Tax parents
I do not believe the state is entitled to do anything to us that we would not be justified in doing to each other in the state's absence. So, if there is no state I am still entitled to defend myself against attack, and I am still entitled to keep the food I grew and stop you from taking it from me, and I am still entitled to others keeping up their ends of bargains we've voluntarily entered into, and so on. And thus, in principle anyway, I am entitled to delegate such matters to others. Indeed, I do not actually have to delegate them: others, if they so wish, can decide to protect my rights. If, for instance, I am being attacked, then you are entitled to protect me from that attack. Perhaps there are exceptions, but for the most part anyone can, if they so wish, decide to protect another person's rights from being violated.
The point is that you can't get out what you haven't put in. And so the state can't magically acquire entitlements to do things to us that we would not have had in its absence. So one way to think about whether something the state is doing is just or not, is to imagine an individual doing the same thing to you and then considering whether that individual would be justified in doing it. If, for example, I decide that you are not eating healthily enough and so decide to fine you for any unhealthy food you purchase so as to try and encourage you to eat more healthily - and threaten you with violence if you do not pay those fines - that would be, well, outrageous. I mean, who do I think I am? What business of mine is it what you eat? And I am absolutely not entitled to do those things. And it makes no difference how powerful I am - I mean, if I am a huge all-seeing giant will that magically mean that I am now entitled to menace you into leading the lifestyle I want you to lead? No, clearly not. And the same applies if that giant is made of a group of people - that is, if instead of a mind it has a committee room.
So far so good - but this means that though the state (indeed, anyone) is entitled to protect our rights, it is not entitled to extract payment from us for doing so. Not unless we have entered into an agreement for it to do so, anyway. I can decide to protect your rights from the infringing activity of others. But I can't then demand that you pay me for doing so. (Perhaps i ought to pay you - after all, it was nice of you to undertake to protect my rights for me - but still, you're not entitled to extract the payment from me with menaces, are you?).
But what about those who have violated our rights? Well, here matters are very different. If someone has violated your rights, then that person loses some of the protection that rights give, especially if they have done so voluntarily. Even if I smash your vase accidentally, I owe you restitution that can, if necessary, be extracted by force if it is not voluntarily given; and so it is even clearer then, that if one voluntarily violates another's rights, then one owes restitution and that restitution can be extracted by force if necessary.
Right: well, I didn't choose to live a life here. That is something others - my parents - have made me do. They knew full well what life here was like - that one needs to work to survive and that living here carries with it all kinds of risks of harm, including the risk that others will violate one's rights.
Seems to me quite clear, then: our parents have violated our rights and have voluntarily exposed us to the risks of living. As such our parents owe us a living and owe us protection for our rights. That is, our parents owe us the state institutions: they owe it to us to provide us with an education; owe it to us to provide us with a police force and justice system designed to protect our rights; and owe it to us to provide us with a welfare system that guarantees us a decent standard of living without us having to work or beg for it. And we are entitled to extract payment for these things from them with force if necessary; that is, it is justified to tax parents to pay for the state institutions.
So that's my solution to the problem of justifying taxing people - which is, let's be clear, to extract money with menaces - to pay for the state. It is clearly unjustified in the main, but it is entirely justified if the money in question is being forcibly extracted from parents (and other rights violators, of course). It's good, isn't it?
The point is that you can't get out what you haven't put in. And so the state can't magically acquire entitlements to do things to us that we would not have had in its absence. So one way to think about whether something the state is doing is just or not, is to imagine an individual doing the same thing to you and then considering whether that individual would be justified in doing it. If, for example, I decide that you are not eating healthily enough and so decide to fine you for any unhealthy food you purchase so as to try and encourage you to eat more healthily - and threaten you with violence if you do not pay those fines - that would be, well, outrageous. I mean, who do I think I am? What business of mine is it what you eat? And I am absolutely not entitled to do those things. And it makes no difference how powerful I am - I mean, if I am a huge all-seeing giant will that magically mean that I am now entitled to menace you into leading the lifestyle I want you to lead? No, clearly not. And the same applies if that giant is made of a group of people - that is, if instead of a mind it has a committee room.
So far so good - but this means that though the state (indeed, anyone) is entitled to protect our rights, it is not entitled to extract payment from us for doing so. Not unless we have entered into an agreement for it to do so, anyway. I can decide to protect your rights from the infringing activity of others. But I can't then demand that you pay me for doing so. (Perhaps i ought to pay you - after all, it was nice of you to undertake to protect my rights for me - but still, you're not entitled to extract the payment from me with menaces, are you?).
