Libertarianism: what is it?

Kannon wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

I'm going to quote this because it's a really good outline of the kinds of questions the Libertarian issue forces us to ask. My suggestion is not to scramble to find reasons to disagree: instead, really try and understand what Aetius is talking about here. It won't necessarily make you a Libertarian if you do, but it *will* make you more aware of your own beliefs and why you hold them if you read these responses with an open mind.

I'm not disagreeing to disagree, here. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal for a reason.

...

aetius wrote:

Does accepting the peace and low crime rate that comes with Mafia "protection" of a business constitute acceptance of that "social contract"? If not, why not? Of course, it's because the "agreement" isn't voluntary, it's made under duress.

This is a bit more reasonable. I can work with this. There's a long-damned-way between unfortunate "business" arrangement and slavery. Extreme still, but not apples to alpha-centauri kind of comparison.

The funny thing here is, I can easily think of a case where this would be acceptable, and may even be of active benefit.

See what I mean ; D

How is the agreement made under duress? You're not punished for not making the agreement, a la the Mafia. You're punished from reaping the benefits of the agreement without paying your share. No one has made a valid case that you aren't free to not take part. (Sorry for the double negative, couldn't think of another way of saying it)

gregrampage wrote:

How is the agreement made under duress? You're not punished for not making the agreement, a la the Mafia. You're punished from reaping the benefits of the agreement without paying your share.

Again though, like the Mafia. If the Mafia cuts down on street crime in your neighborhood, you reap the benefits of the Mafia claiming that piece of turf whether you pay or not.

I'm trying to recall the last time I voted in the last mob boss election. Oh yeah. It was never.

Paleocon wrote:

I'm trying to recall the last time I voted in the last mob boss election. Oh yeah. It was never.

Shame on you for not exercising your Mob Citizenship.

CheezePavilion wrote:
gregrampage wrote:

How is the agreement made under duress? You're not punished for not making the agreement, a la the Mafia. You're punished from reaping the benefits of the agreement without paying your share.

Again though, like the Mafia. If the Mafia cuts down on street crime in your neighborhood, you reap the benefits of the Mafia claiming that piece of turf whether you pay or not.

Another reason that analogy doesn't hold up. Thanks.

gregrampage wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:
gregrampage wrote:

How is the agreement made under duress? You're not punished for not making the agreement, a la the Mafia. You're punished from reaping the benefits of the agreement without paying your share.

Again though, like the Mafia. If the Mafia cuts down on street crime in your neighborhood, you reap the benefits of the Mafia claiming that piece of turf whether you pay or not.

Another reason that analogy doesn't hold up. Thanks.

'welcome!

On the contrary - it is only libertarians who recognize degrees. We're the only ones who explicitly argue that the "obligation" to pay a small fraction of your income is actually a degree or percentage of slavery - the government claims that it owns a percentage of your time and effort, and is willing to use force to take it from you. Does it matter if it's 30% or 90%? Well, of course, but it's only a difference in degree, not in the wrongness of some people owning other people.

Of course, upthread you've seen numerous arguments that do not acknowledge the similarity in kind, that these things are fundamentally different and not the same thing at all. As Malor pointed out, those arguments can also be used to justify slavery and serfdom - and were used time and time again for exactly that purpose.

And are they, today? Because if they are not - if indeed that evil *government* has not made that argument for over a hundred and 45 years - then you're just using that example to raise fear, without any explanation of how we get from here to that state of slavery to the government. Taxes are not slavery, and never will be, in spite of the rhetoric. In slavery, the slave never benefits from his labor, but in a democracy, *everyone* benefits from the labor of every citizen who pays taxes. Yes, there are some things we don't like, but overall, we benefit more than we lose. That's not slavery, that's the real world. And we do remarkably well out of the deal, yourself included.

If we're slaves, we're the most free slaves in history. As you've used it, the term means nothing. All it does is cheapen the experience of those who actually lived in *real* bondage, as opposed to a rhetorical representation of it.

IMAGE(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/418066_266328300101915_148995391835207_590557_81501418_n.jpg)

I saw this and thought of how much better things are now than they were during the "golden years" of American "freedom" that predominantly white Libertarians invariably mention when criticizing the role of government. The Founding Fathers deserve credit for putting us on a revolutionary path toward a "more perfect union", but the idea that we were ever any freer than we are today is demonstrably a farce and a sad, pathetic one at that.

Minorities and women have the franchise of voting and regularly participate in the selection of elected officials. If there was ever a time in history when the government rules only with the consent of the governed, it is now more than ever before.

