* People should keep their money, they worked hard for it!
Then Bruenig points out that there is capital income, which does not come from work. Capital will keep "working" for you even if you stole it or inherited. It's extra obvious in the case of owning fully autonomous robots that could do anything a human could, but it's true for much simpler forms of capital, too.
Then they retreat to voluntarism:
* OK, so capital owners didn't work to get that money, but it was all voluntary. I'm just against force and for voluntarism.
Then he points out that property rights are enforced through violence too - the only reason you will make those "voluntary" trades for food and shelter, is that men with guns will come and arrest you if you just take it.
Then libertarians retreat to common-goodism:
* OK, we could imagine a society where people could just take as they please, so property rights are in a sense man-made. And they do require violence to enforce. But not having them would lead to the tragedy of the commons. Without property rights, we would all be miserably poor!
And this is certainly true, but if the common good is what we target, why not have a proper welfare state, a solid UBI funded by high taxes etc.?
Usually at that point they go back to the first step.
Well, taxation is theft, so that is the easy answer to that. :-)
But to dig a little deeper... a UBI is an interesting concept, and especially so when one considers a future where most, or even all, human labor becomes unneeded. In a world of 100% technological unemployment, it does seem that we're going to require a different system than what we have now. But I don't think just saying "have an UBI" is much of an answer, because - IMO - the entire fundamental basis of the economy will be so radically different that we can't even imagine how the UBI will be funded and how the economy will work.
I keep running through scenarios, trying to come up with a scenario that makes sense, even hand-waving around the "initiation of force" issue temporarily, and it always seems to come out looking like a Ponzi scheme in the end.
Luckily, I think we're still quite a ways away from the total obviation of need for human labor, so we have some time to figure it out. Well, hopefully anyway.
Here's what you do:
1) Tax the monetary gains made by corporations from greater automation, not enough to disincentivize R&D, but enough to counteract inflation from step #2.
2) Institute an unconditional basic income, like Alaska already does for natural resources. Everyone gets a check in the mail.
You balance #1 and #2 so there is no net inflation. The more corporations lay people off in the aggregate, the more wages will be replaced by UBI.
I believe that an individual should be allowed to save the results of their work and consume the benefits later. I believe that they should be allowed to gift (or share) these savings with someone of their choosing. I don't believe that these allowances should be voided by death.
From that, I conclude that if my wife and I die with $2MM estate and give $1MM to each of our children, that they are entitled to the income from that capital, but it doesn't change the fact that that income originated from (my wife's and my) work.
And the problem with that is that it really relies on a "facts on the ground" view on property entitlements. If our laws about property are man-made and supported with force, why shouldn't we change how they can be transferred (or possibly voided in case of death?). You can disagree, and you certainly can fight it, but you can't really morally condemn anyone for trying to take it from you.
You can disagree, you can certainly fight it, but you can't really morally condemn me for sharing my earnings with my family.
But you're, as I said, not justifying it with desert now.
You think you deserve to be able to do as you wish with your money. But why do you deserve that? It can't be because you worked for it, because in giving money to people who didn't work for it (e.g. your kids), you acknowledge that having worked for it isn't important to you. And I guess you think that your kids, too, should be allowed to use the money you give them as they see fit.
Apparently, having the money ("facts on the ground") is sufficient for you to think you should be allowed to do with it as you please. That sounds like might makes right to me...
I'm not condemning you for "sharing your earnings with your family", but I'm certainly condemning your deficient justification for it.
If I have property rights over a steak or a measure of rice, I can cook it and share it with my family. Likewise with my house, car, or abstract medium of exchange (money). I don't see that as "might makes right", but rather as "that's inherently what property rights are".
But let's use your dictionary where property rights are always unconditional. In that case, we have never had property rights and it doesn't seem like a good idea to get them!
Libertarians do not say "people should keep their money because they worked hard for it." They say that "people should keep their money." No qualifier.
Libertarians are not "against force and for voluntarism." Libertarians are fully in favor of force, particularly when it comes to the defense of personal property. Some libertarians are in favor of voluntarYism (the y matters) but that's a totally different thing than whatever Bruenig trying to reference here.
It's partisan screed that oversimplifies concepts and twists words to appeal to people who don't actually know enough about libertarians to spot the bullshit.
There are three possible answers to that:
* Desert: It's mine because I deserve it, having worked hard for it.