But what about those who have violated our rights? Well, here matters are very different. If someone has violated your rights, then that person loses some of the protection that rights give, especially if they have done so voluntarily. Even if I smash your vase accidentally, I owe you restitution that can, if necessary, be extracted by force if it is not voluntarily given; and so it is even clearer then, that if one voluntarily violates another's rights, then one owes restitution and that restitution can be extracted by force if necessary.
Right: well, I didn't choose to live a life here. That is something others - my parents - have made me do. They knew full well what life here was like - that one needs to work to survive and that living here carries with it all kinds of risks of harm, including the risk that others will violate one's rights.
Seems to me quite clear, then: our parents have violated our rights and have voluntarily exposed us to the risks of living. As such our parents owe us a living and owe us protection for our rights. That is, our parents owe us the state institutions: they owe it to us to provide us with an education; owe it to us to provide us with a police force and justice system designed to protect our rights; and owe it to us to provide us with a welfare system that guarantees us a decent standard of living without us having to work or beg for it. And we are entitled to extract payment for these things from them with force if necessary; that is, it is justified to tax parents to pay for the state institutions.
So that's my solution to the problem of justifying taxing people - which is, let's be clear, to extract money with menaces - to pay for the state. It is clearly unjustified in the main, but it is entirely justified if the money in question is being forcibly extracted from parents (and other rights violators, of course). It's good, isn't it?
Comments (75)
More of the same.
...the rest of us believe that the state ought act so as to protect our shared interests in the face of recalcitrant individuals.
You just do not like what I have to say.
Most people are also spectacularly stupid and have probably spent a grand total of 10 minutes thinking about this kind of thing, if they've spent any time thinking about it at all. What's your point? Try engaging with the argument.
Yes it can - and demonstrably, it does. You can fight, but you cannot wage war. You can make paper, you cannot print money. You can become a vigilante, but not a police officer. We create new edifices by engaging in social practices.
That's incoherent; entitlement is a social contract; you have no entitlements not granted you by us.
You're not providing any kind of argument, you're just begging the question and providing a list of things I would find it difficult to do.
Okaaay. Good one. Reason is strong with this one.
...along with making your bed and washing the dishes? This strikes me as teenage whining. Growing up involves taking responsibility not just for yourself, but for those in your care.
So? You're whining.
Quoting Banno
Erm....relevance? I need to trim the hedge. My toe hurts. Do I really need to clean my teeth?
Yep, one who is consumed by themselves would not see the relevance. The extreme individualism that underpins such thought sits outside of ethics, not seeing how it depends on the benevolence of others.
Oh, I see - once more it's my pesky rationalism getting in the way of me seeing what those free from it can perceive so clearly. You sound rather impressed with yourself.
Quoting Banno
Well that's one for the book of quotes.
No, it's your obsession with self.
So, individuals exist and have rights. Good boy!! Now do you have an imagination in there? If you do, try and imagine that there is no society. If you like, imagine an island on which several people have just washed-up. Can you do that?
Where?
That's why there's an implicit social contract.
What?
Perhaps some philosophy might be done here after all...
How about you actually address the argument in the OP, rather than pretending you've read Leviathan.
If you're interested in name dropping, the view I expressed in the opening line is Locke's.
Again, I am addressing the OP. You just do not like what I have to say.
I'm still waiting for you to explain where you talk about organisations in the OP.
Oh, you need to read the OP then. And when you've understood its content - which has clearly yet to happen - you can try and address something in it. Or you can pretend you know things you do not know, and pretend you've read people you've not read. My prediction: you're going to do the latter.
In Saudi Arabia they believe the state rules by divine right.
Bartricks denies any legitimacy to the state, which means he needs to move to the US where we lay seige to the Capitol when we feel like it.
Why do Australians accept the authority of the state?
No, Frank, try again. I don't deny legitimacy to the state: I showed how it could be legitimate. Read the OP again. I don't believe I mentioned laying siege to anywhere.
As Bertrand Russell said "never trust a stupid man's report of what a clever man has said. He will unconsciously translate it into something he can understand. I would rather be reported by my bitterest of enemies among philosophers, than a friend ignorant of the subject".
