We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402805 and marked it off-topic.
Should I flag any of those I see? Because I see it all the time here, but they are "generic ideological tangents" that are more popular and universally accepted, so they seem to create no controversy.
I think this note from Coinbase is exactly what I would hope they would do in such a situation: reject an overly-broad request while restating their willingness to comply with all regulations and legal requests, just like a traditional financial institution.
Many of us are not interested in turning every situation into a political or philosophical battle. I'm glad that there are options out there both for people who do and people who do not.
The question of how, that is by what process, can an act be considered intuitively vile when performed by an individual and yet good and indeed natural when performed by that particular corporation we call the government, nags incessantly at my mind.
Is it a function of group size? Where does the phase transition occur? Or is it a discontinuous process and possible only when we've sublimated from mere mortals into the holy categories of "sovereignty" and "legitimacy?" Oh sure, the replies to your comment are full of the old "argumentum ad pragmaticum" (excuse the poor latin), but their emotional volatility reveals it is anything but pragmatism driving their convictions. There's some deep, primal, psycho-spiritual shit going on here!
So yes, while I would not count myself amongst their ranks, I really do sympathize with the anarchists, but I've got to ask you: What did you hope to achieve with this comment? Do you really think you are going to change anyone's mind here?
P.S.
More questions for you!
Given the putative measures the government would levy against coinbase should they refuse to cooperate, do you _really_ think that they are acting immorally? Why should _they_ have the moral obligation to put themselves and their business at risk because of something being done to them against their wishes?
It's (in the US) constitutionally allowed, which is analogous to "we agree to be taxed to support our government". It's true that you may not have personally agreed to it, but that doesn't really scale anyway. The constitution 'stands for' our mutual agreement - which is why we're allowed to change it.
Even if you don't like that argument, you have to appreciate that it works for many people and so you won't get much of anywhere declaring "taxation is theft" like that's obvious and unquestionable; you just lose 98% of everyone right there. (okay, maybe 95 or 90. I don't know anymore.)
A different argument: In an anarchy, taxation would be theft. In our system of government (being US-centric again), it is not. You can argue that you'd rather live in an anarchy/minarchy/whatever, and that's fine, but it's silly to declare that taxation is theft universally because in the current system that's not really true.
A good way to think of anarchists are pacifists. Pacifists think all violence is universally wrong. Most people are not pacifists although and feel like violence is OK in some instances. Many of these non-pacifists would also agree in an ideal world that pacifism is what humanity should follow. But they recognize they don't live in an ideal world and thus are not pacifists.
Anarchists are really the political equivalent of pacifists. No force or coercion is ever acceptable in any circumstance is the basic foundation of anarchism, everything must be voluntary.
So according to that political philosophy taxation is still theft or extortion, just like self defense is still violence and soldiers killing in war is still murder to a pacifist.
But if you walk into a room and make a statement about the just-ness of something, it's implied and assumed that you're talking about "in our state", not "according to the government system I wish we were using".
It really irks me when people have the opinion "I think a better government system would be X" but conceal it with playing-dumb arguments like "y is wrong!", where y is a thing allowed in our current government Y but not in X. Like, if you want anarchism, don't say "taxation is theft", say "anarchism is good because taxation is theft in anarchism". Taxation isn't theft right here, right now.
And if taxation is theft in your moral framework, fine, whatever, we can't really unify our positions unless you convince me that your moral framework is better than mine. But even still! start with "my moral framework is good", not "this thing we disagree on, I'm going to make blanket un-qualified statements about it and pretend they're obvious and universally agreed upon".
Most of the anarchist groups I used to know a couple of years back where full of force, coercion and exploitation. They just used psychological tricks and peer-pressure instead of physical force.
These things can happen. The victims within the anarchist groups just had the problem, that whenever they were trying to defend themselves, the (inofficial) leaders were able to use political rhetorics to declare them wrong and keep them in line.
