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["Cristóbal Palmer" <cristobalpalmer AT gmail.com>]

On 7/16/07, Phillip Rhodes <motley.crue.fan AT gmail.com> wrote:
> because it uses initiation of force (or threat of said force)
> to achieve it's goals.

You keep repeating this assertion. I think it's bologna. For it to be
true, two things would have to be the case:

(1) The vast majority of people wouldn't pay taxes without the threat
of jail time or other "violent" punishment (I don't think this is
true, but we'd have to look at other countries for evidence).
(2) The vast majority of people pay their taxes because they are
afraid of going to jail if they don't (also not true, I'm guessing).

The fact is that most people aren't _happy_ to pay taxes, but they do
it on time and without thinking about jail or guns. They pay because
it's the law and they have respect for the law. I suppose you could
take a poll and prove me wrong, but I seriously doubt that most people
think, "If it weren't for the threat of jail time, I wouldn't pay my
taxes." I certainly don't.

Do you really feel that threatened by that 1040?

Did you know that the equivalent of the IRS in Perú has its own police
force? They have some real teeth down there. If you lived in Perú, you
might have an argument. Here... not so much. Maybe you can find out if
rates of tax evasion are higher or lower in countries with more direct
threats of force if people don't pay? My guess is that tax evasion is
higher when there's a more direct threat, but I don't have any hard
evidence...

Let's go back to your bit about property rights being fundamental. Did
you know that there was a period (known as the Lochner era) when our
Supreme Court took "Economic Liberties" to be the most basic? Let's
have a look at the case that that period is named for:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0198_0045_ZS.html

Basically the 1905 Lochner case struck down a New York law that capped
hours that bakers could work, asserting that freedom of contract is a
basic right protected as liberty and property rights under the due
process clause of the 14th Amendment, and that the government did not
have a valid "police" purpose that would allow it to interfere in such
labor contracts.

During the same era, the Court allowed labor laws controlling Women's
work hours, coal miner's hours, and price controls for grain
elevators. There was no consistency other than the use of the
"substantive due process" crutch. Also, Lochner is intellectually
dishonest: the bakers didn't actually have the bargaining power to
negotiate for shorter hours, so they didn't have a real freedom of
contract to begin with.

I'm getting what I'm saying here from "Constitutional Law: Principles
and Policies (Second Edition)," which is by Erwin Chemerinsky, who
teaches at Duke. You should check it out. Especially pp. 590-596 on
the Lochner era. I'll quote briefly: "For the last 60 years,
commentators and Justices have repudiated the Lochner era decisions.
[...] Critics argue that the government should be able to regulate to
achieve many other goals, including protecting workers, consumers, and
the public generally. Freedom of contract should not be an obstacle to
necessary regulations. [...] Unelected judges were unduly substituting
their values for those of popularly elected legislatures to protect
rights that were not expressly stated in the Constitution" (596).

If courts still followed the logic of Lochner, we wouldn't have (fair)
labor laws as we know them. Do you like your weekends? I do.

/me goes back to using his taxpayer-subsidized Internet connection.

Cheers,
--
Cristóbal M. Palmer
Love as a predictor of technological success: http://tinyurl.com/2em6zs