This is a problematic position to take. Is it your position that you (specifically you) have special insight into this objective morality that others do not possess? It seems that others (me, for instance) are equally as certain as you are of what is moral and immoral.

Neither Jib or BTM2 are Holy Men. So no objective special status can be claimed. Null and void at the outset in other words.

I, on the other hand..................

I don't see anyone arguing over self-ownership (which could perhaps just be called personal autonomy). The question is over ownership of anything else. How does that happen?

What are the steps to get from not owning the land your house is built on to the state owns your labour?

FWIW, I reject the self-ownership thesis.

Just to be clear, it is not my view that we don't own the land to which we hold title. I understand "owning the land" to mean that you have certain rights of exclusive use and control over a discrete area of land. The rights you have are based on the agreements you made when you acquired that land. My claim is that jibninjas seemingly isn't aware that the actual agreement he (or anyone else in the US) signed to transfer or acquire land include conditional clauses that require him to pay a property tax if so requested. Instead, he falsely thinks that these transfer agreements are for transfer of allodial ownership of property.

But they aren't - in the US only the government has allodial ownership of property and they aren't selling. I'm not saying that this has to be the case - it is possible in principle that US property rights in lands are allodial rather than fee simple, in which case jibninjas would be correct - in the same way that the state of Oregon can't legitimately tax land in Canada, if people had allodial rights over their land in Oregon then it couldn't legitimately tax their land either.

This is not an unusual feature of property law. For instance, generally when you sell land to someone in the US, you sell "fee simple absolute" rights over the land. This means that the person buying it will have absolute rights to control or use the land as they wish (except for the rights reserved by the government). Alternatively, you can sell "fee simple determinable" rights. This is where you place a condition on selling the property. Suppose you sell a family property but include a provision in the sale that the buyer must keep a family cemetery on the property intact. In this case, the buyer owns the land, but does not have the right to destroy that cemetery.

Jibninjas is trying to break the property agreement he signed by claiming that one of the parties to the agreement (the US government) didn't have a legitimate ownership stake in the land when he bought it. As a matter of history or law, this is just false. Even if you accept the deflationary view of the state as just one among many private organizations, regardless of its own pretensions, that doesn't mean that it can't hold property. Even if the government stole property long ago, that doesn't mean that agreements it makes today are null and void (and if it does, then that would mean that jibninjas still doesn't have allodial property rights over that land now - whoever owned the land when it was stolen by the state would presumably still have those rights now).

just because you use a different word, doesnt mean its different.

Theft is taking, by force, or threat of force.
Taxation is taking, by force, or threat of force.

The fact that its the state that does it, or that you "agreed" to it, or that you dont mind being taxed, does not mean its not theft.

That is true.



No. Theft is taking without intent to return and without permission of the individual or society. It has nothing to do with force. If I take your bicycle while you sleep, there is no force.

Robbery involves force.

Taxation is forced. No one believes it is not.

Some of us believe that "being forced" is not the only or even the predominant moral consideration in the world.

I'd happily be forced to not piss on the toilet seat in public restrooms. A punch in the nose is perfectly fine.



It actually does mean it isn't theft. We use a similar metric to differentiate between rape and sex.

Maybe I don't understand the connection here. If the voters vote 60% to 40% that I HAVE to have sex with Bozo the Clown, and I don't want to, I would still be being raped by Bozo.

If the people vote 60% to 40% to take 40% of my income, it's still theft.

I'll answer the question about the prisoner's dilemma here. So first, communication between the prisoners doesn't solve the prisoner's dilemma. In game theoretic terms, the problem here is that the choice to confess "strictly dominates" the choice to stay silent. This means that regardless of what the other prisoner chooses to do (whether confess or stay silent), you will personally benefit from confessing. Thus, a rational self-interested person in a one-off prisoner's dilemma situation should be expected to confess.

The reason communication doesn't solve the dilemma is because, given the set-up, if you can persuade the other person to not confess, it is still beneficial for you to confess. The other prisoner, knowing this, should not be moved by your words, or if they are, then they are also acting irrationally.