* Contractualism/Voluntarism/VoluntarYism or whatever you want to call it, the idea that the arrangement is fair because it was all voluntary from the involved parties.
* Tradition: It's mine because however I got it, now I have it, and you can't take it from me. I call this the "facts on the ground" argument. It's not really a moral argument, so if you take this approach you can't morally condemn people who challenge the status quo (want to take it from you). If you leave out a justification for property claims, you're really here by default.
These three answers are not compatible, for reasons explained at length.
It's not bullshit, because it's a clear argument that I can follow. Whether it applies to "real" libertarians is another matter - as far as I can see it does, though.
I will refer the following article to show how tragedy of the commons did not happen in common land in the last couple of centuries:
http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enc...
---- begin quote ----
The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.
All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
---- end quote ----
Every system uses force or the threat of force, to enforce the rules. A co-op or mall charging rent is not much different than a city or state charging taxes. "Men with guns" will come evict you if you don't pay your rent. But in the majority of cases what usually happens is that your taxes get withheld by the employer from your wages and no guns are involved.
For defense, not offense. I thought that would be clear, but apparently that needed to be called out explicitly. My bad.
A co-op or mall charging rent is not much different than a city or state charging taxes. "Men with guns" will come evict you if you don't pay your rent.
It's not even remotely the same thing. In the mall case you very explicitly entered into a contract with the mall owner, with clearly defined terms regarding the rights and responsibilities on both side. Taxation, on the other hand, is done by agencies which presume the authority to tax anybody within an area defined by lines drawn on a map by men who are long dead. As Thomas Paine put it (paraphrasing a bit) "by what principle can the dead bind the living?"
"Defense" of your property claims, not self-defense. Again, Matt Bruenig has been over this. What if we both claim something as property, are we both acting "defensively" in trying to kill each other over it? One man's defensive claim is an offensive claim to another man, and there's no objective standard by which you can decide who's right.
Sure, one may have the backing of a state, but surely that's just more effective violence. You're not in favour of might makes right, do you? And tradition is no good, because claims have to start somewhere.
To achieve higher aggregate utility, by redistributing some of the money to those who would get higher marginal utility from it. Objecting to it based on freedom is backwards, because freedom is just one component of utility.
The key is in "taking something": there is a baseline state of the world against we're comparing the current status quo.
For point (1), there is clearly a historical baseline in which no land was owned by anybody, and all land was equally accessible to all. Then people started to make claims that some part of land was theirs, and that they had the right to exclude others from it - if necessary by force. They took something from others by (threat of) force - hence committing theft according to your definition, and this theft is enshrined by modern property law.
For point (2), consider the way income taxes work in many (most?) countries. Instead of money being paid by / taken from the employee, the money is instead withheld. The money that is "paid as income tax" is in reality never the employee's to begin with, so it is not taken away from the employee - hence no force is involved.
You might argue that the money is taken from the employer, but nobody forced the employer to employ someone.
For point (3), consider what happens when person A owns some widget, but person B enters their house at night and takes it from them - without force, because person A was asleep. Note first that, that is not theft according to your definition! Later on, person B is tracked down by police, who arrest him or her by force to return the widget to person A. The police have just engaged in theft - which is totally absurd use of language, but a necessary consequence of how you want to define theft.
Points (2) and (3) highlight something important: what belongs to whom is always a social construction. Social convention (encoded into law) says that land ownership is possible, and therefore land ownership is not actually theft. Social convention says that police are allowed to take stolen goods back to their original owner, and therefore those actions aren't theft. And whether you like it or not, social convention also includes taxes, and that is why taxes aren't theft. Because at the end of the day, the useful definition of theft has nothing to do with force - the useful definition of theft is "taking something against the established rules of society".
That is not my definition of theft. Theft by force (or threat of force) is a subset of theft in the more general sense.
For point (1), there is clearly a historical baseline in which no land was owned by anybody, and all land was equally accessible to all. Then people started to make claims that some part of land was theirs, and that they had the right to exclude others from it - if necessary by force. They took something from others by (threat of) force - hence committing theft according to your definition, and this theft is enshrined by modern property law.
If no land was owned by anyone, then taking a chunk of land is not taking it from "others". Its taking something which was previously unowned.
