Then why have those problems not been solved? There's enough money in the hands of the wealthy to house, feed and clothe everyone. There's sufficient available solutions to the environmental crisis for it to be, at least, patched up. The government is neither preventing, nor even discouraging people from acting. Jeff Bezos could feed most of Africa tomorrow if he so wished. The fact is that charitable efforts are currently below what is required. It's therefore ludicrous to argue that such efforts would be adequate to deal with state-funded management tasks too.

I don’t know the answer. Much of it is probably ineradicable. It’s comforting to know good people and good organizations are doing the best they can.

What presently concerns me is the injustice and imbalance in power in the relationship between the man and the state, and the effect it has on our livelihoods.

It's your argument, not mine.

"Employment does not need regulating because if you don't like it you can just leave" - your argument, not mine.
"Corporations are not tyrannical because of you don't like their deal, you can just find another" - your argument, not mine
So
"Governments are not forcing anything on anyone because if you don't like it, you can just leave" - exactly the same argument.

I never made such arguments, though. You’re pretending I did. The closest I came is saying that if I don’t like a product or service I don’t buy it, which is a statement of fact and a description of my own behavior. Instead you took someone else’s mischaracterization and wasted a lot of time on it.

Again, why is the risk and difficulty anyone else's problem? Your argument is that the government are forcing you, with threat of violence, to comply. They're not because you can leave. Your argument is simply wrong on the same grounds you want to use to argue corporations are not forcing anyone to comply. Either both are using a kind of force (the difficulty of finding an alternative), or neither are.

I differentiated the state from the corporation with the monopoly on violence. States actively seek, require, and/or hold that monopoly. Corporations do not (though state corporations such as The Crown Corporation do). It is the monopoly on violence that entails compulsory cooperation. If and when corporations possess this monopoly I’ll oppose it, but until then I can deal with them or not without the looming threat of that monopoly being set against me. When I purchase a product or service from a business I do so voluntarily. When I purchase a product or service from the government I do so involuntarily. I use wealth to purchase services and products from business. The State takes my wealth to purchase its services and products.

Is there no such difference in your mind?

Where would we be with out your passive aggression?

It’s not as ludicrous as you make it out to be, I'm afraid. People help the homeless everyday. People organize to protect the environment. Volunteers, churches, philanthropists, charities, still operate despite your panacea. They have to because delegating these duties to a state only minimizes this activity by taking the responsibility out of their hands and placing it in another's. Paying a tax is tantamount to doing nothing to resolve those issues.

Nor are you compelled by force to deal with anyone from your government. You are free to leave at any time. We've been through this. What threat of force prevents you from leaving your country?

I'm still unsure what any of this has to do with anything. "If you don't like it, just leave" is a fallacy. Why do you keep evoking it, and why should I answer these questions?

Nonetheless, the risk of leaving a country, his home, his family, his support networks, is more than enough to convince one to remain in his country.

X needs doing, there are no alternatives. That's a justification for X.

I just want to know the justification for why taxes need doing. I was arguing that they don’t need doing, that they are immoral, that there are voluntary alternatives such as community organization.

I did address them. You just ignored it. Your list makes emigration harder than moving job. If I find emigration easier than moving job, is my boss immoral for changing my contract unfavorably?

Or, put another way, if states made emigration easier, would they be off the hook?

If you found emigration easier than changing jobs I’d say you were insane, for one.

Yes, I get it, a boss may act immorally towards an employee just like a state can act immorally towards a citizen. Yes, one has the option of quitting a state just as one has the option to quit a job. People do both all the time, for economic and moral reasons, at least when they are not fleeing because they fear for their lives. Yes, if one doesn’t like one state he should move to another.

But that’s an oversimplification because one isn’t compelled, by threat of force, to deal with anyone in the private sphere, corporate or otherwise, save for perhaps in criminal endeavors like robbery. He can liberate himself from the jurisdiction of his overlords and work as he sees fit. He can become a boss himself, start a collective, and so on. All of it, of course, under the beck and call of the state.

In a state you are compelled, by threat of force, to deal with it, just like with any criminal enterprise. The immigrant and refugee cannot liberate himself from its power and oversight no matter where he goes. Even those deemed stateless have been subjected to some of the worst state privations from states.

