Hacker News Reader

The social contract theory of democracy was I believe appropriately dispelled in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This theory may have held up while there was still the frontier, but since there isn't available land for people who opt to settle it is really quite a weak argument.

We are forced by law to accept these pieces "green and gray ink" to settle all debts regardless of what the debt is really in -- you cannot make contracts in gold, and expect them to be enforced. Commerce is most definitely possible without that paper, in fact in California in the early 1900s you were blackballed if you used Dollars instead of gold.

"In California, as in other states, the paper was legal tender and was receivable for public dues; nor was there any distrust or hostility toward the federal government. But there was a strong feeling ... in favor of gold and against paper ... Every debtor had the legal right to pay off his debts in depreciated paper. But if he did so, he was a marked man (the creditor was likely to post him publicly in the newspapers) and he was virtually boycotted. Throughout this period paper was not used in California. The people of the state conducted their transactions in gold, while all the rest of the United States used convertible paper." [ref1]

I am unhappy with the level of services and taxes, but instead of leaving I hope to change and improve it. Just because someone disagrees doesn't mean they are forced to leave.

ref1: Frank W. Taussig, Principles of Economics, 2nd Ed. (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916) I, 312. Also see J.K. Upton, Money in Politics, 2nd Ed. (Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company, 1895) pp. 69 ff.

The social contract theory of democracy was I believe appropriately dispelled in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

I'm sure if you have libertarian, minimalist government leanings, then Nozick's work dispelled the social contract theory of democracy quite nicely. I don't find citing an unknown authority to "disprove" my arguments very helpful. It's a corollary argument to "proof by grad student".

I'm certainly not interested in arguing the benefits of alternate currencies, gold standards or fiat money here. I'm simply pointing out that we all recieve a lot of benifits from the taxes you pay, despite your unhappiness with the system.

And, I wasn't suggesting that you leave the country, I was pointing out that if you are unhappy with the system, you have options. Another option, is that you are free to participate in our tax supported democracy to change it by voting of participating politically.

Either way, you're not going to be forced to do either of those options at gunpoint. You do have that freedom. I grew up in Central America in the 80's. The term "being forced to do something at gunpoint" has different connotations for me than it must for you.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

> I grew up in Central America in the 80's. The term "being forced to do something at gunpoint" has different connotations for me than it must for you.

Try not paying your taxes and see how different it actually is. (Granted, our jails may be slightly better and the police are less likely to simply shoot you if you obey their orders.)

Yes, getting to vote is different from not getting to vote. We're talking about what happens to folks who disagree with the result, regardless of how it came about.

Granted, our jails may be slightly better and the police are less likely to simply shoot you if you obey their orders.

Or, being held at gunpoint to be sure that your paper work is in order (has happened to me).

Being held at gunpoint to be robbed by "freedom fighters" that the US gave weapons to while transporting a van load of elementary school supplies . (Happened to my brother)

Being help at gunpoint in the middle of a church service in rural/lawless countryside by an intoxicated gentleman who was upset by the religious tracts that were handed out by people in our group. (Happened to my father and I)

And, I can guarantee you that our jails are much, much better than what you would find in most countries of Central America and our police are much, much more honest.

My chances of getting arrested by police officers here might be pretty good if I willfully refused to pay taxes for years. But, that would be my choice, and I certainly know the risks that would entail. And, worst case scenario, I might spend some time in a minimum security prison.

It seems that your opinion of our government is rather low, and that's understandable, but these are dramatically different scenarios.

The question was whether taxes are taken at the point of a gun and whether one can opt out of the "social contract" without govt threatening and using force.

Yes, different places have different "social contracts", which results in police using force in different situations. Those differences don't mean that "social contracts" are voluntary in some places and not in others - they're all imposed by force.

Yes, the circumstances in which police will point guns at you vary.

That doesn't address

"I don't find citing an unknown authority to "disprove" my arguments very helpful. It's a corollary argument to "proof by grad student"."