I often think that those cranky white men that stockpile guns and talk about the loss of their "freedoms" do so only because they see brown folks and chicks getting their way from time to time.

jonstock wrote:

Look, if you think income taxes are on a continuum with slavery, where 0% taxes is freedom, 30% taxes is partial slavery, and 100% taxes is full slavery, it implies that you think that the main problem with slavery is that slaves didn't get paid. But that's wrong: the main problem with slavery is that you have no human agency.

What part of my argument involved it being okay to be a slave if you are paid? In fact, the core of my argument is that even if slaves were paid, it would mean nothing, because the primary problem with slavery is exactly that - removal of human agency. In fact, in classical times slaves often were paid in various ways, and even handled money for their masters. That doesn't change the fact that it's wrong to force someone to be a slave.

The main problem with slavery is that your owner got to tell you what to do, where to live, where to go. If you resisted, your owner could beat you or kill you. If your owner, out of the goodness of his heart, paid you a fair salary, we aren't suddenly down to 0% slavery--the essential injustice of slavery would remain. Right?

Of course. And the main problem with taxation is that the government forcibly takes income you earned, and if you resist they can beat you or kill you. It's the same problem.

Do taxes tell you what job to perform? Do taxes tell you where to live, what to do, who to marry? Do taxes remove your agency? Hell no. So quit saying taxes are slavery.

So if a slave is permitted a choice of whether to work in the fields or in the house, that slave has full agency and is free? If a slave is permitted to choose a wife instead of being assigned one, that slave has full agency and is free? If a slave is given a choice of which hut to live in, that slave has obtained freedom? A slave might be slightly more free with those choices, but a percentage of their agency is still forcibly taken from them.Taxes absolutely remove your agency over that portion of your income and labor, and governments remove your agency in (literally) countless other ways. Just because government only takes a percentage doesn't make it right or different, just slightly less wrong.

OG_slinger wrote:

Nice analogy except for the part about how we get to vote for our slave owners and can actually get rid of the ones that we feel aren't treating us right. Any comparison of taxation to slavery is really pushing the limit.

Yes - a vote that means only slightly more than nothing, and often does not align with the eventual "choice". And if you don't vote, it doesn't matter, you still get the resulting government imposed on you. I feel that President Obama isn't treating us right, but I can't exactly get rid of him, can I? A democratic republic is the worst form of government ... it's just slightly better than the alternatives.

You're essentially saying that no law, no agreement, no social contract should never be recognized unless everyone accepts it individually and in a circumstance where there's absolutely no compulsion or duress.

On the contrary, most societal agreements and contracts are recognized and accepted by default, and are often unwritten. There's no need to be legalistic about it, because they are voluntary, and any one of the parties can opt out at any time - happens every day. There may be consequences to that, but no one is threatening to beat or kill them.

The problem comes when people define "agreements" or "contracts" that are based on aggression. Such things are not agreements at all, but rather threats, and are wrong - civilized people should not do this. The argument is that these "agreements" should be recognized for what they are.

Let's perform a thought experiment with that. How do you have a society where that's the norm?

That's pretty easy - it looks a lot like the United States today, except with a much smaller government. The reason, of course, is that most of society already functions on these voluntary agreements - it's only the government and criminals who use aggression in their dealings with others. You don't have any trouble agreeing to purchase food from your grocery store or view a movie at the theater.

Societies don't function that way. There are a hole host of values, beliefs, and rules that come along for the ride when you are born into them. You might not like some of them, but them's the breaks. You can work to change them or you can choose to leave and find another society that's more fitting to your outlook on life.

On the contrary, societies - especially large societies - can only function this way. Emergent, voluntary, always-changing order is the rule of the day, with intrusions such as government mostly interfering with efficient development of society. Centrally-planned societies have been tried, and they are categorically abysmal failures.

Aetius wrote:

The problem with that analogy is that no one is "opting in" to the co-op. It's not a choice, it's imposed by a group of people who generally live far away and don't know anything about you. It's the Hotel California of co-ops.

Bullsh*t. Absolute bullsh*t. In the past decade alone more that 6.6 million people opted into our co-op through the the naturalization process.

People fleeing even more abysmal situations than ours isn't "opting in", it's just running away to a master that's less abusive and less likely to kill you.

Again, let's go back to that thought experiment. In the perfect Libertarian world what are we supposed to do with the all the native-born Americas who decide that the rules of the co-op don't apply to them? Let them suck off the teat of our hard work while they do whatever the hell they want? Kick them out? Force them to participate?