The relationship, the risks, the effort, the power imbalance, the scope, the coercion, the effect—none of it is equivalent between the two.

I am. X needs doing, there are no alternatives. That's a justification for X.

Taxes need doing. That’s a justification for taxes. Doesn’t compute.

So you'd rule against inheritance then, which is neither "one’s own labor" nor "the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others". That's a good start, but it doesn't differentiate Queen Elizabeth from most factory owners.

I would not rule against inheritance, and never implied any such thing.

A monarch is the head of state, a factory owner is a subject of the state.

Just saying it's a false equivalency doesn't make it one by magic. It's harder. That's all you've given me so far. If I find emigration easy but moving jobs hard does that make my employer immoral for changing my contract to terms I don't like?

I’ve given reasons why they are not equivalent, all of which were not addressed. You haven’t given reasons why the are equivalent. Moving to another country is not equivalent to moving to another job.

OK. How else?

I thought you were going to justify taxation.

You're just using 'legitimate' here to mean 'means I agree with'. On what grounds are the means by which factory owner come by their factories 'legitimate' which then excludes the means by which, say, Queen Elizabeth came by England?

This is turning into an interview. I feared as much.

There are two means by which man can satisfy his needs, through one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, or through robbery and confiscation. The private citizen, whether factory owner or factory worker, engages in the former, the state engages in the latter.

You've not answered why the state should care how difficult you find it to emigrate. If you don't like the rules, move. If you find moving onerous, how exactly is that my problem, or the state's problem, or anyone's problem but yours?

If I personally find emigration a breeze, but am terrified of job interviews, do I get to claim corporations are immoral for making move jobs every time they change my employment terms?

You’re comparing immigration to finding a new job. It’s a false equivalency. And that’s to say nothing about states where emigration is or was illegal.

Enjoy your thraldom.

You may be right. I've called him a monster above, and I stand by that. What you see as my charity aligns neatly with Nietzche's caveat:

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...”

Cringeworthy. You lot have resorted to fashioning fantasies in your head. But I love reading you guys seethe about it.

I gave it in the quote - there's a need to manage common resources, experience has shown that in our current hierarchical society people do not do so voluntarily. You agreed with both of those principles. Hence it follows there's a need to manage common resources without relying on spontaneous voluntary action.

It doesn’t follow for me that a compulsory tax or compulsory cooperation is required to manage common resources.

Neither do I, I'm following your logic. If no-one can own a country then I shouldn't have to pay for any property, right? Since no-one can own it? Why do you think no-one can own a country, but people can own a factory?

By and large people come to own a factory by legitimate means, states do not acquire a territory by legitimate means. Factories deal with their employees through legitimate means, utilizing contract and voluntary cooperation, states do not, and utilize force and compulsory cooperation.

No it doesn't you're completely free to leave. They're not using any threat or force to compel you to stay. Of course, if you do stay, then you're agreeing to their rules, one of which is that they can throw you in jail if you break any of the rules. If you don't like that rule, move.

I feel I shouldn’t need to compare immigration to changing jobs, but this is quality of argument we’ve resorted to.

I don’t require a passport to leave a job and find another. I don’t need to pass through a border and have my motives questioned if I leave a job and find another. I do not need to sell my property and sever ties with the people I know to change jobs. I do not need to become an immigrant and go through any immigration process to change jobs. I do not need to learn new languages, customs, laws, just to fit in a new job. I do not face deportation if I find a new job. The comparison is so outlandish as to be false.

I’m not sure I’ve seen your justification for taxation in this thread, or I have forgotten. If you wouldn’t mind reiterating it or linking to it I can provide a response.

I don’t think you made any deal with Harold Wilson, but such a thought brings new meaning to the phrase “cradle-to-grave”.

I don’t think anyone can own a country and I have given no group of people or any institution the right to dictate how I conduct myself. The opposite is true when I sign employment agreements. One dictates my behavior by threat and force, the other by agreement. Do you think both are similar?

I have never negotiated a public utility bill because I am not allowed to. I am unable to negotiate or find a competitor because the state has a monopoly on such utilities.

