Worse, the unwashed masses wouldn't become slaves in the dystopian scenario, because you only feed and shelter slaves to keep them alive to work for you. When robots displace humans, the robot-owners no longer need humans, and won't feed or shelter them and they will just die. Either of starvation or exposure, or from robotic machine-gun fire trying to overthrow the system.
Also, I would break it down to more like four scenarios:
- The dystopian one where the elites own the robots and have no need for anyone else and everyone else dies. The good news is, this scenario ends up utopian when, after everyone else is dead, 100% of the surviving humans live in robot-waited bliss for all eternity.
- The slightly less dystopian one where for some reason, the elites who own the robots keep everyone alive, but at their pleasure, making everyone forever perpetually beholden to them. There is some chance that this could transition to a utopian scenario as well, if generations down the line the robot-owning elites who have never wanted for anything see no reason not to just have their robots give other people free robots because why not, it's not like it costs them anything.
- The still only slightly less dystopian one where, before the robot-owning elites can fortify themselves behind a wall of killbots, a popular uprising uses the power of the state to seize the robots for the common good. Now there aren't robot-owning elite overlords... just the robot-owning government upon which everyone is now dependent. So pretty much the same as the previous scenario in the end.
- The nigh-impossible utopian scenario where by some means or another wealth with which to purchase privately owned robots is widely distributed enough that everyone just retired into robot-waited bliss together, without facing dependency on either the robot-owning government or some private robot-owning elites or else death by robot or by starvation or exposure.
The last is obviously the best, but I don't have high hopes for it. The one of the middle options seems most likely to me. And I can just hope that the possibility those have for a gradual transition to a utopia, for future generations at least, comes to pass. Otherwise, it might in the end be better if the first, worst dystopia happens, since at least it would get all the survivors on to their utopia faster, and not leave the vast majority of humanity enslaved for all of eternity.
I guess at least anyone can decide to default to that first option for themselves at any time by charging face first into a killbot.
And just to clarify the reasoning behind that big caveat about how this is not an argument in practice against taxation:
- States are just gangs, and taxation is just theft
- Gangs tend to spring up spontaneously in any power vacuum
- Most of them don't know any other way to fund their activity besides theft, though there might in fact be better ways
- Some gangs are better than others (for the people in their turf), and the kind that spontaneously arise are usually the worst; established gangs sometimes in time develop better rapport with their subjects and actually think about the long-term well-being of the turf so as to best maintain their power over time.
- Therefore, it's pragmatically better to accept a decently good gang in power than to let the worst of the worst bad gangs spring up in their absence, and to work toward making the gang in power better (hopefully someday to the limit that it stops being a gang entirely and transforms into an beneficial organization playing by the same rules as everyone else in the turf), rather than just destroying it.
- Meanwhile, since most gangs don't know of any other way to fund their activity besides theft, and we've got to accept the existence of some gang and thus some theft, it's best (as in least bad) if we can get them to steal mostly from those who can more easily afford it, as well as to spend it on activities that not only help out the people in their turf, but help out those most in need more than the rest.
So yes, because states are gangs and taxation is theft, until we can figure out a way to have stateless governance funded by something other than taxes, progressive taxation in a democratic state is the best practical option.
Depends entirely on your definition of "anything in return." Even brutal monarchs need to fund military and whatnot (again you can argue whether your taxes are paying for things you personally think are important.)
A mugger uses my cash to pay for something too. If he pays for something I happen to like -- say, bullets with which to kill someone I don't like, or more analogous still, someone from a rival gang in another turf -- does that make it not theft?
That said (and I admit its stretching definition a bit since its hard to justify the king's new gold-plated carriage as being useful to the people,) there is also a major difference between a greedy monarch and a democratically elected representative -- the peasantry don't have any say in choosing their monarch, nor can they "fire" him short of regicide if they think he's doing a shit job of representing them, whereas an elected representative can be voted out (sometimes not soon enough, but I'll try to stay on topic!)
So if the gang start asking the locals who should be in charge of the gang, that makes mugging the locals not theft?
No it isn't, mostly because that "or else" clause has enormously different connotations when its the IRS asking for your taxes vs a mugger asking for your wallet.
They both end with "or else we'll shoot you", the IRS just prefaces it with "...or else pay even more money or else go to jail..." before they get to the "...or else we'll shoot you part". But you're still presented with a choice: pay up, pay up more, get abducted and locked up, or if you refuse any of those, get shot. All laws are ultimately backed by "...or else we'll shoot you." (Which doesn't make them unjust; some things are worth shooting people over, just like sometimes stealing is excusable).
Taxation isn't considered "wrongful" (well, outside of libertarian rhetoric) and therefore by definition, isn't theft regardless of anything else -- even when a greedy monarch uses the money for entirely self-serving purposes.
If the only distinction you make between "taxation" and "theft" is that one is considered wrong and the other isn't, you're basically conceding my entire point. It's the same act, just considered acceptable when one party does it (and given a special name then), and not when any other does.
When the mafia shakes down businesses for "protection" money and is so powerful that they basically control the entire goings-on of a neighborhood, they have effectively become a government, and the money they demand from people has become a tax. If the mafia gradually turns nice and starts polling people to decide on who to put in charge of what neighborhood and even doing genuinely good things for the neighborhood, it never changes the fact that they're still the mafia shaking people down for money. It's certainly better if they do it in a nice way like that, but the underlying reality is still the same.
