The comments on Kimel’s tax rate/growth post sure got interesting. Becker’s comment here was particularly notable: “You are the government just as I am the government and we are the government together. When you speak of the government and it’s governance in terms of “confiscatory”, you are accusing yourself of confiscating liberty from yourself.”
This sounds to me like the state has carte blanche, that consent to anything is fundamentally assumed because of the very structure of the state; as long as the proles have some ostensible voting mechanism, regardless of how anemic, the state is omnipotent.
I also thought this was a significant statement from Kimel: “…the failure to tackle externalities is a fatal flaw of the libertarian movement as far as I’m concerned.” There is a pretty rich tradition of tackling externalities in libertarianism, actually, with important points made on the subjectivity of costs that every other position ignores, AFAIK. See, for example, http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-10.pdf
It’s interesting that Bryan and I have superficially similar views, yet he seems to believe the Constitution is justifiably contractually binding in a way that I view as contradictory. I side with the progressives in the idea that, if you’re going to say the Constitution is validly binding, then you’re accepting taxation and all the rest.
i would agree with you that Bryan is self-contradictory. Once you accept the Constitution, you have pretty much accepted the whole taxes and regulation thing and whatever else comes out of the “form of government.” You can of course argue about particular laws you don’t like, but short of voting and hollering you can’t do much about it… certainly not define the ones you don’t like as “unconstitutional” and expect the government to let you ignore them.
that said, you and i and Bryan were born after the Constitution was ratified. Does that mean we get to opt out, never having agreed to it? I hope you can see why that wouldn’t work.
Bryan, and Libertarians in general long for some special island, or Galt’s Gulch, where no one can make them do anything they don’t want. So do I. But the world doesn’t work that way. Never has.
Go back far enough in history and you find humans living in small groups where “group will” is “the law” and no one even thinks to question it. People need each other for mutual protection and help with the hunting and gathering. All “law” arises from that. Some of it bad law, some of it better.
It is not unreasonable for Libertarians to argue for “more” of the kind of liberty they value, and even to reject “government” solutions to problems they think “the free market” can solve better or with less danger to human liberty. But they injure there cause…to the point where no grown up can take them seriously… when they maintain their beliefs in absolutist terms.
And of course I think they are pretty silly even when they maintain a moderate version of their beliefs which turns out to mean “don’t tax me.” and “if i want to piss in the water supply, it’s my own business.” What it really means is, “I am a silly goose and the man in the suit has told me that if I vote for him he will cut my taxes and let me smoke dope and no one will ever make me do what i don’t want… except him, of course, and Vito and Luigi.
Poppies “…if you’re going to say the Constitution is validly binding, then you’re accepting taxation and all the rest.” Yes, it is a contract in which the People give the govt the power to tax, raise armies, have a Congress, etc. as described in the document plus the Bill of Rights. The power transferred to the govt comes from the People themselves (not God or any other supernatural source) and the govt acts as their agent “to form a more perfect Union.” And, as the Civil War proved through force of arms, the contract cannot be rescinded. NOT. EVER. PERIOD.NancyO
The guys that wrote the Constitution were good lawyers and wrote with great clarity. It means what it says in the context of society as it then existed. How it has been applied has varied as society changes because as Jefferson wrote elsewhere (paraphrased) “the dead hand of the past should not rule the living.”
as a matter of “right” or even of the Constitution the Civil War was ‘wrong’ and almost certainly Unconstitutional. But as a matter of how the world works, I guess they were pretty silly to think that they could walk away from the Union scott free after all the trouble we went to raisin’ em. And as to God’s will, I’m pretty sure Lincoln had it right… the sins of slavery were paid for in blood. And I get fairly sick and damn tired of hearing Southerners whine about States Rights when they mean the right of the State to treat their own people like slaves…. both whites and blacks.
And no one ever thought about the “rights” of the people in the Old South who didn’t want to secede. Some of them got treated pretty bad. So much for the holy cause of “ffreedom and proppity.”
Is there really any reason to believe the current order is not simply “might makes right” in more genteel clothing? Contracts that are binding on the pre-born, an authority grounded in a voting mechanism which is routinely ignored; it all seems like a great deal of mental gymnastics to shroud the truth that the state exists to serve the purposes of those most ruthless in harnessing its power.
the “current order” results from intelligent efforts to limit the “might makes right” basic facts of life.