I don’t think a government should make it easier for me, and never expressed anything like that. I have only said the relationship is immoral, employs compulsory cooperation rather than voluntary cooperation.

I'm not excusing it. I've just given a perfectly clear argument justifying it using foundational principles you and I have just agreed on. We agreed on the need to manage common resources and we agreed that the current crop of humanity (for whatever reason) cannot be trusted to manage those resources voluntarily.

If you want to go back and dispute one of those points then do so.

You didn’t justify taxation.

It's not passive. As ↪Xtrix has pointed out. Just as you can change corporations if you don't like their service, you can change countries if you don't like their deal. The government of the country are the legal owners of the legal entity and they offer a deal to anyone born into (or moving into) their country. If you don't like the deal, move out of their country.

Deal? With which official did you make a deal with on the date of your birth?

I have changed services, changed corporations, and changed countries. One was significantly more difficult and life-altering, taking years to become official and involving much effort and zero negotiation. There was no deal. It was as if running from one plantation to the next. The rest were easy.

You are wrong because I’ve criticized the ethics of state intervention, questioning how passively paying a tax or promoting this or that government service could be considered ethical. Delegating ethical conduct to others is not itself ethical conduct. It’s self-serving conduct.

I said poverty, wealth inequality, overconsumption, and so on, is apparent in all present systems. And I suggested that state interventions only serve to provide mechanisms by which the statist gets to relieve himself from the sordid necessity of living for others, as Oscar Wilde admitted. From this I reason that an interventionist might fear laissez-faire because it would expose his conscience and morality for what it really amounts to.

Laissez-Faire does not entail leaving things to their own course or ignoring anything. It is a fairly simple notion that unlike mercantilism, fascism, communism, modern liberalism, the state should probably mind its own business.

Your reasoning and snark have not convinced me that workers should “get a say” in a venture that is not theirs, nor that this relationship is anything like a state and subject, which has the monopoly on violence, systems of taxation, and armed control and jurisdiction.

If I want to risk starting a business, funding it, operating it, I should not have to give you a say just because I hired you to pour lattes. If you want to negotiate the terms of your employment you’ll just have to put on your big boy pants and learn to negotiate.

Corporations are not governments, though. If a group of people start a corporation it makes no sense to me that others, by virtue of them accepting a job there, should have control over it. It makes no sense to me that the people who conceive of, fund, build, accept the risk, and who are responsible for its operation from its conception until its demise should not get to decide how it should operate. You haven’t offered a single reason why this should be so.

I would say “just quit” because it is a far better course of action than attempting to force others to give up control of their creations so that Xtrix might feel better.

Perhaps my ignorance is a result of my experience and tastes. I have had no relationship with a corporation that was not voluntary and premised on mutual agreement. If I were to come across arraignments that were not to my liking, I’d not sign any contract. If I don’t like their product or service I don’t buy it. If I wanted a raise or some privilege I’d much rather retain a space of negotiation than to let some majority decide how I ought to associate with others,

I just don’t see where the tyranny is.

Will you compile all the accidents that occur on state-built roads and shift the blame accordingly? You monster!

First it’s The Wealthy, then corporations, now it’s multinational corporations. Now it’s IKEA, Johnny Walker, and Starbucks who are our overlords.

Sounds like a terrible dystopia, but no doubt the vision of our technocrats. My guess is they’ll destroy everything in an effort to save everything. As usually the scheme is enforced downwards while the benefit accrues upwards.

Where’s the state there?

You’d compare a list of workplace accidents to genocide, war, and empire.

If corporations are so powerful then you ought to start one, at least to fight back. You can start one by filing articles of incorporation with your state. It’s often pretty cheap, like $100. No doubt you’ll immediately achieve some sort of power. You’d control the state; you’d have the monopoly on violence; you can liberate workers; and you’d be able to use all that power for good!

We can make inferences from your comments. Notions of justice and equity do not loom large therein. The criticism of laissez-faire that you claim never to have understood centres on the continuation of inequity. Anything goes means everything stays, or more likely, gets worse.

There is no mechanism or force in the principle of laissez-faire that prohibits justice, though, nor does it entail “anything goes”. I just happen to be writing about inequities and injustices you remain silent about. Since your understanding of justice is so keen I must infer you avoid them for unscrupulous or bad faith reasons.