Of course it helps that the government (monarch or otherwise) who collects the taxes also defines "wrongful." That's part of why the US was founded with strong checks and balances against too much concentration of power -- they knew how England operated and didn't really like the prospect. Hell excessive taxation was no small part of why the US broke ties with the mother country in the first place.
So if a gang robs a crowd and most of the crowd are like "nah man it's cool, we know these guys, they ask us who they want running our hoods, and like kill the foreign gangs and sometimes do cool murals and shit" then that makes it not theft? Even of the people in the crowd who are not cool with it?
And again, reemphasizing my original point: I am not arguing here for the immediate abolition of all taxes and let the pieces fall where they may, or even really for any practical change in who is taxed what to pay for what. I have pragmatic opinions on those m
The only way you legally prevent anyone from doing anything is to threaten them with consequences for doing so. Every law is a statement to the effect that "if you do X we will do Y to you in retaliation" (where "Y" is usually "fine you money or else put you in jail or else or shoot you"). The consequences are the prevention.
In light of which the example I gave was actually a bad one. In many respects you are not free, even in the meaningless "if you accept the consequences" sense, to rob an armored car, because it's not just threat of consequences that keep the contents of armored cars safe. Unless you attempt the robbery at just the right moment, odds are that you simply will not be physically able to get into it even if the guards stand around doing nothing. That's why it's armored.
A better example would be: you are not free to kick an innocent child in the head. Nothing will physically prevent you from doing so, but you will face consequences as a result of doing so, some of which constitute the legal prohibition on doing so. The fact that people will drag you off to jail for doing it (or shoot you if you resist that) -- those consequences -- is what makes you not free to kick a kid in the face. If there weren't any such consequences, you would be free to do so. It's the precisely the consequences that limit the freedom.
And those consequences make that specific speech in those specific circumstances not free. (Which might be a good thing in those circumstances; not all freedoms are good, like the freedom to punch a stranger in the face for no reason). You are not free to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, because you will face legal consequences for doing so. The consequences are what makes you not free to do so. So this "free but not from consequences" meme is nonsense.
I wasn't talking about the specific topic of discussion about banning people on forums and whatnot, just that phrase "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" which keeps being repeated everywhere lately. It's not true. Something like it is true -- freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from all consequences, say -- but the nuance is important, because what makes any freedom a freedom at all is entirely the disallowing of certain kinds of consequences, so freedom of speech is freedom from some consequences.
Also, more on the actual topic: the kinds of thing you describe do actually limit freedom of speech within a given venue. And that's perfectly within the rights of the venue operators to do, but it is limiting freedom of speech. I don't pretend to offer absolute freedom of speech to everyone who comes into my home -- insult me and I'll show you out -- but then, I don't claim to, and I don't have to. It's not free speech, and that's ok, but still it's not free speech.
First, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Stop saying that.
Freedom of any kind absolutely means freedom from certain consequences. If any kind of retaliation to speech is permitted, then the speech is not really free, beyond the sense that you're free to rob an armored car so long as you accept the consequence of getting shot.
taxation is your payment for services rendered by your government. Army, police force, road maintenance, infrastructure. Your taxes pay for all that shit. And if you really want to bitch about welfare, you can consider that the "service" of keeping beggars off the streets and out of your sight/way.
And before you start saying its not a true transaction because you didn't choose what to "buy" well sorry but you did -- via your elected representatives. You can argue that the price is too high or whatever, or that your representatives are choosing to "buy" the wrong services or whatever, but calling it theft is rather disingenuous at best.
Before I start: look at my post history and note the kind of radical socialist that I am, and that I'm not some right wing nut who just doesn't want to pay the "gub'mit" to take care of people less well off than me. This is a purely philosophical matter, not about practical politics.
That established, what's disingenuous is to claim that taxes are not theft. There are good arguments to be made that they are necessary and that we should accept them or even have more of them, but to argue that they are not theft is just to hide from an uncomfortable truth.
Taxes are not a payment for services. You might get services from the government, and they might not be able to provide them without taxing you, but that doesn't make it a payment for services. When a monarch demands gold from his peasants just to enrich himself and doesn't give the peasants anything in return, that's still taxation, and the peasantry don't get to say "hey you didn't give me anything in return for that" because that's not how taxes work.
If the only consequence for not paying is that you don't get something in return, that is a payment for services. If you want the services you have to pay and if you don't pay you don't get the services, but that's it; you're free to not pay if you don't mind not getting the services. That's not a tax.
If you only have to pay if you do something deemed bad, breaking a law, then that is a fine, which is neither payment for services nor taxation. If you can avoid paying it just by not doing something illegal, then the payment is not taxation.
If you have to pay it no matter what you do, or whether or not you want what's being offered in return, or whether or not anything is being offered in return at all, that is a tax. Yes, even if the you are asked your opinion (via elections) on what you would like and how much you'd like to pay, even if that opinion is honestly factored into the decision on those matters, if it's not your free choice to decline the services and not pay, then it's not just a simple payment for services.