Quoting frank
That's a question for Australian psychologists to answer. The philosophical question is whether the state is, in fact, legitimate.
Oooo, that's a good question. And a puzzle. There's a few directions one might go, from subservience to the squattocracy to reliance on mateship. But I think I would put it down to "She'll be right" optimism and contempt for dickheads.
Well, the ones that agree with the state accept it's authority, the ones that don't do like everywhere else and grumble while not getting too much attention.
Seems to me quite clear, then: our parents have violated our rights and have voluntarily exposed us to the risks of living. As such our parents owe us a living and owe us protection for our rights. That is, our parents owe us the state institutions: they owe it to us to provide us with an education; owe it to us to provide us with a police force and justice system designed to protect our rights; and owe it to us to provide us with a welfare system that guarantees us a decent standard of living without us having to work or beg for it. And we are entitled to extract payment for these things from them with force if necessary; that is, it is justified to tax parents to pay for the state institutions.
Your parents have forced you to live a life. Well, we're all entitled to make them pay to insure us against the various risks we will face while living it. Yes?
I'll make it easier: who should pay for prisons? The innocent? Or criminals? Criminals, right? (Don't tell me who does pay for them - I am not describing the world, I am talking about what is just).
Same idea. It's not your fault you're living here. Not your fault you need to work for a living. Not your fault that you live in a world full of people who threaten to violate your rights. None of it is your fault. It's the fault of your parents. And so they should pay. They should pay to protect your rights - pay for the police etc - and they should provide you with what you need to live a decent life etc.
Quoting Bartricks
Determinism (?). Anyways, it depends a lot of how lucky you could be. Nobody chooses to be born. But also not anyone has a risky life. Others born in a wealthy/lovely life, others born in a dangerous place and then they will be in risk the rest of their lives. So I guess you are defending that the fact of not choosing to be born is a duty that our parents have to being punished for us or the state as a punishment.
Ok... but imagine this fatalism. Your kid is dead since the birth. What can happen here? Who is guilty of this situation? Because you are typing that every pregnant woman will have healthy kids, etc... but the reality is hardest than this.
So I guess being born in a situation where you actually can talk through a forum is a gift which is worthy to paying for.
Because is a developed country which believes in the rule of law due to how good the system works.
Philosophical anarchism (the view that the state has no right to command, its subjects have no duty to obey, so the only rights and duties anybody has are the same ones they'd have in the absence of any state) is a pretty well-known position covered in any intro to political philosophy, usually alongside Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke as archetypes of the three main alternatives.
You can disagree with it if you like, of course, but OP is clearly taking it as a premise and then deriving conclusions from that premise, and that derivation is clearly meant to be the topic here, not the premise itself.
If you insist on debating the premise anyway, try giving an argument against it instead of just saying the equivalent of "nuh uh" or acting like this is some novel complete nonsense that nobody in their right mind would legitimately defend.
No you ain't. You are entitled to the produce of land to which you hold the title, which if you do, you get from the state. No state, no entitlements, merely whatever you can hang on to you hang on to until you don't.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I don't see how one can mount an argument against such counterfactual nonsense. Entitlement is a social construct; you make like a tiger, expect to be shot and skinned.
In addition, you state others are entitled to protect other people's rights. However, if that were the case then someone can use their subjective idea of rights to justify literally any action.
Even if so, "society" and "state" are not synonyms.
No they are not. But 'state' relates to 'estate'. In order to institute property relations as a construct, a society has to lay claim to the land whose rights it wishes to confer. A state is a society that claims sovereignty(?) over a territory.
Does that join the dots sufficiently for you?
I actually just had a thread on this (the meaning of words thing), and will be doing one on the analogous property-rights topic eventually too.
You talk of rights, but you do not explain where rights come from. Did you create your rights ex nihilo? Did you just decide you had something called rights? Why would anyone else care that you "had rights" all by yourself?
They wouldn't.
@Banno called this kind of thinking "the sovereign individual". In another discussion I called it "atomization" which you said you didn't understand.
You didn't invent the concept of rights; that was done long before you were born. Besides being born to parents who were playing an exceedingly cruel hoax on you (probably you in particular) you were born into a society of non-sovereign, non-atomized individuals which granted you rights.
It's way too late (by centuries) for you to invent your sovereign individual rights. You missed the boat -- sorry. [individual creatures, no matter what species, are always enclosed in a matrix of other individuals and other species. There are no 'sovereign individuals' anywhere!]
