[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
My point is that he did not pay for the whole entire public road system… Government still used the money from others to produce the road… the roads are still funded by stolen money, either way…
Anyway, how did he pay for such usage? By government fiat money?!
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This entire line of reasoning is a non sequitur.
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
after searching on this topic on google, I found a Walter Block article on this issue…
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block100.html
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I disagree with Block, and think he is rationalizing his bias towards academia.
Thank you. It is amazing to me that you of all people would be one of the few who understand the argument. It’s pretty fricking simple.
The money is not the state’s. It is stolen from me and other producers. I might be entitled to get some money back, but if you don’t pay in, then I don’t understand where people think they can take out. Taxes are either theft or they are not. If they are theft, no one is entitled to what was stolen from others.
If [sic] libertarians want to take welfare so badly, fine. Then stop saying welfare is wrong, because obviously you guys think it is good! Likewise, stop saying taxes are theft, because obviously you encourage the act of stealing!
If you really want to undermine the state, stop paying taxes. The state wants you to take welfare, they have whole departments dedicated to handing out the loot they took from me, so they can buy your compliance and tacit support.
That’s why Im not on food stamps right now. I could be. BUt I have a loving family who will help me out, and I don’t really need it. And whereas I personally support welfare. I don’t support it for people who don’t need it; i.e. me.
@LS
so what is so different from Hoppe or Rothbard working at a public university and getting aid from the Government to go to school? Apparently, I misunderstood what you said to justify Hoppe’s and Rothbard’s position, so maybe you can clarify…
I don’t know how it’s difficult to understand the difference between opposing welfare (as public policy) on pragmatic/economic grounds and using welfare as a rational actor.
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
so what is so different from Hoppe or Rothbard working at a public university and getting aid from the Government to go to school? Apparently, I misunderstood what you said to justify Hoppe’s and Rothbard’s position, so maybe you can clarify…
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Very little. It’s not a choice I would make.
I don’t know how hard it is to understand the conflict between libertarian ethics and stealing.
Actually, I’m not particularly fond of welfare myself, neither on a personal nor intellectual level. But in rare exceptions I happen to think it’s a pretty good idea, and without getting into the particulars this is one of them. Of course I understand the concept of principles, but I’m not going to butt heads with the OP or other posters over who is more principled because it’s going to go absolutely nowhere.
So instead, I tried pointing out why, given his own principles, there’s not much too feel guilty about in the case that he accepts the grant and in doing so that required pointing out why your thief analogy is a little off. But, let’s try to attach some real numbers to this just to get an idea of how inconsequential accepting this grant is. Let’s make this as favourable to your case as we can get, and say OP is from some very small, poor country Sao Tome e Principe (government expenditure of just over 50m USD a year) and lets use the most expensive undergraduate programme we can as a baseline for the cost to his government, a quick Google search shows Sarah Lawrence College to take this title, coming in at just over 50K USD. Let’s furthermore make the assumption that OP is going to take 10 years to finish his doctorate.
So, total cost of his graduate education is going to be somewhere in the range of 500k, and his governments budget is 500m, a whole 1% of their expenditure goes towards OP. Instead, let’s say that OP comes from an OECD country, say, Portugal (relatively poor by OECD standards) and that his grad school only costs 10K USD (still pretty generous) for 5 years (average for econ PhDs, not sure for math though). All of a sudden, his government is spending 50K USD out of its 114,700M USD budget on him to go to grad school. So, now he’s accepting a cent from a guy who has stolen just under 23K.
Let me put it this way, if I was robbed for 23K and you accepted a cent from the guy who did it (knowingly) in order to get a train to an interview for your dream job, I don’t think I’d hold it against you. Then there’s also considerations of how much he will increase the tax base, one source (http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf) puts the value addded of a doctorate on lifetime earnings at 30K a year on average (at least, that-s what I got, but I only looked very quickly). Taxing that at 40% means he’s going to pay 12K a year more tax than he otherwise would, you’re going to need a pretty steep discount rate to ensure that he won’t pay back the value of the degree. With any reasonably interest rate, he’d pay that back within a decade, and then some.
