Freedomain Radio

http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=111795#111795

To save my typing, I did a podcast... 

Good podcast Stefan.

There was a point that I was thinking of last night that you touched upon in the podcast that I wanted to present in an alteration of Munky’s restaurant analogy.

Munky;

You say that taxation is analogous to a restaurant patron agreeing to pay for a meal. But this is an inaccurate analogy because of the factor of competition and real choice. Imagine a situation where there is only 1 restaurant chain that exists in the province of Ontario called Munky’s  and you have little option but to go to this restaurant , there exists no supermarkets or places to purchase food other than Munky’s.  Now of course you could grow your own food on your property but with that option you are crossing your fingers for a good harvest, and if there is a drought, early frost, or excessive rain, you are then left to either starve or go to Munky’s. Of course you could travel the 2+ day drive to Manitoba or the 12+ hour drive to Québec, but since you need to eat 3 or more times a day than that is rather impractical. You could move to another province, but the situation there is the same only instead of Munky’s, its St Albert’s or something.  Not to mention moving to Québec may require you leaving all your loved ones, brushing up on your French, and finding a new job, all of which are time consuming and difficult.  

Now in this situation what incentive would the wait staff have to treat you with respect ? tipping? What if tipping were mandatory, of course they could make this rule because of the rather difficult alternative outlined above.

What incentive would the Munky’s staff have to provide you with choice? They could just as easily offer only one option, say meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and water to drink.

What incentive would they have to bring your food to you in a timely manner? 

What incentive would they have to offer fresh food? The meatloaf could be re-heated and the potatoes powered, and the water un-filtered.

What would prevent them from charging exorbitant pricing and changing the price weekly, daily, or even during the course of your meal?

I could go on but I think you see my point. Would this not be a rather wrenched state of affairs? It seems to me this would be the moral equivalent of the soviet bread lines.

To stretch the metaphor a little further, let us say that you could vote for a new Munky’s owner, and the candidates promise to add a new menu item, or to provide fresher food, and when they get in they do, but they double the price. “Double the option double the cost, we can’t help it, it’s the way things are.” Then at the next election a candidate promises to lower prices. She gets in but “We’re going to have to cut a menu option, we can’t help it, it’s the way things are.” Of course the price is not lowered back to the previous level, because they hired new cooks when they added the new menu item and now the Munky’s union says that the new cooks cannot be laid off, “that would be unfair”.

What we propose with the DRO’s is a free market solution to dispute resolution, to have the same variety and choice in dispute resolution as we currently do in the food service industry. This will benefit society in many effectual ways, (lower price, better service, greater efficiency, innovative progress) but most importantly it is the more moral solution, because there need not be any initiated force.  If you say that we now have choice, and that that is good, then would not more choice be better?  

Hey very cool to see a podcast. I'm going to reply to Dust first than listen to the audio.

Munky;

You say that taxation is analogous to a restaurant patron agreeing to pay for a meal.

In that there is an implied contract which was created sure.

But this is an inaccurate analogy because of the factor of competition and real choice.

The world isn't 1 country...There is competition in a sense and real choice as to where to live. 

Imagine a situation where there is only 1 restaurant chain that exists in the province of Ontario called Munky’s  and you have little option but to go to this restaurant , there exists no supermarkets or places to purchase food other than Munky’s.

You are bringing a highly unrealistic example to the table? Anyway to address this point... the error here is that you are equating a necessity for life to the government who really isn't necessary. You can live without paying taxes. You couldn't live without paying for food. The thing in law is that you can hold a monopoly on something which is entirely not necessary for life. Sirius and XM radio for example want to merge and they will have a monopoly over satellite radio... but as it is not absolutely necessary for life... there's no reason to stop their merger.

Now of course you could grow your own food on your property but with that option you are crossing your fingers for a good harvest, and if there is a drought, early frost, or excessive rain, you are then left to either starve or go to Munky’s.

There are many other options than even that in your highly unrealistic example. Greenhouse for example can be extremely effective year round. Also more or less immune to the issues you bring up...