It was always the power-hungry egoists shaping these groups. Some were ok, but some weren't better than sects. All-in-all I haven't seen less free people in my life.
Many human organizations have similar problems, I'm not really surprised it happens in an anarchist group as well.
They claim their moral foundations are universal. I have yet to see a comprehensive proof that they are in fact universal and overcome the is-ought problem outlined by David Hume.
Theft as a moral/philosophical concept doesn't mean "deprival of another's property against their will", it means "extrajudicial deprival of another's property against their will". The so-called governmental 'monopoly on violence' (probably better put as 'monopoly on compulsion'..) is encoded into the concept. So it's extremely relevant what governmental framework you're thinking in terms of.
I'm not saying "hey, if you look up theft in the right place, you'll find that it has this extra clause". Definitions in dictionaries aren't concerned with properly inflecting to handle philosophical debates, anyway. I'm saying "the meaning of the word 'theft' that everyone uses in real life seems to have this definition, actually, under inspection -- but you're operating on a different, more simplistic definition, and that's why you're reaching these nonsensical conclusions".
So you could stick with your (imo incorrect) definition of theft and continue declaring that taxation is theft, but I think you're just weakening your position by using an inaccurate model of the world. If you used the definition I'm using everything makes sense. You can still argue against taxation, especially the level we experience, without your argument being "taxation is theft!!" and alienating almost-everyone.
Doesn't this line of thought lead to the rather unpleasant consequence that the state is incapable of murder? I mean by definition, a legally sanctioned state killing of a person or group of people cannot be extrajudicial.
(That's in the political philosophy sense. You can argue that there's a universal moral sense above that and that's fine, but that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about the just-ness of government actions. It's totally possible to have a morally-wrong constitution, and it's on the governed to change it.)
The US government has this relationship with the murder of enemy combatants right now.
I am pretty sure people are talking in the philosophical sense when they say "taxation is theft". I don't know what it accomplishes to simply state "a democratic state has instituted it, therefore it's not a crime" - you could see how this would fall apart for other things we would consider crimes like murder.
Yes it is. If I lend you $10 and you refuse to pay it back, it is generally deemed "morally okay" for me to be mean about it. Courts, and by extension, police enforcement of court rulings are that principle writ large.
The whole concept of ownership is based on social contract. What is "mine" versus "yours" arises from that contract. Theft, because it is rooted in ownership, is thus a relative construct.
Except a social contract is not a contract at all. There's no offer, no acceptance, no consideration, no capacity to contract, etc.
> Theft, because it is rooted in ownership, is thus a relative construct
I don't disagree here. But I'd like to see the social contract be an actual contract that you opt-into. Specifically, one that can be arbitrated on and dissolved upon violating terms of the agreement.
Of course there's a million reasons why people would disagree with that statement. Which is fine, but let's not pretend the government and governed have a voluntary relationship established in some sort of contract.
Fine, don't call it a social contract. Call it a foo. People, collectively wielding more power than any individual, agreed on a set of rules that make collective life better (in the view of those people). These rules are the foo. If you are in the geography where these people, your fellow citizens, have power then you must follow the foo or face consequences. If you don't like the foo, you can leave.
> I'd like to see the social contract be an actual contract that you opt-into
How would you propose enforcing laws? The U.S. Constitution and its ensuing legal corpus is the law of the land. If you don't like it, you can "opt out" by leaving.
Are you saying that because you agree? Because that was the only point I was making..
We can all agree that gangs, mafias and cartels have collective power and use the threat of force to govern territories. The distinction we're making is whether these cartels constitute a "legitimate" government - whatever that means.
I think legitimacy should be measured by consent (crazy idea I know), and that not leaving a territory doesn't constitute consent. Mexican families living in cartel-land do not give consent because they're too poor to leave. Because a said cartel provides "protection" from other cartels does not mean a service was provided.