In the "perfect" Libertarian world, there's largely no reason to worry about any of that. The "rules of the co-op" are few and far between, and deal with things that virtually everyone can agree on without even thinking - no theft, no murder, that sort of thing. They can't possibly "suck off the teat of our hard work" without forcibly taking, and it's a society that takes a very dim view of such actions and permits the attacked to fight back.

Of course, as long as humans are involved there's no such thing as a perfect world - far from it. Understanding what government is, how it works, and why it's wrong simply goes a bit of the way towards making things better. It's very possible to do this, as we've demonstrated as a species over the last few hundred years. For example, we've gone from simply assuming that slavery was the way things were, to questioning it, to finally viewing it as really wrong, and then rejecting it as a societal structure and system.

Kannon wrote:
jonstock wrote:

Do taxes tell you what job to perform? Do taxes tell you where to live, what to do, who to marry? Do taxes remove your agency? Hell no. So quit saying taxes are slavery.

That's the core of my disagreement. You're losing %random, small percentage of your income. In return, you get a hell of a lot, with agency on how it's spent. I would posit that the presence or absence of agency is a difference of type, as opposed to degree. Differing levels of agency are differences in degree. Fair?

The problem with this argument is that I don't agree at all that we get "a hell of a lot" - indeed, far from it. I certainly do not think I get "a hell of a lot" from my government, unless you mean a hell like the government is currently perpetrating in Afghanistan, or with the War on Drugs. What we get in return for our "random small" percentage is a distorted, damaged economy, the highest incarceration rate in the world, and numerous petty humiliations every time we fly. And you get virtually no agency on how its spent, as taxes are routinely used to propagate things that are actively harmful, and you can't do a thing about it.

Sure, the system isn't perfect, but I'd rather work towards fixing it than burn it all down.

The problem is that there are some systems that cannot be "fixed", because they are based on things that are wrong. Would you make the same argument for the societal institution of slavery? Unsurprisingly, it's been made before. How would you "fix" an institution like slavery?

The funny thing here is, I can easily think of a case where this would be acceptable, and may even be of active benefit.

Consider if the Mafia were not running the "protection" racket, but were actively providing a service in protecting your business from rival gangs and wandering thugs. Because really, who in their right mind would rob a store that was under the mafia's protection?

Now, you have the projected losses from theft, vandalism, so forth, as well as the profits from your business. Provided the cost for the protection was less than projected losses, without swamping your profits, it would be a smart thing to go with it.

In our analogy of degrees, you'd have some ability to negotiate to represent your agency (because an absence of agency is a difference of type, and not degree.), and some ability to choose between different "service" providers, albeit difficult.

The issue is that what you are describing here is a voluntary business arrangement. These kinds of arrangements are made every day, precisely because both sides accept them and benefit from them. However, Mafia "protection" is not voluntary - it is imposed by force, and there is no ability to negotiate. Agency is entirely absent. What you are describing is what a Libertarian would argue is precisely the kind of arrangement that a society wants, while the actual protection racket is viewed as wrong and undesireable.

Robear wrote:

And are they, today? Because if they are not - if indeed that evil *government* has not made that argument for over a hundred and 45 years - then you're just using that example to raise fear, without any explanation of how we get from here to that state of slavery to the government. Taxes are not slavery, and never will be, in spite of the rhetoric. In slavery, the slave never benefits from his labor, but in a democracy, *everyone* benefits from the labor of every citizen who pays taxes. Yes, there are some things we don't like, but overall, we benefit more than we lose. That's not slavery, that's the real world. And we do remarkably well out of the deal, yourself included.

Libertarians, myself included, do not agree that *everyone* benefits from the labor of citizens who pay taxes. If *everyone* benefits from the labor of citizens who pay taxes, then why not increase taxes to 100%? There should be an exponential gain to society! In the real world, of course, such a thing is very undesireable, and for obvious reasons - it removes any incentive for people to work.

In the real world, the benefits mostly go to the friends and cronies of our politicians, whose primary skill is winning a beauty pageant. And in the real world, the benefits are often increased by destroying other societies and other people. This is not something we want to perpetuate.

If we're slaves, we're the most free slaves in history.

Perhaps, but as long as our society accepts aggression as a valid and indeed desired relationship, we're still slaves, at least some of the time. I think society would be vastly better off if we weren't.

In the real world, of course, such a thing is very undesireable, and for obvious reasons - it removes any incentive for people to work.

Aside from an intrinsic desire to work and create, sure.