Of course you could travel the 2+ day drive to Manitoba or the 12+ hour drive to Québec, but since you need to eat 3 or more times a day than that is rather impractical.

Here you basically point out how your analogy failed. The comparison between the restaurant and the taxation examples are moreso limited to explaining the implied contract for taxation. They aren't interchangable processes.

Now in this situation what incentive would the wait staff have to treat you with respect ? tipping? What if tipping were mandatory, of course they could make this rule because of the rather difficult alternative outlined above.

Where do you have to give respect to government workers? When do you tip your mailman or your mayor? You might respect the people in their position because you understand the trouble they live through to provide the service for you... such as firemen or police... but there's no mandatory expectation for you to treat them with respect. If you did something wrong or have ur house on fire. You may want to keep your mouth shut and not disrespect them because that'll only lead you away from getting a warning or less effort.

What incentive would the Munky’s staff have to provide you with choice? They could just as easily offer only one option, say meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and water to drink.

Yes the government does give a single option only. This again isn't comparable to a meal at a restaurant; at least not exactly given the above points.

What incentive would they have to bring your food to you in a timely manner?

I fail to even see how this is comparable to government. Where are they not being timely? You may point out the long lines in canadian health care. This really isn't the fault for the government... it is simply the limit of these doctors who are doing those surgeries. The fix for this is essentially in denying people healthcare coverage. Which isn't good in my books. If there was a surge of these doctors and they were available and doing these surgeries... the government would pay.

What incentive would they have to offer fresh food? The meatloaf could be re-heated and the potatoes powered, and the water un-filtered.

Again since you have failed in the analogy on the necessity factor. Not to mention realism... the government is providing good service at much cheaper. If the government wasn't doing these things... you would suddenly have to add additional cost as "profit" on many levels. If we look at roads and transportation. The government held onto this land to make roads for CHEAP... if you suddenly increase the very first cost that is profit on selling the roads. You are already incurring a massive amount of more cost. Furthermore  every step along the lines... you incur further profit and additional cost. Once you get to the actual system of roads without government... you MUST put up toll booths... which everyone hates... these tolls are going to be far more expensive on a grand scale than what the government is doing roads for. What change in QUALITY will there be? I really hope you don't think that there will be an increase in quality because of the increase in price across the board... they are just paying off the inherent profit. Which never goes to the quality of the service.

What would prevent them from charging exorbitant pricing and changing the price weekly, daily, or even during the course of your meal?

The government isn't really guilty of this one neither.

To stretch the metaphor a little further, let us say that you could vote for a new Munky’s owner, and the candidates promise to add a new menu item, or to provide fresher food, and when they get in they do, but they double the price. “Double the option double the cost, we can’t help it, it’s the way things are.”

You are still comparing a profit system to a non-profit system. Governments put lots of money into roads and never put tollbooths up and make a profit from the system. If this company "Munky's" was actually charging more like a 1 time yearly charge or something similar... than what's the point...

What we propose with the DRO’s is a free market solution to dispute resolution, to have the same variety and choice in dispute resolution as we currently do in the food service industry.

My issues with DROs still haven't been addressed. The issue I see is that there's really nothing stopping people from starting these DRO systems up right now. This isn't happening. Why? because there's no necessity for it. We have similar systems like unions perhaps which don't have the issues I see with the DRO system and get the job done. Will these same mechanisms like unions dissolve in anarchist state? I dont think so. Therefore I suspect you will simply see the parts of government like the police or firemen become privatized. You no longer have to pay the government for the insurance basically for fire coverage... instead your house catches on fire... you call the firemen... they come save your house... after the fact they ask for your fireman insurance card... you dont have one... they than give you a bill for more than what your house even costs. You cant pay it and you loose your house. You see this issue in the USA frequently with their healthcare system.