I'm just asking people reason about government in principle, rather than in terms of what they think a government should be.
No. I just find discussing ideas more meaningful than arguing definitions.
> "legitimate" government - whatever that means
Don't handwaive this away. The boot-up process, which builds founding myths and their related constructs, is integral as much as with any other venture.
Ignore it and you will be advocating for the unrealistic (e.g. "everyone signs a contract at 18 or gets banished") or the abominable (e.g. "we will have an efficient, culturally homogenous society once we kill the Jews").
If the law is just. Otherwise it's literally a Crime Against Humanity to force that choice on someone.
We recognize that a person cannot be deprived of statehood. (Or, put in a situation where they must deprive themselves of their own statehood to escape, such as threatening them for their religion, sexual orientation, etc.)
Most people view theft as wrong because it takes someone's property from them by force, not because it's illegal.
You don't get to both 'give away a freedom to the government via the social contract in exchange for protection of your other freedoms' and then also say "hey, it's immoral to not have this freedom; Give it back!". It's one or the other.
A group of people calling themselves the government and creating ideological constructs like "social contract" are still committing a human rights violation when they throw someone in prison for refusing to hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade.
Hum, the whole point of anarchism is that they don't even recognize the first as valid, let alone wanting both.
Seriously, this is some of the craziest doublethink imaginable. Something is not made just just because the majority say so, or just because the state says so. There are unjust laws.
This is the opposite: you seem utterly incapable of understanding basic, well-known positions, and you imagine I am delusional (lizards? really?) when your comprehension fails you.
The state as a concept is not the same as a normal person, obviously. It is subject to different rules.
Something is made just because the governing system that the people have agreed to says it is just. That's the theory that our system of government operates under. You don't have to like that, but you're ignorant if you just say it's false without going and doing some learning.
I am also wondering if you know what a 'law' is and how it differs from 'the text of the constitution'.
That's not an accepted definition in most of the world, including the US, which accepts stuff like the UDHR. We in the West consider many States unjust if we consider that they violate human rights, even if their population supports that.
A person acting under the auspices of a state has no right to violate human rights. A state is merely a human construct. No human construct grants a person a right to violate human rights.
Human rights are a human construct. Moreover, they only make sense within the context of social contract which only becomes practical when enforced by a government.
And 'social contract' is double speak. It's an attempt to misappropriate the concept of a contract to confer moral legitimacy to majority dictates.
The phrase "taxation is done with consent" uses consent to mean "the collective's continuous consent", due to the understanding that the collective is capable of changing the system if they deem it important enough. But I think you knew that already and are playing dumb as some kind of rhetorical strategy.
> which is a pretty good system that we have not seen fit to radically change
Slavery was "a pretty good system". Any action the state takes can be justified using this line of reasoning.
Easy retorts:
* Slavery was morally wrong (per almost all moral frameworks), but it was just per the government at the time. You should be opposed to immoral things regardless of how just they are under a government.
* You're still using the wrong definition of consent. Imagine there are two words - ConsentI and ConsentP. You're arguing against the phrase "taxation is done with ConsentP" by saying "well I didn't ConsentI!!!". No shit, we're talking about ConsentP. Get with the program or you just sound ignorant.
* The state does get a special exemption from definitions. That's the point of having the definition of 'just' come from the state. This is basic stuff.
(Specifically, defined in the constitution of the state. The behavior of the agents of the state are not exempt from the definitions.)
[0] steelmanning is the opposite of strawmanning: instead of fighting a fake, weak version of your opponent's argument, you go out of your way to fight the strongest possible version of it - which should be easy if your position is the correct one.
Where is the reason that consentp is not just "other people taking away the rights of someone"?
Fortunately, the majority also has a vested interest in the system being functional, so they don't necessarily change the constitution every time it rubs them the wrong way (and it's hard to change it, also, so it takes a lot of momentum and time for it to actually happen, giving everyone plenty of time to reconsider). In this case, it would be not in most peoples' interest to abolish taxation, because the country would immediately collapse.
