People who oppose taxation are like people who oppose rent
Oh, you want free stuff? Get in line, the real world costs money
Libertarianism is just crybaby communism
When taken to its logical conclusion, your arguments imply that all your bitcoin along with your body, standing room, labour, devices, house, resources, land, etc. are all *collectively* and *democratically* owned by your government, and not you.
Leading to the stance that surveillance of your bitcoin transactions is permitted since the government rightfully owns your bitcoin and deserves to know about the coins they own.
If you have the time to read, I can explain why your arguments lead to such a conclusion. I'll leave out my own value judgements from this as much as I can.
The basic arguments from this post and your other replies, as I understand it, are as follows:
1. Taxation is the same as rent paid to a landlord, except that it's compulsory.
2. Which means governments are the same as landlords. They own *everything* within their jurisdiction, and can extract rent for its usage.
3. Not wanting to pay rent means you want something for free. Communists oppose rent and want free stuff, ergo libertarians also want free stuff because they oppose taxes, which are basically rents.
I'll address these directly and make my case for why they lead to the conclusions mentioned above.
1. Taxation is the same as rent paid to a landlord, except that it's compulsory.
A rental agreement involves a renter permitting the rentee to use a property he owns for a particular duration in certain ways under certain conditions. A rent is what the owner of the property gets in exchange for letting the rentee use his property for his own ends.
At any point in time, either party can exit the agreement and cancel the contract. When this happens, the rentee is no longer permitted to use the property that the renter owns.
If taxation is rent, then
- An income tax implies that your income is owned by the government, or in your definition, the renter/landlord.
-A goods and services tax implies that your goods and services are owned by the government.
- A property tax implies that your property is owned by the government.
- A capital gains tax on bitcoin implies that any value that bitcoin goes up by is owned by the government.
Thus, when you fail to pay rent/taxes, and want to exit the government's jurisdiction, you must hand over everything you've paid taxes on, since it was all rent paid for temporary use of what is owned by the government, rightfully so, according to you.
It's either this or we agree that a tax 'law' is different from a rental 'agreement'.
And if the government is indeed like that landlord, it will of course want to know whatever there is to know about the resources it owns. Surveillance, in such a rental agreement, is similar to the landlord collecting information about what he owns. It is totally justified and privacy becomes a criminal offence.
2. Governments are the same as landlords. They own *everything* within their jurisdiction, and can extract rent for its usage.
Ownership of a scarce resource exists so that conflict between multiple people over who uses that scarce resource and for what purposes can be resolved.
Ownership can be acquired either through (i) proof-of-work or (ii) fiat
(i) Proof of work: This means that the first person who puts a scarce unowned resource into use (first-use owner) or acquires that resource from another first-use owner (contractual owner) is the rightful owner.
(ii) Fiat: This means that a person who arbitrarily declares that a particular scarce resource is his or acquires that resource through the use of force from a first-use or contractual owner, is the rightful owner.
Governments always and everywhere come to own a set of scarce resources based on fiat or a maintenance or creation of fiat. Under such ownership conditions, aggression and force is implicitly permitted, and conflict will always ensue without resolution. The fiat owner will always look to maximise his income and will use the means of aggression, force and recently, surveillance to do it. He will not stop with a 'fair' or 'just' amount of taxation because there are no such things to him.
A state of fiat ownership means that whatever exists within the fiat owner's 'jurisdiction' is permitted to be exploited. Rent on everything, including your bitcoin, is thus permitted. This necessitates surveillance because how else is the renter supposed to know how much rent he is owed without it?
Of course, checks and balances, separation of powers, democratic governance, constitutional limits can all be proposed as counters to prevent this or put limits on this, but realistic incentives do exist for such legal concepts to be overrided through emergencies, wars, crisis, threats, etc. Governments are comprised of people and people do tend to want to maximise their income.
3. 'Not wanting to pay rent means you want something for free. Communists oppose rent and want free stuff, ergo libertarians also want free stuff because they oppose taxes.'
Communists do not necessarily want everything to be obtained free of cost. They want everything to be unowned, because they think all ownership is derived from violence and exploitation, i.e, by fiat. For them, charging rent is a form of exploitation, which is a no-go.
This is understandable if one looks at history and present and sees no evidence of resources being acquired through proof-of-work, but only sees fiat means applied. Add this to their own definitions of economic value, exchange, profits, exploitation, etc. and you'll be able to get where they're coming from. The solution for them to such a state of affairs is to abolish all forms of ownership.