A payment for services is something like "I will sell you ice cream of any of these flavors for $5", and you choose whether you want to pay that and what flavor of ice cream you want. "Give me $5 or else" is just theft. "I'm going to buy you ice cream, give me $5 for it or else" is just weird theft, a forced transaction. "I'm going to buy you ice cream, give me $5 for it or else; also what flavor do you want?" is even weirder theft, but it's still theft. Even if you actually wanted ice cream and would have paid $5 for it; not being given the choice is the important distinction.
When the government says "Give me $X or else", we call that taxation, and you'll note it's formally identical to theft. If they say "I'm going to provide you with Y, give me $X for it or else", that's still theft. Yes, even if they say "I'm going to provide you with Y, give me $X for it or else; also how would you like that Y?" Yes, even if you want Y, and would be willing to pay $X for it. The fact that you don't get a choice in the matter makes it still theft.
That said, and as I started with, we can then go on to argue about whether certain acts of theft are acceptable given the alternatives, especially when those alternatives will usually tur
Actually, renting has very little to do with whether or not one is poor. In fact, people with higher incomes often prefer to rent. Why? Because then they can easily move to another job that makes a higher bid for their services.
It's not about whether you choose to rent, it's about whether you have a choice. If you can easily just own a home whenever you feel like settling down and aren't worried about where you're going to sleep when you're too old to work anymore, you might choose to rent. If you face no option other than renting for the entirety of your existence (until you're too old and poor to even do that and die cold and alone in the street), that's not much of a choice.
Tens of millions of people live in places with a high cost of living. If I could find even an empty plot of land big enough to park my trailer on for under $200,000 without having to move so far away that it's basically another country, I'd be fucking set, like you describe.
But unless you propose to relocate what's basically an entire normal-sized country's population a distance that would be to another country if America weren't so huge, then just living like that isn't an option for an enormous number of people.
If you know of a way a government can pay for itself without collecting taxes or taking natural resources from the people (or simply descending into anarchy), I would love to hear your solution.
I've had an idea on that note mulling around in my head for a while.
People with enormous amounts of wealth get a steady stream of income without doing anything because they have that wealth invested places earning returns.
Some non-profit organizations are largely funded the same way: some rich person (or several rich people, or many many many smaller donors) donated money to a foundation that invested that money and uses the proceeds from that investment to fund the activities of the non-profit organization.
In principle, a government could be funded likewise. Have a massive foundation that owns an enormous chunk of the productive economy, but not in a controlling fashion -- not the government wholly owning and controlling companies or entire industries, rather, just having lots and lots of little pieces of lots of lots of companies through something like an index fund. The proceeds from that investment then fund the operations of the government.
How to get such a huge investment put together ex nihlo to fund a new government that way is a hard problem, but then starting a new government anywhere is a hard problem in the first place, and better governments are even harder to start from scratch. (Much easier for one powerful person to seize control with the help of other powerful people to whom he promises the spoils of conquest, than to organize and fund a democratic organization to seize the power of the state and somehow stay democratic and relatively free in the process). Usually, better governments are born out of the ruins of worse ones; liberal democracies take control of the existing wealthy and powerful state apparatus of a previous monarchy, say. So on that model, it may be possible to use the existing suboptimal method of raising government funding, taxation, to bootstrap a better one like described above. To start with, the corporate welfare budget could be replaced with a corporate investment budget instead: sure maybe we'll give your company money, but we want stock in exchange (that we'll promptly sell on the market so as to buy a more diversified spread of investments instead).
6. Nearly all the Founders despised slavery. The only reason it was allowed to continue was the southern Democrat States...
Major anachronism here. You're talking about political parties that wouldn't exist until decades later. The southern states weren't Democrats because there weren't Democrats period. There weren't even Democratic-Republicans yet. There weren't even parties at all. There hadn't yet been a single election. There wasn't even a constitution under which to conduct one, because you're talking about the period when it was still being drafted.
If I set aside my personal terror about the matter, I'm really curious to see what's going to happen when my generation collectively get too old to work three or four decades from now and suddenly all become homeless because nobody owns property. Or really, I'm curious to see how long before that enough people finally see it coming and start to panic and actually try to do something about it.
Everyone tells me I'm worrying about it too much right now but I do the fucking math and even making twice the median income (and living way below my means my entire life) it's going to be close even for me, and I'm watching it happen to my mom right now because her generation aren't completely un-fucked either. (Between them my parents have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on housing in their lives and somehow own no property between them. How the fuck? Rent and interest, that's how the fuck).
Socialism is when the people own the means of production. A democratic government owning it on behalf of the people is only one way to accomplish that. But if ownership of the means of production is widely and evenly distributed by some other means, that is also socialism.
If it weren't for the ridiculous cost of bribing someone else to let you exist on their land (rent) every month, that would be true. But with that factored in, tens of millions of people will be lucky not to die in the streets when they're old.
Or repeal all taxes except one huge tax on all unearned income from rents and interest, and let the people truly making money just by having it pay for everything or else stop doing that (win for everyone else either way).
You are overlooking the fact that the same people being paid that money are also being taxed to pay for it, so it cancels out for more people near the mean income.