As for whether markets are always optimal, I'll just say that I do believe that market failures exist that cannot always be easily solved through market mechanisms. For instance, I think it is difficult to price in externalities in a completely free market exchange, so you often run into tragedy of the commons problems with regard to use of common resources or environmental degradation. I think there are often other problems for market participants as well, such as free riders, principal-agent conflicts, etc.

Fortunately, we, as a group, have decided that there is no public good worth you being raped by Bozo. Your welcome.

We will have to tax you to ensure that rape by creepy clowns is appropriately punished. This is far better than having a posse defend your honor. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

I posted in a thread somewhere that protecting me from creepy clowns (e.g.) could be accomplished without resort to an income tax.

Property taxes are kewl because one need not own land to thrive.

Sales tax kewl because it taxes consumption.

User fees kewl because only those using a service pay for it. (Duh!)

When I hear the libertarian terminology of self-ownership, it doesn't sound particularly different to the notion of self-autonomy, just phrased using libertarian-style language, around ownership. Without getting too off track, do you think there's a bigger difference than that?



Right, I oversimplified it, apologies.

I still don't know how jn would get to the state owns your labour from the state has an interest in your land.

ok, lets call taxation robbery rather than theft, if that fits better. or perhaps extortion.


you want to be taxed. I dont, now what? Oh, people are going to come round and forcibly take the taxes, or lock me up? Sounds like robbery to me.

Your sex analogy is stupid. There is no state department that is going to come round and force me to have sex if I refuse to have sex.

There is voluntary exchange of goods/money. Then there is taxation/theft/robbery. If the mafia come round to your house and claim to be "protecting" you, you might pay them, you might even want to pay them, its still robbery/extortion. Lets say they are actually protecting you ( from other mafia families, perhaps) . Its still robbery/extortion. The fact that its the state doing it rather than the mafia, doesnt change anything.

There is the voluntary exchange of bodily fluids. then there is rape.

It sounds like robbery in the same way as an appendectomy sounds like brushing your teeth.

To be a member of our society you have to pay your taxes (certain restrictions apply). You are welcome to leave society at any time, and are more than welcome to join any tax-free society that you wish to. It certainly isn't my society's fault if you cannot find one to join, and it isn't any society's fault that you don't have the requisite power to build and maintain your own.



It is only as bad as the tax/theft/robbery analogy. No one is forcing you to do any taxable transactions - there are plenty of people who have chosen the route of avoiding making taxable transactions.

How does one avoid paying income tax? Easy game: Don't earn any money over about $20,000 a year.

If you steal money, then you are supposed to return that money. If you buy a house after stealing money, that house is still yours. You might have to sell it if you can't otherwise repay those from whom you stole, but it is still yours to sell. In other words, you might think that the government is an organization that steals from people, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't still have its own property rights as an organization.

One of my biggest disagreements with the kind of anarcho-capitalism that you are presenting here is that it doesn't respect people's property rights adequately. Property rights exist in the US today. They are inscribed in the the legal code and are the result of centuries of common law dealing with unusual situations to create a very large and complex set of doctrines to organize a vital part of modern society.

However, this view ignores these property rights in favor of a set of vague and overly generalized pre-law intuitions about the morality of "ownership." This seems to me just clearly worse. First, these intuitions are not that broadly held - many people (arguably more) have very different moral intuitions about ownership (eg socialists who reject much of these private property rights, or "statists" who believe states have political legitimacy towards property rights). Second, much of the social benefit of property rights comes from them being public (knowable and followed by all) and reliable (backed by force against defectors and free riders). The moralistic idea of property rights used by ACists give up these benefits.

This isn't how property rights work. We don't just decide who has the most just claim to something in a moral sense. I mean, not unless you are some kind of socialist. We start with people already owning what they have and go from there.

It makes it much more difficult for those enslaved to live autonomous lives, it typically creates a great deal of suffering, it leads to impoverishment, revolution, and other social evils, it creates evil men and women who have seared their consciences, and so on.

Most great ancap writers have a strong foundation on common law, so I am not sure what you are talking about.

No it doesn't.

I don't think you understand the ancap position. Pretty much all ancap's hold that a society founded on property rights and the NAP are better for human flourishing. Then some/many hold that it is also more moral.

