Rothbard's Blind Spot

[Sola_Fide]

No you did not reject religion, you merely substituted the State as your religion. So here you are, force feeding us your State Religion disguised as Pragmatarianism

Yes, I agree.

Also, there are several problems with pragmatism as a philosophy. One glaring problem with pragmatism is that it can never furnish a man with knowledge until after one has acted. But one of the purposes of knowledge is to give a man knowledge enough to make an informed choice. On the pragmatic theory of knowledge, one always knows too late.


Also, if what is right is defined by success, than virtually anything could be defined as right and good. Stalin murdered countless people, but died peacefully in his bed. Was his murder right because it was "successful"? On the pragmatic theory, where success is the desired end, one could say that Stalin's murder was good.

[Xerographica]

You said that allocating taxation would "lift the burden of government" from people. How?

If I point a gun to your head and tell you to give the contents of your wallet to person A, person B, or person C...and you get the choice of which person the contents of your wallet goes to, how does this "lift the burden" of the person pointing the gun at me?

Sure, the person pointing the gun at me has "created a market" for the contents of my wallet, but how can you rationally say that the burden of my emptying my wallet to someone is lifted? I'm still burdended by the person pointing the gun at me.

Somebody points a gun at me and forces me to decide which person to give $1000 to...

Person A: Will give me $10 in return
Person B: Will give me $500 in return
Person C: Will give me $3000 in return

Well...obviously I'd choose to give my $1000 to person C. Are you going to argue that it's a burden for me if somebody triples my money?

The burden of government stems from the fact that we aren't getting our money's worth of public goods. That shouldn't be a surprise...that's an inevitable consequence of command economies. How do we lift that burden? By allowing taxpayers to reward the government organizations that do more with less. If you want to argue that all government organizations are equally ineffective and wasteful...then why wouldn't allowing taxpayers to shop for themselves in the public sector be the most effective/efficient way to help them come to the same conclusion?

God saves men, not because of anything they've done but because He has predestined the ones to be saved before the beginning of time:

How do you know that you, Sola Fide, are predestined to be saved?

[Sola_Fide]

Somebody points a gun at me and forces me to decide which person to give $1000 to...

Person A: Will give me $10 in return
Person B: Will give me $500 in return
Person C: Will give me $3000 in return

Well...obviously I'd choose to give my $1000 to person C. Are you going to argue that it's a burden for me if somebody triples my money?

The burden of government stems from the fact that we aren't getting our money's worth of public goods....

Other people have already refuted your ideas better than I can. First you assert that there are "public goods" without any argument. Also, you have not alleviated the burden of government from anyone in your example. Even if someone puts a gun to my head and forces me to do something that even may ultimately benefit me, it still does not alleviate the burden of the gunman forcing me to do something.

Other people have explained this better than I can.

How do you know that you, Sola Fide, are predestined to be saved?

Because I believe in Christ alone for salvation.

[Xerographica]

First you assert that there are "public goods" without any argument.

But why do I need to make an argument in support of there being "public goods"? If you want to argue that all goods can be effectively/efficiently supplied by the private sector then why would I argue against that? My argument is...if everything can be effectively/efficiently supplied by the private market...then allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes would reveal this to be true.

For example...if you set up your own private court...what do you want? Money. And where does money come from? Customers...people who are willing to pay for impartial justice. If a customer is happy with your business...then why would he give any of his taxes to public courts? If he did so then perhaps we can imagine that he felt impartial justice should be available to people who can't afford to purchase it in the private sector.

John Stuart Mill put it best when he said, "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."

Are you going to argue that everything is already sufficiently well done by individual liberty? Great...maybe you're right. But should we just get rid of the entire government because you might be right? How would that make you any different than a dictator? No...we simply put it to the test. We allow millions and millions of taxpayers to use their own hard-earned taxes to indicate exactly which goods are not already sufficiently well done by individual liberty.

How they distribute their taxes in the public sector will reveal the path to individual liberty. If they give their taxes to public courts...then that means that you need to start a for-profit or non-profit organization dedicated to supplying impartial justice. If they give their taxes to public schools...then that means that you need to start a for-profit or non-profit organization dedicated to supplying education. Will this benefit consumers? Most definitely.

Also, you have not alleviated the burden of government from anyone in your example. Even if someone puts a gun to my head and forces me to do something that even may ultimately benefit me, it still does not alleviate the burden of the gunman forcing me to do something.

If taxpayers don't want a gunman forcing them and others to do something...then they just won't give their taxes to the IRS. But if enough taxpayers DO give their taxes to the IRS...if they do want a gunman to force them and others to do something...then what's the point of getting rid of the government? They'll simply all pay one private defense agency which will purchase all the other defense agencies until you end up with a monopoly on the use of force.