As time goes on, I find myself agreeing with the idea that libertarianism is simply an Americanized word for anarchy.

Aetius wrote:

Libertarians, myself included, do not agree that *everyone* benefits from the labor of citizens who pay taxes. If *everyone* benefits from the labor of citizens who pay taxes, then why not increase taxes to 100%? There should be an exponential gain to society!

This is a ridiculous statement. There's no evidence (nor is anyone claiming) that taxes would be at their most useful at 100%. That's just taking the argument and twisting it for no reason.

It also wouldn't be exponential, it would be linear.

The law of diminishing returns pretty much makes that entire argument moot invalid anyway.

Libertarians, myself included, do not agree that *everyone* benefits from the labor of citizens who pay taxes. If *everyone* benefits from the labor of citizens who pay taxes, then why not increase taxes to 100%? There should be an exponential gain to society! In the real world, of course, such a thing is very undesireable, and for obvious reasons - it removes any incentive for people to work.

Aetius, did you really just make stuff up in order to argue against it? Because no one has suggested that taxes should be 100%. It's kind of obvious to most people that that's crazy, without your pretending that it's a point made against you. As you point out, such a thing is obviously very undesirable, and so it's obvious why none of us has argued for it.

In the real world, the benefits mostly go to the friends and cronies of our politicians, whose primary skill is winning a beauty pageant. And in the real world, the benefits are often increased by destroying other societies and other people. This is not something we want to perpetuate.

Go read "The Gulag Archipelago" or "The Jungle" and tell us how bad we have it today in the US. Yes, there's corruption to be cleaned up, and there always will be. But this idea that we're living in some kind of slave hell is just not in touch with reality. And more importantly, it tries to create the idea that the system can't be fixed. But of course it can be made better - and frequently is. And that's a heck of a lot cheaper than tearing it down and starting over.

I gotta say, I'm usually pretty good at ignoring silly hyperbolic rhetoric metaphors, but this "slave" thing is just, to be frank, too insulting and tasteless for me not to say anything. It's tasteless. It's insulting. It's plain wrong. There is no wall of text that will change that.

Up to about 35% of everything you make can be taken away from you, by force.

What gives anyone the right to do that? How do ten people together suddenly have the moral right to take things from others, when individuals don't?

It may be necessary to do this, because the alternatives may be even worse. But understand what it is. It is taking, by force, even if someone disagrees. It is not a 'good' action. "Less evil than" does not equal "good".

If it IS less evil than the alternatives, then fine, let's do that. But we should also be striving to reduce the impact of the wrongs we must commit as a society, to BE a society. To whatever degree possible, voluntary organizations should be the natural order of things, with involuntary ones reduced to the smallest amount possible.

Malor wrote:

Up to about 35% of everything you make can be taken away from you, by force.

What gives anyone the right to do that? How do ten people together suddenly have the moral right to take things from others, when individuals don't?

It may be necessary to do this, because the alternatives may be even worse. But understand what it is. It is taking, by force, even if someone disagrees. It is not a 'good' action. "Less evil than" does not equal "good".

If it IS less evil than the alternatives, then fine, let's do that. But we should also be striving to reduce the impact of the wrongs we must commit as a society, to BE a society. To whatever degree possible, voluntary organizations should be the natural order of things, with involuntary ones reduced to the smallest amount possible.

These statements rely on the idea that it's universally agreed upon that these actions are not good. That is not reality.

So you think that it would be okay for you to take money out of my wallet to feed yourself? That would be a good action?

Malor, your very ability to post this stuff is because money was taken out of other people's pockets, as you would have it, by force and involuntarily. Unless you're going to live up to your ideals and stop posting about it, maybe you should just drop the "no taking benefits anyone and all takings are evil" and skip right to the compromise (again, as you see it).

In your scenario, what are the *obligations* of a citizen? Do citizens pay taxes to support the government? How do you ensure each citizen contributes to the welfare of the country, without taxes? And how do you collect taxes without force?

You are as accepting as we are of the benefits brought to you by government. But by calling them evil, you've turned yourself into a special kind of contradiction. That's a very different stance from accepting "necessary evils", but you are trying to walk both of those lines at once. Pick one - either drop yourself from the evil Internet, or drop the "all takings are evil" rhetoric until you can actually live up to it.

