User:Woozle/Eric S. Raymond/2779/Woozle 2

Woozle Says:
December 4th, 2010 at 9:42 pm

When someone does exceptionally well for themselves, in our civilization, they do so in part because of the infrastructure and other benefits provided to them by that civilization.

The libertarian/propertarian position, as I understand it, is that if the “rules” say that your one billion dollars was legally earned, then it is yours — but this represents an error in the assignment of value in many ways, the most obvious of which is that the infrastructure that made those riches possible needs to be paid for somehow.

Taxation is a kluge to reduce that error. It’s full of errors, it’s complicated and awful, it’s subject to political manipulation which make all of those flaws worse — but unless the “winners” in our economic game can be persuaded to voluntarily fund the infrastructure, I see no alternative but compulsion.

Having it both ways — profiting from the infrastructure without giving anything back — is, yes, just as much an entitlement as social welfare. Where would Ray A. Kroc be without interstate highways? Where would Sergei Brin be without the internet? This isn’t rocket science, folks. If the government gets out of those businesses entirely and completely deregulates them, will the highways still be well-maintained and toll-free? Will the telecomm companies police each other to ensure that Joe’s Web Site on a shared hosting service is just as accessible as YouTube?

Also, ESR is missing the point about Bush’s tax cuts vs the meltdown. Those cuts may well have increased revenues — for certain people, and perhaps on average — but they nonetheless contributed to the financial meltdown, because the financial health of the ownership class does not equate to the financial health of America. The gap between the lowest and highest earners has been growing for decades now, and those tax cuts only made it worse — which might have been okay if “trickle-down economics” had worked, but it was a dismal failure. You can’t run an economic engine more efficiently by starving half the population any more than you can make a car engine more efficient by cutting power to the fuel pump. “What’s good for General Motors” is not always good for the rest of us.

Some companies made record revenues last year — during the height of the worst depression since the big one, when people were still being laid off in droves. Can you tell those people, please, why they should be willing to support the idea of cutting the already-threadbare government safety net even further?

esr Says:
December 4th, 2010 at 11:27 pm

"The libertarian/propertarian position, as I understand it, is that if the “rules” say that your one billion dollars was legally earned, then it is yours — but this represents an error in the assignment of value in many ways, the most obvious of which is that the infrastructure that made those riches possible needs to be paid for somehow."

No. The actual libertarian/propertarian position is that behaving as if individuals owe a debt for “infrastructure” that they cannot repay except by chattel slavery (or, equivalently, taxation) is a practice that leads to intolerable atrocities and must therefore by abjured.

Woozle Says:
December 5th, 2010 at 3:41 pm

ESR says: "The actual libertarian/propertarian position is that behaving as if individuals owe a debt for “infrastructure” that they cannot repay except by chattel slavery (or, equivalently, taxation) is a practice that leads to intolerable atrocities and must therefore by abjured."

1. The IRS certainly does some pretty atrocious things, given that it has been given way too much power (I would agree with reducing the reach of that part of government, at least) — but I don’t see the inevitability of it. Can you give evidence for the idea that this practice, by nature, leads to atrocities even when well-designed?

An example of a good design might include attributes such as (a) taxation only of income over X% of the median (so nobody’s having to sell their assets to pay their tax bills — place X at some value >100 but low enough to include, some reasonably constant but small portion of the national income), (b) simple rules with no known loopholes, and (c) the IRS is required to send you a bill each year, at least 6 months in advance, which you may contest. If you do not contest, you are guaranteed immunity against prosecution for any errors on that year’s taxes — even if the error was based on inaccurate statements you made. If you do contest, you get free legal defense (you choose the lawyer); if the IRS loses, they pay a punitive fine N times what you would pay — N-1 of which goes into a taxpayer defense fund which pays for the free lawyering.

2. So. How does the libertarian/propertarian position propose paying for infrastructure, without making the game even more “winner-take-all” than it already is? Dare I even ask about the common welfare and a social safety net, or does the L/P position consider poor people to be losers who are just lazy and deserve what they get?

3. Does the libertarian/propertarian position have anything to say about local taxes (e.g. real estate, which I find particularly onerous) rather than Federal, or are they all more or less equally bad?

4. Does the L/P position see corporate taxes as just as bad as personal ones?

esr Says:
December 5th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

"Can you give evidence for the idea that this practice, by nature, leads to atrocities even when well-designed?"

Yes. It’s called “history”. Go learn some and stop talking like a blithering idiot.

Jay Maynard Says:
December 5th, 2010 at 4:02 pm

Now, Eric, don’t be too hard on the guy. A regrettable truth is that the overwhelming majority of the population is not conversant with libertarian thinking on those issues, and even if you throw out question 1, questions 2-4 deserve answers.

esr Says:
December 5th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

"even if you throw out question 1, questions 2-4 deserve answers."

I’m not in the mood to teach basic libertarianism to the kind of smarmy git this Woozle is coming off as. He can do his own homework and come back with intelligent questions that aren’t loaded with toxic presuppositions straight out of Howard Zinn, or he can get stuffed. It’s not like the answers to the basics aren’t readily available to anyone who can read.

Woozle Says:
December 5th, 2010 at 5:49 pm

ESR says: "Yes. It’s called “history”. Go learn some and stop talking like a blithering idiot."

That’s insulting and makes an unwarranted assumption. You may apologize at your leisure; until that time I will no longer be taking your opinion on politics seriously. You lose.