That $12k/year is close to 25% the mean income, so a 25% tax per person to pay for it would mean someone at the mean income pays nothing and gets nothing, someone at half the mean income gets only 12.5% the mean income (around $500/mo) in UBI-minus-tax, etc. It doesn't take 25% of the GDP away; it just shuffles it around some. To places where it will get spent more quickly actually, effectively taking less out of circulation than would have been if you had done nothing.
My goal would to be paid more for the same amount of time
Which will still take some kind of effort or sacrifice or expenditure of something on your part, if nothing else then whatever it takes to learn the skills to warrant better compensation. Why would you possibly want to put in effort like that if you've already got enough to live off of? (That's sarcasm).
Who is paying the taxes?
Everybody, but for people below the mean income (i.e. about 75% of people with how incomes are distributed today) the basic income payment more than cancels out the tax (so they see a net gain), and for most of the (25%) of people above the mean income, the basic income cancels out most of the tax, so only the very few people people at the very top end up paying much of anything of note, just like only the poorest of people actually see much benefit of note. (But most people still see some small benefit).
Where are the sales or corporate taxes on all the things these wonderful factories are making for free?
Who said anyone is making anything for free? In a full-automation scenario (which is not part and parcel with basic income, the two are separate things though one can address the other's problems), the people who own the factories get free labor from their robots, but they're still going to charge as much as they can get away with for their products. Which is exactly what creates the problem of all the money flowing into the hands of those who own the factories/robots, leaving everyone else destitute. Basic income can help with that problem, but that's not the only reason why basic income is a good idea.
That's a utopian view of the system. In reality, there will be far fewer "way above it" than "hand out" people. If there is just three to one, you need to tax every worker THREE TIMES THE UBI just to break even. That means you take the entire UBI away from them, plus twice the UBI. Why would ANYONE work when they would be subject to such ridiculous levels of taxation?
As it happens, there actually are around exactly three people below the mean income per person above the mean income, because the mean income is around the 75th percentile right now.
However, it's not a simple linear curve, and it's not like you hit that mean income threshold and then WHAM you're out of the free-money camp and into the taxed-to-death camp. If you give everyone some amount that is x% of the GDP per capita, and then fund that with a x% tax (which exactly works out because that's what averages do), the net result is that everyone's take-home after UBI and tax is x% closer to the mean income. Right now, incomes are distributed such that there is a long slow growth from zero income to the mean income at around the 75th percentile, and then slightly less slow growth upward away from it accelerating exponentially into an incredibly steep peak at the top few percent or fractions thereof.
An UBI has the effect of scaling that curve in the y axis, centered on the mean income value. So everyone below the mean income gets bumped up a little closer to it, with people at the very bottom seeing the most absolute movement, and most people along the way seeing lesser degrees of movement. Most of that 25% of people above it see a small absolute movement downward, because they're already just a little bit above the mean income anyway. Only that incredibly steep peak of the top few percent see any significant actual loss. And you know what? They can afford to absorb that.
If you're familiar with that study of how Americans on average think income should be distributed vs how they think it is distributed vs how it is distributed, an UBI could easily have no more effect than shifting the "how it is" curve to more closely resemble the "how we think it already is" curve, or maybe, if we really feel like it, to the "how we think it shou
I'm not saying that UBI should provide everyone with a new car, I'm replying to someone claiming that existing welfare recipients all have fancy cars and TVs and things (though seriously? those things aren't even in the same category, cars are several orders of magnitude more expensive than TVs), and calling them out as I know people on existing welfare systems and they would LOVE to have fancy cars so if there's some way that's happening all the time I'd like to know how it works.
Where "the poor" is about 75% of the American populace (below the mean income) and "the rest" is only 25%, and most of "the rest" are still not very far above the mean income and so pay for a very small part of it, most of the burden falling on those at the very top earning ridiculously, exponentially more than even "the rest", never mind "the poor".
We're talking about the scenario where AI exists. If it takes a couple hundred years for that scenario to fully materialize, so be it, but that's the topic of the conversation.
And if the economy grinds to a halt on the way to full automation like that, and mine ownership is what makes all the difference between still needing money (= being dependent on other people) and full robotic independence, then it's the existing mine-owners who will end up the true robot-owning overlords. They won't need money. Everyone else might need money to try to buy mines from them, but they have no use for those other people's money and so no incentive to sell their mines.
Like how feudal lords didn't really buy and sell real estate, it was just owned by whatever lord owned it, inherited and merged in marriage or split between children, etc, but not really traded. Traded for what? In an agrarian society where labor is free -- from the peasants who trade you, their lord, labor for the right to live on your land -- and land is the only capital, what are you going to buy with the money you would get from your land? More land?
This hypothetical fully-automated future is the exactly the same, except the free labor comes from robots instead of humans, and the important quality to have in land is not just arability but mineral content.
Why? Who needs money from robots? You need money to get other people to do things for you, but if you have robots to do things for you instead, there's no point in that.
That is the exact comment I was replying to, and I've yet to get an answer as to how to do it. If everyone's doing it it must be easy, so tell me, how can my mom take her <$900/mo SSI and, after paying for rent and food and bus fare and phone bill, buy a nice fancy car with it?