I was only talking about the two terms to make it clear that the argument against that specific phrase was missing the point of the phrase entirely - inventing new words to clear up overloaded ones can be quite useful.
>The state does get a special exemption from definitions. That's the point of having the definition of 'just' come from the state. This is basic stuff.
No it gets no exemption. The state does not define justice. We categorize many state actions as unjust.
"The state does not define justice." It does for me. It does in America. So you're talking about "in your fantasy system, it doesn't". Who cares? You need to use the same definitions of words that everyone else is using. If you can't, won't, or are incapable of it, then talking to you is, indeed, like talking to a wall.
No, I really don't think so even in your case. You must have a limit where if a law was passed saying it was okay to .... something, that you'd object. Even if only such that you'd recognize it in a movie and say "Not in my America."
It really is the people who define justice. The state codifies and enforces that.
We try people (Nazis, Saddam Hussein, etc) for crimes that were legal by the laws of their state. The Italians try American CIA agents with kidnapping for extraordinary rendition. This is a widely held, almost universal view, that justice transcends law.
> It does in America.
We (my government and likely yours) recognize North Korea as a country, but we don't recognize it's actions as legitimate.
So pure minimalistic statehood - the ability to have and hold land - isn't enough for legitimacy.
What, beyond statehood, does America have that makes it legitimate. Can you put your finger on what parts matter to you?
> You need to use the same definitions of words that everyone else is using
You're the steelman. I don't think that's compatible with definitional nitpicking.
> > So the government is not made of normal people? Is the USA run by lizards or something?
> you seem utterly incapable of understanding basic, well-known positions, and you imagine I am delusional when your comprehension fails you.
The Lizard comment was valid sarcasm. You're not only not steelmanning, you're playing the victim.
You're rightly being called on your use of the word 'normal' because you're hand-waving so much away with it, and being so dismissive with the article.
>You need to use the same definitions of words that everyone else is using.
Everyone else does not use the same definition of justice as you.
This is how justice is usually defined (first definition found through a Google search):
>Justice definition, the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause.
just:
>just jəst/ adjective 1. based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.
When used in the context of laws, justice refers to a legal remedy that is morally right, equitable, etc. Legal rulings are not automatically considered justice on account of being from the state. State actions everywhere, including in the US, are widely characterized as unjust, a miscarriage of justice, etc., when they are considered immoral.
I suggest you stop being stubborn, because you're wrong.
How do we reconcile this with the unjust regimes practicing things such as slavery or capital punishment? It's not an obvious question, but one must be able to reason about it without resorting to trivialities such as universal unanimous consent.
If the majority of a group decide something then that implies collective consent unless and until the minority are so outraged that they either successfully agitate for change or the group splinters and starts fighting e.g. as happened with the abolition of slavery in the US.
Basically, collective consent is an implicit concept rather than an explicit one and doesn't require (nor imply) universal acceptance of something.
So I guess i'm not sure what the point is. In the US, the government derives its rights from the consent of the governed (see the declaration of independence, which, while not an binding source of law, explains this quite well:P).
Here, the governed chose to enact a constitution that allowed the government to take taxes. The government does so.
If the governed wish to not be taxed, they have a way to do that too! Pass a constitutional amendment.
Collective consent requires unanimity. If you don't have that to begin with, then you don't have consent to consitutional amendments or what have you.
If you want to argue for government, argue on pragmatic grounds, social contract theory or "the consent of the governed" is a joke.
Says who? There are many forms of collective consent and decision making.
Your parents parents parents parents parents (or whatever) consented either by exercising rights in the document (adoption/ratification), voting for it, or heck, choosing to remain knowing what the rules would be. You get your chance to not consent by choosing to not remain if you like.
A subjective and indefensible view point, as far as I'm concerned.