This will benefit society in many effectual ways, (lower price, better service, greater efficiency, innovative progress) but most importantly it is the more moral solution, because there need not be any initiated force.

lower price? No. You add in profit into the system and that increases prices.

better service? Perhaps, short lived if so.

greater efficiency? Actually yes. This however is only due to removing those who are poor from the system. Keeping a janitor in his house because he cannot afford to pay the transit costs to make it to his job just isn't something I would propose as a good thing.

innovative progress? not really no. Perhaps in a high end profit system they can afford to keep innovating at a level like where you can be replacing computers or upgrading monthly. This however leads to many being left behind.

moral solution? errr my system is more or less the same way... we dont initiate force. The person resisting arrest does so.

If you say that we now have choice, and that that is good, then would not more choice be better? 

 There's a great ted talk on this one. I cant find the talk unfortunately. The fact however is that you do have choices in the world. There may never be a system you love 100%... but choosing one which is damn near to that choice is the way to go. The ted talk elaborates this point sooo much better however.

Now I'm going to listen to the podcast. :) 

Coto? lol... I don't get it.

I'm currently slowly moving to more normal sleep patterns. I dont oppose a verbal communication... I'm just not available atm to do so.

I tend to like written form myself so I can address point by point and not accidentally miss a point like you can do in verbal contact. I also tend to notice fallacies being used far more often verbally than written. It often isnt even on purpose and everyone does it. I have even caught myself using arguments from anonymous authority on many occasions. Why? because I couldnt remember the authority's name. If I'm typing I can search online quickly for his name.

Meh my fault I understand it. I'm just a shy night owl. 

I do believe the tax bracket is around 16000$ actually before you get taxed. There are ways that even if you are making 25,000$ or so... with deductions you can lower down to not paying taxes.

3rd party being introduced into a 2 party transaction. Yes this is true. Except there's far far more than even that. A contract can include many extra parties without those parties being actually there to be signing the contract or even for implied contract means there are many different takes.

You now move on to basically make the statement that taxation and such is coercive. Which is addressed already in that yes... both our systems are coercive in that we coerce you to follow our rules/laws such as do not murder, rape, or steal. If you do that there are consequences. I have jail. You have economic sanctions that make their property essentially jail. As I make the point that not paying your taxes is essentially theft... is it abnormal if that theft than is coercive or meant with your being arrested or sanctioned? I don't think so.

Voluntarily choose to rape my wife. Well I dont have a wife... but that's beyond the point obviously. Again this analogy is wrong because there is no actual ownership over my wife... while the government does own the land inside it's borders. If this was not true... you would have allodial title over the land. Which isn't true you do not have allodial title. Therefore the government does own the land. I don't see how you claim ownership over my wife. Therefore no logical ownership.

The 3rd party in this gets to impose their will upon you because they own part of the land.

Lets even move back to the landlord-renter relationship. Lets say there's no government involved. John owns the land... he allows his buddy Steve to build an apartment on his land. He simply needs to pay a 1 time large sum for lets say 95% ownership over that land. Due to that 5% ownership he now has to pay a property tax of $5 every year. He also has to pay John 5% of the profit of running that apartment. So Samantha comes to the apartment and starts renting... there's an agreement between Samantha and steve on the cost of living in that apartment. Well there's still that 3rd party that receives 5% of that income after deductions like electricity bills. Now here's the thing... that 5% is actually informed to Samantha as a cost to her living there. It's not going to be coming out of Steve's money. So there's a 3rd party to this contract between Steve and Samantha. Here's the hitch... John offers no services at all for that money. NONE. The 5$ and 5% goes into his pocket and he walks away.

So far I really doubt you have an issue here.

So lets now say Samantha doesn't want to pay that 5% any longer. She stops paying... Either someone starts paying that 5% to john or it's basically theft... perhaps Steve bites the bullet and pays. It doesn't change the fact however if there was a violation to that contract and they stopped paying that money. It would be theft.

Just replace John with the government and it's basically the same thing.

You now are saying that everyone should have the right to leech off 2 party interaction. Do you disagree with the above example? Perhaps Steve and John will be paying property tax to the government...  but that cost can also be shifted to the people in the apartment.