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Worse, the unwashed masses wouldn't become slaves in the dystopian scenario, because you only feed and shelter slaves to keep them alive to work for you. When robots displace humans, the robot-owners no longer need humans, and won't feed or shelter them and they will just die. Either of starvation or exposure, or from robotic machine-gun fire trying to overthrow the system.
Also, I would break it down to more like four scenarios:
- The dystopian one where the elites own the robots and have no need for anyone else and everyone else dies. The good news is, this scenario ends up utopian when, after everyone else is dead, 100% of the surviving humans live in robot-waited bliss for all eternity.
- The slightly less dystopian one where for some reason, the elites who own the robots keep everyone alive, but at their pleasure, making everyone forever perpetually beholden to them. There is some chance that this could transition to a utopian scenario as well, if generations down the line the robot-owning elites who have never wanted for anything see no reason not to just have their robots give other people free robots because why not, it's not like it costs them anything.
- The still only slightly less dystopian one where, before the robot-owning elites can fortify themselves behind a wall of killbots, a popular uprising uses the power of the state to seize the robots for the common good. Now there aren't robot-owning elite overlords... just the robot-owning government upon which everyone is now dependent. So pretty much the same as the previous scenario in the end.
- The nigh-impossible utopian scenario where by some means or another wealth with which to purchase privately owned robots is widely distributed enough that everyone just retired into robot-waited bliss together, without facing dependency on either the robot-owning government or some private robot-owning elites or else death by robot or by starvation or exposure.
The last is obviously the best, but I don't have high hopes for it. The one of the middle options seems most likely to me. And I can just hope that the possibility those have for a gradual transition to a utopia, for future generations at least, comes to pass. Otherwise, it might in the end be better if the first, worst dystopia happens, since at least it would get all the survivors on to their utopia faster, and not leave the vast majority of humanity enslaved for all of eternity.
I guess at least anyone can decide to default to that first option for themselves at any time by charging face first into a killbot.
And just to clarify the reasoning behind that big caveat about how this is not an argument in practice against taxation:
- States are just gangs, and taxation is just theft
- Gangs tend to spring up spontaneously in any power vacuum
- Most of them don't know any other way to fund their activity besides theft, though there might in fact be better ways
- Some gangs are better than others (for the people in their turf), and the kind that spontaneously arise are usually the worst; established gangs sometimes in time develop better rapport with their subjects and actually think about the long-term well-being of the turf so as to best maintain their power over time.
- Therefore, it's pragmatically better to accept a decently good gang in power than to let the worst of the worst bad gangs spring up in their absence, and to work toward making the gang in power better (hopefully someday to the limit that it stops being a gang entirely and transforms into an beneficial organization playing by the same rules as everyone else in the turf), rather than just destroying it.
- Meanwhile, since most gangs don't know of any other way to fund their activity besides theft, and we've got to accept the existence of some gang and thus some theft, it's best (as in least bad) if we can get them to steal mostly from those who can more easily afford it, as well as to spend it on activities that not only help out the people in their turf, but help out those most in need more than the rest.
So yes, because states are gangs and taxation is theft, until we can figure out a way to have stateless governance funded by something other than taxes, progressive taxation in a democratic state is the best practical option.
Depends entirely on your definition of "anything in return." Even brutal monarchs need to fund military and whatnot (again you can argue whether your taxes are paying for things you personally think are important.)
A mugger uses my cash to pay for something too. If he pays for something I happen to like -- say, bullets with which to kill someone I don't like, or more analogous still, someone from a rival gang in another turf -- does that make it not theft?
That said (and I admit its stretching definition a bit since its hard to justify the king's new gold-plated carriage as being useful to the people,) there is also a major difference between a greedy monarch and a democratically elected representative -- the peasantry don't have any say in choosing their monarch, nor can they "fire" him short of regicide if they think he's doing a shit job of representing them, whereas an elected representative can be voted out (sometimes not soon enough, but I'll try to stay on topic!)
So if the gang start asking the locals who should be in charge of the gang, that makes mugging the locals not theft?
No it isn't, mostly because that "or else" clause has enormously different connotations when its the IRS asking for your taxes vs a mugger asking for your wallet.
They both end with "or else we'll shoot you", the IRS just prefaces it with "...or else pay even more money or else go to jail..." before they get to the "...or else we'll shoot you part". But you're still presented with a choice: pay up, pay up more, get abducted and locked up, or if you refuse any of those, get shot. All laws are ultimately backed by "...or else we'll shoot you." (Which doesn't make them unjust; some things are worth shooting people over, just like sometimes stealing is excusable).
Taxation isn't considered "wrongful" (well, outside of libertarian rhetoric) and therefore by definition, isn't theft regardless of anything else -- even when a greedy monarch uses the money for entirely self-serving purposes.
If the only distinction you make between "taxation" and "theft" is that one is considered wrong and the other isn't, you're basically conceding my entire point. It's the same act, just considered acceptable when one party does it (and given a special name then), and not when any other does.
When the mafia shakes down businesses for "protection" money and is so powerful that they basically control the entire goings-on of a neighborhood, they have effectively become a government, and the money they demand from people has become a tax. If the mafia gradually turns nice and starts polling people to decide on who to put in charge of what neighborhood and even doing genuinely good things for the neighborhood, it never changes the fact that they're still the mafia shaking people down for money. It's certainly better if they do it in a nice way like that, but the underlying reality is still the same.