>If there were any legitimacy to such decisions, social contract theorists wouldn't try to bend backwards to make them sound like they are consensuals.
As far as "social contract theorists" are concerned their system is right/just within it's own bounds, just as yours is only right/just within it's own bounds.
There is no moral gold standard just as there is no universally just government.
The Social Contract works because it defines that a majority of people can give consent for others to participate in it. This is purely subjective and is only an operating principle if the Social Contract exists.
Once you step out of the Social Contract, it no longer applies and nobody can give consent you into participating.
Now let's step back for a minute.
What you're attempting here is saying that under the moral framework A, the actions taken with justification moral framework B are unjust.
This is not correct. It's similar to taking a mathematical system that lacks addition and then complain that another system with addition does not work correctly because it has addition. (Reverse lack/has if you want, it's irrelevant)
The "social contract theorists" justify their actions under the social contract which allows them to give consent via majority instead of unanimity, while you want a system that defines the consent to said contract via unanimity.
Both options are fine but you cannot simply say the other side is wrong.
edit:
I might also add that even you continue to utilize a social contract; the contract of consent via unanimity.
Which means that everyone agrees to respect the consent of everyone else. This is not a objective right that you somehow magically have, it's something you say you have.
That only works as long as everyone agrees but if one person says "I don't want everyone to respect my consent" your social contract violates itself.
lots of decision making needs higher standards, often watered down later
Conviction for Murder 12 unanimous peers - watered down to 11 of 12 in some places
Constitutional changes - 2/3 majority required in many jurisdictions
As a side note this is why the Brexit result was so devastating, the brexit side won by only a little however the support for being governed by the EU was only 48% .... this needed to be 66% or more for EU rule to be truly accepted
"I didn't agree to that parking fine; I park where I damn well please."
"I didn't agree to not put rat poison on the food I sold."
"I didn't agree that John and Jane Doe owned that house."
"I didn't agree that we have a medical licensing board to determine qualifications for doctors/surgeons."
"I initially agreed to pay for that, but I now revoke my consent and don't wish to be bound by that earlier consent. I did not agree to recognize your courts as valid and able to enforce that civil agreement."
If the argument against a mostly functional existing government is that "not everyone consented unanimously and willingly", I think the claim that to require such makes things less functional is an in-bounds claim. You can argue that I'm wrong, but you will have a hard time convincing me that my claim was non-responsive.
You're right that it's not consent exactly, but I made a binding choice to have children and to raise them in America (and Massachusetts and Cambridge and in this house). I made that choice recognizing that that would subject them to the good and ill of those choices, including taxation, the federal and state laws, local ordinances, and whatever drafts, roof leaks, and other dangers this house might have.
That they were not personally consulted and did not personally consent that we drive on the right side of the road, that we use the USD as our currency, that we use center-tapped 240VAC, 60 Hz single-phase as the residential electrical standard is irrelevant in practical terms.
No. A bunch of politicians composed of lawyers and privileged elites from the various states chose to enact a constitution did.
> "If the governed wish to not be taxed, they have a way to do that too! Pass a constitutional amendment."
If someone rejects the government's claim on their self and rejects the government's legitimacy, then no, they have no obligation to utilize the government's system of law making.
I think we actually get to a proper statist view by seeing taxation as theft, thus an inherent badness, which is only justified when the people are represented properly and the government respects their needs.
So I hear this language as a perfectly reasonable call to examine the balance and see if we're being heard and getting our needs met in exchange for the sacrifices in question.
If you must, think of it as how you're paying for access to this society.
Can you explain to me how it's not theft? It's money taken from you whether you consent or not under threat of force. I suppose more technically that's extortion, but there mere fact you get some services in return doesn't change the fact it's not voluntary and done under threat of force.