Go on. Put your actions where your mouth is. You are taking money out of my pocket to post this stuff. I think you've got the right to do it - we *both* paid for that right. But you think you *don't* have that right to use my contribution as well as yours - and you want to use that judgement to tell me that the very basis for our government is evil use of force to support evil takings that benefit *no one*. So if you don't have the right to do it, then don't. If you *do* - even if it is in your mind a "necessary evil" - then stfu about it and accept that your hands are as dirty as ours. If you're in the system, you've acquiesced. That may be sad and frustrating for you, but you can't get around the 235 years of infrastructure and services that government has brought you through takings of *other people's* money. The least you can do is stop bashing us because you're having a crisis of conscience.

Does the United States keep its citizens from leaving to become citizens somewhere else? That's where I see the difference between being a citizen and being a slave. The use of 'slave' as an equivalent term is unsettling to me, and seems wrong. It makes me less inclined to read any arguments that use it and judge them on their own merits.

maybe you should just drop the "no taking benefits anyone and all takings are evil" and skip right to the compromise (again, as you see it).

It would be really, really nice, Robear, if you would actually read what I write. That is just a completely, absolutely, STUPIDLY wrong summation of what I have been saying.

Oh, and:

Malor, your very ability to post this stuff is because money was taken out of other people's pockets, as you would have it, by force and involuntarily. Unless you're going to live up to your ideals and stop posting about it,

You're way, way over the line here. This isn't true, and it's just utterly uncalled for.

Malor wrote:

So you think that it would be okay for you to take money out of my wallet to feed yourself? That would be a good action?

No and I don't think that's what's happening.

Taxes are not taken by force. I voluntarily pay them because I choose to live in a society, preferably one with a social net. The only time force is involves is when you choose to take part in a society but choose not to pay the dues required. In other words, force is only used against thieves. I have no problem with that.

On a different note, I think Malor's posts in this thread (at least the last few, it's hard to remember them all) have been very reasonable. The one I've been responding to was especially reasonable in that it acknowledged that there might not be any better alternatives than the current system. I think that qualifies as skipping to the compromise and I'm not really sure where the hostility is coming from. Perhaps you're confusing his posts with Aetius's which are much more extreme.

Speaking of extreme posts, the word slave needs to be dropped from this conversation. I get paid for my work and I'm free to leave. I'm not a slave. That's not disputable and it cheapens the entire concept and is just insulting.

Yeah, hostile is a good word and I should have toned it back. But it's hard to see this "all takings are evil" stuff held up as condemnation, even when that's admitted to be an extreme position in the real world.

Up to about 35% of everything you make can be taken away from you, by force.

What gives anyone the right to do that? How do ten people together suddenly have the moral right to take things from others, when individuals don't?

It may be necessary to do this, because the alternatives may be even worse. But understand what it is. It is taking, by force, even if someone disagrees. It is not a 'good' action. "Less evil than" does not equal "good".

Quote:

maybe you should just drop the "no taking benefits anyone and all takings are evil" and skip right to the compromise (again, as you see it).

It would be really, really nice, Robear, if you would actually read what I write. That is just a completely, absolutely, STUPIDLY wrong summation of what I have been saying.

I did actually read it, and you did state that taking by force is "not good". That's evil. You said exactly what I said you did; in fact, you even exclude "less evil" specifically. If that's not what you meant, fine, but it's what you wrote.

If you think it's stupid, well, show us where you didn't say that takings were "not good" and where you said that some takings - any takings - could actually be justified as useful. I'm wrong as much as the next person, I just don't see where I made a wrong summation of what you said.

Quote:

Malor, your very ability to post this stuff is because money was taken out of other people's pockets, as you would have it, by force and involuntarily. Unless you're going to live up to your ideals and stop posting about it,

You're way, way over the line here. This isn't true, and it's just utterly uncalled for.

The Internet was developed with taxpayer takings entirely until the late 80's, and substantially supported and regulated since then with money forcibly taken from citizens. Did I miss something? If all takings are "not good", are you not taking advantage of that evil? You told us to understand that our support of takings was evil - "not good" and to remember that even if we deem them to be useful. Are you exempt from the same challenge?

On a different note, I think Malor's posts in this thread (at least the last few, it's hard to remember them all) have been very reasonable. The one I've been responding to was especially reasonable in that it acknowledged that there might not be any better alternatives than the current system. I think that qualifies as skipping to the compromise and I'm not really sure where the hostility is coming from. Perhaps you're confusing his posts with Aetius's which are much more extreme.

Specifically? It's that we're exhorted to remember that:

What gives anyone the right to do that? How do ten people together suddenly have the moral right to take things from others, when individuals don't?

