The Principle Concepts of Libertarian Economics - Feedback Requested

[Xerographica]

I had my own personal view. That is, I exchanged my labor for money, then exchanged that money for a TV or a car or food. I traded those years of my life for those possessions. Therefore if a person steals from me, that person is in fact stealing a part of my life. IMO that's the core to Property Rights. Are Property Rights part of a Free Market economy?

Were all those possessions worth all those years of your life? What happens if taxpayers can choose which government organizations they give their taxes to? Are all those public goods going to be worth all the years of their lives? Why wouldn't we want each and every taxpayer to ask themselves this question?

Here's how the average person thinks of it...from J.S. Mill..."It is, of course, not desirable that anything should be done by funds derived from compulsory taxation, which is already sufficiently well done by individual liberality."

What is sufficiently well done by individual liberty? Let's find out. If we allow taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes...then it's doubtful that they will pay the government to do anything that the private sector does sufficiently well. This is because everybody wants the most goods for the least amount of life. Which is exactly why we really need to apply this concept to the public sector.

[Travlyr]

I think we have a different target audience in mind. When I ask people whether taxpayers should be able to directly allocate their taxes...nobody uses their fondness of the current monetary system to reject my proposal. So if they don't mention a single thing about sound money...then it would be a total non-sequitur for me to respond with a sound money argument. Why should I spend my limited time/effort/energy responding to arguments that the opposition is not making? Why do I want to bark up the wrong tree? Why do I want to go tilting against windmills? How can I convince people of the value of liberty if I don't actually address their arguments against liberty?

All the libertarian economic concepts that I included in my original post address the arguments that people actually make against allowing taxpayers to choose how they spend their taxes in the public sector. In other words...all those libertarian concepts address the arguments that people make against the free-market.

In the other thread I asked you to show me your target audience and their arguments against liberty. Did you do this? For example, here's my target audience and their arguments against liberty...Unglamorous but Important Things. On that page are around 80 responses where people have argued against the free-market. So feel free to go out there and do the same thing. Show me 10 responses...or even 5 responses...or even 2 responses where people respond to your free market arguments with "fake" money arguments or moral arguments.

Here's a convenient example. Right now on MSNBC Lawrence o'Donnell said that we currently have a government of the 1% but we should have a government of the 100%. Should we respond to this argument with a sound money argument? No...that would be a complete non-sequitur. Instead, looking over the list I shared...the best argument to respond with would be from Mises..."The capitalist society is a democracy in which every penny represents a ballot paper." That means that every penny that every consumer spends is a vote for how somebody uses our society's limited resources. A true government of the 100% would allow the people that we all vote for all the time to have the freedom to spend their taxes in the public sector.

Xerographica completely misses the point of sound money. Xerographica, sound money is fundamental to your argument. Without sound money (money that 'rings' when dropped on a hard surface) you have zero ground to stand on.

[Xerographica]

Xerographica completely misses the point of sound money. Xerographica, sound money is fundamental to your argument. Without sound money (money that 'rings' when dropped on a hard surface) you have zero ground to stand on.

If you magically managed to replace all our "fake" money with "sound" money...then how would my argument change? We'd still have 538 congresspeople spending taxpayer's money in the public sector. I'd still have to use all the economic concepts I listed in my original post to help people understand why taxpayers should be able to directly allocate their taxes.

Given that you think that your sound money argument has anything to do with my free-market argument...it's clear that you have no idea how the free-market works. If you did have an idea how the market works...and how we benefit from allowing it to work...then you'd stop wasting your limited time promoting sound money and instead spend your time trying to help people understand the economic concepts I listed in my original post.

So why not start barking up the right tree?

[Henry Rogue]

Were all those possessions worth all those years of your life?

Those possessions or property include savings, and apparently so since i acquired them in a voluntary transaction.

What happens if taxpayers can choose which government organizations they give their taxes to?

It maybe an improvemnet over no choice, but it is still theft through coercion.

Are all those public goods going to be worth all the years of their lives?

No because the individual property owner can no longer use there property in future transactions.

Why wouldn't we want each and every taxpayer to ask themselves this question?

I never said that question shouldn't be asked. Go ahead and ask it. I'm not sure why all these questions are directed towards my post. I was responding to Steven Douglas's Interpretation of a Henry David Thoreau quote in which he responded to your post. I thought I defended HDTs quote as a libertarian idea, which was in your post. So shouldn't you be asking yourself the questions since HDT's quote was in your post.

[ClydeCoulter]

It's the question, the damn question. If that's wrong the answer will likely be wrong. We have to get people to think about the right question(s) first.

[Xerographica]

It's the question, the damn question. If that's wrong the answer will likely be wrong. We have to get people to think about the right question(s) first.

"Is it worth it?" is the always the right question. Was it worth it for you to read every single passage I included in my original post? Will it be worth it for you to reply to this? This is the opportunity cost concept...the basic relationship between choice and scarcity.

"It is, of course, not desirable that anything should be done by funds derived from compulsory taxation, which is already sufficiently well done by individual liberality." - J.S. Mill

What is NOT sufficiently well done by the private sector? Maybe nothing...maybe a few things...maybe everything? But whatever somebody wants the public sector to do...they have to ask themselves whether those things are worth their own taxes. This is the point of allowing taxpayers to choose which government organizations they give their own taxes to. If we can't accurately discern what things they believe are not being adequately supplied by the private sector...then how can entrepreneurs ascertain the potential payoff of supplying these inadequately supplied goods in the private sector?

For example, if we allow taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes...and many taxpayers decide that funding public education is worth their own taxes...then entrepreneurs will be able to see the potential for non-profit schools in the private sector. If non-profit schools in the private sector offer people more bang for their buck...then they no longer would decide it was worth it to give their taxes to public education organizations in the public sector. This would narrow the scope of government and lower the tax rate.

