You can call it theft or whatever, but without a doubt you have benefited from living in a society with a safety net. As a former Libertarian let me hypothesize two visceral reactions to the assertion just made:

1) Presumption that I don’t understand the tenets of Objectivism or the free market — scratch that, I used to preach them both.

2) Belief that you would in fact be better off if other people suffered their lot in life without your forced assistance.

If #2 were even true it would be a sad state of affairs. I’ve been a business owner and self-employed and taxes have rarely bothered me. Why? My business affairs are more secure resting upon the social fabric.

More accurately, you have committed the fallacy of Non Causa Pro Causa — the slippery slope. A person being made to share their wealth with society and being forced to give to charity is not going to suddenly cause a totalitarian regime to spring up where we must all practice the state religion and ass-fuck each other (no more so than government regulation has led to government mind-control — though it did put a stop to numerous on-going and prevent similar future human rights violations).

But without meaning to, you have provided an excellent argument FOR taking money from people “unwillingly” and distributing it for the common good, in recognizing that we have a shared social morality that is forced on others. We prevent people from killing, stealing, raping, cheating, speeding, fighting, enslaving, etc. against their own best interests or personal desire — frex: “Pay workers a fair wage? How dare we prevent companies from setting their own wage policies! We want to give them 50 cents a day for hard factory labor!”

Requiring those who partake of the best society has built for them to give back to society is absolutely no different than the enforcement of any of the above moralities.

The reason is simple: you have heard of the Tragedy of the Commons, correct? That applies here: in a society based on self-interest and short-sighted human nature, sometimes you have to force people to do things (or prevent them from doing things) that inconvenience those individuals or violate their “rights” in order to protect the common good. We already do that with many things because of the recognition that protecting the common good is necessary and beneficial to everyone in the long-run.

I have even pointed out in the past how maintenance of the common good is beneficial to the self and to the spread of freedom by reducing the number of impingements upon your freedom — less crime, more social progress, greater economic prosperity, better access to freedom-sustaining and nurturing technology — and how, given historical and economic evidence, social welfare better ensures increasing freedom for everyone in a society than does self-interest and total personal economic control. (You have also claimed such facts make no difference to you, even though you now argue about freedom for everyone.)

As such, I find your argument about “moral society” spurious. What I consider solidly over the line is a person allowing someone else to starve to death because they would not give up some portion of their wealth to prevent it. Being a party to someone else’s starvation by being a part of a society that allows it to happen deprives a person of freedom as much as pulling the trigger and killing them does.

You can walk past a man locked in a box, tell him that only he can get himself free, and feel that your conscience is clean — that you have not violated their freedom because you didn’t personally put them in the box, that you are thus a proponent of freedom — without it actually being so.

sean

It’s a moral question whether or not it should be lawful to murder someone. The question is where to draw the line.

To murder someone is to deprive him of his freedom. That’s solidly over the line.

As a Catholic, I can’t justify the idea that “whatever my neighbor does is none of my business” completely. I don’t like the idea of only taking care of me, it seems pretty selfish.

You say that as if I’m advocating the end of charity and the end of caring for others. Far from it. I just don’t think that anyone should be forced to provide for others to whom they have no inherant obligation.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean to me “the ability to do whatever you want.” If it was, then you’d sacrifice the safety of yourself and the people you love, as well as the morality (yes, the morality) of the society you raise your kids in. This may not seem like a big deal to you but to me it is.

Well, “the ability to do whatever you want” would be anarchy, and would include things like “the freedom to take freedom from others.” I’m talking about freedom for ALL, so you have to tack on that you will not violate the freedom of others. I’m not free to put you in jail or steal your posessions or physically harm you, etc.

“Society” is comprised of individuals. When you talk about society’s morality, you’re talking about the morality of individuals. If you can force your morality on other individuals in order to build a more ideal environment for yourself and your children, what is to stop them from doing the same back to you? As soon as you start trading in freedom for the elusive prize of a more moral (in your eyes) society, you forfeit the freedom to practice that morality yourself! And thus your morality and your neighbor’s morality and the devil-worshiping pedophile down the steet’s morality all get mixed into “society’s morality” and this is forced upon everyone.

Unless the majority of Americans agree with you on every moral issue, you lose. And before you know it, the pharmacy you own is forced to stock contraceptives and forced to limit sales of cold medicine. Your child is taught about ass-fucking in school at the age of 6, and not only can’t you stop it, you aren’t even notified that it happened. A doctor can perform an abortion on your 12-year old daughter without your consent. Your right to own a gun is taken away, or at least severely restricted.

Suddenly this whole “moral society” thing doesn’t look so great once you discover that your opinion on morality isn’t the only one that has sway. If you can’t accept that what your neighbor does is none of your business, you conversely must accept that what you do is your neighbor’s business.

The principle of freedom for all may allow for others (“society”) to live their life according to a moral code with which I disagree, but it is the only way that I can be guaranteed that I will be able to live my life according to my moral code, and raise my children as I see fit and practice religion as I want.

However, there are programs and taxes which serve a greater good and should be levied. You talk about legislating morality like it’s “shoving morality down people’s throats” but honestly all laws legislate morality. It’s a moral question whether or not it should be lawful to murder someone. The question is where to draw the line. As a Catholic, I can’t justify the idea that “whatever my neighbor does is none of my business” completely. I don’t like the idea of only taking care of me, it seems pretty selfish.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean to me “the ability to do whatever you want.” If it was, then you’d sacrifice the safety of yourself and the people you love, as well as the morality (yes, the morality) of the society you raise your kids in. This may not seem like a big deal to you but to me it is.

You know we have utterly different views of what in life is worth having.

Karl Marx and Ayn Rand walk into a bar… or something like that.

As far as shoving morality down others’ throats, yep…if you call enjoying protection from being killed, raped, beaten, enslaved, starved, poisoned, etc., then I guess I do shove my morality down other people’s throats by expecting and supporting a particular society-wide social code of behavior.

So I agree that I am a terrible, terrible man for not being a greedy, idealistically-deluded anarchist and giving a crap about the welfare of others.

Then again, you would live in a dirt hole in the woods eating things you killed with rocks and claim that since such would be total freedom it would be THE BEST THING EVER, so I don’t know why we are even discussing this. You know we have utterly different views of what in life is worth having.

Pff. The public KNOWS it is theirs, but I daresay the problem is not that “everyone else is a moron” or “if only everyone knew what was REALLY going on like I do!” but a huge difference in viewpoint regarding monetary issues and taxes.

Most Americans don’t hold such beliefs, so a year without a W2 would likely be a bit of a shock for them.

We need to wake the fuck up and reclaim our own money!

Well, everything except the ‘breaking of somebody’s jaw’ part, that’s just not nice.