since taxes are conditional, to me they can be responsive rather than agressive. maybe call them fees or subcriptions. most of the taxes i have seen are conditional on citizenship , purchase, or/and or registration status.
What you're arguing here is that somehow force is justified as a response to a non-aggressive act. My simply earning income does not entitle others to a portion of that income. You're arguing that somehow it does...that the forceful taking of my earnings is not aggression, but merely a "response" to my earning income.
That has to be the lamest excuse to try to justify aggression I've ever heard.
Aggression in the context of the "non-aggression principle" is roughly defined as the initiation of force. Simply claiming that the taking of my income by force is a "response" to my earning an income does not negate the fact that it is an initiation of force.
it could take a few reposts to get where i mean
people sign a contract for and agree to be citizens under a republic. part of the contract means that taxes will be paid under certain conditions. those conditions are met. since the agreed apon conditions are met, the tax is honering the contract. not paying the tax would be breeching the contract. there is no agression between the people who have agreed to be citizens when the taxes are paid. after someone refuses to pay the tax, thus breeching the contract, tax collecters are sent to enforce the contract that both parties had signed and agreed to be a part of. like any club, so is a state with each person agreeing to be part of the state. the contract has rights, and duties that people must do or breech the contract. not paying taxes is breeching the contract, paying taxes is honering the contract. the initial agression that takes place in when people refuse to pay what they have said they would pay.
if people sign a contract where paying taxes is part of the contract, then not paying taxes is agression and breech of contract
cab21:people sign a contract for and agree to be citizens under a republic.
Please show me this contract I allegedly signed.
that can be a problem for natural born citizenship, but there is also the case of people applying to be citizens. part of it is that taxes and contracts apply on action
the contract can also be signed by doing any government business , such as registering private property or a business with the government.
someone who does not want to sign the contract would not pay taxes, but they would pay whatever they had to to use the property owned by people that have signed the contract, and that could mean paying the taxes of the person who has registered a business with the government. with doing business with government property or with someone who has signed the contract, a person agrees to pay what they need to in that transaction.
noone is made to be a part of it, but they are made to deal with the contract if they engage with people that have signed the contract.
cab21:that can be a problem for natural born citizenship
So basically you're saying you can't produce this contract you claim I signed.
So tell me again how initiating force against me is justified?
the constitution would be the contract.
i think the best i can do here is say is some cases, not all, that taxes are justified
if someone wants and owns their own private land and wants their own soverenty with no registration with the government or its constitution, they would not be taxed in that way or treated as a citizen.
looks like the nap way for citizenship would only be speficic opt in naturalization and citizenship.
Even so, if I want to build a house on some portion of land that is unowned, I would have to have government permission and pay taxes over my property afterwards. All that just because allegedly the government is the owner of all land inside an arbitrary imaginary line. Is important to note that 'the government' is just a bunch of individuals.
So, logically, this is similar to me and a group of friends pointing guns to all neighborhood, demanding a portion of their incomes because we own the land where they leave in, showing them a piece of paper (constitution) to prove it. Not nice, imo.
cab21:the constitution would be the contract.
I assume you mean this constitution. I can assure you, I did not sign that.
So tell me again how
a) I am to be held to a contract I did not agree to
b) initiating force against me is justified
cab21:since taxes are conditional, to me they can be responsive rather than agressive. maybe call them fees or subcriptions. most of the taxes i have seen are conditional on citizenship , purchase, or/and or registration status.
Conditional on citizenship? What you're saying, in roundabout way, is that being a citizen obligates you to pay taxes. Obligations must be accepted voluntarily ahead of time. Thus, forcing an obligation on someone is an aggression, just as if I showed up with an orphan and said you're now obligated to adopt him. No, you're only obligated to care for the orphan if you accept that obligation.
This is the great apologist argument, that citizenship obligates one to this and that. But it fails the NAP-sniff test immediately.
Note that even the government does not make this argument. Technically, USG gives no (non-statutory) legal reason why you must pay taxes - you have to pay taxes because they wrote something on a piece of paper that says you have to pay taxes. There is no better reason than that and there sure as hell isn't any contract or agreement between anybody and the government regarding taxes. Contracts can be terminated/settled. Taxes cannot. Taxes are perpetual and there is no prior limit to the extent of taxation.
