“steal as much government resources as you possibly can”
Stealing implies theft. Government however, is the aggressor and criminal. Naturally, it is instantly better off in someone elses hands, than that of the robbers.
Welfare recipients should not be blamed or called bums, direct the ire at those who steal the money in the first place.
I find this [the bolded] to be somewhat incorrect, factually. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.
According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.
http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=430
That, itself, is a very minor technical point though, which is what I believe you meant by telling RJM that he’s changing the argument. I have no doubt that the government does track every penny coming in, otherwise it couldn’t prosecute people for failure to pay income taxes.
I think that part of the problem, though, is that those taxes are put into a pool. The money is then deducted from that pool and put into other accounts, and subsequently spent in various places. Seizing all cash assets in government’s possession would hardly pay back the taxpayers whose taxes were used to purchase consumable goods or repay foreign debts. Either everyone gets gypped by being repaid the percentage of the total pool they paid in, or not everyone gets repaid. Admittedly, if I were to steal the contents of an armored car carrying cash “belonging” (I use that term very losely here) to the state, assuming the state itself still exists, how do I as an individual know where that money came from (i.e. who paid into the “funds”)? I don’t have unfettered access to government accounting that I’m aware of. How would I return it to its “rightful” owners in that case? – But don’t answer that here if you have already answered it elsewhere. If you have truly answered those questions in your thread two years ago, could you post a link, or send it to me outside of this thread? I’m very interested in the arguments you would have posed on this topic.
To the OP… I actually crossed this very section fo Chapter 24 just this morning. And I, too, noticed that it made me rather uncomfortable. I have approached this topic before with a close friend of mine, but I’m not entirely sure I have reached resolution. There’s something disturbing about the thought of “stealing” from theives, at least for me. I can’t quite pin-point it just yet. Admittedly, the thought of living without a state at all was disturbing to me on a similar level, and once I understood the reality of my current situation, that thought was no longer “scary” to me. I think in this case I just need to understand it better.
Take money from the state. As much as you can. Use social programs if they benefit you directly. Do everything you can to raise your standard of living. Be happy. I’m an ancap and use state whenever I can, because I’m aware that by using it’s services where it suits me I’m in fact accelerating it’s demise. Banksters are fcking heroes in my eyes. I wish I had such skill like them to do exactly the same! I mean what is better way to show that system we have does not work and at the same time rise your standards of living? It’s showing result of best ancap theories in reality. Lobbyists/banksters/etc are basically like hackers. They show weakness in systems they crack and make money off it. IMHO nothing wrong with that. If people can’t learn from mistakes and see epic fail of their ideas then for the better for hackers/banksters/lobbyists.
To address the OP directly, I have a problem with being a net tax consumer. It would be akin to knowingly buying stolen goods from someone. So I try not to receive more government money than has been taken from me already in taxes.
I think taking from thieves becomes stealing when 1) you take more from them than what they stole from you, and 2) you plan on keeping the extra things that you take.
Without a doubt. Surely no one thinks I deny this.
However, that wasn’t what the discussion was about. It was about whether the money government has can be restored to the persons it was taken from, and the answer is yes.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing. Are you saying that receiving known stolen goods is ok?
With all due respect, I find this point of view to be disturbing. By your reasoning, you should also applaud car thieves for “showing weakness in systems they crack and making money off of it”. If people can’t learn to lock their car doors, etc. then the better for the car thieves.
Does this mean I should only be taking from thieves things they stole from me specifically?
Also, this doesn’t address whether or not I know for a fact that the man stole the property in question. If it looks like mine, and mine is missing, should I be permitted to take his property from him pending him proving he didn’t steal it from me (or anyone else)? What if it’s impossible to determine whether or not the property in his possession is actually my rightful property?
I don’t know that I like the idea of taking property “in hopes” that you were right, even if you’re willing to repay them for the damages should you be wrong. Granted… if a person did that one time and was wrong and held laible financially… I don’t think he’d be likely to do it twice… I don’t know. This whole situation feels ripe for exploitation.
Sure they can. The government documents all outbound payments.
The rest of your post sounds like you’re trying to rationalize your self interest, fitting facts to your values. Sounded like RJM was doing the same. Kaju makes a similar argument. “I have to do it, or I have to live off the grid”, the implicit idea being that living off the grid is somehow the insane choice, but again, it comes down to individual values.
You’re certainly welcome to your values, and I wish you God’s peace along the way, but I believe what you’re doing is counter-productive to radical libertarianism. The state wants to serve as your wealth ATM. They want to give you money, it gives them a reason to make or acquire more, in a race to the bottom. You certainly won’t have the moral high ground to oppose taxation, since you try very hard to receive the fruit of that operation.
Then what is the difference between you and a statist in method (not in motivation)?
False dilemma IMO.
DD5, now you mention it, what about the theft called inflation. How can one document how much he lost from that, with his loss being the money printer’s gain?
Lady, forgive me for skipping the finer points…
Same thing happens at banks. Does anyone think that the bank can’t return money to the person who put it in? Sure, it can go bankrupt (a separate argument) but it does indeed know what goes into the pool, what gets expensed out, what gets loaned out, what gets fractionally inflated, used as reserves etc. Modern fiscal infrastructure is very well developed.
I will try to find it. We were debating the break up of the state in a way which didn’t give the smelly leftists control of everything just because they had proof of use via welfare receipts and spots in the DMV line.
Wrong question to ask. Go one logical progression deeper before you choose the issue.
Yes, unless you plan on giving the other things you take back to the people from whom they were stolen.
There’s really no difference here between you doing it yourself and someone else (“PDA” or whatever) doing it on your behalf. Strictly speaking, unless the item that was stolen from you is unique, there’s no way you can completely prove that you’re taking back what was stolen from you. I don’t think “beyond a shadow of a doubt” is a reasonable legal standard in dealing with theft cases.
What do you mean by “exploitation”, exactly? As far as I understand the term, a fully free-market society couldn’t completely eliminate exploitation or opportunity for it.
LS,
You speak in riddles.
While I agree his response was rather cryptic (why be cryptic?), I’m guessing his “one logical progression deeper” is the government money monopoly.
Are you going to stop thieves by moralizing them? Better thieves inspire better security solutions. More thieves inspire thoughts about why there are that many. I see nothing disturbing here. Thieves in that sense have good role to play in society.
My issue with your viewpoint isn’t about stopping thieves. It’s about you apparently considering their theft to be justified in some sense. This simply goes against the Non-Aggression Principle.
No problem. You’re doing a lot of replying at the moment. 
I don’t think I’m arguing this very well. Let me try this differently.
You said:
So when a thief steals something from you, you lose any title to it?
To which RJM II replied:
If you can’t figure out who he stole it from, yes.
Your reply was:
We know exactly who was taxed and how much.
I would argue that we don’t know this as individuals… or at least I don’t, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Government does, but I don’t think that it would hand over that information readily. I don’t know that it’s reasonable to expect that someone who appropriated a portion of government assets be required to find out exactly which taxpayers’ payments funded that asset. If we were in the process of dismantling state completely, we would [presumably] have access to that information, but on any scale smaller than total dismantling… I don’t think this is a reasonable expectation.
I could be persuaded otherwise, however.
I will look forward to it.