Competition in ‘bads’
I’ve been listening to a few of Hoppe’s lectures recently and he makes a good point that I’d just like to reiterate here in this post: It’s important to note that when you talk about competition’s beneficial effects, to ensure that we’re talking about things that are desired. We want competition in good things, but we don’t want competition in the production of bad things.
Commonly, you will hear that it is one of democracy’s strong points that the role of the elected leader(s) is ‘open to all’, rather than it being a birthright in a monarchical system. Hoppe’s point is that the “service” the government provides should not be considered a good, but rather, a ‘bad’. People don’t want to pay to be enslaved and the money is not voluntarily given, but taken by force.
Dave from No Third Solution in the article ”Taxation is theft” poses some good questions here:
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Would you, under any circumstances, voluntarily purchase the services of a group of men whose jobs it would be to kill or kidnap you when you refuse to continue providing for their armaments and training?
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Would you, under any circumstances, voluntarily purchase the services of an organization which states in no uncertain terms that in the event you decide to stop buying from them, you will forfeit your house?
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What if an organization like one of the above tried to assert a claim against you? Would you submit your dispute for arbitration to an organization owned or operated by the very same individuals?
Proposing government by democracy is like saying ”Let’s have a competition to find out who’s the best at whipping the slaves! And the winner gets to be the slavemaster”. This is precisely what we don’t want.
[...] my post, “Taxation is Theft!”, Stephan contributes Competition in Bads. Proposing government by democracy is like saying ”Let’s have a competition to find out [...]
[...] going to elaborate on what I was saying in my previous post, ”Competition in ‘bads’”. [...]
To answer question 1) I would say that I agree much of the money spent on defense is misdirected and would be better spent in any number of areas. I think the way the question is framed is dubious. Would you pay a policeman to arrest you if you planned on stealing something? Of course not. Would you expect a policeman you paid to apprehend someone who stole from you? Yes. Would you expect a military you helped paid for guard UN supervised elections in a neighbouring country, or in the unlikely event of attack, defend you? Yes. Does the ordinary citizen have enough money to raise an army should the situation warrant one? No. Does the ordinary citizen know enough about foreign policy to give his/her army sound instruction? No. How does a citizen then, who opposes war, how military spending is being managed, or certain foreign policy decisions, make their feelings known to government. Protest, throught the media, by voting for a candidate who best reflects your stance. Why should a pacifist still pay their taxes, if part of that goes to military spending? Each individual is not given the choice of overseeing where every single cent of their taxes go. Decisions are made according to policy, according to those who have been elected, by those who elected them. If every person decided where every cent of their taxes went, do you really think it would be possible to make any group decisions which benefited people en masse?
Hello again,
Ok the point with that question, is that you shouldn’t be coerced into paying for stuff you don’t want. eg. I don’t like the war in iraq, so I shouldn’t pay for it.
Of course we can come up with examples where we would voluntarily pay for services (national defence etc), and thats fine, because the market will provide those. Check out the ‘pro anarchy’ tab on http://www.simplyanarchy.com/ for a look at how lots of different things could be done.
The ordinary person wouldn’t have to know that much about foreign policy, they don’t need to be able to come up with the funds to provide national defence on their own either, see my post about invasion insurance for eg. http://democracysucks.wordpress.com/2007/12/24/free-market-national-defence/
*”Each individual is not given the choice of overseeing where every single cent of their taxes go.” – But the whole point here is that they should be given the choice, since its their money. I would find it wrong if an individual came up to me and stole my money but then claimed “Oh nah its cool I’m gonna go help the poor with this money, so you obviously have no right to complain.”
Even if the guy offered me the chance to ‘vote’ on it, that alone doesn’t make it fair. Two wolves and lamb vote on who’s getting eaten for lunch. Fair outcome? Are your rights at all contingent on what other people think? Or are they independent of this?