Which is more true?: Taxes are theft or Property is theft?

[BurtWorm]

Poll question: Which is more true?: Taxes are theft or Property is theft?

The Libertarians are famous for putting forth the proposition that taxes are stolen from individuals from the government essentially by force (threat of imprisonment--or worse, if you resist more forcefully--for not paying them).

But this formulation is actually an appropriation itself, from the anarchist idea put forth by Proudhon that property is fundamentally a form of theft from the community.

Do you think either idea is more right than the other, or are they both right a little, or both wrong a lot?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. "Extreme corporate capitalism" is theft.

[Mr. Flibble]

2. That depends on who makes the laws. Nothing else matters.

The corporations can do whatever they want. But the consumers? Better stay in line and do what they say.

Our system is a dichotomy oligharcy. A plutocracy fitted to bestow a double-standard.

[trotsky]

3. Libertarians live in a fantasy world.

No one - NO ONE - earns or spends their money in a vacuum. To think that my money is MINE and no one else helped me earn it is ludicrous to the extreme.

Property ownership, I dunno. I guess I can see arguments on both sides, but for now I'd go with it not being theft, as long as it is done responsibly and not to the detriment of the community.

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Ownership is not a "natural" relationship to things & property.

It only exists in the context of law and social customs. (Sorry if I am short-cutting Peter Singer's excellent argument in "The President of Good and Evil".)

[trotsky]

6. You are exactly right.

Without a government, "ownership" of anything is meaningless.

[BurtWorm]

10. I think that is the fundamental fact about property. It needs government

to be legitimate. I've had long, fascinating arguments with so-called "anarcho"-capitalists--extreme Libertarians who claim that property is a right but who believe government is pure evil--over this subject. I think their basic premise is a self-contradiction.

[DBoon]

4. property is theft

it is the appropriation of the ancient commons by feudal warlords

[mattclearing]

7. I voted that both are true.

Because in principle, they are. I never agreed to government services for taxes...it was expected of me for being born.

To the same extent, property can be thought of as theft from the community, because it is the hording of resources, which is arguably detrimental to the whole.

They are both extreme views, and the logical results of them are pretty devastating to our current society, but they are arguably true in theory.

[Ready4Change]

8. The basic of property is effort, not material.

Two people in a field with a single berry bush? Niether owns those berries.

Two people in a field, one of them with a sack full of berries he/she plucked from that berry bush all on his/her own? I'd say the one who plucked the berries has more right to those berries now, because he/she expended effort to harvest them.

But this simple example quickly gets warped by social complexities.

[lonestarnot]

9. What if the one with all the berries is bigger than the other or is male

and the other female? and took the berries while beating the other person down? warp?

[BurtWorm]

11. Not so. Another word for "effort" is "labor,"

and we know that owners do not usually labor to extract value from their property. They usually--in fact originally, as kings--extracted value by hiring (or enslaving others by force, promordially) to labor for them.

[Ready4Change]

12. Both comments above examples of warping via social complexities.

- One could outcompete the other in picking berries,
(survival of the fittest)
- One could threaten the other and force them to pick berries,
(slavery)
- One could just beat up the other and steal the berries,
(theivery, bullying)
- One could be lazy and hope the berry picker will share them,
(parasitism)
- One could hire the other to pick the berries,
(paid labor, trade)

All these are ways that social complexities warp the effort basis of property. But the basis of property remains effort, not material.