Clayton -
Before I clicked Clayton's link I was going to go ahead and embed this anyway...
But on this note, technically the income tax is not even a law (i.e. written on a piece of paper)...
property ownership is agression.
property is optained and maintained by violence. so by nap does that put morality on "first" and then agreed to by trade?
what makes human vs human different than human vs other natureal aspects of life on the planet?
eating is agressive
if writing on a peice of paper does not mean anything, how are voluntary contracts to be done? ive put on here that becoming a citizen by choice is a different criteria then having citizenship forced on birth and trying to apply it to people who have not signed it.
there are different types of taxes, so income taxes don't need to be part of the tax discussion. part of it could be property taxes charged to people who register property. now the tax can be called a fee or subcription, but essentialy it's supposed to be a payment for service that won't be charged to people that don't use the service. requiring payment for using a road would be another example, the fee can be called a toll or a tax or fee or whatever, its raising revenue from people that use the service or the property.
@cab21
property ownership is agression. property is optained and maintained by violence. so by nap does that put morality on "first" and then agreed to by trade?
Why? And, if property is theft, why states can be the owners of all land?
what makes human vs human different than human vs other natureal aspects of life on the planet? eating is agressive
I disagree with eating being agressive. To live you have to eat, so not eating would be an agression with yourself. Eating is a natural proccess, and nature just is. There is not right and wrong about nature. But human societies are not natural, in the biologic sense of the word, so, you can't say that taxation is natural just because it is happening now. In other words, we don't need taxation to sustain our bodies, unlike eating, so this argument does not follow.
Voluntary contracts are only valid if they are voluntary, that is, if both parties agree. The constitution does not fit in the definition of a voluntary contract, thus it is really only a piece of paper. As for "voluntary citizens", or imigrants, they left a country where they were forced to be citizens as well, so that can't be used in defense of states.
The name doesn't matter. If it is forcibly acquired, it violates the NAP (not that you find it relevant). Furthermore, I don't use all the services I'm forced to pay. For example, I'm brazilian, and Brazil has universal healthcare (guess what? it's a dump). I don't use it, because honestly, I'm afraid to use it. The majority of hospitals are so bad that people lie on the corridors, for there are no accomodations for them.
im saying agression is part of nature and part of survival, just how we are agressive is up to choice.
eating is resource posative, taking from one to give to another.
a business needs revenue and customers to survive and must be resource positive
the interaction of a business and customer each each give to each other.
if a person uses a business services, they can expect to pay, saying that its agressive to force someone to pay for something they have already consumed seems that it's responsive force. to not have the obligation to pay, a person can avoid use of the business services or property.
the land of a government could just be the sum of the land of the voluntary citizens and how they choose to delegate it's care and management. the land can be gained from trade or homestead. someone coming into that owned land would have to follow what the government has chosen as to what payments are in order for usage of the service or property.
payments would not be required from services not used, although the funds could be used to pay for them, like any private business does.
cab21: im saying agression is part of nature and part of survival, just how we are agressive is up to choice. eating is resource posative, taking from one to give to another. a business needs revenue and customers to survive and must be resource positive the interaction of a business and customer each each give to each other. if a person uses a business services, they can expect to pay, saying that its agressive to force someone to pay for something they have already consumed seems that it's responsive force. to not have the obligation to pay, a person can avoid use of the business services or property. the land of a government could just be the sum of the land of the voluntary citizens and how they choose to delegate it's care and management. the land can be gained from trade or homestead. someone coming into that owned land would have to follow what the government has chosen as to what payments are in order for usage of the service or property. payments would not be required from services not used, although the funds could be used to pay for them, like any private business does.
I think we're not on the same page here when it comes to agression. Wikipedia definition of agression:
Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation. In narrower definitions that are used insocial sciences and behavioral sciences, aggression is an intention to cause harm or an act intended to increase relative social dominance. Predatory or defensive behavior between members of different species may not be considered aggression in the same sense. Aggression can take a variety of forms and can be physical or be communicated verbally or non-verbally. Aggression differs from what is commonly called assertiveness, although the terms are often used interchangeably among laypeople, e.g. an aggressive salesperson
As you can see, predatory agression may not be considered agression in the same sense. You can consider, but, as I said in my last post, nature just is. Humans have to agress against other animals to survive (vegetarians would disagree, but the evidence that humans evolved eating meat is pretty clear. As a side note, I'm a vegetarian, but I'm considering a primal diet. Alright, enough of it). In human social realm, though, agression is viewed quite differently. So, keeping agression on human social relations, I don't agree with your assertion that we agress anyway, so it's just a matter of choice of agression. First off, I don't think we agress anyway, because just acting to meet biological needs is not to agress, and even if we did, who chose the state? In the US, for example, virtually NOBODY that is alive today was born when the constitution was written. Of course, a case could be made that most people today support the state, at least in some way. But the few who don't can't opt out of this system. In fact, if people could opt out of it, then a state would not exist in the first place. I suspect that even some supporters of state action would not pay taxes if they could choose. Actually, I think a lot would not pay.