You now actually make the false claim that you cannot go anywhere that doesn't demand taxes. This is false because there's antarctica, the many tax havens, or even you could build yourself a super cruise liner... which is gigantic compared to even the super carriers the USA military has or even the cruise liners that are common. These are so large that there's even a landing strip for planes on the top, float planes and boats can dock with the boat efficiently.. the cruise liner can be more or less close to self-sufficient in that you could set it up to grow all your own food and many other services. OR you could go cheap and build yourself a floating island, large enough to allow you to survive, made out of garbage. There are many many places on earth where you dont have to pay the taxman.

Yaay I should be admired. I'm flattered :)

How does the people who call themselves the government have this power? Well not through violence... but through their ownership of the land. You do not hold an allodial title of the land... therefore the government continues to own that land. At least some percentage of it. The actual percentage is meaningless but they own part of it.

$10,000 a year for my school. You don't have ownership over their land. Unlike the government.

Increased taxes. The issue is that they often change taxes over time. The recent cut in taxes in Canada was announced long before January 1st 2008. If they were going to impose a "bathroom tax" in that you must pay $1000 a month for each of your bathrooms; this will come out of your income at the end of the year with income taxes. They will have announced this change long before the actual change. Therefore you have plenty of time to leave or quit your job and go on welfare or whatever else... well before that change. You still have prior knowledge in that it's going to happen to you if you keep your job for example.

7 year old boy who becomes a slave. The issue here is that they were never ever given that option. They were forced to work for the master or be hung from a tree. Infact if they were actually given this option... they would indeed have been told to leave and goto freedom by their parents. I'm in windsor, ontario and there are a number of people in the area who worked with the underground railroad and never got to know who their parents were because they couldn't all get free and leave so the children did.

The fact however is that even if you equate all of our citizens to slaves. Canada being a plantation. You don't have to go to another plantation as it were. Go over to the bahamas and live yourself virtually free of the slave life. You can go to bahamas or antarctica without having to deal with all the issues of moving around.

 Yes the government does own ALL the land in the country. You would have an allodial title if that was not true. The polticians dont have the ownership rights... but the overall of all citizens own that percentage. Not the minority at all. You and your friends arent not the majority compared to all the citizens of the country.

NOW we have discovered the issue perhaps. You do not know what allodial is.

An allodial title is basically a true 100% ownership of the land. You are yourself sovereign. The Principality of Sealand is a perfect example of this. They literally took ownership off this offshore construct and had allodial ownership over it. They declared their sovereignty and no longer pay property taxes, only themselves have jurisdiction over any crimes committed on the area. This is what an allodial title would entail. If you were inside Canada and had an allodial title. You could declare your sovereignty or not... stay together with Canada. You would not ever have to pay property taxes. You would not be subject to laws. As with Sealand they are a 'data haven' in that you can run child pornography servers and all kinds of other illegal things in the UK... but they are not subject to those laws.

That is absolute ownership of the land. This is not given to anyone in Canada or the USA. The only actual limited allodial titles are for high commissions, embassies, and consulates. Obviously not available to the common citizens.

If you own your house. You essentially have a feudal ownership over land. Which is subject to the state essentially. Originally in england this started out as the Queen/King owned all the land. They had their governers and lords... who managed that land and allowed people to live on that land for taxes. Now that we aren't a monarchy. The state owns such land in that manner.

Perhaps you want that relationship gone and you want absolute ownership of your land. That's great. You just have to accept the consequences of making it that way... in that nobody actually has jurisdiction over the land any longer. Therefore any crimes commited there... cannot be punished. The best you can do... is like the UN or something similar is to economically sanction these groups. The issue I have with this is that... in such a tribal small scale union. It will be extremely hard to actually hold such a monopoly in society. As DROs are completely voluntary and given how DRO groups are not already being used in society now... such groups holding such a monopoly to sanction such people will be so damn impractical that you might as well just get some vigilants and punish the person that way.

Yes the situation of how Canada took the land by force is very wrong. There's nothing honestly to fix there however in that your situation does not fix that issue. Moreover, the entirety of Canada was not taken by force. Newfoundland only joined Canada after WW2. We didn't take their land by force. Infact the government of Canada isn't exactly the one who actually did this force infact. It was british soldiers.

