Again, I’d say it would be just for people to return money they received from government education grants, etc. I don’t see how using public roads is the same thing as receiving money from the government.
Fair enough about the roads, those are not direct exchange of property.
What about dollars? Those needed taxes in order to be printed (correct me if I’m wrong, please).
Strictly speaking, dollars don’t need taxes in order to be printed. Otherwise I consider using dollars to be akin to using public roads.
It doesn’t need taxes theoretically, but it does use taxes. And what about the penny which costs more to produce than it is actually worth in a store?
Regardless, I still see using dollars as the same kind of thing as using public roads. What’s more, using dollars is required by law.
Though it would be nice to read the sources you cite:
There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.
Also, go directly to the source:
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx
So no, it’s not required.
It seems I overlooked that part, sorry. So a person isn’t obligated to pay in dollars unless the person he’s paying asks for dollars. In any case, I still see using dollars as the same kind of activity as using public roads. What I think would be just for the government to do in this context is return the gold it confiscated from US citizens in 1933.
I made the same mistake about legal tender over at FLL.
In the case of the roads no one was given the roads, and hence no one must return them.
In the case of dollars banks were given dollars, so banks must return them.
(At least this is how I frame the question - in terms of “giving”)
By “mistake about legal tender” are you talking about using government dollars vs. using government roads? Or what?
One could say that people are “given” government roads, but the construction of those roads is already paid for by taxes. Likewise, people are given government currency, but the printing/minting of that currency is already paid for by taxes.
I meant about having to pay debts with dollars.
In either of the cases you present, both are paid for by taxes. And the taxes must be restituted in some way.
One thing I’ve neglected to mention with restitution is that I think it should only be made if the aggrieved party asks for it. For example, if a homeless person takes $20 out of my pocket, and I catch him in the act, and he says that he hasn’t eaten in days, and I then let him keep the $20, I see no need for restitution.
I agree.
If they signed any such contract to begin with. However, I’ll remind you that I personally (pace Rothbard, if need be) consider any such contract to be illegitimate, as I don’t think Great Britain ever legitimately owned the land in the first place.
You’re saying that Great Britain didn’t legitimately own the unhomesteaded land? That part I would agree with, and thus I would agree that it would have no right to sell it. But that’s not my argument. If that alone was sufficient for making the contract illegitimate, then the contract that Disney made with its construction workers would also be illegitimate. But perhaps your argument is that the Disney contract is illegitimate but the property becomes legitimately Disney’s after the workers finish and turn it over to them? In this case it wouldn’t be the signed contract that establishes ownership but a later unsigned contract.
For the nth time, this isn’t about the terms of the contract per se, it’s about the legitimacy of it. Are you deliberately strawmanning the anarcho-capitalist/Rothbardian position here?
If the terms of a contract don’t establish legitimacy, then what does? If I build a house and you pay me to inhabit it, is it not the terms of the contract that dictate whether it is legitimately yours or whether I am just renting it and thus legitimately retain ownership? Clearly, the construction workers have (physically) homesteaded Disney World. If Disney can be said to own it, it must only be because of the terms specified in a contract, correct?
Regarding Disney World, you seem to be committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
I am saying that Disney secures and defends the unhomesteaded land through the state military/police force. If this doesn’t make what they build on the land illegitimate, then why would it make the Department of Transportation’s claim over the roads it built illegitimate? Further, both the Department of Transportation and “private” railroad companies (maybe Disney too) built their transportation networks with money stolen by the IRS. The fact that we call one a state agency and another a private company seems largely nominal to me, at least in regards to establishing legitimacy under the homesteading principle.
After the Civil War, Reconstruction, railroads, and transforming the North and South war machines towards peacetime required public funding. However, in 1872, seven years after the war, lawmakers allowed the temporary Civil War income tax to expire.
Just clarifying it wasn’t the IRS the whole time.
Actually, Hoppe answered to that question, I think it was on Democracy. He states that all state-created property should be privatized by giving it to the workers of the property, because they are the ones who use it.
And how do we determine what state-created property is? Is receiving state money for building something enough to consider it state created? All US dollars were issued by the state at some point. Does that make everything state-created property? Many people own treasury bonds. Doesn’t owning a treasury bond make one a thief and an agent of the state? I’m amazed at how the same people who call taxation theft are often the same people who insist that the national debt should be paid off. Cut public spending so that taxation becomes simply direct theft by bondholders.
Retain ultimate control? They understood that if they won’t A) give money to the Britain so they can move to a land which is not owned by Britain B) give total control of their property to the Britain, they will send soldiers to do it? I’m not finding this legitimate at all.
The construction workers understood that if they didn’t (A) give the promise of labor to Disney so they could move to a land which is not owned by Disney and (B) give total control of their property to Disney, Disney would send soldiers to take it.
Just clarifying it wasn’t the IRS the whole time.
Thanks for clarifying. I meant the tax collecting function of the government. I wasn’t sure what to call it.
Then what solution do you propose, FotH?
Then what solution do you propose, FotH?
That’s a rather big question. But I think perhaps where I differ fundamentally with people here is that I don’t think actions obtain legitimacy based on the past. I think actions are legitimate for what they currently are and for what they are likely to bring about in the future. Human desire is forward looking and that’s how I think our political philosophy should be as well. I think the structures of society should be made to conform to human desire and not the other way around.
Something more concrete, perhaps? The issue of state “property,” private courts, something?
I guess the question then is whether a person can homestead something on behalf of another person. In leftist terms, this concerns whether labor can be “alienated”. It might also concern whether “staking a claim” (i.e. actually marking off something to indicate that it’s now yours) can be considered a kind of homesteading.
No, I don’t consider Disney’s contract with the construction workers to be illegitimate. If no one staked the claim for that land on Disney’s behalf already, then the construction workers did so.
So then you might ask, “In that case, didn’t the settlers homestead the land on behalf of Great Britain?” My answer is no, because the settlers didn’t turn the land over to British authorities after homesteading it. And as far as I know, they were considered to be the “actual owners” of the land and had no contract with Great Britain stipulating otherwise. I certainly consider them to have been so (assuming they didn’t effectively steal it from Native Americans). Colonial charters and the like were bogus IMO, because (to my knowledge) no claim had even been legitimately staked on the land in the charter.
Don’t make the mistake of believing that my position is that any/all contracts are valid per se. But yes, if you have a legitimate agreement to homestead something on behalf of someone else, that means he’ll own it. In leftist terms, labor can be “alienated” by contract.
By “post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy”, I mean your apparent argument that, because Disney Corporation came into being well after the state did, Disney Corporation necessarily came into being because of the state - that is, the state (and nothing else) caused Disney Corporation to come into being.
Now by your reasoning above, the fact that I received federal student loans while I went to college means that I don’t legitimately own my house. Am I right? Why or why not? What if I call the police after someone breaks into my house?
Otherwise, while it’s true that private companies often do take money from the government, they don’t all do so equally. If a company receives the lion’s share of its income by providing things that consumers want, but does receive some amount of money from the government, are all of the company’s assets necessarily illegitimately owned?
My point is that it’s not nearly so cut-and-dried as you seem to make it out to be. I can understand the attractiveness of declaring all present property relations illegitimate - that way you can justify the desire to “cleanse the entire world”.