion of the division of labor and a civilized society. Since there are obvious economic reasons for adopting private property, this is exactly what we should do. I accept that in many cases private property will seem unfair, which is why it is reasonable to favor some form of redistribution. I do not see the contradiction. I am not basing my ethics soley on fairness either (even though that is a factor). All I am doing is taking economic and social effects into account.
Well yeah I think it exists outside the realm of ethics and morality. It’s simply a consequence of power. If you’ve got power, you can tax. If you don’t have power, you can’t tax.
This is a bunch of gobbledy-gook. You have no theory of property. You presuppose collective security and law. None of your justifications for taxation are novel.
I am not sure how the idea of taxation or redistribution exists outside the realm of ethics or morality. I obviously agree that if you have the power, you can tax. But that is not the point. One can attempt to justify taxation using utilitarian or consequentialist ethics for example.
I don’t accept the claim that homesteading land automatically gives you exclusive control over that land. I also don’t accept argumentation ethics. I already said that the arguments I made may have been put forth before.
You’re right, I suppose they could be justified on…really any terms. But to me, the justifications are erroneous, if you haven’t the power to enforce your ethics and/or morality, they’re meaningless.
In fact, it’s probably meaningful to note that it seems right now that utilitarian ethical explanations are in fact given as justifications for taxation. What I’m saying is that they’re clever diversions meant to distract people from the reality that you don’t have to justify power in any meaningful way. If people will buy the explanation, then much better for the person exercising power. But power alone would be and is sufficient to make possible taxation.
“And of all things a prince must guard against, the most important are being despicable or hated.” Perhaps utilitarian ethics or whatever other ethics can accomplish this goal.
The theory of original appropriation is a lot more than just “homesteading land” - the term “homesteading” is used in an analogical sense. The first person to use a physical resource in an “embordering way with publicly visible boundaries”, in the words of Stephen Kinsella, owns it. The reason for this has nothing to do with natural rights, in my view (Kinsella, Hoppe, et. al. approach homesteading from the PoV of natural rights which I find dissatisfying). The reason is that if a conflict arises over who owns the physical resource, the natural question to ask in such a case is “who had it first?” The answer to this question will almost always settle the matter of who owns the physical resource. This is the “rule of first use”, it is so basic that even children use it.
If taxation wasn’t extracted forcefully it wouldn’t be taxation. It would be donation. Hence there is no way to get around the ethical dilemma of taxation, the equivalence of theft.
This is rather contradictory. A is fabulously successful and B is just as fabulously not. Accepting your premise that property rights are derived from social construct, then A and B receive exactly the same benefits from said construct, namely, the respect for their private property. The difference between them, then, is their abilities and choices in how these benefits are used. Your justification of taxation, then, says that B, in addition to all of the benefits bestowed on him by this social construct, is entitled to ignore the construct when dealing with A.