Rant, triggered off by someone I don’t know who, on one of Jeff Ford’s posts, trotted out the tired old “taxes are theft under threat of violence” idea:
Not only is this absurdly melodramatic, it’s dead wrong.
Taxes are a mechanism by which we collectively contribute to the common good as we’re each able to do so. We sanction people who refuse to contribute, even though they could, and we do that in part because those people have already benefited from those collectively funded common goods. If they refuse to join in the system because it isn’t voluntary (as if their individual will was some grand and sacred thing), there is a thief in that scenario – but it’s not the government.
If you’re on the Internet, you are using a system the original development of which was paid for by taxes. You’re using a device which is only possible because of a system of international trade, ports, transport systems, standards, consumer protection laws, and on and on, paid for by taxes. If you drive a car down the street, the same is true of your car, and the street, and the signs, and all the laws to enable you to do so safely (and without being assaulted and your car stolen). Statistically, you’re probably alive because of public health laws, food safety laws, and medical research funded by taxes. And that’s without even getting into public education – even if you are one of the rare few who hasn’t received any, the fact that widespread education exists, a situation of immense benefit for society at large, is a consequence of government and taxes.
Government is not a perfect, or even sometimes even a good, means of achieving collective goals. But nor are corporations. Nor are voluntary organisations. People who want to get rid of government because it doesn’t work all the time are abdicating the much harder task of getting it to work more often.
If theft is not the correct term, how would you label a transaction in which someone provides you a service that you have not agreed to pay for and then forces you to pay for it? Extortion?
The argument for getting rid of government isn’t that it is not perfect or that it does not work all the time. It is that it, on net, produces worse results than alternative non-coercive institutions would. You may disagree–most people do. But that is the argument.
Taxation. You don’t like it, get off the roads, cut off your mail and any utilities that were subsidized (that includes the Internet), etc.
I really hope the seasteading thing takes off, so that libertarians can go try to prove their system would work (or more likely, learn that it won’t) without dragging the rest of a country with them.
David Friedman, by the time you reach the point in your life where you’re paying taxes, you’ve already benefited from others doing so. This is why you don’t get to opt out. You didn’t personally agree; so what? What makes your personal agreement sacred? The society of which you are a part, from which you benefit every day from the day of your birth (indeed, before), has agreed.
And yes, I do disagree that alternative institutions would produce better results. There’s no evidence of that. It’s pure speculation, and not soundly based speculation, in my opinion.
The reason that government doesn’t always produce good results is not that it’s coercive. It’s that it’s run by humans, like every other human institution.
The reason government consistently does worse than the alternative is that, in the political marketplace, individuals who make decisions, whether voters, politicians, judges, or bureaucrats, almost never bear a significant fraction of the net cost of those decisions. Hence what choice it is in their interest to make is a very poor measure of what choice it is in the social interest for them to make.
That is not the case in the ordinary private marketplace, although it too is populated by humans.
You didn’t respond to my point that while providing a service and charging people for it who have not agreed to the deal doesn’t fit the usual definition of theft, it does classify as extortion when done by anyone other than government. To avoid that conclusion I think you have to claim that the government is the legitimate owner of the country, hence can set terms for remaining in it, which is a hard claim to justify.
I did respond to your point, but I’ll be more explicit: it’s based on a fundamental difference in our understanding of the nature of government and society (to put it as neutrally as possible). By growing up benefiting from the deal, and living in a society that is founded on the deal, you are a part of the deal. Your personal assent is implicit. If you want to withdraw it, you have to go somewhere else, because if you stay where you are, you cannot avoid benefiting from the deal, and so ought to contribute in proportion to your ability to do so.
I hear Somalia has no functional government. Perhaps people who think that government is worse than the alternative should go there. I suspect they’d discover what actual theft with the actual threat of violence is like quite quickly.
(And if you think that senior executives of corporations, or for that matter charities, bear significant fraction of the net cost of their poor decisions, you haven’t been paying attention. I take your point that there are plenty of examples of the decisionmakers shifting the cost onto others, but this isn’t unique to government, isn’t inevitable in government, and in my view it’s a reason for reform, not replacement.)
Mike Reeves-McMillan
“If you want to withdraw it, you have to go somewhere else, “
Or in other words, you are making precisely the argument I suggested. As I pointed out, that requires you to argue that the government owns the country, hence is entitled to make consent to its terms a condition of remaining.
If you don’t agree that you need such an argument, note that I could announce that by remaining in the country, or for that matter breathing, you consent to pay me money for services I believe I am providing you, such as explaining arguments to you in this thread.
“I hear Somalia has no functional government.”
It’s a little more complicated than that. Somalia, at least northern Somalia aka Somaliland, had a functioning stateless society for a very long time. When England and Italy abandoned their role in Somalia they set up a centralized, democratic government. It was ended by a military coup, followed by a very unpleasant dictatorship, followed by a war with Ethiopia. The USSR, which had been supporting Somalia, switched sides, the war went badly, the dictator was killed, and things were sliding back towards the traditional system.
At which point the U.S. and the U.N decided that Somalia needed a government. Ever since then they have been trying to impose one, using Ethiopian troops–Ethiopia is the traditional enemy of Somalia–to do it with. The results have been unpleasant. In the north, the Somalis have established a reasonable degree of order under the “Republic of Somaliland,” on mostly a traditional basis, but we refuse to recognize them because we insist that Somalia must be one country.
