First of all, at the very least half the population has this same concern (assuming a 50/50 Dem/Rep split with the Dems being the good guys). And the split crosses all income brackets, so it’s not like only the poor care.
Hence, half the nation cares about the poor. Why steal property from people when you have half the nation willing to help voluntarily, with the funds to back it?
Furthermore, let’s extend your train of thought - what if to save a life you had to rape someone? Would it be justified then? What if absolutely the only way you could save a poor person from starvation is to rape a 5 year old girl. Would you consider that “justified”? After all, you’ve only violated her right to her body - you haven’t even taken anything from her!
This points to the larger problem of trying to reconcile “rights” - interpersonal utility comparisons do not make any sense. You cannot show that society is better off by violating the right of a person to satisfy the want of another.
Our proposal is simple - Let every man keep his own production and any contractual transfers he receives. You want to help the poor? Then by all means - help them. But do it without violating people’s rights.
I think that’s an inaccurate question to ask. “Right” and “wrong” aren’t inherent properties that we observe in things. They’re value judgements that we impute to things.
Anarcho-capitalists don’t think that taking another person’s property without his consent is always wrong. They just use a very different set of justifications for it from that which the government uses. To be more specific, anarcho-capitalists’ set of justifications is much more limited than the government’s set.
Since there’s no real right or wrong (see above), I can only offer my own judgement. As long as the people making 6-7 figures a year are doing so without aggressing against anyone, then I think any amount of tax imposed on them is theft and thus wrong.
Anarcho-capitalists think that theft is always wrong because they think it’s a form of aggression.
I personally derive certain rights from the self-ownership and non-aggression principles. However, those are first principles, or premises. No one is obligated to believe in those principles (i.e. assume their validity). Just as there is no “correct” price for something, so there is no “correct” moral value for something. As value judgements, those things are subjective.
I think there are two aspects to consider. One is outlined in Frederic Bastiat’s parable of the broken window. The other is what I talked about earlier in the thread - the fact that moral value, like all value, is subjective. So there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a professional car thief - but there’s nothing inherently right about being one, either.
Wheylous, I hereby confer upon you the Bastiat Award - this award goes to anyone that I deem to have channeled, if only for a moment, the spirit of Frederic Bastiat.
Do people just hand over whatever collectivists/socialists want from them? So what if you believe that the fruits of other peoples labor belong to you, does the laboreres in question agree with you?
Exactly. The rich, almost by definition, spend their money on goods that require a smaller structure of capital. in other words, tax revenue has declining utility as it comes from richer people. This is why it’s not possible to tax our way out of the budget deficit or to make health care any more abundant by just taxing the rich enough. Along with the economic distortion, it may well turn out that redistributionism is counter-productive even if judged in a purely utilitarian way. The moral argument isn’t really necessary.
To quickly respond to your points. The first one: Yes, but the supply curve of potatoes can only be raised by additional resources. Designer watches will likely stil be profitable if they cost half or a third as much, so the same amount of resources goes into producing them. And if few resources are released by taxing the rich, then the supply of potatoes is not influenced very much.
The second one: As the watchmaker spends less, the potato farmer can spend more. They cancel each others out.
EDIT: But it really doesn’t matter what I believe in I was just trying to help the OP understand who he/she was talking to in case he/she didn’t already know.
“… consider an ethic according to which there are no rights at all; everyone is morally free to coerce everyone else whenever he can get away with it, but many people succeed in defending themselves well enough so that they control much of their own [property].”
The way I think of it is “might makes possible.” Or “might makes relevant.”
I think the importance of this phrase is easily overlooked - clearly, there is something restraining the coercive impulse and it is that restraint - whatever you want to call it… morality, law, decency, whatever - that is responsible for social order.
Why would anyone defend himself if he thought that everyone is morally free to coerce everyone else whenever he can get away with it? This kind of “ethic” leads directly to the Hobbesian notion of “the war of all against all”. As far as I can tell, that actually isn’t human nature.