In the question of ownership and rent, they actually want everyone to own everything or nobody to own anything. That way, rent does not get charged at all. 'Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' as they say.
This of course means conflict over the use of scarce resources will ensue without resolution, since nobody will be able to do anything with anything if such a system is actually implemented. Eventually an entity will emerge to resolve such conflicts, who will then charge rent. But they believe this entity can eventually bring in a communist society without any ownership or rent, in the future.
Libertarians are okay with rent as long as the owner of the scarce resource they want to use acquired it through first-use or contractual means. Their definition of theft and exploitation is limited to the action of using fiat means to acquire ownership or income. So for them, an entity which claims ownership through fiat is a thieving one.
So it's understandable that they do not want governments to exist or to charge taxes.
It's not that they do not want the services provided by the government or that they want it free of cost. They want those services to be provided by competing entities and want to be able to enter and exit relationships contractually. They advocate against non-contractual and fiat means of acquring income or ownership. They advocate against a monopoly provider as they believe that such a provider will always provide substandard services that will not be improved. They want privatization, deregulation, sound money, etc. as well.
How realistic either communism or libertarianism are in practice, is a different question for which different people will give different answers based on their own biases and social, legal and political theories of their and worldviews they have chosen for themselves.
But one set of ideas do lead to a world where privacy and rent remains a choice and the other lead to a world where surveillance and rent become a necessity.
They are aware of what the world is. Not like either are totally ignorant of the realities of the world we live in.
They are arguing for what ought to be, which you don't seem to like. So I can understand why you are annoyed at them.
But what can be said with certainty is that as long as governments exist as territorial monopolies on violence and keep charging taxes, or 'rent' in your definition, for everything they own right now, which is, according to your definition, everything that exists within what the government considers as its 'jurisdiction', ownership of anything by any individual cannot co-exist as time goes by.
Which is to say that governments are socialisic/communistic entities, in practice.
The 'landlord' will want to maximise his income and will want to have full insight into what he owns.
It's only realistic to expect, based on both reason and evidence, that said landlord will look to charge as much rent as possible over time and ignore any notions of 'fair' or 'just' or 'limited' taxation.
And that said landlord will criminalize the action of hiding what he rightfully owns, making privacy a crime.
Leading to the stance that surveillance of your bitcoin transactions is permitted since the government rightfully owns your bitcoin and deserves to know about the coins they own.
If you have the time to read, I can explain why your arguments lead to such a conclusion. I'll leave out my own value judgements from this as much as I can.
The basic arguments from this post and your other replies, as I understand it, are as follows:
1. Taxation is the same as rent paid to a landlord, except that it's compulsory.
2. Which means governments are the same as landlords. They own *everything* within their jurisdiction, and can extract rent for its usage.
3. Not wanting to pay rent means you want something for free. Communists oppose rent and want free stuff, ergo libertarians also want free stuff because they oppose taxes, which are basically rents.
I'll address these directly and make my case for why they lead to the conclusions mentioned above.
1. Taxation is the same as rent paid to a landlord, except that it's compulsory.
A rental agreement involves a renter permitting the rentee to use a property he owns for a particular duration in certain ways under certain conditions. A rent is what the owner of the property gets in exchange for letting the rentee use his property for his own ends.
At any point in time, either party can exit the agreement and cancel the contract. When this happens, the rentee is no longer permitted to use the property that the renter owns.
If taxation is rent, then
- An income tax implies that your income is owned by the government, or in your definition, the renter/landlord.
-A goods and services tax implies that your goods and services are owned by the government.
- A property tax implies that your property is owned by the government.
- A capital gains tax on bitcoin implies that any value that bitcoin goes up by is owned by the government.
Thus, when you fail to pay rent/taxes, and want to exit the government's jurisdiction, you must hand over everything you've paid taxes on, since it was all rent paid for temporary use of what is owned by the government, rightfully so, according to you.
It's either this or we agree that a tax 'law' is different from a rental 'agreement'.
And if the government is indeed like that landlord, it will of course want to know whatever there is to know about the resources it owns. Surveillance, in such a rental agreement, is similar to the landlord collecting information about what he owns. It is totally justified and privacy becomes a criminal offence.
2. Governments are the same as landlords. They own *everything* within their jurisdiction, and can extract rent for its usage.