With the clever exception that, unlike a grad student, Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia is freely available from Amazon.com if you want to read the argument for yourself.

Some points just are too long to fit in a comment post. For example, sometimes people link to Paul Graham essays when pg makes a point they can't restate any better. The parent post is similarly "linking" to a published book.

The united states government was first started without taxes. It collapsed in about 2 years. From that the current US government was born.

Taxes are necessary, unless you want to pay out-of-pocket for schools, the fire department, police, etc. And literally anyone who can't afford hospital treatment gets thrown out of the hospital no questions asked. No insurance? No problem, have a near-death experience which causes you to be in a hospital for 5 days? $80,000, pay up. Want people to go to jail for killing other people? Well I guess you better have enough money to sponsor a court session otherwise the criminal walks free.

Argue against taxes all you want, but I want to see a large society work without taxes.

To be fair, once you start arguing against taxes you really have to have a really clever answer to one of the following three questions:

* How do we voluntarily fund a government?

* How do we have an anarchic civilization?

* Are we willing to trade civilization for anarchy?

In other words, the type of person who argues that taxation is theft either has to shrug and say it's a necessary evil, have really clever answers to your objections, or be an anarchist. The anarchist will shrug his shoulders and say "we shouldn't have a US government" and the "necessary evil" folks like me will shrug their shoulders and say "you're both right".

you cannot make contracts in gold, and expect them to be enforced.

Two flaws with this argument of Nozick's:

1. by accepting or requesting external enforcement of your contracts, you're opting into the general social contract;

2. well of course people wanted to use gold to settle. the claimholders had got there first and there was a lot of gold to be had. If California was a separate country, it would have just resulted in a social contract where only gold was acceptable, because that suited gold-holders.

You know, if you happen to sit atop a diamond mine, then you probably think everyone should be willing to accept diamonds as payment. If I sit atop a diamond mine and you don't, you probably feel otherwise.

1. I'll give you that since it doesn't really effect the point I was disproving -- that government is need to print and regulate currency.

2. That is the incorrect conclusion to draw, they didn't want to accept dollars because the new that the government would inflate their value away as every government that has ever existed has done without fail.

'They' in 2. being the people who controlled the alternative money supply, ie the gold. C'mon, don't you think there might have been even a little bit of self-interest at work there?

So how do I opt out of the "social contract", unsubscribe from 911 and the postal service, and give up any protection I get from the police?

Oh. I have to move to another country and accept their social contract, instead. I have to go out of my way and leave the land I was born in and the continent that my ancestors lived in for centuries before these governments were even established, and refusing to do so means I have "accepted" a social contract whose terms can change outside my control and against my most spirited resistance.

I can accept an argument that voluntary human interaction does not scale well enough. I can accept an argument that we need institutional violence to keep a continent-wide civilization in order. I can accept an argument that the benefits of civilization outweigh the costs of this institutional violence. But don't pretend this state of affairs is voluntary. We are born into a system, raised knowing no other way for humans to live, made to recite pledges of allegiance in the classroom before we know the language well enough to understand what we are saying, and as adults, expected to obey arbitrary rules with no realistic recourse of change. And we are expected to believe that we freely chose the shape of the society we live in.

Yes, you can vote. You can even assert your constitutional rights and try to convince five judges, rather than fifty million voters. But even then, the voters might vote to amend the constitution to take your rights away. So in reality you're always at the mercy of authority--be it the authority of the courts or the authority of the mob.

When, exactly, in the Indian Wars did the tribes accept their social contract? Does the fact that your ancestors lost a war really constitute consent to the rule of the victorious government just because that government has conquered and subdivided your homeland?

I'm well aware that blood has been shed to secure what little choice we have under this government. Blood has also been shed to force an entire race, under gunpoint, to live under this government against their will. And blood was also shed to take two steps forward and one step back--no more slavery, but on the other hand, if your entire state votes to opt out of the federal government, it gets burnt to the ground by General Sherman.

