Re:Coinbase and the IRS
by tptacek on Sunday January 15, 2017 @10:08AM
(#13404287)
Your right to own property is a textbook example of the social contract at play, because without that contract your "right" extends exactly as far as your personal ability to prevent me from taking it.
[ Parent
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I have no contract with everyone. I cant recruit someone from other side of the country to prevent you from taking it.
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 ?
The history of the world, from feudalism to chattel slavery to honor societies to colonialism.
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.
As I said, I am dependent on others. But the others != citizens of a nation. Its a very small subset. And for the service I am happy to pay as humans have been paying since invention of society.
I'm not seeing where it is we disagree.
We disagree on size of state. The flexibility/unhappiness of the social contract increases with size of state. The consent/absense-of-it is easier to indicate as size decreases.
I wasn't making an argument about the size of the state.
Usually people support taxes/megastates/state-as-a-solution-for-everything in bundle. My bad if thats not the case here.
Re:Coinbase and the IRS
by icebraining on Sunday January 15, 2017 @04:01PM
(#13406376)
You're lucky that the Declaration of Independence is not part of the Constitution, otherwise you'd have to consent to the idea that those rights are endowed by the Creator :)