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[Phillip Rhodes <mindcrime AT cpphacker.co.uk>]

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Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
> 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. 

Yes, that's because it's true.


> I think it's bologna.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

>  For it to be
> true, two things would have to be the case:

Why?

> (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).

I see nothing to support the claim that these two conditions are
necessary for our government to be one based on coercion and
initiation of force.  What most people "would do" in some
hypothetical scenario is irrelevant.  The fact is, if you do not
pay your taxes (or follow a myriad of other ridiculous laws) the
US government will come and arrest you, at gunpoint, and imprison
you.

That our system is based on initiation of force isn't just
about taxes, you know.  Look at things like drug laws:  If
you choose to medicate your own body with substances that the
US government declares off limit, you are supposedly guilty
of a crime and can be arrested and imprisoned.  I don't have the
numbers in front of me, but the number of people imprisoned
in this country for that, and similar "victimless crimes" is
ridiculous.


> 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.

I don't contest that.  But I say that what those people do is their
business, and it does not change the underlying principle that our
government uses coercion to achieve it's aims.  Not just relative
to taxes, but in many ways.

Going back to the tax thing for a minute, let me frame it this way:
Do you approve of the war in Iraq?  If not, how do you feel about
the fact that our government purports to represent you as it collections
billions (if not trillions) of tax dollars to use to fight this war
which has killed thousands of innocent civilians?  And even if you
personally support the war, can you see why some people would
have reasonable objections to it?

So, we pay taxes to pay for "the common good" or whatever. But nobody
who believes the war is NOT "the common good" can simply choose to
quit funding it, since we're forced to pay "our" taxes.  So we're
paying for a mixture of things that we might agree with (building a
given highway or something) and things we may oppose.   If we had
a voluntaryist system, with no coercion, people who object to the
war in Iraq (or whatever) could secede from the current system
which does immoral things in their name, and form their own system.
But our existing government will not recognize the right of
secession.


> Do you really feel that threatened by that 1040?

I feel that if I don't pay taxes to the federal government that they
will eventually send men with guns to arrest me.  It's something
of a moot point though, since the government typically forces your
employer to collect your taxes and submit them for you.

> 
> 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. 

That's just an implementation detail. The IRS here has police, even if
the chain of command is longer.  Break a federal law, any federal law,
and they will find somebody to come and arrest you.


> 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.

I'd say the court got it 100% right on Lochner then.

> 
> 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.

There are so many problems with that.  If a given baker is being asked
to work more hours than he/she wants to work, he/she can choose to
become something other than a baker.  Or the bakers can unionize and
bargain collectively.   And since we have the idea of property
ownership, private business, and capitalism, a given baker could save
their wages and eventually start their own bakery (or something else).


> 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. [...] 

All this tells me is that our courts have been wrong for the last 60
years.  And that's not surprising given our precedent and case-law
based legal system.

> 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).

So rights only exist if they're enumerated in the Constitution?  I
reject that, as did (and do) many other people.  You know, there was
actually quite a bit of opposition to the Bill of Rights exactly because
some people worried that creating a list of that nature would lead to
an assumption that it was a complete list, and that anything not
listed did not exist.

> 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.

That begs the question of whether or not "fair labor laws" are fair,
necessary and/or beneficial.


TTYL,


Phil
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