Ownership of a scarce resource exists so that conflict between multiple people over who uses that scarce resource and for what purposes can be resolved.
Ownership can be acquired either through (i) proof-of-work or (ii) fiat
(i) Proof of work: This means that the first person who puts a scarce unowned resource into use (first-use owner) or acquires that resource from another first-use owner (contractual owner) is the rightful owner.
(ii) Fiat: This means that a person who arbitrarily declares that a particular scarce resource is his or acquires that resource through the use of force from a first-use or contractual owner, is the rightful owner.
Governments always and everywhere come to own a set of scarce resources based on fiat or a maintenance or creation of fiat. Under such ownership conditions, aggression and force is implicitly permitted, and conflict will always ensue without resolution. The fiat owner will always look to maximise his income and will use the means of aggression, force and recently, surveillance to do it. He will not stop with a 'fair' or 'just' amount of taxation because there are no such things to him.
A state of fiat ownership means that whatever exists within the fiat owner's 'jurisdiction' is permitted to be exploited. Rent on everything, including your bitcoin, is thus permitted. This necessitates surveillance because how else is the renter supposed to know how much rent he is owed without it?
Of course, checks and balances, separation of powers, democratic governance, constitutional limits can all be proposed as counters to prevent this or put limits on this, but realistic incentives do exist for such legal concepts to be overrided through emergencies, wars, crisis, threats, etc. Governments are comprised of people and people do tend to want to maximise their income.
3. 'Not wanting to pay rent means you want something for free. Communists oppose rent and want free stuff, ergo libertarians also want free stuff because they oppose taxes.'
Communists do not necessarily want everything to be obtained free of cost. They want everything to be unowned, because they think all ownership is derived from violence and exploitation, i.e, by fiat. For them, charging rent is a form of exploitation, which is a no-go.
This is understandable if one looks at history and present and sees no evidence of resources being acquired through proof-of-work, but only sees fiat means applied. Add this to their own definitions of economic value, exchange, profits, exploitation, etc. and you'll be able to get where they're coming from. The solution for them to such a state of affairs is to abolish all forms of ownership.
In the question of ownership and rent, they actually want everyone to own everything or nobody to own anything. That way, rent does not get charged at all. 'Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' as they say.
This of course means conflict over the use of scarce resources will ensue without resolution, since nobody will be able to do anything with anything if such a system is actually implemented. Eventually an entity will emerge to resolve such conflicts, who will then charge rent. But they believe this entity can eventually bring in a communist society without any ownership or rent, in the future.
Libertarians are okay with rent as long as the owner of the scarce resource they want to use acquired it through first-use or contractual means. Their definition of theft and exploitation is limited to the action of using fiat means to acquire ownership or income. So for them, an entity which claims ownership through fiat is a thieving one.
So it's understandable that they do not want governments to exist or to charge taxes.
It's not that they do not want the services provided by the government or that they want it free of cost. They want those services to be provided by competing entities and want to be able to enter and exit relationships contractually. They advocate against non-contractual and fiat means of acquring income or ownership. They advocate against a monopoly provider as they believe that such a provider will always provide substandard services that will not be improved. They want privatization, deregulation, sound money, etc. as well.
How realistic either communism or libertarianism are in practice, is a different question for which different people will give different answers based on their own biases and social, legal and political theories of their and worldviews they have chosen for themselves.
But one set of ideas do lead to a world where privacy and rent remains a choice and the other lead to a world where surveillance and rent become a necessity.
They are aware of what the world is. Not like either are totally ignorant of the realities of the world we live in.
They are arguing for what ought to be, which you don't seem to like. So I can understand why you are annoyed at them.
But what can be said with certainty is that as long as governments exist as territorial monopolies on violence and keep charging taxes, or 'rent' in your definition, for everything they own right now, which is, according to your definition, everything that exists within what the government considers as its 'jurisdiction', ownership of anything by any individual cannot co-exist as time goes by.
Which is to say that governments are socialisic/communistic entities, in practice.
The 'landlord' will want to maximise his income and will want to have full insight into what he owns.
It's only realistic to expect, based on both reason and evidence, that said landlord will look to charge as much rent as possible over time and ignore any notions of 'fair' or 'just' or 'limited' taxation.
And that said landlord will criminalize the action of hiding what he rightfully owns, making privacy a crime.
1❤️1