Comment by dantheman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dantheman | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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?

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".

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