So, we just have this construction called the state, that eveybody is forced to comply, whether we like it or not. Why have it instead of a non-agressive system, i.e, the market? I'm not even mentioning the morality of it. We have PLENTY of facts and data showing that state intervention are only doing harm to societies. Just search the website.
predatory agression wise, i think that happens eating with both meat and plant material. both animals and plants are living beings that take resources to grow and survive. building a farm out of a wooded area uses force to change nature, i also think perhaps if we have total private ownership, that it needs to mean more than just land marked off by human use. we need to have areas that can be trusts with human stewardship that can be santuarys for animals if the property owners choose such use.
agression human relationship wise, as in intention to harm or social dominance, that is something i think is easyer to avoid. whether we have private or state protection services and collection services, they will need to be forceful be definition to those that resist obligations. a free market will still have courts and law and enforcement. the systems are in place not for when things go well, but when people choose to breech contracts or be initiate agression. business will choose how people pay for services and tell people how they will be delt with should they use a service and not pay.
right now a state can give the right to secede, my thought was particpation in a state as being only opt in.
im really just starting to explore these ideas, a large part of what i'm thinking about is that i can't find any ancap or minarch society that was not taken over by a state. the world is shaped more by agression then ideas such as voluntary interaction only and the non agression principle.
predatory agression wise, i think that happens eating with both meat and plant material. both animals and plants are living beings that take resources to grow and survive. building a farm out of a wooded area uses force to change nature, i also think perhaps if we have total private ownership, that it needs to mean more than just land marked off by human use. we need to have areas that can be trusts with human stewardship that can be santuarys for animals if the property owners choose such use. agression human relationship wise, as in intention to harm or social dominance, that is something i think is easyer to avoid. whether we have private or state protection services and collection services, they will need to be forceful be definition to those that resist obligations. a free market will still have courts and law and enforcement. the systems are in place not for when things go well, but when people choose to breech contracts or be initiate agression. business will choose how people pay for services and tell people how they will be delt with should they use a service and not pay.
EDIT: Actually, consumers would choose what to pay for. Bussinesses that successfully supply the demand of the consumers would survive on the market.
Yeah, but the state, i.e, a handful of people, created this right for themselves, pretty much like the guy on the video Clayton and JJ posted above explained. As we can see, there is really no opt in or out.
But that doesn't mean that it will never happen. We (by we I mean people who acknowledge the value of liberty) are here for the change. We may not see it in our lifetime (just like many who advocated change in the past, but didn't see it in their's), but history showed as well that every central planning society fell apart. I believe that someday, and I really wish to see this, we will grow out of this state paradigm. Just a matter of time. Until then, we learn, we teach, and we stand for what is truthful and principled. At least that's what I try to do.
cab21:property ownership is agression.
Christ. Not this again.
property is optained and maintained by violence.
I find a rock on the ground in the forest. I pick it up and keep it. I have obtained new property. When did the violence occur, exactly?
when you walked throught the forest, when you picked up the rock. when you kept the rock. if people are able to consider steping on private property trespass and want to have consequences for it (such as trespasers will be shot signs and a willingness to shoot on sight), this as well would be , a physical change in the environment. it takes physcial force to walk though a forest and pick up the rock. there can be animals that use that rock and it would be taking away their home. there is a whole ecosystem in place that is being disrupted when that rock is taken from it.
cab21:when you walked throught the forest, [...] if people are able to consider steping on private party trespass, this as well would be...
The forest has no established owner.