Of course it helps that the government (monarch or otherwise) who collects the taxes also defines "wrongful." That's part of why the US was founded with strong checks and balances against too much concentration of power -- they knew how England operated and didn't really like the prospect. Hell excessive taxation was no small part of why the US broke ties with the mother country in the first place.
So if a gang robs a crowd and most of the crowd are like "nah man it's cool, we know these guys, they ask us who they want running our hoods, and like kill the foreign gangs and sometimes do cool murals and shit" then that makes it not theft? Even of the people in the crowd who are not cool with it?
And again, reemphasizing my original point: I am not arguing here for the immediate abolition of all taxes and let the pieces fall where they may, or even really for any practical change in who is taxed what to pay for what. I have pragmatic opinions on those m
The only way you legally prevent anyone from doing anything is to threaten them with consequences for doing so. Every law is a statement to the effect that "if you do X we will do Y to you in retaliation" (where "Y" is usually "fine you money or else put you in jail or else or shoot you"). The consequences are the prevention.
In light of which the example I gave was actually a bad one. In many respects you are not free, even in the meaningless "if you accept the consequences" sense, to rob an armored car, because it's not just threat of consequences that keep the contents of armored cars safe. Unless you attempt the robbery at just the right moment, odds are that you simply will not be physically able to get into it even if the guards stand around doing nothing. That's why it's armored.
A better example would be: you are not free to kick an innocent child in the head. Nothing will physically prevent you from doing so, but you will face consequences as a result of doing so, some of which constitute the legal prohibition on doing so. The fact that people will drag you off to jail for doing it (or shoot you if you resist that) -- those consequences -- is what makes you not free to kick a kid in the face. If there weren't any such consequences, you would be free to do so. It's the precisely the consequences that limit the freedom.
And those consequences make that specific speech in those specific circumstances not free. (Which might be a good thing in those circumstances; not all freedoms are good, like the freedom to punch a stranger in the face for no reason). You are not free to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, because you will face legal consequences for doing so. The consequences are what makes you not free to do so. So this "free but not from consequences" meme is nonsense.
I wasn't talking about the specific topic of discussion about banning people on forums and whatnot, just that phrase "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" which keeps being repeated everywhere lately. It's not true. Something like it is true -- freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from all consequences, say -- but the nuance is important, because what makes any freedom a freedom at all is entirely the disallowing of certain kinds of consequences, so freedom of speech is freedom from some consequences.
Also, more on the actual topic: the kinds of thing you describe do actually limit freedom of speech within a given venue. And that's perfectly within the rights of the venue operators to do, but it is limiting freedom of speech. I don't pretend to offer absolute freedom of speech to everyone who comes into my home -- insult me and I'll show you out -- but then, I don't claim to, and I don't have to. It's not free speech, and that's ok, but still it's not free speech.
First, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Stop saying that.
Freedom of any kind absolutely means freedom from certain consequences. If any kind of retaliation to speech is permitted, then the speech is not really free, beyond the sense that you're free to rob an armored car so long as you accept the consequence of getting shot.
taxation is your payment for services rendered by your government. Army, police force, road maintenance, infrastructure. Your taxes pay for all that shit. And if you really want to bitch about welfare, you can consider that the "service" of keeping beggars off the streets and out of your sight/way.
And before you start saying its not a true transaction because you didn't choose what to "buy" well sorry but you did -- via your elected representatives. You can argue that the price is too high or whatever, or that your representatives are choosing to "buy" the wrong services or whatever, but calling it theft is rather disingenuous at best.
Before I start: look at my post history and note the kind of radical socialist that I am, and that I'm not some right wing nut who just doesn't want to pay the "gub'mit" to take care of people less well off than me. This is a purely philosophical matter, not about practical politics.
That established, what's disingenuous is to claim that taxes are not theft. There are good arguments to be made that they are necessary and that we should accept them or even have more of them, but to argue that they are not theft is just to hide from an uncomfortable truth.
Taxes are not a payment for services. You might get services from the government, and they might not be able to provide them without taxing you, but that doesn't make it a payment for services. When a monarch demands gold from his peasants just to enrich himself and doesn't give the peasants anything in return, that's still taxation, and the peasantry don't get to say "hey you didn't give me anything in return for that" because that's not how taxes work.
If the only consequence for not paying is that you don't get something in return, that is a payment for services. If you want the services you have to pay and if you don't pay you don't get the services, but that's it; you're free to not pay if you don't mind not getting the services. That's not a tax.
If you only have to pay if you do something deemed bad, breaking a law, then that is a fine, which is neither payment for services nor taxation. If you can avoid paying it just by not doing something illegal, then the payment is not taxation.
If you have to pay it no matter what you do, or whether or not you want what's being offered in return, or whether or not anything is being offered in return at all, that is a tax. Yes, even if the you are asked your opinion (via elections) on what you would like and how much you'd like to pay, even if that opinion is honestly factored into the decision on those matters, if it's not your free choice to decline the services and not pay, then it's not just a simple payment for services.
