Please tell me I’m missing something.
I’ve gotten into heated debates over this, specifically government grants for musicians.
While pooping, I thumbed through the Ethics Of Liberty and stumbled up to chapter 24…
THE MORAL STATUS OF RELATIONS TO THE STATE
…This means that it cannot be unjust or immoral to fail to pay taxes to the State, to appropriate the property of the State (which is in the hands of aggressors), to refuse to obey State orders, or to break contracts with the State (since it cannot be unjust to break contracts with criminals). Morally, from the point of view of proper political philosophy, “stealing” from the State, for example, is removing property from criminal hands, is, in a sense, “homesteading” property, except that instead of homesteading unused land, the person is removing property from the criminal sector of society—a positive good…
Okay, so I’m a stand up guy if I get some tax money for myself? Did Murray just give me a green flag to appropriate a music grant?..
Not anyone anymore, but only because of force and redistribution of stolen property.
Does this not make me as guilty as the government itself? And surely the laws of economics apply to stolen merchandise - it’s discount will always make it a popular product in even the super-duper free market we all dream about. Are we not stimulating a demand of coercion and theft on a whole when more people are encouraged to consume more of it individually?
So when a thief steals something from you, you lose any title to it?
If you can’t figure out who he stole it from, yes. Pretending all that money slushing around in the State, much less the Federal, treasury can be meaningfully traced to any tax payer is crankish.
Are we not stimulating a demand of coercion and theft on a whole when more people are encouraged to consume more of it individually?
So what? I live in the real world for myself, not some ideal. Your contribution is trivial.
We know exactly who was taxed and how much. We know exactly how much they paid in which fiscal year and into what particular government departments.
You assert it is crankish, which we both know is intellectually sloppy and makes you look like a dolt with no argument, so why not explain why it cannot meaningfully be traced to any tax payer. Isn’t that what tax returns document?
We know exactly who was taxed and how much. We know exactly how much they paid in which fiscal year and into what particular government departments.
Which totally ignores the money they get paid out and the various in kind grants they get, not to mention any complicity they might have in the state, not to mention the fact that lots of people are robbed, expropriated and disrupted by the State in indirect ways aside from the IRS, not to mention that there is never going to be enough money to pay these people back, not to mention all of them will die before the State goes away, not to mention that if the state goes away Federal Reserve notes won’t even be money.
Basically, your ideas are useless and unrelated to the problem of whether property and cash funds existing in the State are viable to be claimed by any specific person; they are ‘finders, keepers’ as any living person could easily find some reason the state ‘owes’ them some arbitrary amount of compensation for harm done.
You Rothbardians with your fantasy ethical views really go in circles with this crap; assigning ownership to tax funds is epistemically and practically impossible; not to mention useless; not to mention it’s not going to get done. For those of us living in the real world your little spiel is just a non sequitur. There is no ‘ownership’ or ‘right’ to any property, property and disputes are directly tied to it being epistemically and funcitonally possible to resolve it for a specific person in a specific situation; the state makes a giant clusterfack out of society where everyone is complicit and nobody has any real authority or rights. Your moralizing BS doesn’t work, and real legal logic is hard pressed, too.
Anyways, you’re a lunatic and I am not arguing with you.
You’re changing the argument, but I have an answer for this too. I tackled this subject on these forums 2 years ago.
It doesn’t matter what got paid out, because that has receipts too. The government documents all of it. You just thought you could make a lazy argument that it all goes in a big pot and no one can be bothered to look at the books. I’m sure there are a few people here would have accepted such a sloppy answer, but I am not one of them.
More assertions without proof. Yawn.
Besides red herrings and strawmen, do you have anything to contribute?
I am not a Rothbardian, so once again, you are wrong. Mind you, it was a lame attempt to ignore my argument and use another red herring. No one here is debating ethics.
I have already demonstrated that it is possible to solve this problem because the government documents the flow of all taxes in and out.
Appeals to the “real world” are empty and usually the sign that the individual bringing it up doesn’t have an argument. I haven’t yet seen an argument from you that refutes my answer. Taxes are paid in the real world. Tax returns are filed and documented in the real world. Pretty simple stuff.
Ricky, it pains me to do this, because I find the insights and information in your posts so excellent, but you simply can’t go around insulting people here. 1-week ban.
Even though RJM is on hiatus, I want to address more of the stuff he added to this, because it is an opportunity to instruct.
Ad hominem
Red herrings
Proof by assertion, non sequitur
More proof by assertion, non sequitur, red herring
Dear reader, just because someone claims to use logic, doesn’t mean they actually are. Ricky failed to substantiate one point in his responses, but he did manage to avoid directly addressing the points I did substantiate. This is sloppy argumentation, and frankly, the standard here is a lot higher. Shouting past people and demeaning them or their position won’t win arguments. You need to address the subject in good faith.
The government also expropriates by another method other then by just taxation: All those other millions of decrees which comprise the total sphere of government action that we call interventionism. Those things cannot be measured or assessed by the method of accounting, but they inflict damage and result in a loss of wealth to the individual no less then taxation, perhaps even more.
Yes, it is okay to take government money. If it weren’t, you should be living on homesteaded land in Yellowstone National Park, while refusing to use government roads or any other government “service.”
While the government can trace some stolen money (such as taxes) no one on the receiving end of things such as welfare type payments can trace the money and likely no single individual in government can trace the money. So while technically if someone had complete access to the whole of government (or at least all of the accounting books) part of the money could be traced. There is still the issue that things like printing money effectively ‘tax’ anyone with money stores by devaluing what they currently have saved up. This is much more difficult to trace and since cash comes into play (not logged reliably) I don’t think it’s possible to accurately trace these figures even given all logged information.
On top of that, one would have to determine the labor costs associated with convincing the government to give you that money along with any opportunity costs associated with acquiring that money. If I am unemployed and collecting unemployment I have to put time/effort into filing for unemployment and maintaining good standing. I also am missing out on the opportunity of having a job that likely pays as good, if not better than, unemployment. Of course I have a lot more time free to work under the table, educate myself, have fun, etc. but what it all comes down to is there is not an effective way to calculate how much of what I am stealing from the government should go to me and how much should go “back to the tax payers”.
That being said, we are currently working in a statist society so the question becomes (in my opinion) what route will expediate the destruction of such a society. In the case of accepting money from the government I am of the opinion that the more people who exploit the system the faster the system will collopse. I believe that most people here agree that a socialist system is unsustainable due primarily to exploitation (i.e.: socialism only works if everyone is altruistic) so what better way to expediate it’s downfall than to exploit the system as much as you can.
I personally utilize every loophole I can to get the government to give me money in one form or another. I am getting close to breaking even on taxes paid back when I was in a high tax bracket, one day I hope to come out ahead.
I think there are two different circumstances: one in which the government is realistically going to give the same amount of money to someone no matter what, and one in which the government will only give x amount of money depending on whether someone applies for it. I feel that at least in the former case, it is better for the money to go to someone who uses said funds in his campaign against the state (e.g. Rothbard) than someone who uses it in his campaign in support of the state (e.g. Krugman). I think ultimately the state will try to spend as much money as possible, so it is preferable for this money to be spent on relatively worthwhile things (e.g. Rothbard’s research) rather than detrimental things (e.g. propaganda)