HeavenlyPossumTaxation is theft.
Rents are a form of tax.
Voron@HeavenlyPossum if taxation is theft, then no roads for anyone 🤷♂️
I’m not sure why we’d need taxes to fund roads, since roads existed before taxes.
@HeavenlyPossum really? You would have to go all the way back before feudal times 🤔 no even further, so yeah there were tracks made by cart wheels that were called roads before taxes, those awesome Roman roads were even paid for by taxes
- Roads predate states. States are much older than either the Roman state or the medieval period. We don’t need taxes to have roads.
- States don’t tax to fund spending.
- Coercion is bad. If people have to be coerced into doing something, it’s probably not worth doing. If it is worth doing, then people will probably do it without being coerced.
- The usefulness of coercion to you is not a good justification for coercion.
@HeavenlyPossum yup dirt tracks predate states, not a fan of drive on dirt tracks
“People living thousands of years ago didn’t have asphalt” is not a particularly good argument for the state.
@HeavenlyPossum well, pragmatism never works with idealists
The observation that people in nonstate societies without taxes still have roads is empirical, not idealist.
@HeavenlyPossum ok show me a place today without any taxation with roads that are functional for my Honda Fit
Not sure if your dork car can handle roads in places like Chiapas, but, again, your argument seems to boil down to “men with guns should extract resources at gunpoint to fund amenities for me and my dork car” which still isn’t compelling.
@HeavenlyPossum not compelling “to you”, changing societies requires something be compelling to a fairly large number of people
So to be clear, you’re acknowledging that you’re happy men with guns coercively extract resources and compel labor so you can comfortably drive your dork car around?
@HeavenlyPossum To be clear you are offering no viable solution other than going back to living in huts and living as hunter gathers.
Give me a viable alternative
Give me a viable alternative
Can you identify where I’ve said that?
@HeavenlyPossum can you identify where I have said the stuff about extracting money with guns?
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That’s your interpretation so I gave you mine, fair is fair.
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Like I said give me your viable alternative, you haven’t so I have to fill in the blanks 🤷♂️
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That’s your interpretation so I gave you mine, fair is fair.
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Like I said give me your viable alternative, you haven’t so I have to fill in the blanks 🤷♂️
What do you think taxes are? How do you think the state compels people to pay taxes? Does the state threaten to, say, tickle you if you don’t pay your taxes? Or maybe something a little harsher?
My alternative is “people freely and voluntarily engaging in cooperative effort,” but a critical identification of taxes and rents as theft does not rely on presenting an alternative.
@HeavenlyPossum thats an ambiguous theory, you like empirical stuff right?
Give me a functional example
Give me a functional example
Chiapas, Zomia, Tristan da Cunha, any time you and your mates get together and buy each other a round.
@HeavenlyPossum are you talking modern current Chiapas
@voron “Chiapas” is a synecdoche for the parts of the state that were liberated by the Zapatistas
@HeavenlyPossum how were the Zapatistas funded? How are those ares funded? Is there a firewall between the funding the Zapatistas get/got is there a firewall between all external funding & resources?
@HeavenlyPossum I’ll look into it Btw
Oh whew I was really worried there for a sec
@HeavenlyPossum because there are taxes in Chiapas right now https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalities_of_Chiapas
@HeavenlyPossum I have a feeling you don’t have one, and that’s ok
@HeavenlyPossum that model works great…for hunter gatherers living in huts 🤷♂️
Not sure why you’re so reluctant to answer the question, or why you think so little of people that you can’t imagine them engaging in voluntary cooperation.
@HeavenlyPossum imagination is great I can imagine it just fine and I like doing so I also like imagining dragons 😊
So to you, people engaged in voluntary cooperation is as fantastical as dragons?
Mr. MustacheAfter watching people for the last 20 years or so, and studying much more of history, I would say emphatically that voluntary empathy/co-operation is about as realistic as dragons for most people.
The vast majority of modern governments are deeply broken, to the point that I do not believe that they can be fixed. That doesn't mean that some sort of more equitable system won't need to be built.
My personal ideal is a democratic federation very similar to the Fediverse. Some baseline stuff (like infrastructure, education, and Healthcare) helps EVERYONE so everyone can help fund it. Otherwise the groups sort themselves out and leaving for another area should be easy and cheap.
Strong centralized power is ALWAYS bad but co-operation for the common good sometimes requires co-operation instead of requesting.
@HeavenlyPossum your argument seems to be live in a hut and work by consensus as hunter gatherers which is not compelling to very many people today
Is it your understanding that the people of Chiapas live in huts as hunter gatherers?