The origin and nature of property rights IS an interesting discussion, but it's really a red herring here. Consider this: You live in the proto-world with no land ownership. You select a piece of land that is unoccupied and unowned, and you build a home on it and start a garden. Later, somebody else comes along and says "I want your home and your garden for myself". Would you argue that you have no right to say "bugger off" to that person? Are you saying you have no right to defend that home and garden, that you worked on, toiled, and cultivated?
If not, how do you propose mitigating this conflict?
In the proto-world, unoccupied land is generally regarded as held in the commons, free for use by hunters, fishers, herders, gatherers, migrations, ceremonies, scattering seeds of herbs and plants you like, and whatever else. There is basically no unclaimed land.
> Would you argue that you have no right to say "bugger off" to that person
You have no inherent right to do so, but it would absolutely be in your interest to do so. And indeed, while it took many thousands of years to settle the question, the settler-agricultural types did finally crush the more nomadic peoples in the last couple centuries and assert an absolute claim to formerly common property, so the question is moot: your property rights were established by thousands of years of violence and genocide by people tired of nomadic peoples asserting their traditional rights.
Fair enough, but how do you reconcile that with my point (3)? Police returning an item as in the given example means the police are thieves according to your definition.
If not, how do you propose mitigating this conflict?
In the same way as it is done today. Note that I'm not the one who is saying that land ownership is theft - you are, because you are trying so say "taking by (threat of) force is theft".
In reality, what is and isn't theft is defined by social convention. So land ownership, police returning items, and tax aren't theft, even though they all involve (the threat of) force. Taking an item from somebody else's home is theft, even when no force between humans is is involved at all.
I'm not saying that land ownership is theft. I don't advocate taking someone else's land by force, but I do claim that (at least in "proto-world") taking unclaimed land is acceptable exactly because it is unclaimed.
That whole discussion does lead to some other interesting points though... for example, if I abandon the home and garden I build on unclaimed land in proto-world, and move 8,000 miles away, does that land remain "mine" or does it return to its unclaimed state? It turns out that in the modern world, "we" decided that once you own a piece of land, it is yours forever, unless you sell it, trade it way, etc. I'm not actually convinced that is right. On this, I may be closer to the position of some left-anarchist types who hold that land ownership is temporary and only based in actual use/occupancy. I'm not entirely convinced one way or the other on this point though.
Inheritance is another interesting issue, although you can kinda sorta hand-wave around that by saying that "if you can transfer something to a new owner, then doing so a split second before you die is effectively the same thing as allowing inheritance".
In reality, what is and isn't theft is defined by social convention. So land ownership, police returning items, and tax aren't theft, even though they all involve (the threat of) force.
Sure, the social convention is what it is. What I'm arguing is that the social convention is wrong and needs to be updated. It's not like these things are chiseled into stone tablets and made immutable for all time.
I'll also point out that I'm far from alone on the "taxation is theft" thing. It may be a minority viewpoint, but it's hardly some fringe idea held by just two or three crackpots. There's at least five or six of us. :-)
The salient point here is that everything done with force is theft, but we depend on mild, egalitarian theft to keep society functioning. The primary issue with private theft is its asymmetry (every security system that doesn't deter a theft is a waste of money), while governmental theft is roughly symmetric and underlies even the institutions libertarians care about.
If you'd like that night watchman state to keep your neighbor from killing you and taking your canned beans, realize that you're asking for property reassignment through force. Not just taxation-theft to fund that government, the actual behavior you want is ownership determined by force. You haven't invented a grand claim against taxes, you've rediscovered the observation that somewhere down the line force (or the lack of it) is a consideration in every exchange.
Why is taxation theft?
Because you're taking something you have no right to take possession of. And you're right, "theft" is a broader category of actions, but I don't consider that distinction relevant here. Eg, the State doesn't (yet, AFAIK) sneak into you home and take your property without your knowledge, in the name of taxation. Although they DO do some other pretty sneaky things, like civil asset forfeiture, but that's a separate issue, IMO.
The thing with what we call "paying your taxes" in the popular vernacular is clearly a case where the State wants something you have (the spoils of your labor, if we limit this to Income Tax for the time being) and if you aren't inclined to give it to them, they use force to take it. If you were willing to pay it without the need for coercion, then it wouldn't be theft.
And here's the rub, that makes this all so ironic: I expect most people would "pay their taxes" to at least some extent, even without the need for coercion. This is especially so IF the agency requesting said payment is actually demonstrating its value clearly.