Libertarianism… that is, rejection of all government you don’t like… would very quickly descend into a very ugly version of might makes right. Government is what people do to try to protect themselves from a “might makes right” attitude by everyone… of course it has to have sufficient “might” to make “right.”
as for imposing “contracts” on the un-born.. take that up with your parents. or your kids. no one has the time to wait for you to get some sense before they have to insist you do what you are told. and if you push them, it becomes “…or else.” and “because I say so.”
i should add that the demands my parents placed on me were so reasonable that i never thought to question them. it was only much later when i encountered demands that seemed unreasonable or “authority” that seemed illegitimate that i resisted. there were also “rules” that i broke because for some reason i failed to think of them… though in hindsight they were pretty obvious.
thing is you can’t just go from hating some rules, or some “rulers,” to a general rejection of rules and “government.” we can’t live without them, and if you insist that you have some “philosophy” that says we can, people just won’t take you seriously… except of course for some other shallow thinkers who are really really mad about being forced to do something and think the remedy is to… i suppose.. to force everyone to give up trying to agree with each other about some rules that will make their lives better. and of course the predators who know they can take advantage of you by promising you a tax free paradise where you get to do whatever you want.
If a particular plan will demonstrably make lives better and protect against predators, most people will be happy to go along with it voluntarily. If a plan requires forcing people into it, one may want to question whether it actually makes lives better and/or protects.
I don’t hate rules, governance, authority, etc. I just believe that good rules, governance and authority rely on results, not aggression.
If a particular plan will demonstrably make lives better and protect against predators, most people will be happy to go along with it voluntarily.
Hint: It wasn’t volunteerism that changed legal racial discrimination in public accomodation. It wasn’t demonstrating the potential benefits of safe reliable public retirement that moderated widespread poverty among seniors. And I don’t expect the Koch brothers to concern themselves with making anybody’s lives better in pursuit of their own misguided ideas regarding freedom.
If a particular plan will demonstrably make lives better and protect against predators, most people will be happy to go along with it voluntarily.
Hint: It wasn’t volunteerism that changed legal racial discrimination in public accomodation. It wasn’t demonstrating the potential benefits of safe reliable public retirement that moderated widespread poverty among seniors. And I don’t expect the Koch brothers to concern themselves with making anybody’s lives better in pursuit of their own misguided ideas regarding freedom.
the trouble with poppies, i think, is that he can hold the two ideas in his head simultaneously. he thinks he believes that “good plans” will naturally be agreed to by all affected parties. then he reserves he right to opt out of any plan that will cost him money or trouble.
apparently all the people in poppies’ world are naturally wise enough to know good from evil, except of course those of us who are so evil we want to force him to do something he doesn’t want to do.
heck, i wonder if he would resort to aggression to stop us from imposing burdens on him by our thoughtless and aggressive behavior.
Dean Baker does a good job of calling them both out, ( http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/),but it wouldn’t hurt for others to make their opinions knnown to the WP editorial board.
I left a brief comment ppointing out the less than truthful nature of Samuelson’s column and the duplicity of the Post editorial board. It was there at one moment then it was gone soon there after. There was a next comment that also disappeared. It was peculiar in that it claimed to contradict Samuelson, but it went on about SCOTUS decision regarding the validity of the general tax revenue claim and the disconnect between FICA and benefits. That comment seems to have disappeared though maybe my computor is playing games while on the WP web site, which took forever to load.
Mitsy Mitt the poor little rich Governor finally wears down perennial punch line Rick Santorum in GOP primaries.
An aide is probably shaking him violently to evenly distribute the aluminum dust to prepare for the general election picture. The Kochs and Grover Norquist probably control the right hand knob, I wonder who turns the left one… Some wonk at the Heritage Foundation perhaps?
The comments on Kimel’s tax rate/growth post sure got interesting. Becker’s comment here was particularly notable: “You are the government just as I am the government and we are the government together. When you speak of the government and it’s governance in terms of “confiscatory”, you are accusing yourself of confiscating liberty from yourself.”