Look: I can understand the wish to be a sovereign individual, having the privileges of an absolute monarch. The desire is latent in our id-self per Dr. Freud. It happens to be an infantile, narcissistic desire. It is embarrassing to see an adult elevating the self-centeredness of a helpless infant to a philosophical platform.
He wants his mum to pay for everything. Not a highpoint in the intellectual life of the forums.
It is because force can legitimately be used against those who are violating another's rights and also to make sure people pay restitution. For instance, if someone damages some of your property, then I - any anyone else for that matter - is justified in making them give you restitution. And thus as state institutions are really nothing more than bodies of people, those institutions would be justified in extracting money from parents with menaces. So, whereas there is no justification for taxing those who have not violating anyone's rights or who do not owe anyone restitution - and thus taxing regular folk is unjust - it is not unjust for us to tax parents. For it is their fault we have to live a life here and their fault our rights are liable to be violated and thus need protecting.
And you're qualified to judge that?
They come from Ipswich. By train.
What, exactly, are you asking? We have rights. We recognise them using our reason. It's that faculty that few here know how to use effectively.
I asked you earlier if you had an imagination. You did not answer, so I will assume you do. Use it: imagine an island on which there lives a hermit. So an island on which there is no society. This hermit has built himself a little shack and grown himself some vegetables.
Now, does that hermit have any rights? For instance, if I just rock up on the island, may I kill him? Or will killing him be unjust? It will be unjust, yes? Because he has a right to life. See? No society. Yet he has a right to life. Again: there is no society on the island. No laws. No nothing. Just a hermit, a shack and so on. And yet it is blindly obvious to all those of moral sensitivity and intelligence that others are not morally permitted to treat the hermit in just any old way. He has a right to life, a right to that shack, to his vegetables and so on.
Don't ask 'why?' - we can give all kinds of backstories about that, but it won't make any difference to my case, which requires not that we can explain why we have rights, but only that we have them. So again, the important point is that he does have such rights, and that there are no human institutions on the island. And thus those who can reason clearly can recognise that rights are not constructs of human societies. Far from it, the legitimacy of a human society's institutions derives from whether and how well such institutions are respecting the rights we have.
That's all John Locke above. It's standard stuff. The 'problem' it generates - and it is not a problem, just the logical upshot - is that taxation is not justified. For I rock up on the island and I decide to protect the hermit's rights. That's something I'm entitled to do. I am not violating his rights in deciding to do this. But then, having decided to dedicate my life to protecting his rights, I insist he pays me - that he gives me space in his shack and a portion of his vegetables. And I threaten him with violence if he does not give me these things.
Well, that's clearly not something I am entitled to do. It would be quite different if the hermit freely recruited me to protect his rights. But he didn't - I just decided to protect them. And because of the lack of a freely negotiated agreement, I do not have any right to a portion of his possessions, and no right to use violence against him.
Yet that's what the state does to us. It taxes us - which is to extract money with menaces - in order to pay for itself. That's not something I am entitled to do to another in the state's absence, and so it is not something the state is entitled to do either, for we can only delegate to others that which we ourselves have a right to do.
But parents have violated our rights and have exposed us to risks that we did not consent to, and thus they can legitimately be made to pay to protect us from those risks. Hence what would be unjust if done to us - namely taxing us to pay for the protection of our rights without our consent to do so - is not unjust if done to parents.
But you can't bring yourself to do that.
Your hermit only has property if, when you 'rock up', you decide that it is so.
Questions:
Did any of the 10 people have any rights? No.
Did any of the 10 people have any property? No.
Fast forward 100,000 years.
Questions:
Did any of the 100 people have any rights? No.
Did any of the 100 people have any property? No.
Did a government exist? No.
Fast forward 10,000 years.
Questions:
Did any of the 1,000 people have any rights? Yes.
Where did their rights come from? From the very minor potentate's government.
Did any of the 1,000 people have any property? Yes.
Where did their property come from? From the very minor potentate's government.
Did a government exist? Yes, if you can call a very minor potentate a government, which you can.
Where did the very minor potentate get permission to rule over everybody? Executive Fiat.