In any case, no, that’s not my argument, but I’m starting to wonder which part of “anarchist communist” you misunderstood when you decided to follow me.
@HeavenlyPossum btw I’m enjoying the conversation I really like trying to find alternatives to our current system
@HeavenlyPossum take it easy true idealists are rare and valuable they are the heart of humanity
@HeavenlyPossum even those Mayans & Aztecs taxed to make their roads you have to go waaaaaay back to find roads not funded by taxes and those roads sucked
Taxes don’t fund road construction, but even if they did, the existence of a benefit for you does not justify theft.
That roads many thousands of years ago were not designed for modern SUVs does not obviate the point that people in stateless societies still have roads.
@HeavenlyPossum 🤔 strange since I’ve sat in on budget committee meetings and gone over road funding in Wisconsin since potholes are a weirdly big issue.
I have been a part of tracking funding in close detail because of shitting nepotism
I have been a part of tracking funding in close detail because of shitting nepotism
Super excited to get to introduce this to you:
@HeavenlyPossum ok that’s a theory, you said empirical, I asked for evidence by way of a specific example. I’ll read the rest of the link now
RDThe idea that taxes fund things is also theoretical unless you can demonstrate it empirically. The reason MMT even exists is because you can't.
It’s true that local government in the US taxes to fund spending, but that’s only because the federal government has not delegated its money-producing authority to its subnational components. But that’s like saying “the government can’t create money” because a government employee has to submit an expense report to get reimbursed.
@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy this is a very entertaining conversation, and I get we’re you folks are coming from, but it breaks down with the lack of functional current examples of alternatives that fit your ideals, I’d love to champion such a system but with out a concrete system other than a commune I’m not sure I could rally much support
The existence of an alternative does not really having any bearing on whether taxes are theft or not.
@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy we can talk about social contract about members of a society country, but I’ve been down this road if you will pardon the pun, and I prefer to work on fixing shit, give me something better and I’ll put my shoulder behind it and push
Freedom from coercion is better. Not sure why you have such a hard time either getting behind this idea, or admitting that you believe human beings need to be coerced by a separate ruling class in order to thrive.
@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy You are trying to fit me into your mental framework rather than listening which is ok, it’s what humans tend to do
You either believe the coercion is justified or you don't. How do you not fit into one of those categories?
@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy well you either believe in supporting right wing rhetoric at a time when fascism is on the rise like “taxation is theft” or you don’t which is it?
See how dumb that game is?
See how dumb that game is?
Correctly identifying taxation and rents as theft is not really pro-fascist.
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum Do the fascists use “taxation is theft”?
Cause I hear it over and over on right wing radio when doing opposition research
Cause I hear it over and over on right wing radio when doing opposition research
Does the truth value of a statement change because a fascist repeated it?
The state doesn’t tickle us to compel us to pay taxes. It doesn’t ask politely. It deploys armed agents with the authority to kill or detain to imprison us against our will until we pay.
It differs from the capitalist only in scale, not in kind.
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum does the truth of the statement that to create the change from a coercion based system requires a viable concrete alternative mean the person supports coercion?
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I see you may get my point now
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I see you may get my point now
Again, the truth of the statement “taxes and rents are theft” does not hinge on the presentation of a viable alternative to taxation to fund roads on which you can comfortably drive your car.
You’re mistaking your privileged comfort as the standard by which state coercion should be judged. I don’t really care if you’ve decided that you benefit too much from coercive exploitation to meaningfully change that coercive exploitation.
Next you’ll tell me you’re a landlord.
The viable concrete alternative is to let people work things out together without coercion. There is no singular "system" that must be defined and implemented for everyone everywhere, in place of the current one.
Enby Shark@voron @RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum the fascists have coopted many things that were historically benign and completely unassociated with fascism: runes, frog memes, and the ok hand symbol, to name a few. Your claim that someone who believes/says "taxation is theft" must automatically be associated with fascism is a non-sequitur and straw man argument.
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum note I only brought this up when the discussion devolved into an antagonistic “gotcha” crappy thing
You mean, from your first reply to my first post?
Saying that our society is built on coercion is not rhetoric. Deciding which side you're on is not a "dumb game".
Hilariously, he has blocked me.
He followed an anarchist communist and then threw a tantrum when I wrote anarchist communist things.
Me too. Too bad, I was just about to give in and spill the whole secret anarchist System Of Everything in minute detail. The new improved extra-compelling version.
Oh well.
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum the problem with repeating and championing the phrase “taxes are theft” is the libertarian/right wing uses it all the time to build support for horrible shit, so I don’t use that rhetoric