[mike777]

Let's assume a world where taxes are inherently moral and where there is an inalienable right to other people's money?

Ok...that means what does "moral" and what does "right" mean?

[hrothgar]

DrTodd13, on Oct 1 2006, 02:34 AM, said:

All your arguments are "we must force people to do something and contribute their money otherwise bad things X, Y and Z will happen."  You talk about rights but essentially you want a society with no rights at all.  You want a society where people can take a vote and do absolutely anything based on their definition of good.

Here is how I would frame things:

There are any number of well known examples of market "failure". Market failures are defined as examples where independent rational actors converge on an equilibrium solution that is sub-optimal for the system as a whole. Public goods are one well known example of market failure. Pollution is a second. Resource extraction problems a third. Public safety a fourth (I can go on and on and on...)

If you look at almost any society out there, they solve this problem by use of a social contract. Individuals ceed certain rights to a centralized government because they believe that this is in their own best interest. I readily admit - I was born back in 1966. When I was born, I didn't get the option of opting out of this social contract. It was imposed on me by virtue of the fact that I was born in Poughkeepsie New York. With this said and done, I have made a voluntary choice to retain my US citizenship. I'm think that I am better off living here in the US than I would be anywhere else in the world.

You have made the exact same choice. As I noted earlier, there are anarchies out there. You could move into the Hindu Kush or Somalia and be complete free of the evil collectivist state. And yet, you have chosen not to do so. Perhaps there's some value to a police force after all?

[DrTodd13]

I wouldn't call Somalia anarchist any more. I'll have to check out that other place you mentioned. When I say anarchy, I don't mean chaos nor do I imply the lack of what might be called a police force. I simply mean that police forces would be private and I wouldn't be coerced into using one.

Anyway, we just have different axioms. You seek to maximize overall societal good, whatever that is, and I seek to minimize the violation of people's rights. I'm well aware of situations like the prisoners dilemma where independent actors produce a sub-optimal result but to me, that is a small price for freedom.

[mike777]

Again we need to define freedom, rights, vs ...duty, obligation..If these words have no joint meaning ok/.

[hrothgar]

DrTodd13, on Oct 1 2006, 05:31 AM, said:

I wouldn't call Somalia anarchist any more.  I'll have to check out that other place you mentioned.  When I say anarchy, I don't mean chaos nor do I imply the lack of what might be called a police force.  I simply mean that police forces would be private and I wouldn't be coerced into using one.

I brought up Somalia for a very simple reason:

Your glorious utopia doesn't exist, has never existed, and - I would hazard to guess - will never exist on any large scale.
Areas without any kind of centralized government degenerate into strong man rule.

It starts out simply enough - hypothetically, I might decide to kill a neighbors cat because it shits in my yard to often. (That was your final solution to Josh's cat question as I recall). A few years later armed militias are roaming the street. Indeed, I would hazard to say that the dividing line between those private police forces and a militia is roughly 25 years or two bad harvests in a row... whichever came first.

From my perspective, the most interesting example is one that David Friedman brings up: So-called "organized" crime. Groups like the Mafia are often described as a state within a state. Note the specific choice of wording: A state within a state. The bosses provide many services associated with a modern state. For example, they are the final arbitrators of a dispute. However, they are every bit as coercive.