Is my friend's "drop-out" claim even remotely true?

[Texas_Trigger]

I have a friend that I have slowly been convincing out of a socialist framework. He has made a lot of progress, however he is older than I am which often leaves him muddling in a false sense of intellectual superiority. Add to this that he spent the first 21 years of his life living in Poland and remembers well the collapse of the Soviet Union, after having lived under its communism for many years, and you are safe in assuming that when he hears my ideology of a voluntary society, he thinks I am just in a state of young(ish) naiveté and idealism that is not possible.

But the most recent development I have had with him on the topic of an ancap society was a matter of ethics. He now agrees that if a government forces you to pay taxes, this is thievery. Unfortunately, he countered this with a new claim.

To paraphrase what he said: “In America (he finally got his citizenship a few months ago) one does have the option to simply ‘drop-out’ of paying taxes. He was careful to point out that this meant you were literally cut off on your own (no use of roads, courts, or any other “public good” of any kind), however, the social contract here is actually valid because most people do choose to live under it, as it is the better option over ‘total freedom but with the huge con of basically being stranded on your property’.”

This claim, even if true, would still not satisfy me as total freedom because of the many negative externalities I am not protected from, such as air pollution, etc..

Additionally, let us say I choose to produce Heroin; a substance highly illegal and controlled in America. Let’s also say that i choose, as dual dictator/citizen of my newly formed country, to pass an open-door policy with any American’s I deem fit to enter, and sell this Heroin to these Americans. The Americans come in, I sell them the good, they consume the good, and they go back home. In this scenario, I just can’t believe that the American government would ever let me get away with this practice, despite my friend’s claim.

At best, I think the US would simply declare war on my nation on the grounds of harboring a terrorist (me because of foreign Heroin supply), and send a predator drone to shoot hell fire missiles at me. Being a VERY small country, I would be unable to defend myself.

Either way I look at it, de facto or de jure, my friend’s claim seems dubious at best. I have never even heard such an assertion that sounded remotely similar to this one. Is he confusing this with something else, just making it up, or just plain ignorant on this one?

Seems like the closest thing to such an attempt of this would have been the Southern States’ seceding from the Union. If half of the country couldn’t get away with it, why would one person be able to? I am hoping to get an idea of where he might have heard this so i can point it out to him, and he could then stand corrected.

P.S. - He is not huge fan of the US (married an american), so it doesn’t appear that he would make this up just to come to the defense of the US.

[John_James]

First of all, congratulations on your friend’s progress (and citizenship).

But yes, you’re right, he’s full of it. At first I thought you meant he was just talking about living off in some really rural area, or in the woods. But even in that setting you can’t avoid the Man.

The classic film The Incredible Bread Machine (color version, without the intro and epilogue debate) includes a vignette of an Amish farmer minding his own business, getting law men pushing him around, even on his off-the-grid farm.

Indeed this is not a fable. It happens quite a bit…

Amish, state laws face conflicts

Amish Farming Draws Rare Government Scrutiny

But what it sounds like you’re saying he’s actually talking about simply declaring yourself sovereign. Obviously this falls flat on its face immediately when you realize the State claims ownership prima facie of all the land (if your friend doesn’t believe this tell him to stop paying his property taxes and see what happens). Even the episode of Family Guy in which the entire plot centered around this idea of declaring one’s own “personal nation” included the plot point of a legal technicality to make it at least kind of theoretically plausible on some level.

But if your friend just things you’re scott free as long as you don’t use any public services he’s simply delusional. I suppose you can’t be sure if he is just honestly that ignorant (you did say he’s only been a citizen for a few months), or if he just wants to tell himself that because he needs to believe it.

You’re exactly right, there’s literally no way you could possibly live without any government intrusion into your life, save being so far out in the desert, or the woods, or under some lake , or something to a point at which the State was simply unaware of your existence. But the minute they know you exist, all bets are off.

As for him pulling the age rank card, and the “I’ve seen the reality of the world, and you’re just a naive kid” stuff, you might check through some of Yuri Maltsev’s stuff and send him some of that. (Check the links section here…especially the media.)

[gotlucky]

@The Texas Trigger

To paraphrase what he said: “In America (he finally got his citizenship a few months ago) one does have the option to simply ‘drop-out’ of paying taxes. He was careful to point out that this meant you were literally cut off on your own (no use of roads, courts, or any other “public good” of any kind), however, the social contract here is actually valid because most people do choose to live under it, as it is the better option over ‘total freedom but with the huge con of basically being stranded on your property’.”

The key words there are “social contract”. This is not a new argument. The social contract as it is used states:

The social contract or political contract is an intellectual construct that typically addresses two questions, first, that of the origin of society, and second, the question of the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their natural rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory.

So, in order for us to be part of society, we must give some of our rights. This is false, and I know you think it is false because you are a voluntaryist. But, where is this contract? Did you sign it? Did I sign it? At best, your friend could be said to have signed one as a naturalized citizen, but that doesn’t make this so called contract valid.

The American state essentially owns everyone and everything within it. Surely your friend can realize that this is not a just position. Does your friend really think that his house belongs to the state? Why does he call it his house? It’s entirely possible that your friend really does believe that the state legitimately owns everyone and everything in its territory, but since you have said that he is making progress, I think that this is probably not the case.

So, is your friend familiar with the concept of homesteading? Perhaps you should start there with him. If you demonstrate a fairly simple idea (first use) as to how people come to own property (well they can trade it too), perhaps it will be easier for him to see why this social contract is invalid. Also, you may wish to teach him a little bit about common law. It is not might first choice of a system of law, but it is far more decentralized that statutory law. So if your friend’s objection to a voluntary society is that there needs to be a state in order to have law, then this is an obviously false claim. And you can back it up with the huge history of common law. Common law does not require a state, and a lot of our modern legal principals originated in common law.

Also, I don’t know if you have read these, but What Law Is and A Praxeological Account of Law are entirely relevant to the question of how law in a voluntary society could work. It may be hard to convince him by making him read the posts, but if you can find a way to rearticulate the arguments, then you may have better luck.

[ClaytonB]

The missing puzzle piece is public space. Public space is any kind of property that is unowned. Outer space is public space (no one owns it), most of the air is public space, most of the ocean is public space, and there is still some land that could be considered public space in more sparsely populated parts of the world. Specifically, many roads and trails in parts of Asia, Africa, South America, etc. are unowned.

No one - not even a government - has any right to aggress against someone who is homesteading public space simply by virtue of the fact that they are homesteading it. But that doesn’t mean there are no rules or that there aren’t different kinds of public space. For example, you can’t lawfully obstruct a public road, that is, an unowned road. Even though no one individual owns the road, by virtue of the fact that all users of the road have an “easement” on the continued use of the road by virtue of their prior use of that same road, you can be removed from the road if you are obstructing it. The same concept applies to any kind of public space in different ways.

The problem is that the government equivocates on the issue of whether its holdings are public space or privately held. If public, then the government is subject to the common law regarding the use of public spaces. If privately held, then the government can institute whatever rules it likes (e.g. statutes), however, the government also becomes fully liable for everything that happens on its land, everything it does with its resources (including allowing pollution effluents) and its holdings are no different than any other kind of private title in regard to their liability to be awarded as damages or repossessed by a rightful owner. So, the government wants the best of both worlds - they want no liability as if their roads/etc. are unowned, and yet at the same time they want the power to write whatever rules they like regarding the use of their roads and other resources (statutory law).

Clayton -