"when did the violence occur, exactly?" when you picked up the rock. when you kept the rock. it takes physcial force to walk though a forest and pick up the rock. there can be animals that use that rock and it would be taking away their home. there is a whole ecosystem in place that is being disrupted when that rock is taken from it.
when you picked up the rock. when you kept the rock. it takes physcial force to walk though a forest and pick up the rock. there can be animals that use that rock and it would be taking away their home. there is a whole ecosystem in place that is being disrupted when that rock is taken from it.
so there can be a ecosystem in place, then some alian entity can walk in and claim part of the ecosystem as the entitys property that it can rightfully remove?
it takes physcial force to pick up a rock, if a giant picks up your house because no giant has claimed your house, is that force violent or not? ok , force, can be a better word than violence
Business create and supply demand, so this is not different what I meant to say. Chicken and egg. Business decide what to offer, consumers decide what to purchase, and the best matches are the most successful. Sometimes though and geography wise, two business can’t own the same space and consumers will have to pay one to use the space. With current roads, if they turned private, a person would have no choice but to take multiple roads and pay multiple owners of those roads in some cases, ownership of the space is monopoly
Depends on what the constitution and contract they write up says. Usa constitution allows noncitizens to becomes citizens and citizens to become noncitizens. Free contracts allow people to give up what they want to give up. A person can’t call it theft if they agreed that another person could take it. Consent can’t be given to do things without consent. The contract is multiple ways and not one way.
That’s good
But if Geogists are correct about property, then taxes are justified.. Or more precisely, that one tax..
With current roads, if they turned private, a person would have no choice but to take multiple roads and pay multiple owners of those roads in some cases, ownership of the space is monopoly
Well, you have a monopoly over your body, but that doesn't mean that someone has any right over you. The same goes with property you have originally acquired (just like the rock example JJ gave). States don't acquire property, they say that they have the right over a definite portion of land and an arbitrary amount of the property of every person who was born on that land. If I say that I own your car, that doesn't make your car mine. As for roads, market solutions would exist, of course. Walter Block on private roads and highways.
A person can’t call it theft if they agreed that another person could take it.
Right, but who agreed on the constitution?
stats do aquire property, they purchase territory and make treaties. people can also donate land to the state, the state can also have the state representative walk into the forest and take the rock. the usa constitution only gives government power granted to it by the citizens and the government serves the citizens. the citizens have the right to disolve the government should they feel it is not serving their needs.
as for agreeing to the constitution, there were people that ratified it and gave consent to be governed by it. the constitution can control those who consent to it. people agree when they become citizens, so my thought is that people only become citizens by consent and not by birth. the citizens determine what the constituion says and have the power to amend it or get rid of it.
ill look at the walter block highway book. i guess my big question is how used land with no current "legitimate" owner is supposed to be delt out? if it's illegetimate for the state to own land, it would be illigetimate for the state to give it or sell it, but this is all land citizens are already using so there is no first usage to be had.
cab21: stats do aquire property, they purchase territory and make treaties. people can also donate land to the state, the state can also have the state representative walk into the forest and take the rock. the usa constitution only gives government power granted to it by the citizens and the government serves the citizens. the citizens have the right to disolve the government should they feel it is not serving their needs. as for agreeing to the constitution, there were people that ratified it and gave consent to be governed by it. the constitution can control those who consent to it. people agree when they become citizens, so my thought is that people only become citizens by consent and not by birth. the citizens determine what the constituion says and have the power to amend it or get rid of it. ill look at the walter block highway book. i guess my big question is how used land with no current "legitimate" owner is supposed to be delt out? if it's illegetimate for the state to own land, it would be illigetimate for the state to give it or sell it, but this is all land citizens are already using so there is no first usage to be had.
Yeah but remember, states claim to own simply all land within an arbitrary geographic portion. And states, as I said earlier, are just a bunch of individuals who agressed against other people. If you think people should only become citizens with consent, than there's no state anymore by that premise, because by definition states oblige other people to comply.