Beyond that, Somalia is a poor and backwards country, so the appropriate comparison is not to the U.S. but to Somalia under the immediately previous system–the Barre dictatorship–or Ethiopia, a similar and neighboring state which has had a government for a very long time.
Would you be persuaded if I suggested that since you approve of government you should move to North Korea, which has even more government than we do?
If you want more information on Somalia I will be happy to point you at a chapter on it in a book I’ve written but not yet published–the draft is webbed. My main source is an LSE anthropologist who had been studying Somalia since the 1950’s and my view on the recent history is close to what his was.
Part of my point is that Somalia is poor and backward exactly because it has not had a government functioning as it should. Your extra detail is interesting; thanks for that.
And no, as I’m sure you’re aware, I don’t “approve of government” in a “more is always better” sense. My point is that government is an instrument by which society (ideally) attains the balance of stability and freedom which enables prosperity, and that taxation is a means to that end – but it only works if everyone (who has the ability to do so) participates. Taxation, in turn, is based on the surplus of prosperity which previous taxation-funded development has made possible. That money is owed to the government (that is, to society’s instrument) for two reasons: first, that you benefit from others being taxed, and so you ought to also contribute so that society can continue to function; and second, that the wealth out of which you pay those taxes came into being in part because you live in the kind of country which previous taxes have enabled to come into existence. One in which contracts are enforceable, in which you can enjoy your legal property with minimal likelihood of it being stolen, where there’s infrastructure, an educated workforce, etc., etc.
Mike Reeves-McMillan “Part of my point is that Somalia is poor and backward exactly because it has not had a government functioning as it should.”
Evidence? Ethiopia, just next door, has had a government for two thousand years or so and is also poor and backwards. Somalia had a government from 1960 to 1991, imposed on it by the exiting colonial powers, and things seem on the whole to have been worse then than before, probably better since that government fell, aside from the areas where we are trying to impose a new one.
” My point is that government is an instrument by which society (ideally) attains the balance of stability and freedom which enables prosperity”
“Ideally.” You are describing what you want. The question is what reason to you have to expect that the net effect of government, having decisions made under the rules of the political game, is positive.
Governments, in modern developed countries, typically consume a third to a half of all income. Your argument for claiming they give benefits worth more than that depends on your assumption that without government there would be no contract enforcement, rights protection, perhaps no education. But we have lots of evidence of institutions for enforcing contracts and protecting rights without government, lots of education is private, and current public education is producing a poor quality at a high and rising cost.
And I’m only counting taxes. Governments also make us poorer in many other ways–jail people for doing things that ought not to be illegal. Fight dangerous and unnecessary wars. Prevent the development of new medical drugs. Peltzman’s estimate was that a single change in the regulations (the Kefauver amendments) cut the rate at which drugs were coming to market in half with no detectable effect on average quality.
The question isn’t what an ideal government would do. It’s what an actual government does. To judge that, we need both theory and evidence, and neither provides much support for your position.
Seasteading. Seriously.
It’s the only way to resolve this.
“Functioning as it should” was a key phrase there. The mere existence of a government is not sufficient. But in my view, functioning government is necessary to create a workable society of more than a few people.
Talking about what an ideal government would do is a valuable tool to assess the governments we actually have with a view to improving them. Starting with the assumption that government is, at best, unnecessary is not going to help us improve the ones we have.
I don’t think either of us is going to convince the other, so let’s call it here, OK? I have other things to do. Thanks for your challenges, which have made me think more deeply about my position, though.
It’s amusing to hear the tired old arguments constantly rehashed, when recent history debunks that whole “taxes bad” meme. The 1950s was perhaps the height of the US, the time that all the cons want to return us to… forgetting that the top tax bracket was 90%, and the workforce had strong unions backing it. Downward pressure on tax brackets through the 60s and 70s led to volatility, unemployment, and unrest.
Reagan’s trickle-down economics was a complete bust, providing higher incomes only for the wealthiest. A modest uptick in taxes on the highest income in the Clinton years led to the 90s boom-time and full employment until things simply overheated.
High income taxes are good for business, since executives have to reinvest in their companies instead of just plundering the till. They’re good for the general population, because the infrastructure can be kept up. They’re good for education, because schools can be fully funded (which they haven’t been in years—do you know teachers have to buy supplies with their own money, not expensing it back?), scholarships can be available for more people. That’s called an investment, which pays off in a number of ways.
Yeah, this is my last word on the subject, too.
Mike Reeves-McMillan
“But in my view, functioning government is necessary to create a workable society of more than a few people. “
I don’t know what your definition of a workable society is, but there are lots of examples of stateless societies that were sufficiently workable to survive and function for a long period of time.
By the standards most of us are used to, it’s not clear that there were any workable societies prior to the past century or two, but I assume that’s not what you mean.
Stateless societies where the number of responsible people* was below Dunbar’s Number, or significantly above it?
*That is, people who are held responsible for themselves. Don’t count children. In a sexist society, women would not be counted. In a slaveholding society, don’t count slaves.
Because I can totally see a stateless society below Dunbar’s Number. Everything would be handled socially instead of politically.
In fact, one could easily understand government as a way of hacking Dunbar’s Number.
Nobilis Reed Far above. The population of Somaliland prior to the creation of the nation of Somalia was (I’m guessing) over a million. Saga period Iceland was a semi-stateless society, with a single law code and court system but no executive arm of government, so all enforcement was private, population about 50,000. I don’t know what the Comanche population was, but surely well above Dunbar’s number. In all of those cases there were some people not responsible for themselves in your sense, but not nearly enough to bring the population down to Dunbar’s number.