This sounds to me like the state has carte blanche, that consent to anything is fundamentally assumed because of the very structure of the state; as long as the proles have some ostensible voting mechanism, regardless of how anemic, the state is omnipotent.
I also thought this was a significant statement from Kimel: “…the failure to tackle externalities is a fatal flaw of the libertarian movement as far as I’m concerned.” There is a pretty rich tradition of tackling externalities in libertarianism, actually, with important points made on the subjectivity of costs that every other position ignores, AFAIK. See, for example, http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-10.pdf
It’s interesting that Bryan and I have superficially similar views, yet he seems to believe the Constitution is justifiably contractually binding in a way that I view as contradictory. I side with the progressives in the idea that, if you’re going to say the Constitution is validly binding, then you’re accepting taxation and all the rest.
poppies
i would agree with you that Bryan is self-contradictory. Once you accept the Constitution, you have pretty much accepted the whole taxes and regulation thing and whatever else comes out of the “form of government.” You can of course argue about particular laws you don’t like, but short of voting and hollering you can’t do much about it… certainly not define the ones you don’t like as “unconstitutional” and expect the government to let you ignore them.
that said, you and i and Bryan were born after the Constitution was ratified. Does that mean we get to opt out, never having agreed to it? I hope you can see why that wouldn’t work.
Bryan, and Libertarians in general long for some special island, or Galt’s Gulch, where no one can make them do anything they don’t want. So do I. But the world doesn’t work that way. Never has.
Go back far enough in history and you find humans living in small groups where “group will” is “the law” and no one even thinks to question it. People need each other for mutual protection and help with the hunting and gathering. All “law” arises from that. Some of it bad law, some of it better.
It is not unreasonable for Libertarians to argue for “more” of the kind of liberty they value, and even to reject “government” solutions to problems they think “the free market” can solve better or with less danger to human liberty. But they injure there cause…to the point where no grown up can take them seriously… when they maintain their beliefs in absolutist terms.
And of course I think they are pretty silly even when they maintain a moderate version of their beliefs which turns out to mean “don’t tax me.” and “if i want to piss in the water supply, it’s my own business.” What it really means is, “I am a silly goose and the man in the suit has told me that if I vote for him he will cut my taxes and let me smoke dope and no one will ever make me do what i don’t want… except him, of course, and Vito and Luigi.
Poppies
“…if you’re going to say the Constitution is validly binding, then you’re accepting taxation and all the rest.” Yes, it is a contract in which the People give the govt the power to tax, raise armies, have a Congress, etc. as described in the document plus the Bill of Rights. The power transferred to the govt comes from the People themselves (not God or any other supernatural source) and the govt acts as their agent “to form a more perfect Union.” And, as the Civil War proved through force of arms, the contract cannot be rescinded. NOT. EVER. PERIOD.NancyO
The guys that wrote the Constitution were good lawyers and wrote with great clarity. It means what it says in the context of society as it then existed. How it has been applied has varied as society changes because as Jefferson wrote elsewhere (paraphrased) “the dead hand of the past should not rule the living.”
Ms Ortiz
mostly true.
as a matter of “right” or even of the Constitution the Civil War was ‘wrong’ and almost certainly Unconstitutional. But as a matter of how the world works, I guess they were pretty silly to think that they could walk away from the Union scott free after all the trouble we went to raisin’ em. And as to God’s will, I’m pretty sure Lincoln had it right… the sins of slavery were paid for in blood. And I get fairly sick and damn tired of hearing Southerners whine about States Rights when they mean the right of the State to treat their own people like slaves…. both whites and blacks.
And no one ever thought about the “rights” of the people in the Old South who didn’t want to secede. Some of them got treated pretty bad. So much for the holy cause of “ffreedom and proppity.”
Is there really any reason to believe the current order is not simply “might makes right” in more genteel clothing? Contracts that are binding on the pre-born, an authority grounded in a voting mechanism which is routinely ignored; it all seems like a great deal of mental gymnastics to shroud the truth that the state exists to serve the purposes of those most ruthless in harnessing its power.
“…the state exists to serve the purposes of those most ruthless in harnessing its power.” When in history has this NOT been true?
poppies
the “current order” results from intelligent efforts to limit the “might makes right” basic facts of life.