My conclusions: a. Humans have evolved into socially needing to exist with each other.
b. In general, the various societies across the world have different styles - democracy, dictatorship, kingdoms, capitalism, socialism,etc.
c. In general, most of us have the choice of leaving a particular social group and then moving away to another social group. Somewhat easy to do within a country if you are a citizen or are authorised to do so. Somewhat difficult in some cases (e.g., you are not permitted to leave the country).
d. If an individual doesn't agree with social norms and "laws", they may most likely still have the option to leave. They will need to relocate to some other place where they are permitted to do (or can get away with doing) what they want to do.
If I live in a country, then my predecessors decided together to create a tax system whereby all residents contribute tax, and in exchange receive certain benefits. To prevent free-loading, tax is made mandatory. To ensure some form of proportionate taxation, there are tax slabs.
If they are not receiving these benefits, then they need correct the situation. If they feel they are being over-taxed, then they need to present the reasons, and hopefully have sufficient auditing and electoral process in place to correct the over-taxation.
If they don't like this and are not effective enough, they (mostly) have the options of reconciling to the situation, or of leaving.
They were your legal guardians and were permitted to do so.
Yes, it happened in the past. But the consent doesn't expire until people change the constitution (anything else is insane, as you could never form a government of any sort).
Until then, those are the rules of the country, and living here means abiding by them.
The argument that "i didn't vote on this personally and therefore i did not consent" is not sane. It may be a sane argument before say, age of majority. Even then you could be emancipated and leave. But once you hit age of majority, you are consenting by staying. Note that in basically every legal system that has ever existed, you are also consenting by exercising any other rights. Like any contract, you don't get to pick and choose what parts you consent too, you can either ratify the document as a whole and adopt the contract or not.
But note: If you don't, this is the same document that enables folks to have the power to make it illegal for people to murder you, and enforce that, so ...
No. There is no consent.
Again, the document you refuse to consent to is literally the only thing granting you the benefit of being here.
You don't have the right to take anything from me just because there's another person in the room. The state doesn't get special moral or justice exemptions just because it's a special type of group.
I have to use my social/economic power. And yes I am happy to "pay taxes" to them. Because I need them but not to a welfare/UBI-addict who just takes.
And whats up with assumption that everyone will steal from everyone all the time if it were not for Govt ?
Whether or not you personally agree to the social contract, so long as you own property or have personal integrity protected in any way by the functions of a state, you are a beneficiary of the social contract. In its absence, you have rights solely to the extent that the strength of your own limbs can ensure them.
There are societies with neither taxation, or the idea of individual ownership of belongings.
Nothing does. You don't have an objective right to life.
>Everyone has natural rights.
There is no such thing as a natural right.
Natural right implies that it is a objective right, something that can be reasoned to be always true no matter the mindset of those who reason.
Human rights or just about all rights we have are subjective, we made them up.
And yes, that includes all basic human rights. Your right not to be violently murdered is at it's essence a subjective notion that you don't want to be murdered above all.
It's true that some documents have documented these rights, notably the declaration of independence and some other similar. But that doesn't change the subjectivity of these documents either.
>You don't have the right to take anything from me just because there's another person in the room.
Again, this is entirely subjective. The other two people in the room might massively disagree and argue that since their are in the majority, they have every right to do what they want with you and your property.
It entirely depends on the moral and ethical framework used by those in the room.
For some, it might be fully ethical to murder you and practice their cannibalism a bit.
>The state doesn't get special moral or justice exemptions just because it's a special type of group.
Which is just as subjective.
Most people in the US seem to agree that the moral framework they have constructed is beneficial to them and that a majority rule is sufficiently moral and ethical to ignore the complaints of the few.
You can whine about it all day but it doesn't change that the majority believes that a majority can rule (which is an entirely subjective notion).
You are free, now, presumably as an adult, to revoke your consent and citizenship. We won't stop you.
Until then, those are the rules of the country, and living here means abiding by them.
Again this isn't a compelling argument, or even a point. You might say that about any state - totalitarian or not. I'm struggling not to invoke Godwins law here.