A payment for services is something like "I will sell you ice cream of any of these flavors for $5", and you choose whether you want to pay that and what flavor of ice cream you want. "Give me $5 or else" is just theft. "I'm going to buy you ice cream, give me $5 for it or else" is just weird theft, a forced transaction. "I'm going to buy you ice cream, give me $5 for it or else; also what flavor do you want?" is even weirder theft, but it's still theft. Even if you actually wanted ice cream and would have paid $5 for it; not being given the choice is the important distinction.
When the government says "Give me $X or else", we call that taxation, and you'll note it's formally identical to theft. If they say "I'm going to provide you with Y, give me $X for it or else", that's still theft. Yes, even if they say "I'm going to provide you with Y, give me $X for it or else; also how would you like that Y?" Yes, even if you want Y, and would be willing to pay $X for it. The fact that you don't get a choice in the matter makes it still theft.
That said, and as I started with, we can then go on to argue about whether certain acts of theft are acceptable given the alternatives, especially when those alternatives will usually tur
Actually, renting has very little to do with whether or not one is poor. In fact, people with higher incomes often prefer to rent. Why? Because then they can easily move to another job that makes a higher bid for their services.
It's not about whether you choose to rent, it's about whether you have a choice. If you can easily just own a home whenever you feel like settling down and aren't worried about where you're going to sleep when you're too old to work anymore, you might choose to rent. If you face no option other than renting for the entirety of your existence (until you're too old and poor to even do that and die cold and alone in the street), that's not much of a choice.
Tens of millions of people live in places with a high cost of living. If I could find even an empty plot of land big enough to park my trailer on for under $200,000 without having to move so far away that it's basically another country, I'd be fucking set, like you describe.
But unless you propose to relocate what's basically an entire normal-sized country's population a distance that would be to another country if America weren't so huge, then just living like that isn't an option for an enormous number of people.
If you know of a way a government can pay for itself without collecting taxes or taking natural resources from the people (or simply descending into anarchy), I would love to hear your solution.
I've had an idea on that note mulling around in my head for a while.
People with enormous amounts of wealth get a steady stream of income without doing anything because they have that wealth invested places earning returns.
Some non-profit organizations are largely funded the same way: some rich person (or several rich people, or many many many smaller donors) donated money to a foundation that invested that money and uses the proceeds from that investment to fund the activities of the non-profit organization.
In principle, a government could be funded likewise. Have a massive foundation that owns an enormous chunk of the productive economy, but not in a controlling fashion -- not the government wholly owning and controlling companies or entire industries, rather, just having lots and lots of little pieces of lots of lots of companies through something like an index fund. The proceeds from that investment then fund the operations of the government.
How to get such a huge investment put together ex nihlo to fund a new government that way is a hard problem, but then starting a new government anywhere is a hard problem in the first place, and better governments are even harder to start from scratch. (Much easier for one powerful person to seize control with the help of other powerful people to whom he promises the spoils of conquest, than to organize and fund a democratic organization to seize the power of the state and somehow stay democratic and relatively free in the process). Usually, better governments are born out of the ruins of worse ones; liberal democracies take control of the existing wealthy and powerful state apparatus of a previous monarchy, say. So on that model, it may be possible to use the existing suboptimal method of raising government funding, taxation, to bootstrap a better one like described above. To start with, the corporate welfare budget could be replaced with a corporate investment budget instead: sure maybe we'll give your company money, but we want stock in exchange (that we'll promptly sell on the market so as to buy a more diversified spread of investments instead).
6. Nearly all the Founders despised slavery. The only reason it was allowed to continue was the southern Democrat States...
Major anachronism here. You're talking about political parties that wouldn't exist until decades later. The southern states weren't Democrats because there weren't Democrats period. There weren't even Democratic-Republicans yet. There weren't even parties at all. There hadn't yet been a single election. There wasn't even a constitution under which to conduct one, because you're talking about the period when it was still being drafted.
If I set aside my personal terror about the matter, I'm really curious to see what's going to happen when my generation collectively get too old to work three or four decades from now and suddenly all become homeless because nobody owns property. Or really, I'm curious to see how long before that enough people finally see it coming and start to panic and actually try to do something about it.
Everyone tells me I'm worrying about it too much right now but I do the fucking math and even making twice the median income (and living way below my means my entire life) it's going to be close even for me, and I'm watching it happen to my mom right now because her generation aren't completely un-fucked either. (Between them my parents have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on housing in their lives and somehow own no property between them. How the fuck? Rent and interest, that's how the fuck).
Socialism is when the people own the means of production. A democratic government owning it on behalf of the people is only one way to accomplish that. But if ownership of the means of production is widely and evenly distributed by some other means, that is also socialism.
If it weren't for the ridiculous cost of bribing someone else to let you exist on their land (rent) every month, that would be true. But with that factored in, tens of millions of people will be lucky not to die in the streets when they're old.
I actually used to rant and rave about that exact theory when I was young and dumb some 20-odd years ago.
Which raises the question: what exactly is the news story here? Zealandia has been at thing at least for decades.
Or repeal all taxes except one huge tax on all unearned income from rents and interest, and let the people truly making money just by having it pay for everything or else stop doing that (win for everyone else either way).
You are overlooking the fact that the same people being paid that money are also being taxed to pay for it, so it cancels out for more people near the mean income.