It may be necessary to do this, because the alternatives may be even worse. But understand what it is. It is taking, by force, even if someone disagrees. It is not a 'good' action. "Less evil than" does not equal "good".

What this is establishing is that anyone who disagrees with this is, well, "not good". Evil. We're evil because we support *any* "taking by threat of force", and even if Malor has to later concede that some of those might be useful - I dunno, roads, hospitals, etc - *we* have to remember that *we* are evil because we don't resist taking by force even for the greater good.

No. I'm not buying into that. It's far too extreme and it's well past time we called it such. I don't care who proposes it. When was the last time someone tried to establish that he was willing to compromise, but we all had to first acknowledge that we're all immoral, except him? Because somewhere I missed the "even I have to admit I benefit from this" that would put him in with the evil supporters of "unjust takings" to benefit others.

Does that make more sense?

SixteenBlue wrote:

Taxes are not taken by force. I voluntarily pay them because I choose to live in a society, preferably one with a social net. The only time force is involves is when you choose to take part in a society but choose not to pay the dues required. In other words, force is only used against thieves. I have no problem with that.

The only taxes, be them local, state, or federal, that I view as being a form of theft are income taxes.

What about those who choose to live on one form of government welfare or another their entire lives, then pass those 'values' onto their children so that we know have entire generations of families living on the public dole? They game the system to receive far more in benefits than what they pay in. What should be done about these thieves?

What about those who choose to live on one form of government welfare or another their entire lives, then pass those 'values' onto their children so that we know have entire generations of families living on the public dole? They game the system to receive far more in benefits than what they pay in. What should be done about these thieves?

I dunno. Maybe we could implement welfare reform, cut their numbers by about 60% in ten years, and reduce fraud and abuse not just through monitoring, but structurally. The numbers I can find, from 2002 - six years into the reform - show that 1.9% of unemployment payments were fraudulent.

No one can live on welfare their entire lives anymore, that I'm aware of. Even the families in my neighborhood who get it have to have people working actual jobs to keep any assistance coming. That's a far cry from the old Welfare Queen image.

Is 1.9% fraud actually a dire amount? Certainly we should try to lower it, but is really all that much of a concern? The entire US Federal budget for welfare programs - not just unemployment, but housing, WIC, workers comp and the like, is $431B. That includes administrative costs. Unemployment costs are $96B, although payouts are less. That's under $2B of fraud each year, at most.

Health care fraud was estimated in 2010 to be around $100B. $47B was estimated to come from Medicare's $451B budget that year. DHHS is doing *tons* of stuff to drop that number (and it *has* come down), but we've got far bigger problems than the rump end of welfare being abused less than 2% of the time.

So here's a question - is Eve Online a good example of Libertarian ideals? Are corp associations the natural result of the freedoms given the players (corps themselves are game mechanics, it's the joining that is of interest)? Why would most players join an organization rather than solo? Or does the transaction tax treyf the whole thing, because players are forced to pay it on every sale - a taking enforced by the in-game government?

I'm not focusing here on the fact that the game contains violence. It also contains trade in peaceful areas where players are nominally protected by the government, and between factions who disagree with each other. And yet entire organizations have developed simply to prey on others, in spite of the ability of players to band together for protection. Naturally, that's not ideal for people arguing that a collection of societies that sets their own rules is an improvement on what we have now. It's a fairly brutal environment, if exciting when held at arm's length in a game.

Is this not a decent example of libertarian principles in play? If not, why not? What am I missing in this? Can Eve help us to understand what libertarianism means for societies, or is that something that can't be simulated, perhaps because people behave differently in games than in real life?

MacBrave wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

Taxes are not taken by force. I voluntarily pay them because I choose to live in a society, preferably one with a social net. The only time force is involves is when you choose to take part in a society but choose not to pay the dues required. In other words, force is only used against thieves. I have no problem with that.

The only taxes, be them local, state, or federal, that I view as being a form of theft are income taxes.

What about those who choose to live on one form of government welfare or another their entire lives, then pass those 'values' onto their children so that we know have entire generations of families living on the public dole? They game the system to receive far more in benefits than what they pay in. What should be done about these thieves?

Plenty of people will receive more benefits than they put in. That's the nature of the safety net. It's not against the rules and therefore they're not thieves.

That said, I'm not on a hunt for thieves or trying to make the perfect system. My point was that my taxes are not taken by force, they're giving voluntarily. The only time force is used is when someone receives while refusing to give what they owe. I'm not talking about people who benefit more from the system than they are legally obligated to put into it. They're two different scenarios.