You don’t know what I understand, but assert it anyways. You are not just.

Suppose that there are two means with which man can satisfy his needs. One is the application of labor and voluntary exchange; the other is the appropriation of someone else’s labor and voluntary exchange—theft, robbery, extortion, exploitation. The state, having no wealth of its own, chose the latter. Whether it provides services or not, the underlying mechanism of exploitation remains. Adding on top of that the monopoly on violence, the regulation of its citizen’s livelihoods, and its jurisdiction over all land and properties in its dominion, we have a relationship that is tantamount to the master and slave.

I do believe in something like the rule of law, that all people and institutions should be subject to the same laws, principles, customs, whatever, but that’s just another reason why it bothers me that states can get away with theft, murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, but anyone else would not.

I’ve defined it as the organization of the means of appropriation of the labor of others, basically a system of exploitation. It’s known as the so-called “conquest theory of state”, which contrasts with the notion of the social contract. Voltaire said it best:

“The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other”.

Sit and spin. You have nothing.

Sorry, states authorize corporations. I appreciate the quibbling.

We can compare our naivety. If I’m so naive on the topic it should be easy for you to name a wealthy person who has committed murder and violence “just as much as the State has”; or name one wealthy person in Russia or China who has arrested someone and confiscated his wealth. I can give countless examples of States engaging in such behavior.

It’s a good thing there are compassionate, not-so-wealthy people such as yourself out there spending your efforts to help the elderly, disabled, the poor etc. to compensate for the lack of wealthy concern. But in effect you’re not helping, but advocating that the state and the wealthy—others—should help the poor wherever you refuse to. Equating compassion with tax-paying and statism is one of the greatest evils in the history of mankind, in my opinion.

The wealthy ARE the state.

Sorry, I’m not going to pretend the State is a one-to-one ratio with a single socio-economic class, especially one so amorphous, fuzzy and stereotypical as The Wealthy. Every private citizen, wealthy and poor, is under the jurisdiction of The State and its laws. That these laws often favor the wealthy or are not applied equally is not due to the wealth of the beneficiaries, but to State malfeasance, incompetence, and greed of state officials.

The implication of all this “the wealthy are the state” talk is that you’d rather be governed by The Poor. But we’ve seen all these so-called proletarian revolutions and what they amount to: usually genocide.

States create and control corporations. Corporations, like you and I, are considered legal entities, largely subject to the same state laws. Corporations, like you and I, are subject to taxation. You and I can create a corporation. We cannot create a state. We can run a corporation to beneficent ends. We cannot run a state towards beneficent ends. You and I can engage with a corporation on a voluntary basis. We cannot engage with a state on a voluntary basis. So you have it all backwards.

If by "potentially democratic" you mean we get to vote for another mammal to control how we live and to steal the fruits of our labor, I want nothing to do with it.

I disagree only slightly. Multi-national organizations are certainly growing in wealth, many of them having a GDP greater than many nation states. But power, to me, is different than wealth. Corporations can only beg and bribe for privilege, and regulatory capture and rent-seeking behaviors arise only when there is an institution willing to provide such privileges. Ordinary people, too, must engage in the same behavior to affect any end that satisfies their own needs, and there’s no shame in it. In my mind, the organization that has the final say in the matter, whether to follow the agenda of a corporation or ordinary people, has the power.

As for health and safety, it seems to me that if one doesn’t want its services he shouldn’t have to pay for it. So maybe something like a subscription or membership program could work. Whether it would work or not, I’m unsure, but it would at least be an ethical relationship.

Thanks for the honesty.

Protection rackets aren’t known for their voluntary association. But the underlying practice is extortion, which is exactly how the state funds itself.

It is my understanding that Grenfell Tower was the product of British “social housing”, the landlord being the the borough Council—the State.

Just to be clear, no laissez-faire has existed, so the “results” are difficult to come by. Virtually every activity occurs under the jurisdiction and oversight of a state.

You want the State to be the sole arbiter of safety. I do not. How can we reach a moral resolution to this impasse?