As for roads, there's lots of ideas for how private roads could function. You can look into Block's book, and there are other resources as well, like the very wiki article about the book. It contains links of other articles about the subject.
people that apply for usa citizenship are not compelled to apply for citizenship. they arent compelled to come to this geography. if all the geography was owned by private owners in a ancap way, it still would not allow people to just come without being invited
private landowners association land wise, right now im still fuzzy on the neccicary different between that and something that can call itself a government. all corporations have governence. a group of people can homestead land, agree to purchase law from a company they set up, and agree that anytime they sell land, the new owner must use the law organization as part of the condition of buying the land. they can set the company up to allow the company to be broken apart later or even put it in the contract that people are allowed to leave at any time and will no longer get protection from the law company.
by the time we are calling 99% people agressive against others, that looks like a big paradigm to try and shift. there has not even been a society that has not agressed and survived generation to generation without agressing by this standard that any state is itself defined as agression. that makes any registered citizen or business agressive.
im looking at articles from the site
http://archive.mises.org/2502/states-cannot-own-property/ this even says that states have the right to emenent domain over it's own citizens in point 4. if that is ok for a states own citizens, taxes can also be ok for its own citizens. if all citizens are said to be agressive with a agressive state then it's just some mass of agressive people.
if all the geography was owned by private owners in a ancap way, it still would not allow people to just come without being invited
All geography? Only governments do that. Imagine for now that there's no governments. Look at the amount of unowned land there is today.
people that apply for usa citizenship are not compelled to apply for citizenship. they arent compelled to come to this geography.
I'm brazilian, and it is optional for me to apply to USA citizenship, but as I said earlier, I already have a government forcing me to pay taxes, the brazilian government.
by the time we are calling 99% people agressive against others, that looks like a big paradigm to try and shift.
Tell me about it...but people slowly are starting to see the value of liberty, I think. Besides, with all the stupidity the states in general are doing lately, its getting easier to see
we have to at least have land trusts and ways for people to own wilderness in ancap right? i would not like the idea of some hunter going in and killing animals because noone owns the land so the hunter has the right to just go kill anything in nonhomesteaded land. privatise some state parks and then the whole area of geography can legitimately be owned by someone who does want hunting or wants to regulate hunting in a certain way. can yellowstone and other stateheld parks be sold to people that choose to conserve it privatly or must it be turned into unowned property people can choose to claim and desimate in small chunks or go through and kill what they want to kill without the rules of any public or private owner of the land to stop them?
whole areas of geography have to have the ability for ownership without people needing to use the land, or at least people must have the choice to use land in a way that could include minimal human trafic.
a person would not be taxed to use the space, but there could be a fee to use the space, and the private owner could lable that fee a tax. if private land owners could only receive money by users volunteering to give them money, they are not land owners at all. the private land owner must have soverenty over that property and the ability to demand behaviar or it's not ownership. im mainly just going here as when i read about taxes government tolls and fees are included, and private companies include tolls and fees as part of doing business
Cab, you seem to be saying whatever government decides is OK because government owns the land, or maybe whatever 51% decide is proper because they voted for it (I'm not sure which) just one question to maybe move this forward. Did slavery only become immoral when the law made it illegal?
forcing slavery is immoral with or without a law . a law making slavery legal cannot make it moral. slavery could be seen as different than servitude i think though
voluntary servitude is a choice i think, only immoral if it means violating others at the command of a owner. some types of servidute mainly involved just the labor and then people were free for family life and choices of their own
involuntary servitude is immoral when it's because of the initiation of violence.
i think I'm saying owners can make conditions that cause others to leave or volunteer to meet the conditions and stay.
if people agree in a contract that a 51% vote will mean a change in the law, then that seems voluntary.
in private business, lot's of decisions are made by 1 person with 51% ownership of a company.
i think the land ownership can be close to what i am saying.
if a man's house is he castle, and the man is king of his castle, then he is the head of state. if he requires his children take out the garbage or leave the house, it gives the children the choice to do the chore or leave the property and make their own way and deal with other people and other property. can a child say "what contract" and insist on living under the roof and call it violating NAP if the father says the child is no longer welcome in the home and must leave?
since a lot of government would not give the government ownership of people's property, the case would be that government decides what is ok because of bilateral contract. i think a state can made out of a non-state with private land owners who get together and make a institution that they are all a part of and decide how to govern. the state is a union of sovereign individual property owners in this case.
i think I'm saying owners can make conditions that cause others to leave or volunteer to meet the conditions and stay. a tax ( or fee) can be a response to a person choosing to stay and use the property of the owner or enter the property of the owner. someone in their own sovereign state or property would not be obliged to pay another state, apart from usage fees that could come from a state putting on it's own citizens or people that enter the land citizens own.
here we go again
*picks popcorn*
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)