You are back onto the belief that the politicans are somehow the ones who magically own all the land. This isn't how it works. The government is the collection of ALL canadian citizens. The politicians are just the representatives. All citizens in canada would technically in a sense own a portion of your land. That ownership doesn't mean that they can come live on your land. It just means they hold the jurisdiction to limit your freedoms that the society believes to be illegal and immoral. Such as murder or rape. They also have you essentially paying rent or in other words property tax. Ofcoarse there's a little more than that to it... but that's the basics.

Arresting a person can be done in a non-violent way. You say that statement is not true. Lets just look at this. What is violence?

vi·o·lence 

Rough or injurious physical force. Now it's entirely possible for a person to be entirely untouched by policemen and be arrest. Just an example off the top of my head. There's a guy on Howard Stern's show called high pitch; because his voice is very high pitched. He left many messages on this one girl's answering machines verbally abusing her and threatening her life. It's very serious if you hear the tapes. He wasn't roughed up or anything... the extent of his arrest is his VOLUNTARY going to the police station to turn himself in. That's a method of being arrested. There is no cops there being rough or using physical force against him.

This last part of the podcast is actually in response to another person's claims. The context is necessary to understand. I was pointing out how his claims actually led to that situation. I am obviously not of that position as I'm not advocating anyone has to leave north america. You are rather incorrect in believing that the native americans and the essentially christians actually communicated on any real level at much of this time. I would suggest looking up the proclamation that was read to each of these groups before doing these trades.

Mad Moral Monster. Well I'm afraid I'm going to have to say good bye. If you think this way of my I am obviously not being respected here. Obviously I'm the same as Hitler or something as he is an example of a monster. I have been pretty polite since I have been here. If that's how I get treated what is the point in my continuing? I can guarantee you that I have been in very similar situations where the usual stigma of atheists was actually portrayed against me. The essential attack on my character was that I was a baby-eating satanist. I was through with talking with those people.

Munky99999:

Increased taxes. The issue is that they often change taxes over time. The recent cut in taxes in Canada was announced long before January 1st 2008. If they were going to impose a "bathroom tax" in that you must pay $1000 a month for each of your bathrooms; this will come out of your income at the end of the year with income taxes. They will have announced this change long before the actual change. Therefore you have plenty of time to leave or quit your job and go on welfare or whatever else... well before that change. You still have prior knowledge in that it's going to happen to you if you keep your job for example.

What a horrible slave world, your tax sentence is announced and you have a month to run for your freedom or quit the job you love and stop contributing to society. But you are absolutely right if you start from the premises that the government owns all land. This actually means the government owns everything. Because you can not run a free press if the printing press stands on the government it's land. Unless you can hover in the air, your ass is owned by the government. That is why the government in your opinion has the right to attach themselves to a employer/employee relation ship and demand half the proceeds of their slave's labor. Because they own the guys and if they want their lives to fight their wars, they own those as well. That is why you say the comparison with raping your wife is inapt, because you don;t own your wife, but the government does. That is why the government can enter each an every relation ship and demand tribute.

Munky99999:

Perhaps you want that relationship gone and you want absolute ownership of your land. That's great. You just have to accept the consequences of making it that way... in that nobody actually has jurisdiction over the land any longer. Therefore any crimes commited there... cannot be punished. The best you can do... is like the UN or something similar is to economically sanction these groups. The issue I have with this is that... in such a tribal small scale union. It will be extremely hard to actually hold such a monopoly in society. As DROs are completely voluntary and given how DRO groups are not already being used in society now... such groups holding such a monopoly to sanction such people will be so damn impractical that you might as well just get some vigilants and punish the person that way.

Criminals can be punished, like you indicate yourself. On the other hand, I don't see how you can prevent the government from taking all these willing slaves and abusing them, which happened to 200 million people in the past 100 years. In this period, the main risk of a violent death was being killed by your own government, second biggest risk is being killed by the neighbors government. 