And the question at hand is not whether or not theft is immoral, but whether or not what the State does is theft. Very few actually argue theft is not immoral. And if they did I wouldn't care, in my view they are just wrong.

Whatever. When the Mob leaves town I'm not concerned with what they claimed they owned.

Sounds like you are describing the State. At least one beyond a minarchy

That's just absurd. Either way, even under this definition all the states "property" would have to be repossessed as it has no way of generating revenue. So the result would be the same.

The argument is that when the State takes from us, say through income tax, that it is not theft. OP has argued that the State actually owns the property and leases it to us. Which is why he believes it is not theft when the state forces us to pay property tax. So if the State does not steal from us when forcing us to pay income tax or sales tax, it must be because the State owns our labor. Of course he has not actually made this argument.

Which is exactly how it does not reflect the market.

There's plenty out there on how a free market would deal with externalities. But really it would only have to be even with the State solution to be the right choice. And the government has set a very very low bar. I don't see how the free market could possibly do a worse job than government.

I'm not sure what free rider issues you are talking about. And prinicpal-agent conflicts (I really don't know much about this) sounds like it is an issue for State based societies, not free market ones.

As far as optimal goes, I'm not sure maximally optimal solution can exist. But if you are talking about best of the available options, I would obv disagree. The free market out paces throughout history every other option.

I think we have exhausted the discussion around land. How do you justify they income tax etc? Do you bundle that in with land?

If there was an original contract between the State and the people, it would be the constitution. Without getting into whether or not that was actually a binding contract. Do you think that if Walmart had someone sign a document like the Constitution then acted like the Government does today that it would hold up in court?

Do you realize that when and where the state has not acted to create and enforce laws that the situation was entirely identical to AC?

Where the state has no hand, it does not exist. This has not, historically, turned out well.

I think that is mostly correct as to libertarian intentions in using the idea of self-ownership, but I think it differs in some respects. "Autonomy" refers to the concept of self-government, but self-ownership doesn't imply this. Rather, it claims we have rights of non-interference from others, but that is not a sufficient condition of self-government. Also, typically ownership includes the power to alienate and sell, and slavery seems inconsistent with self-government.

I think there are two steps needed to make this claim. First, the self-ownership thesis, which claims the only obligations anyone or anything have towards others is to respect their own self-ownership rights or the terms of any agreement we make with others. And second, the claim that we didn't make any agreement with the state to give them an interest in our land.

As I said, I disagree with the self-ownership thesis as well, but here I've been arguing against jibninjas by denying the second claim. In fact, an understanding of US property law shows that in our land contracts we've made many more agreements than commonly supposed by libertarians, it is just that no one reads the fine print except lawyers. That is no excuse for libertarians to later claim they didn't know and so ignore those provisions to pay tax. It is their own responsibility to know what agreements they are making, not anyone else, and if they do a bad job of it, oh well (anyway, they actually do know, since it isn't a secret that people are expected to pay property tax in most US states).

Sure it does. The state sells property to private citizens who use it for productive purposes, and as part of the sale charges an annual fee, i.e. revenue.

Also, it's not absurd, it is how property rights work. Criminals still have property rights.

I said very explicitly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fact that in US common law we have only fee simple property rights in land, not allodial property rights. This is just a fact about the American legal system. You assert that in fact we have allodial property rights, but have given zero legal basis for this claim. As for your AC writers who claim a foundation in common law - show me their defense that according to common law we have allodial property rights in land.

Yes it does. Self-ownership is a moral, not legal, doctrine. Furthermore, there is no general agreement on what it means, what it implies (i.e. many left-libertarians accept self-ownership, but deny that it includes property rights in land), or whether it is true.

On the other hand, the common law tradition of land property rights is much more sophisticated and complex (read a property law textbook for details). It has achieved enough general consensus to be used as the basis for nearly all business transactions in the US. It has an agreed-upon method for resolving conflicts, etc.

I understand their position just fine. They believe a society based on their principles would lead to human flourishing, I think it would lead to violence, poverty, cruelty, and so on.

Then why do you support stealing from the state?

Fair enough. People with attitudes like yours are one of the reasons why I support a state, so that people who aren't concerned with other people's property rights are punished if they try to steal from them.