You do understand how welfare is funded right? People are forced under threat of violence to fund it. I just want to make sure you’re clear on that. You might think the outcome is a “pretty good idea” like communists think the Utopian state is a “pretty good idea” or the Venus Project guys think a resource based economy based around a super computer is a “pretty good idea” but economics helps us understand whether or not this is actually a “pretty good idea” and it’s pretty clear that tax undermines property rights, and without property rights, a society cannot flourish.
Right, but when you’re a net tax producer, you can make that decision for yourself. The idea that you can make such decisions for me with my property undermines a civil society and any sort of rational property order.
This is entirely a discussion of principles, that’s why the OP indicated his discomfort with the idea, while he also found it appealing. People who aren’t willing to discuss principles aren’t answering the OPs question. Ultimately, all of us will rationalize whatever we do, it is how humans are hard wired to handle making compromising decisions and the risk of failure. But our rationalizations whether it’s
are not compatible with libertarianism. It may be compatible with consequentialism or liberalism, but it is clearly not libertarian if libertarianism is to mean anything to do with the NAP.
My position is that your education is you investing in your own ‘human capital.’ Division of labor requires specialization. Generally the more one knows about one subject, the more valuable he becomes. This does not mean that education need be formal, but sometimes sheepskins are a necessitity and I don’t think they ever hurt your prospects. Education is high on my personal value scale and I encourage others to hold it dear.
While I do believe in principles I am also cognizant of the real world we live in. If the government is going to subsidize, it is our duty to take all we can. The more we take the faster their house of cards will fall.
I’m not sure this makes sense. If your principles are not compatible with the world, then they aren’t really principles, or maybe they need to be reconsidered.
I’m still not sure where this idea comes from. Who do you have a duty to? And if you take more, doesn’t that make the state stronger? Don’t they want you to rely on their money instead of your own production and independent social relationships for exchange?
Consider, every time you take welfare, you are avoiding the market. Can we really achieve a market economy by taking welfare? Perhaps we should also try f**king for virginity?
Well the real question here is what each of us does inbetween now and the society we hope to achieve. Until we have a privitization of the road system, should we travel on public roads? Should we use public libraries to check out books? Government is a monopoly on many public services. Is it a fault of libertarians to not be able to escape said monopoly?
I’ve addressed this earlier in the thread.
“I’ve addressed this earlier in the thread.”
Yes, you did. You will excuse me if I crystalize the question for others to answer.
I think the question you proposed is loaded and a strawman of the issue.
@ the OP
I think that your bad-ass piece of paper (that goes for any masters or PHD) is only bad ass in your own mind and in the minds of uni sell outs. It won’t help your marketability in any sector other than academia. So, if your goal is to establish a career in academia and become a net drain on society, by all means. In the real world, that is, the private sector, education, especially uni level counts for shit, and its really on the job experience that increases productivity. Unless you need that education to enter into a particular field because government regulations require it (as is the case in professions), either college level or on the job training is by far more productive.
Not only will society miss out on the net benefit you add to the overall ecomony by working in the private sector, you will also be a net drain. Ultimately, its a choice you will have to make for yourself. But those are my thoughts.
I think the answer to this is simple.
If you`re a net-taxpayer, you have every right to use the roads and any public property. It belongs to you rightfully.
If youre a welfare bum, a public servant, a Goldman Sacs exec., a subsidized student, or the like, you have no right whatsoever. Its not your`s. And if you want to use it, you should beg honest ppl for their permission.
This just sounds like a statist response to me…“If you dont pay taxes, your not allowed to have X.” In a sense, this argument sounds like you are justifying paying taxes to the State. In other words, you must pay the thief in order to use the stolen goods!
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
This just sounds like a statist response to me…“If you dont pay taxes, your not allowed to have X.”
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So it is statist to point out that you are not entitled to what is not yours?
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
In a sense, this argument sounds like you are justifying paying taxes to the State. In other words, you must pay the thief in order to use the stolen goods!
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The goods are still rightfully the victims. That hasn’t changed just because someone stole them.