What is your goal here Munky? Are you seeking to have ideas clarified and questions answered, or are you seeking to fog the ideas and never come to any kind of clear conclusion about anything?

What is your methodology for determining truth from falsehood? 

Thanks for your response, before I review it in more detail, I wonder if you can just clarify something for me.

I fully support your desire to pay taxes and so on, and would never dream of using force to prevent you from disposing of your property as you see fit.

Do you openly support and advocate the use of violence against me, in terms of kidnapping and imprisonment, if I disagree with your assessment about the 'virtue' of coercive taxation?

This is a yes or no question I'm afraid... 

Thanks! 

Munky99999:

The 3rd party in this gets to impose their will upon you because they own part of the land.

 I will try to add my 0.02 grams of gold to this conversation.

If I understand you correctly, you believe that governments owns their territory and "sublet" the land to people. With this reasoning, you are perfectly right to make a comparison with restaurants or apartments. But this is the fundamental difference with libertarians/anarcho-capitalists: we do not consider the territory owned by government. That is the reason everyone here is making comparisons with mafia: because like the government, mafia "owns" territory because "they said so", not because it is a legitimate claim.

So, the question of taxation as robbery *implies*, for anarcho-capitalist, that government does not own the country. You may disagree with that but I think you can better understand our views. *If* you would change your mind and accept that government is not the legitimate owner of the country, would you say that taxation is illegitimate?

It is then important for you to know if the government is a legitimate owner or not. I do not remember having read a proof of that in your text.

I can summarize the anarcho-capitalist position on government property as illegitimate because it was taken by force, fraud/deception, or simply just by "saying so" (you arrive in a new continent and say: it is mine!). The righful owners are then considered as the current owners of the land they use (homesteading). It is like if everyone in this country has "allodial titles" (to use your term) on their respective land. This is the reason why everyone here is seeing your propositions of "government as third party" like a mafia gang.

I hope it helps.

Note: An allodial title has at least one important restriction: it cannot be sold or transfered to more than one heir. That is pretty restrictive for a supposed "sovereign like" title of property. And the "only one heir" restriction seems a bit related to "king->son" inheritance restriction on kingdoms.

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial

Stefan Molyneux:

Oh, you're a moral relativist - sorry, I didn't know.

If morality is relative, why do some people (calling themselves 'the government') get to violently impose their wills on others without their consent?

For instance, I never once agreed to pay taxes. They are extracted from me under threat of force, and I cannot escape them.

Also, if some people can claim to 'own everything' and so extort money from others, do I also have this ability? Can I claim to 'own you' and start charging you 'taxes' - and kidnap and imprison you if you don't pay?

If not, what is the difference between me and, say, George Bush?

If you say that I cannot 'suddenly' impose taxes, since that would obviate the criterion of a 'pre-existing, implicit contract,' that does not help your argument, since the income tax, say, was imposed at some point without the consent of every individual - and if that was unjust, it does not somehow become 'just' through the passage of time.

Thanks! 

Indeed--this reminds me of a dry cleaner who ruined my entire wardrobe years back--I took him to court ("government justice" earning its position as an oxymoron here)  and was "awarded" a sum of money with the proviso that I had to collect it. So I head to the guy's shop thinking the state has given me the power to collect some money--and he announces that "I have agreed to pay you $20 a month"  --now this implies that he has agreed with someone--presumably either myself or a judge--but no, he was "agreeing" with himself--I did not so much agree.....

When I take a job, I have not contracted with the state, but with an employer.  It is only courtesy of Milton Friedman's brilliant idea of withholding (nothing worse than a good economist working to make government more efficient)  employers INDEED must steal from us for the government nowadays.....so the employer has a coerced contract with the government, essentially paying protection to be allowed to be an employer (one reason I have no employees), and I have a contract with the employer.  But I have not contractually agreed to pay taxes.

I just ran across this....

8 months later and this guy is still going.  Incredible.  The true-self wants out, doesn't it?

posting in an epic troll thread