Libertarianism… that is, rejection of all government you don’t like… would very quickly descend into a very ugly version of might makes right. Government is what people do to try to protect themselves from a “might makes right” attitude by everyone… of course it has to have sufficient “might” to make “right.”
as for imposing “contracts” on the un-born.. take that up with your parents. or your kids. no one has the time to wait for you to get some sense before they have to insist you do what you are told. and if you push them, it becomes “…or else.” and “because I say so.”
i should add that the demands my parents placed on me were so reasonable that i never thought to question them. it was only much later when i encountered demands that seemed unreasonable or “authority” that seemed illegitimate that i resisted. there were also “rules” that i broke because for some reason i failed to think of them… though in hindsight they were pretty obvious.
thing is you can’t just go from hating some rules, or some “rulers,” to a general rejection of rules and “government.” we can’t live without them, and if you insist that you have some “philosophy” that says we can, people just won’t take you seriously… except of course for some other shallow thinkers who are really really mad about being forced to do something and think the remedy is to… i suppose.. to force everyone to give up trying to agree with each other about some rules that will make their lives better. and of course the predators who know they can take advantage of you by promising you a tax free paradise where you get to do whatever you want.
If a particular plan will demonstrably make lives better and protect against predators, most people will be happy to go along with it voluntarily. If a plan requires forcing people into it, one may want to question whether it actually makes lives better and/or protects.
I don’t hate rules, governance, authority, etc. I just believe that good rules, governance and authority rely on results, not aggression.
If a particular plan will demonstrably make lives better and protect against predators, most people will be happy to go along with it voluntarily.
Hint: It wasn’t volunteerism that changed legal racial discrimination in public accomodation. It wasn’t demonstrating the potential benefits of safe reliable public retirement that moderated widespread poverty among seniors. And I don’t expect the Koch brothers to concern themselves with making anybody’s lives better in pursuit of their own misguided ideas regarding freedom.
If a particular plan will demonstrably make lives better and protect against predators, most people will be happy to go along with it voluntarily.
Hint: It wasn’t volunteerism that changed legal racial discrimination in public accomodation. It wasn’t demonstrating the potential benefits of safe reliable public retirement that moderated widespread poverty among seniors. And I don’t expect the Koch brothers to concern themselves with making anybody’s lives better in pursuit of their own misguided ideas regarding freedom.
thanks, am.
the trouble with poppies, i think, is that he can hold the two ideas in his head simultaneously. he thinks he believes that “good plans” will naturally be agreed to by all affected parties. then he reserves he right to opt out of any plan that will cost him money or trouble.
apparently all the people in poppies’ world are naturally wise enough to know good from evil, except of course those of us who are so evil we want to force him to do something he doesn’t want to do.
heck, i wonder if he would resort to aggression to stop us from imposing burdens on him by our thoughtless and aggressive behavior.
Here they go again. The Washington Post is once again distributing bullshit regarding the Social Security program through its resident bullshit artist, Robert Samuelson.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/would-roosevelt-recognize-todays-social-security/2012/04/08/gIQALChd4S_allComments.html?ctab=all_&#weighIn
Dean Baker does a good job of calling them both out, ( http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/),but it wouldn’t hurt for others to make their opinions knnown to the WP editorial board.
thanks jack,
i am working on a reply for AB. not sure the Washington Post would care to read it.
I left a brief comment ppointing out the less than truthful nature of Samuelson’s column and the duplicity of the Post editorial board. It was there at one moment then it was gone soon there after. There was a next comment that also disappeared. It was peculiar in that it claimed to contradict Samuelson, but it went on about SCOTUS decision regarding the validity of the general tax revenue claim and the disconnect between FICA and benefits. That comment seems to have disappeared though maybe my computor is playing games while on the WP web site, which took forever to load.
Or maybe their actual customers, the advertising clients prefer it that way.
Mitsy Mitt the poor little rich Governor finally wears down perennial punch line Rick Santorum in GOP primaries.
An aide is probably shaking him violently to evenly distribute the aluminum dust to prepare for the general election picture. The Kochs and Grover Norquist probably control the right hand knob, I wonder who turns the left one… Some wonk at the Heritage Foundation perhaps?