[acptulsa]

I don't know what you intend to do with this stuff, but if you're going to present it to the wider world you should keep in mind that you're asking for the principal concepts. Or, if you prefer, the Principal Principles of Libertarian Economics.

[Xerographica]

It maybe an improvemnet over no choice, but it is still theft through coercion.

But it's not theft if people are satisfied with the value they receive for their taxes. If a robber takes your money and gives you the things you were planning on spending your money on anyways...how is it theft?

If we allow taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes...then will many of them be satisfied with the value they receive for their taxes? If many taxpayers are satisfied then perhaps the "theft" argument will be utterly useless. In that case your only line of attack will be to make sure that taxpayers are not satisfied with the value they receive for their taxes. You would do this by setting up organizations in the private sector that provide more value than the organizations in the public sector. But at least you would know exactly which goods/services you would try and supply.

No because the individual property owner can no longer use there property in future transactions.

Therefore, people never see the value in purchasing gifts or making donations? Why wouldn't taxpayers be able to send their kids to the public schools they helped fund or be able to drive on roads they helped fund or rely on the police/firemen they helped fund? Why wouldn't they be able to benefit from a cure for cancer that they helped fund?

I never said that question shouldn't be asked. Go ahead and ask it. I'm not sure why all these questions are directed towards my post.

Because I'm interested in your answers.

I was responding to Steven Douglas's Interpretation of a Henry David Thoreau quote in which he responded to your post. I thought I defended HDTs quote as a libertarian idea, which was in your post. So shouldn't you be asking yourself the questions since HDT's quote was in your post.

You did defend HDT's quote as a libertarian idea...which is why I saw potential value in pressing you for more of your insight. Every investment of time/energy/money/effort is a gamble. There's no such thing as a sure bet. So we allow taxpayers to invest their own hard-earned taxes in the public sector and then see how many of them feel that the return on their investment is worth the amount of life they had to spend to earn that money.

All I'm saying is that we should create a market for public goods. Is there a demand for public goods? Sure. Are their suppliers of public goods? Yes...government organizations. All that's needed to create a market in the public sector is choice. Once we give taxpayers the freedom to choose how they spend their taxes in the public sector...then we'll all reap the benefits of a market.

It's a sad state of libertarian knowledge when it requires a monumental effort on my part to convince libertarians of the value of a market.

[Steven Douglas]

If you magically managed to replace all our "fake" money with "sound" money...then how would my argument change? We'd still have 538 congresspeople spending taxpayer's money in the public sector.

Which taxpayers? Did you buy into the common lay-illusion that Congress is merely taxing the current existing public and then turning around and spending that money? Do you know what deficit spending is, and the logistics as it relates to taxation?

Right now both Congress and the Fed are spending promises of past, present and FUTURE taxpayers' money, AND NON-TAXPAYERS' money, in the form of debts that are being heaped onto children and as-yet-unborn taxpayers. How the fuck can little children and the yet-to-be-born participate in that process, or allocate any funds when they cannot vote, and many of them don't even exist yet?

With sound money circulating, and without legal tender laws in place, deficit spending and financing of the warfare/welfare state by a government-chartered counterfeiting press would be virtually impossible, and could no longer even occur as it does now. Without that counterfeiting credit card from a Counterfeiter of First Resort, politicians would be forced to obtain revenues the old-fashioned way--from existing taxpayers--with all the backlash that entails, since you are no longer telling them, in essence, "Don't worry, your payments will be limited, we'll spread the bulk of it onto your children's tab."

The more dismal reality is that most people (you included, apparently, based on your premises) don't even know what deficit spending is, or the role that currency debauchery and legal tender laws play in that. Most people are operating under the false perception current taxes go to fund current spending by the state. Until that really is the case, the notion that taxpayers even could "allocate" anything is nonsense.

Right now we have a case where a state-created credit card is being used, and where much of the taxpayer funding goes to service the debt. So what you would really be asking, in most cases, is which funds should be allocated to WHICH OF THE DEBTS THAT ARE ALREADY INCURRED. The answer will be, "All of them, of course", since Congress put the entire American public, taxpayers and non-taxpayers alike, on the hook for them.

I'd still have to use all the economic concepts I listed in my original post to help people understand why taxpayers should be able to directly allocate their taxes.

Well, you'd first need to answer the above, but there is another thing you failed to address. Not all Citizens are taxpayers. More importantly, NOT ALL TAXPAYERS ARE CITIZENS. Does a Foreign corporation operating in the US now have political power, and control over the state purse strings? How do you think they would tend to "allocated more efficiently"? What if taxes were shifted, and the state was supported 100% by foreigner taxes only? Or what if funding was only in the form of tariffs? Are you proposing that we give foreigners and others paying those tariffs choices in how state funding is allocated? What they got from their taxes is the privilege of engaging in commerce, nothing more. Nothing else is due and owing to them, and how the state spends taxes that came from them (i.e., it is no longer "their taxes") is absolutely none of their concern.

[Xerographica]

I don't know what you intend to do with this stuff, but if you're going to present it to the wider world you should keep in mind that you're asking for the principal concepts. Or, if you prefer, the Principal Principles of Libertarian Economics.

LOL...thanks. Homonyms always get me. But either I've really cornered the market on libertarian economics...or it's a sad state of affairs that the only feedback I've received are a spelling correction, a sound money suggestion and a NAP suggestion. I was hoping for better passages than the ones that I included.

That's the problem with sound money and NAP...once you believe in them then you see no need to make the effort to learn anything else about economics.