Oh, so you are fine with letting people not pay taxes then? - Yes. Taxes are theft. They are exploitative. Do you have any arguments to make?
People are mistaken about theft as the best MEANS to their end. If someone thinks that thievery is an end in itself, I am wrong. If people are simply trying to produce the most material wealth possible, they are wrong.
Ahh but even the monopolist exploiter cannot afford to keep itself afloat(Deficit spending, higher taxation ect..). Offering us further evidence which shows that even as a monopolist exploiter your income does not outway your costs. IE, being an exploiter costs too much for it to last any length of time. We haven’t even begun to address that once you’ve become a monopolist exploiter you loose all sense of economic calculation.
No need to get so hostile. I misunderstood your position.
filc, in your “capitalists have temporarily lent out their private property” example, the capitalist is still the effective owner. he can use it as he wishes. Though he has granted limited effective ownership to the workers as well.
The problem with not using such a concept of property (the “effective” one) is that it doesnt describe reality. If property is not effective, then criminal gangs would be poor, the government would be poor, since they dont havent got it through “legitimate”(NAP and homesteading) means . Obviously that is not the case.
Filc, theft/robbery is by FAR the most effective way to gain wealth. The success story of the state everywhere on the globe is blatant evidence. No other organisation in their areas controls anywhere near as much wealth as they do.
Governments have superficially low operating costs because people believe they are legitimate. No one would think that a rogue antivirus program that hacks into your computer is legitimate, especially when it has already been proven that it is not the best method of organizing.
And they only get away with that theft because the vast majority believe it is justified. People believe taxation is legitimate, and so they allow the state to take a portion of their income. This makes the cost of taxation (theft) smaller than it would be if people rejected the concept of taxation. The state cannot actually threaten every single taxpayer, as appears to be the case with the oft-mentioned “exploiter” in this thread.
Lol Sieben still going the internet security line 
It doesnt fit my exploitation criterion. So it does not present the moral dilemma to the producer of the service.
Anyway, to those who said i didnt make a real point(filc for example), here it is:
Assuming there is demand for A to hire C to use action on B that B used on A, there exists a dilemma for a would be supplier whether to be C or to be B.
Since A hiring C cannot possibly give as much monetary income as B acting on A, there exists a monetary incentive for supplier to be B.
I must live on a different planet then you.
http://www.streetgangs.com/magazine/062004lapovertygangs.html
Do I really need to pull up the numbers showing how government hasn’t really made a profit since it’s inception?
Filc what i meant was that governments’ and gangs’ assets not being legitimate property does not reflect the fact that they do have purchasing power and can effectively use their “stuff” even though it isnt their property.
And government makes a gigantic gross profit(as there is no cost of goods sold, except for exchanges that government makes, but that isnot the main part of revenue), in fact all their tax-revenue is gross profit. Though it is immediately spent, but that is more of a characteristic trademark of democracy.
You’re still ignoring it. You also ignore my argument that governments have superifically low operating costs. “Free Market” thiefs do not.
Your supposed exploitation criteroin has been delt with in previous posts. You cannot keep bringing it up like it was settled in your favor.
This is a grammatical nightmare. Why should anyone continue to painstakingly decipher your posts only to have you ignore their responses? Everyone else’s posts are readable on the first pass. Please put in more effort.
We know that a duopoly is almost as bad as a monopoly. You continue to flat out ignore our claim that competition among providers keeps the market honest.
Ahh but even the monopolist exploiter cannot afford to keep itself afloat(Deficit spending, higher taxation ect..). Offering us further evidence which shows that even as a monopolist exploiter your income does not outway your costs. IE, being an exploiter costs too much for it to last any length of time. We haven’t even begun to address that once you’ve become a monopolist exploiter you loose all sense of economic calculation.
Talking about our specific circumstance in 21st century certainly complicated the issue. However, I would argue the only real cost of being a monopolist exploiter is maintaining your monopoly. For example, much of the National Debt actually represents exploited wealth, not losses made by the exploiters (government). That money has already been transferred to the exploiters, we just haven’t yet nailed down who the victims will be (us, or foreign lenders, or both).
All this means is that our specific monopolist-exploiter has a high time preference, meaning they are foregoing future gains to exploitable wealth in order to exploit more now. This has to do with the dynamics of Democracy, which is another topic. It would be hard to say Bill Clinton didn’t make a profit from his temporary role as chief exploiter. Now that he has “left the game” those profits have been locked in. So it gets a bit complicated in reality, but the same basic points are in the simple case.
As to the calculation problem, i argued that when viewed strictly as exploiters, the government faces no such problems. Given the exploiters time preference, They should spend, on any one activity, all the down until the last dollar spent yields one additional dollar in exploitable wealth. Sure, they have a clac problem when trying to meet “consumer” demand, but that isn’t what they are doing. They are exploiting.
Government costs was dealt with by mcintyre.
Sieben i honestly cant see how my criterion was debunked, mind giving a pointer.
Premise:
∃ action A
∃ demand for action A
Action A ⇒ monetary income
Opportunity Cost of action A < Opportunity Cost of supplying A (more expensive to conduct action A against other action A’ers)
Conclusion
revenue from supplying A < revenue from action A ⇒ monetary incentive for action A & monetary disincentive for supplying A
There it is, more formal logic than Mises or Rothbard uses, still not satisfactory?
Cost of action A < Cost of supplying A, because supplying A requires performing Action A on other people who perform it.
This is becoming embarressing. If we were to assume that the personal economy of A is stationary, and that whether someone chooses to be C or B has nothing to do with whether the personal economy of A is stationary or not, your theory would apply to the real world, but the problem is that people tend to accumulate capital, which means that the personal economies of people tend to not be stationary, and exploitation tends to slow capital accumulation, so the assumptions depended upon by your argument aren’t realistic. I also could rephrase what I am saying by saying that, if we were to assume that human interaction were a zero-sum game, your theory would apply to the real world, but the problem is that human interaction isn’t a zero-sum game, it is a positive-sum game, so the assumption depended upon by your argument isn’t realistic.
Did I ever dispute that they could not generate an income? Can you provide evidence that gang-banging is a more profitable endeavor then other generally more accepted market activities? That Gang-Bangers tend to live above par in the scale of living?
So then you feel this is justified? And that there is no general disruption to structure of production and that this behavior does not come a general cost to society as a whole?
No that is not a fact. The net income has to include it’s costs. If the state operated at a net profit, we would not need institutions such as the fed, and our base tax revenue would exceed the cost to run government.
People are mistaken about theft as the best MEANS to their end. If someone thinks that thievery is an end in itself, I am wrong. If people are simply trying to produce the most material wealth possible, they are wrong.
Sabien … After you attacked me several times for ‘ignoring you’ I took the time to write a detailed post about the role of morality in this disscussion. You have neither addressed my argument, nor abandoned your position that i am ‘missing the point’/‘not taking morality into account’.
Ryan, i understand your argument. But it is a case of the prisoner’s dilemma. For any single actor its most useful to cash fast, instead of hoping that others are also willing to sacrifice a bit of present profits for future ones.
You are completely confused. I never asked you to look at the morality of market actors.
So the costs of performign Action A are not relevant? The costs of converting the fruit of Action A to a monetary income is also not relevant?
Does not follow. There are other problems with your line of thought but this is the most glaring.