The argument that "i didn't vote on this personally and therefore i did not consent" is not sane. It may be a sane argument before say, age of majority. Even then you could be emancipated and leave. But once you hit age of majority, you are consenting by staying. Note that in basically every legal system that has ever existed, you are also consenting by exercising any other rights. Like any contract, you don't get to pick and choose what parts you consent too, you can either ratify the document as a whole and adopt the contract or not.
Again, this logic leads to some terrifying conclusions. Your argument is that by living in an area under jurisdiction by a given state, you consent to everything the state does to you because you haven't fled. Again - think of all the things states potentially have the power to do, still do to this day, and have done in the past. It follows that everyone on the globe consents to these things unless they bcome refugees.
I've yet to see anyone make a coherent argument for "taxation isn't extortion" which doesn't immediately lead to the authoritarian conclusion that nothing a state does is a crime, and that anyone living in an area controlled by a state consents to whatever the state chooses to do. An argument I can at least respect "taxation is essentially extortion, but I believe the end justifies the means".
You have a say in how taxation works, through the political process. You're part of this system and are fully free to work to end all taxation.
And, you don't need to think that taxation is just, or fair, but it is in fact legal and applies to you until you either work to end it or move somewhere where it doesn't apply.
Theft is the unlawful, extrajudicial taking of something without permission.
Put simply: we all agreed to be taxed (for most of us, our parents agreed on our behalf when we were born), but theft happens without our agreeing to anything.
When you reach the age of majority, you are free to revoke your consent by leaving the area and renouncing your citizenship.
You really don't have to stay if you don't like the laws. You don't even have to move, if you can get enough people on board to changing them.
You have a lot of options, but very few of them make "taxation is theft" into a meaningful sentence.
The social contract is not a contract, it's an invalid excuse. If I made a contract which (1) I could change at any time without your consent, (2) I was in charge of enforcing, (3) I forced on you just because you were in a certain area which I deemed under my control, and (4) never let you opt out, no court in the world would support me.
Taxation is theft. The question is whether the moral violation is worth it.
So if we give up certain freedoms in this agreement (such as the 'right to not be taxed'), then it's not unjust - we have (tacitly, implicitly) consented to this. It's true that you the individual might not have consented, and might not have the means to leave if you don't like it. But the collective is consenting, and can change the constitution if they change their mind.
So taxation is not inherently unjust if the state's constitution says it can tax you by definition. You might think the social contract that we're using is bad, or that the constitution is bad, and that's fine, and you can change it democratically if enough people agree with you. But 'unjust' doesn't really work.
I wasn't aware that the state defines what is just and what is not. Does that mean that there are no unjust laws?
edit: here, I'll help you. For part (a) of this question, list four different meanings of the word 'law', and give an example of each. For part (b), describe what the word 'just' means when applied to each definition from part (a). (Hint: they are all different.)
You do not need to personally consent to or agree with all laws for them to apply to you.
You are also free to make taxation a point of civil disobedience, if you feel that strongly that it is immoral.
You are free to start a movement to eliminate all taxation, and if you succeed in having it become the law of the land, then taxation will no longer exist, of course, but it would still not be theft under any circumstances.
* You continue to be taxed even if you're not in the US. Additionally, the US uses its diplomatic advantages to strongarm foreign banks that serve US customers, even if those US customers are never present in the US.
* You have to pay a expatriation tax, and a $2,350 fee to renounce citizenship to avoid the above.
* Central banking gives the government much more control over the monetary system than is needed to pay for simple services. Look at China to see how bad this can be; the article is about Bitcoin, which is currently mostly used to evade oppressive currency controls in China. I consider our central banking system to be an indirect form of taxation.
If these 3 issues were changed, I'd put taxation closer to the 'not theft' than the 'theft' category. Until then, you have to pay the tax even if you don't want access to the US' society.