A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are "good" in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. - Rothbard

How many taxpayers are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress their neighbors? I don't know. But how can you make an informed decision without this information? Let's implement pragmatarianism and see exactly how many resources taxpayers are willing to devote to the police, the IRS, jails and courts.

If you get a chance you should read Economists and Scarcity by Steven Horwitz...

When economists say, “We will never run out of resources,” what they often mean is that faced with increasing scarcity of one resource, we will always find new solutions to the problem that that resource originally solved. In an important sense, the actual economic resource was not copper but “the ability to convey voice and data.” And that resource has become “less scarce” by the substitution of sand. This illustrates Simon’s point that the “ultimate resource” is the human ingenuity that finds new and better ways of using physical resources.

The burden we're always trying to overcome is scarcity. We overcome this burden by giving people the freedom to give their money to the individuals who find new and better ways of using resources. This is why markets work. This is what we need to help people understand. Is there any human ingenuity to be found in the public sector? If there is...then let's give taxpayers the opportunity to find and support it. If there isn't...then what will taxpayers do with this knowledge? Let's find out.

[Stallheim]

This is my response to Len Larson's post in Hazlitt - Public works mean taxes...
How much of the deficient good should be supplied? That should be determined by the demonstrated preferences of taxpayers.

Rothbard acknowledged that people desire public goods. If we created a market for public goods...then the provision of these goods would be connected to its collection of payment. If you want more protection for the environment...then you'll have to give more of your taxes to the EPA...and/or convince others to do so.
.....
Arguing against taxes does absolutely nothing to help the people who want public goods to understand the importance of individual valuation. All it does is prevent them from learning about the keystone of economics. That's why pragmatarianism...aka tax choice...is something that we should all actively promote.

Your "pragmatarianism" is completely ridiculous. Here is why: Public goods funding is only possible if there are some who pay taxes and others who don't. If I am able to earmark my own taxes entirely, then I choose... spending that directly and exclusively on stuff that benefits me. If everyone did this then there would be no need to tax, as a far more efficient system would just be to allow people to spend their own money on these things voluntarily. (Don't speak of large, expensive projects that no one would ever be able to afford, people participate all the time in buying a share or service collectively through Walmart, toll roads, insurance protection etc.) This would be far more efficient because the tax collecting and the bureaucratic management of government costs money and must be taken out of this pile of taxes, only to hand what is left back again. This, you must see, is absurd. The Pragmatarian Utopia you paint conveniently leaves out all of the public goods that Non-tax payers are hollering for, and that my friend is the only real reason taxes exist: government produces nothing by itself, it only redistributes and taxes are the means by which the shell game functions. People only want public goods because they can be paid for by someone else, otherwise they become private goods enjoyed by many people.

[Xerographica]

Your "pragmatarianism" is completely ridiculous. Here is why: Public goods funding is only possible if there are some who pay taxes and others who don't. If I am able to earmark my own taxes entirely, then I choose... spending that directly and exclusively on stuff that benefits me. If everyone did this then there would be no need to tax, as a far more efficient system would just be to allow people to spend their own money on these things voluntarily. (Don't speak of large, expensive projects that no one would ever be able to afford, people participate all the time in buying a share or service collectively through Walmart, toll roads, insurance protection etc.)

If people could directly allocate their taxes then it would be ridiculous because they would then realize that there would be no need for taxes?

This would be far more efficient because the tax collecting and the bureaucratic management of government costs money and must be taken out of this pile of taxes, only to hand what is left back again.

If people could directly allocate their taxes then it would be ridiculous because they would then realize that government organizations suffer from X-inefficiency?

This, you must see, is absurd. The Pragmatarian Utopia you paint conveniently leaves out all of the public goods that Non-tax payers are hollering for, and that my friend is the only real reason taxes exist: government produces nothing by itself, it only redistributes and taxes are the means by which the shell game functions. People only want public goods because they can be paid for by someone else, otherwise they become private goods enjoyed by many people.

If people could directly allocate their taxes then it would be absurd because they wouldn't have to pay for public goods that other people want?

[awake]

You have been at this before, claiming we should make a market in public "services", which is an oxymoron...But I agreed because it would collapse the government overnight, and that's a good thing. Your Idea is hair brained but it would work toward libertarian ends to some degree. The first thing I would do is to organize a movement to have everyone pay all their tax dollars to the Institute of Peace.

[Conza88]

[Xerographica]

You have been at this before, claiming we should make a market in public "services", which is an oxymoron...But I agreed because it would collapse the government overnight, and that's a good thing. Your Idea is hair brained but it would work toward libertarian ends to some degree. The first thing I would do is to organize a movement to have everyone pay all their tax dollars to the Institute of Peace.

Did you ever read the short science fiction story...We, The People...by Jack C. Haldeman?

[Xerographica]

Conza, what's the point of having an ignore list if you're just going to ignore it?