Feel free to complete it =]
Exactly what I’ve wasted multiple paragraphs trying to explain.
You have so far omitted to detail how this logic unfolds. The reason is that it doesn’t.
States do not form as voluntary associations, but as voluntary submission to power. Know the difference.
If you have not yet done so, you must familiarize yourself with Etienne de la Boétie’s discours de la servitude volontaire. (Discourse on voluntary servitude) It demonstrates how and why people voluntarily subject themselves to governments.
Of course the Mises institute has it with an introduction by one Murray Newton Rothbard: http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
I already am quite familiar with this work and Rothbard’s introduction. I think that you’re misusing it to actually establish legitimacy, when I interpret it as a brilliant suggestion for how to make the state obsolete via civil disobedience and an explaination as to how states perpetuate themselves once they are already formed. I do not see this work as demonstrating that the state is voluntary in its formation, it is only a demonstration of how the state is sustained via power-based incentives towards civil obedience once it already has been formed. But civil obedience should not be construed to imply voluntaryism per se.
The logic does follow, unless you want to reject causality altogether.
Power (particularly political and criminal power), by definition, is not voluntarily submited to. It is exercised upon others, regaurdless of consent. People may asquiesce in that they cease to resist so that they stay alive or avoid particularly negative consequence, but that doesn’t mean that one is “voluntarily submiting” to someone who holds a gun to your head and asks for your wallet and you give them your wallet. It’s based on coercion, and while successful coercion is “submitted” to, it’s not voluntary by definition. Liberty and power are dichotomous in principle - this is one dichotomy that I do not reject.
Someone joining the army, the police, or any government bureaucracy is not “voluntary submitting to power”, they are becoming a part of the power structure itself, although most likely at a low rank. They are becoming excercisers of power themselves. They are not purely the subjects of power at such a point and the relationship between them and others not in their position is antagonistic in that others are subject to their power. Others do not “voluntarily submit” to their power per se by virtue of the very fact that they are subjects of it; power is excerised on them, regaurdless of explicit consent.
The State is definately voluntary for George W. Bush, but so what? If 99 people all agree to rob 1 person is this then a “voluntary” exchange?
Really…I don’t see the controversy here.
I’m not sure what is being said. If you think I was justifying the state than I wasn’t. I was explaining something. The State isn’t voluntary, since it uses means which are coercive to maintain it’s power. You are “entitled” to a government’s protection, hence also forced to pay for it, coercively, without your approval.
I know. I was pointing that your “If voluntary, then legitimate” argument is only valid if you presume universal consent, not merely majority consent.
I’m not too worried about someone arguing that the state is voluntary, either.
We know the state is not voluntary, by the fact that we can’t disassociate from it.
Edit:
For this reason it is possible to say the State exist because of general consent without implying it is a form of voluntary association.
The state is not voluntary, so it is possible to say it exists because of ‘general’ consent ?? What’s that supposed to mean ?
I thought I spelled it out pretty well. The difference is the difference between universal and majority.
Whats more likely, 99 people robbing 1 or 1 person robbing 99? Hmmm…
Noone consents to the state as such, as a whole, and the majority of people don’t even vote. So I don’t see how one can even argue that the majority “consents” to the state in any meaningful sense. The state is by no means an example of 99 people robbing 1.
Replace “consent” with “asquiescance to coercion” and you might make sense to me. There’s a difference.
Ah, I see now.
edit: or maybe I don’t…
True. Its 98 people helping 1 person rob the 100th person. The 98 people being everyone who happily pays their taxes and the 100th person being you.
So according to you 98% of tax-payers don’t really pay ‘taxes’ but rather ‘voluntary contributions’ ?
No, according to me:
You keep claiming conclusions that follow from definitions which do not, in fact, follow from definitions, making all of your claims unsubstantiated.
I am also not trying to establish the legitimacy of the state, you simply accuse everyone who points out the errors in your reasoning of being your enemy.
You’re essentially construeing taxation as voluntary or seem to imply that people “consent” to whatever the consequence of them paying taxes happens to be (an absurdity), which destroys the whole point of this libertarianism thing. It is not realistic at all to portray the scenario as if the vast majority of people are “gladly” supporting the state as a whole. Everyone opposes the state in one context or another.
Furthermore, this explaination totally leaves out that fact that the multitude are themselves subjects of the robbery in various contexts. Portraying it as the evil multitude indirectly plundering a small innocent elite is not accurate. In reality there is a very complex web of plunder extending in all directions, and the actual instrument of plunder itself is directly controlled by an oligarchy, not the multitude.
I’m simply pointing out that the logical implication of what you’re saying is, in fact, state legitimacy. You’ve yet to directly address me pointing out such contradictions, you simply dismiss them and proceed to conveniently switch between two contradictary premises (voluntaryism and the state as a product of the consent of the multitude). There’s no need to beat a dead horse, but it’s quite simple: if one accepts voluntaryism as a principle, then one must accept whatever follows from voluntary interaction. If the state is, in some sense, the product of voluntary interaction, then you must view it as legitimate. This is very simple logic that you have refused to address. You have not pointed out errors in my reasoning - you have made some questionable positive claims, I have pointed out the errors of them, and you have evaded the challenge consistantly.
You cannot coherantly maintain both anti-statism or voluntaryism and the premise that people who are subject to the state “voluntarily” submit to the state at the same time, unless you want to essentially deny causality or destroy the meaning of “voluntary” entirely.
Are these equivalent statement?
- I want taxation to be involuntary.
- Taxation is voluntary.