Are you are arguing that staying in a geographical area constitutes consent for whatever the state in control of it does?
No I'm saying that without the government you wouldn't be making this comment on the internet, in English, or even have had a roof over your head.
Nations are a way of making people proud of things that they did not do, and making people hate other people that they have never met.
I 100% do not rely on police or courts to protect my property - because they don't.
Even if you do that, the US will still tax you unless you also renounce your US citizenship. Which, incidentally, is not easy to do, and also requires paying a hefty fee (ie, "the tax you have to pay to get out of paying your tax").
Yeah, it's not really a valid argument, is it.
But saying "things that people have consented to in the past, that i have not, are not binding upon me, and therefore taxation is theft" makes no sense. The world existed before you were born. You can leave the country at any time.
> You can leave the country at any time.
You seem pretty confident. But you're wrong. There are countless barriers to exit, especially if you are poor. Even if I could leave, there is no viable stateless territory on which I can live.
Talk to your parents, and their parents, and their parents, who did. Like i said, this is pretty much only a valid argument until age of majority. But note: even before then, you are taking advantage of the contract, which is the essence of implied consent in every legal system.
". There are countless barriers to exit, especially if you are poor."
There literally are not. You may walk, all the way to a border, and exit, as many people have.
You may not be accepted elsewhere, nor may you have a good time, but that is different, and changes nothing about consent.
(remember that document you didn't consent to, that's the thing that tries to make it so you might have a good time here)
"Even if I could leave, there is no viable stateless territory on which I can live. " Nor does this change anything about consent either.
The fact that you want something does not mean that your inability to get it easily changes anything.
Nothing has ever been easy. You want a viable stateless territory, go make one, by force if necessary. Heck, you are complaining about lack of consent, go get people to consent to one. Suck it up.
Nothing in the above is a valid argument about you consenting or not, just an argument that "if i don't consent, life is tough."
To which the answer is: Yes, yes it is. That's why we created governments in the first place.
You seem to have a very very very strange view of what collective consent is. You seem to think it is "individual consent of literally every member of the collective", instead it is "output of collective decision making process". You may want that decision making process to be "every member of collective says yes", but that's just one form of collective consent, and at least here, not the one agreed to.
and again, you have your chance to ratify or not ratify the agreements your forebearers have made. If you choose to ratify and adopt, you've consented. If you choose to leave, great, you haven't. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim "i don't subscribe to the agreed collective decision making process but i want the benefits the collective have agreed to".
Collective consent is not a form of true consent. 51% of people in a room cannot decide what the other 49% have to do. That is tyranny, and it's ridiculous to think that the government even has the consent of the majority for half of the shit they do.
But you didn't consent to the contract. Choosing to stay in a country is not contenting to following any human-rights violating law the majority happens to pass. By your logic, any law implemented through the democratic process cannot be a human rights violation, as long as the citizens had an option to leave the country, since all citizens "consented to the contract" by choosing to stay in the country.
>You seem to have a very very very strange view of what collective consent is.
Terms like "collective consent" are double-speak, and mean exactly the opposite of what they imply. Other terms that fall in this category include "social justice", which blatantly violates justice, and "social contract", which is in no way a contract.
Instead, of course, we discover that parents in fact, sanely consent for children until those children are capable of consenting or not consenting for themselves.
We also discover the concept of implied consent, whereby people using the benefits of a contract have also consented to the burdens.
Can a parent consent for the child to have sex? Of course not. A parent can't sign their child's life into debt.
Parents can not consent for their children, especially when that consent entails being conscripted into military service, taxed, and being put in prison for possessing a plant.
Student loans aren't actually very far away from that. (Not everyone taking out a student loan is over 18 or the local age of majority, which I realize that you haven't personally consented to what that age of majority should be.)
I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this point.
i went to 8 schools before graduating high school. ranging qualities really depends on neighborhoods' wealth, unless there's a magnet/charter type school.