That $12k/year is close to 25% the mean income, so a 25% tax per person to pay for it would mean someone at the mean income pays nothing and gets nothing, someone at half the mean income gets only 12.5% the mean income (around $500/mo) in UBI-minus-tax, etc. It doesn't take 25% of the GDP away; it just shuffles it around some. To places where it will get spent more quickly actually, effectively taking less out of circulation than would have been if you had done nothing.
Just last weekend I was wondering about the state of farm automation. Do you have any convenient links summarizing what's happening there right now?
My goal would to be paid more for the same amount of time
Which will still take some kind of effort or sacrifice or expenditure of something on your part, if nothing else then whatever it takes to learn the skills to warrant better compensation. Why would you possibly want to put in effort like that if you've already got enough to live off of? (That's sarcasm).
Who is paying the taxes?
Everybody, but for people below the mean income (i.e. about 75% of people with how incomes are distributed today) the basic income payment more than cancels out the tax (so they see a net gain), and for most of the (25%) of people above the mean income, the basic income cancels out most of the tax, so only the very few people people at the very top end up paying much of anything of note, just like only the poorest of people actually see much benefit of note. (But most people still see some small benefit).
Where are the sales or corporate taxes on all the things these wonderful factories are making for free?
Who said anyone is making anything for free? In a full-automation scenario (which is not part and parcel with basic income, the two are separate things though one can address the other's problems), the people who own the factories get free labor from their robots, but they're still going to charge as much as they can get away with for their products. Which is exactly what creates the problem of all the money flowing into the hands of those who own the factories/robots, leaving everyone else destitute. Basic income can help with that problem, but that's not the only reason why basic income is a good idea.
That's a utopian view of the system. In reality, there will be far fewer "way above it" than "hand out" people. If there is just three to one, you need to tax every worker THREE TIMES THE UBI just to break even. That means you take the entire UBI away from them, plus twice the UBI. Why would ANYONE work when they would be subject to such ridiculous levels of taxation?
As it happens, there actually are around exactly three people below the mean income per person above the mean income, because the mean income is around the 75th percentile right now.
However, it's not a simple linear curve, and it's not like you hit that mean income threshold and then WHAM you're out of the free-money camp and into the taxed-to-death camp. If you give everyone some amount that is x% of the GDP per capita, and then fund that with a x% tax (which exactly works out because that's what averages do), the net result is that everyone's take-home after UBI and tax is x% closer to the mean income. Right now, incomes are distributed such that there is a long slow growth from zero income to the mean income at around the 75th percentile, and then slightly less slow growth upward away from it accelerating exponentially into an incredibly steep peak at the top few percent or fractions thereof.
An UBI has the effect of scaling that curve in the y axis, centered on the mean income value. So everyone below the mean income gets bumped up a little closer to it, with people at the very bottom seeing the most absolute movement, and most people along the way seeing lesser degrees of movement. Most of that 25% of people above it see a small absolute movement downward, because they're already just a little bit above the mean income anyway. Only that incredibly steep peak of the top few percent see any significant actual loss. And you know what? They can afford to absorb that.
If you're familiar with that study of how Americans on average think income should be distributed vs how they think it is distributed vs how it is distributed, an UBI could easily have no more effect than shifting the "how it is" curve to more closely resemble the "how we think it already is" curve, or maybe, if we really feel like it, to the "how we think it shou
I'm not saying that UBI should provide everyone with a new car, I'm replying to someone claiming that existing welfare recipients all have fancy cars and TVs and things (though seriously? those things aren't even in the same category, cars are several orders of magnitude more expensive than TVs), and calling them out as I know people on existing welfare systems and they would LOVE to have fancy cars so if there's some way that's happening all the time I'd like to know how it works.
Where "the poor" is about 75% of the American populace (below the mean income) and "the rest" is only 25%, and most of "the rest" are still not very far above the mean income and so pay for a very small part of it, most of the burden falling on those at the very top earning ridiculously, exponentially more than even "the rest", never mind "the poor".
We're talking about the scenario where AI exists. If it takes a couple hundred years for that scenario to fully materialize, so be it, but that's the topic of the conversation.
And if the economy grinds to a halt on the way to full automation like that, and mine ownership is what makes all the difference between still needing money (= being dependent on other people) and full robotic independence, then it's the existing mine-owners who will end up the true robot-owning overlords. They won't need money. Everyone else might need money to try to buy mines from them, but they have no use for those other people's money and so no incentive to sell their mines.
Like how feudal lords didn't really buy and sell real estate, it was just owned by whatever lord owned it, inherited and merged in marriage or split between children, etc, but not really traded. Traded for what? In an agrarian society where labor is free -- from the peasants who trade you, their lord, labor for the right to live on your land -- and land is the only capital, what are you going to buy with the money you would get from your land? More land?
This hypothetical fully-automated future is the exactly the same, except the free labor comes from robots instead of humans, and the important quality to have in land is not just arability but mineral content.
Why? Who needs money from robots? You need money to get other people to do things for you, but if you have robots to do things for you instead, there's no point in that.
That is the exact comment I was replying to, and I've yet to get an answer as to how to do it. If everyone's doing it it must be easy, so tell me, how can my mom take her <$900/mo SSI and, after paying for rent and food and bus fare and phone bill, buy a nice fancy car with it?