The people didn't give themselves property. Until someone came along and created the idea of "property" and said, "All this is mine, and that little bit over there is yours. Keep your hands off my property or you'll be dead meat." the idea of having property couldn't exist. "Rights" to having property couldn't exist either until they were created by (in this case) the very minor potentate. "You have a right to grow whatever you want on your little plot of land. Remember to keep your hands off my property. You have no right to it whatsoever."
The government, such as it was--a tin-pot potentate--gave the people rights. Maybe he shouldn't have, but he did.
What happened to the 1,000 people living in the city run by the very minor potentate is a crude model of what would happen in the future:
a) people live together in large numbers and need a coordinator
b) the coordinator of all the activities a large number of people undertake becomes a government
c) the government, with the assent of the people, creates rights, or revokes them.
In time, people become very accustomed to the various rights they have and come to think that rights, like apples, grow on trees. They don't. They come from a collective of some sort that has the necessary power to either create or destroy rights. It might be the collective of all the king's horses and all the king's men, or it might be the self-constituted revolutionary government, the junta, or a committee democratically elected by the citizens to form a government snd define rights and responsibilities.
However it is done, rights are granted.
1. If rights are granted by humans, then the hermit has no rights
2. the hermit has rights
3. Therefore rights are not granted by humans.
Furthermore, you are not addressing the main argument of this thread, which is that taxing parents does not violate their rights, whereas taxing the rest of us does, other things being equal. But well done for focussing on the less interesting claim!
Here's how most of you here seem to argue: I make an argument that, say, Xing is immoral. You respond "morality is a human construction". It's just tedious. It's like saying "how do we know anything?" in response to any argument for an interesting proposition.
Now, do you have anything interesting to say about the interesting argument that I made?
And your parents can pass the buck to their parents, and they to theirs, and so on, back to Adam and Eve, or the Primordial Soup.
Where exactly does that get you?
A case can be made for the use of force being just in the case of self-defense, but other than that I am not so sure.
Violence is truly an unholy tool. It's reason that seperates man from animal, and violence that makes him more like it.
But, the bigger problem here is that you claim that the hermit has rights but you haven't indicated how or from what source these rights came to him. You haven't claimed that rights are from God. That would be one way for him to have rights. You haven't claimed that they are from anywhere else, either. Did he just declare one day that he had rights? You or I could claim that we had rights, but how would the hermit, you, or I make it stick?
Have you heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? It's a United Nations document. It grants numerous rights to everyone. But is the United Nations a sufficiently authoritative and powerful organization that it can create rights for everyone? Seems doubtful.
The Constitution of the United States enumerates the "inalienable rights" of American citizens. The authors of the Constitution thought the nation they were creating had the authority and the power to create rights. Citizens of the newly hatched country also thought that their nation had sufficient authority and power. As it turned out, the nation did not have quite enough authority and power to fully establish the rights the constitution enumerated. It's been a struggle.
Quoting Bartricks
Personally, I don't have any problem with the hermit having rights as an individual. It would be wrong to kill him. He has a right to life. So do I, so do you. THAT isn't the question. The question is where do the rights that we have come from? I think they come from a society that has enough authority and power to establish them. When states fail, the rights that they had once created begin to evaporate because the authority and power of the collective society is gone. A once orderly society becomes a chaotic and frequently fatal 'all against all'.
Your reason. Not our reason.
That you still haven't grasped the difference between you thinking something is the case and something's actually being the case is at the root of your proliferation of uninteresting threads. The correct resolution of your syllogisms is child's play to most people here and your arguments in all cases come down to some premise with which others disagree but which you claim to be immutable on no grounds other than that it seems that way to you.
It's philosophically dull, a dead end...
Quoting Banno
Thank you. You are also well named. But at the risk of a little negativity, let us focus on our disagreements and dispense with the compliments.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
You have made a creed. My creed is different, and comes from the Diggers. "No man has any right to buy or sell this Earth for private gain". Which develops from the sayings of Jesus; "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God, that which is God's."
I might get to taxation justice later, but if you start with inalienable property rights, then It seems reasonable for me to question your premise rather than your conclusion.
He mimicks the style of philosophers. :p
A competent arguer would not question the idea that we have rights, but would instead focus their attention on whether my controversial conclusion really follows.
I think this was an episode of One Punch Man.
Make them.
I am not advocating suicide but most parents have always assumed the 'tax' for having children. Protecting them from danger, feeding them etc.
Your life becomes yours at some point and you gain a measure of independence, as far as this things go; what do you do when the key to your self-proclaimed prison is handed to you?