There is no social contract. No one freely chose to live under government, though many of us do accept the status quo, and many more simply resign themselves to the belief that there is no alternative. We do have a society that seems to work acceptably, and that may outweigh the cost. Government seems necessary for civilization, and civilization is a wonderful thing. But voluntary? No, sir, it is not.

(Edited)

Government is not some exterior entity, it's the expression of the people at large. Of course, that's problematic because we (humans) ran out of spare land some time ago.

If you were part of one tribe and defeated by another here in the US >500 years ago, you could go elsewhere and either establish yourself there or regroup and take back your ancestral land in another conflict. But against European colonists with superior technology, it ended up as a string of lost conflicts. The colonists in turn were opting out of their default social contract, and established another where there was weak opposition.

Technology doesn't make people nicer or fairer, but is used for competitive advantage when fighting over resources. If the South had had better technology (including the socioeconomic kind) they might have secured their desired border and prevailed.

If/when it becomes practical to colonize other planets, we'll do the same things as before on a grander scale.

"Government is not some exterior entity, it's the expression of the people at large."

Perhaps collectively, in the same way that smog is the expression of motorists at large. But that doesn't mean anyone has consented to it, especially when that government is on balance injurious to some group of people living inside of it.

Well, the interests of small and large groups of people do not always align perfectly. Ain't life a bitch.

> taxes are part of the social contract

The word "contract" conveys an idea of some sort of fixed agreement, that can be recinded if one party doesn't fulfull it's obligations.

Problem is, you're pretty much obligated to enter into the contract in order to get education and work, and if you don't fullfill your part, the government recinds it by putting you in jail.

The other way around? What are even the governments obligations? If you're not satified with the police not doing enough to fight crime in your neighborhood, or fighting the "wrong" (in your opinion) kinds of crime?

Not happy with wars, schools or bailouts? You get to move. That's pretty much it. Yeah, you also get to participate in the democratic process, but that's not the kind of influence you normally connect with contracts.

You can always move. Obviously it usually is a lot tougher move out of country (because of the social aspect). But I know all kinds of people who left high tax states New York and California for low tax states like Florida, Texas and Arizona.

But if it gets bad enough the rich will move the Caribbean. As I understand it, that is what a lot of very wealthy French people have done.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking to leave Denmark, not because I'm wealthy (I'm not), but because I'm sick and tired of politicians telling me I'm hysterically greedy because I think 50% tax is a bit steep on a perfectly average income (even quite low considering my age and education).

It's just the characterization of the deal as a contract I'm opposing. Any civil contract just vaguely like the citizen/government "contract" would result in criminal investigation pretty much anywhere in the world.

Sounds alot like the contract a mafia don has with local business owners.

He keeps the neighborhood orderly, so you don't have to deal with thugs.

He keeps everyone respectful. Business isn't possible without respect.

If you are unhappy with the don's policies, you can sell your house, leave your job and family behind, and flee.

You also have the option to vote, or participate in the political process if you're that unhappy with it.

I see two problems with the option to vote.

First, the American presidential election averages the opinions of 200M people to obtain 1 bit of information. Selecting a president from the population requires about 28 bits. Where do the other 27 come from?

Second, in a presidential election each voter exercises a miniscule amount of power/influence over their own life - about one-200millionth - and a lot of similar tiny increments of influence over everybody else, all adding up to 1. But why should each voter have 200M times more business meddling in the lives of everyone else than governing themselves? The setup is ripe with perverse incentives.

Both effects get starker as a democracy grows in size.

You're right. The right to vote in a presidential election does seem rather paltry.

But, just because you don't choose to participate more in the political process and have more influence doesn't mean that you are unable to participate. That is a very big distinction that a lot of people have shed blood over in the past three hundred years.

But, as paltry as the vote may seem, you get the benefits of a reasonably transparent, efficient and honest government system. And, the last 9 months aside, you are able to participate in one of the largest, most vibrant economies in the world at one of the (comparatively) lowest levels of taxation in the industrialized world.