The idea that someone owns the state and has the monopoly on violence as soon as he hits a certain net-worth isn’t worth thinking about. Not even Moses could come up with a sillier scapegoat. I cannot be convinced that this monopoly will disappear as soon as a goatherd comes to power.

The state is not a social institution run anti-socially, just waiting about for some moral vanguard to bring it to its teleological purpose—no greater leap of faith can be found—it is an anti-social institution running exactly how it was designed to run.

Any discussion which begins with "I don't want to pay taxes" (paraphrasing) is deeply suspect in its integrity.

Any hand-wave that excuses the appropriation of wealth through taxation is incredibly obsequious. Clearly a desire to benefit from it inheres in these remarks?

Sure. But if some Americans firmly believe abortion is murder, that matters. Their opinion shouldn't be brushed aside in the name of someone's privacy. No one has a right to privately commit murder.

It should be brushed aside. What matters in this context is the constitution and precedent, and how well our supreme jurists can stretch the plain meaning of language to suit their interpretations. Public opinion doesn’t matter, or it ought not to according to the system it operates in.

It is

Because?

Obviously? Then it should be easy to say how this is the case.

The wealthy don’t posses the monopoly on violence. The state does. The state, not the wealthy, can murder you in the street with impunity, throw you in jail, or confiscate your wealth. Slavery is still legal in the United States constitution, for example, so long the slave is the property of the American justice system. But if you’re fine with being controlled by politicians and bureaucrats, and those politicians and bureaucrats turn out to operate in the service of the wealthy, I guess that’s just too bad.

I’m not sure why any community requires the wealthy or the state to help them. It’s not “a given” that this should be so. But I can go to any large city in North America, wherever the state is at its most powerful, and look around to see what your state help amounts to. Not a whole lot.

Ok. So to limit state intervention, you'd have to restrict the ability of the people to vote for state intervention. That requires far reaching state power.

I wouldn’t propose to restrict anything. It would be interesting to see what would happen in no one voted, though. Maybe we should start a “Don’t Vote” movement. But then they’d make it compulsory, no doubt.

I think the problem is not the end goal, but the means. I'm on board with the whole individual freedom thing, perhaps more than most here. I raised both my children without any rules at all, they were not required to go to school, attend lessons, no bedtimes, nowhere out of bounds etc... I take individual freedom very seriously. But the fact is that we are where we are. Individuals have not been brought up with any idea of responsibility, repressed, beaten, and stupefied. We have a disgusting level of inequality, in both power and wealth, we have massive problems with pretty much all of our communal resources, most of which have been caused by the ones who are now rich getting themselves that way.

So if we want our anarchist utopia, how do we get there from here? Government backing out of economics seems like a terrible first step. It's just going to magnify the inequality and worsen the problems with communal resource management because nothing has been done about the system of power relations that exist as a result of living in a non-anarchist system for ten thousand years or so. You can't just undo that kind of damage by walking away. Certainly not by just walking away in one aspect (economy).

I'm with you on that. To destroy it or walk away from it would be cruel. The only way such a state could be achieved, I think, is if people simply stopped thinking in those terms, like the decline of Catholicism. That could take forever, for all I know. But in the meantime one needn't participate in it, and as you have done, lead by example.

The problem here is historicism. You agreed there never has been any properly state-free system, so all you can show is that when the state are the most powerful weapon around, the rich use them to further their goals. If the state were not around, the rich would simply use the next most powerful weapon available (private armies, monopolising essential goods, private taxation etc), which may well be worse.

You're right. They'd try to become a state. But I think it would take them a while to achieve the monopoly on violence, and a group like the Regional Defence Council of Aragon could hold them back.

I'm nervous and tense about statism, which is both left and right.

It's no strange wonder that Roosevelt praised Mussolini, and Mussolini praised the New Deal. In a review of Roosevelt's book he said "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices, having recognized the welfare of the economy is the welfare of the people". The Nazis also praised it. And it's no strange wonder that Mao Zedung and Lenin praised state capitalism.

There never was any laissez-faire. The state caused much of the poverty, and the state caused all of the wars. It was the Inclosure Acts in England that forced people into the hands of the factory owners, for example. Having their property taken from them by the State, it was either work in the factories or starve to death.