20
“Freakonomics” Was Neoliberal Bullshit
(www.currentaffairs.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
20 points (100.0% liked)
Socialism
2849 readers
14 users here now
Beehaw's community for socialists, communists, anarchists, and non-authoritarian leftists (this means anti-capitalists) of all stripes. A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you're nice about it.
Non-socialists are welcome to come to learn, though it's hard to get to in-depth discussions if the community is constantly fighting over the basics. We ask that non-socialists please be respectful and try not to turn this into a "left vs right" debate forum by asking leading questions or by trying to draw others into a fight.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
the other comment challenges one half of this, but i'll also challenge this bit since i get the sense this is a position you believe you hold but don't actually. i'll briefly illustrate why, and you can correct me if i'm assuming wrong of you here.
i am going to assume you support taxation. there are a lot of reasons to—it maintains your roads and allows your fellow citizens to survive, be housed, be clothed, and be fed. but you are compelled to pay taxes by legal sanction and even imprisonment. so if your issue is with being forced to help people and society, wouldn't it then be necessary to oppose taxation, since it does that but it's not voluntary?
I do not support taxation. Taxes are theft. I only pay taxes because if you don't they can throw you in jail. I am an anarchist.
okay so then i think your position is just really bad and not tenable for running society.
Well so I think it's first important to note that taxes are the positive right of our government to levy, per the 16th amendment, true really for every government, so we just aren't playing on the same legal basis as one another.
Second, if you are an anarchist, you are a leftist, because governments are the enforcers of private property rights. Personal property can exist under anarchy, because you can defend it, but as a matter of pure practicality private property can not, because you are not present to defend it, and are outnumbered by your workers, who have an incentive to not heed your claim to ownership. If you support private property, you support a government that protects private property, which requires police, which requires taxation, which kinda brings us back around to your first point that taxes are theft.
Since you need police, a system of violence in and of themselves, and taxation to make private property work, then at the very least private property is also violence.