[ExI] Under the libertarian yoke was Re: Next Decade May See No Warming

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2008/5/7 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>:
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >  Breach of perhaps the most basic and common contract - namely, if I
>  >  buy something from you but don't pay - does normally authorise the use
>  >  of force against me
>
>  ### This is incorrect. Use of force is either explicitly authorized in
>  the contract, or else it is implied by the general legal framework
>  under which the contract is signed. Frequently a contract will have
>  provisions for non-violent sanctions in case of breach, such as
>  forfeiture of a surety. In other situations there are provisions for
>  arbitration, which may or may not involve agreeing to the use of
>  force.

I might agree to all sorts of things explicitly in a contract,
including sanctions in case the contract is breached, but if those
sanctions in any way depend on my cooperation then force will have to
be used to make me comply. It is best if the sanctions don't require
my cooperation, but it won't always be possible to arrange the
contract that way.

>  >  A tax in a democracy is a kind of conditional contract just like this.
>
>  ### No, most definitely it is not. One of the essential features of a
>  valid contract is that it is being entered voluntarily, that is,
>  neither of the parties, their agents, principals, nor allies, is
>  threatening violence to induce another peaceful party to sign the
>  contract. Clearly, the agents of the state are threatening deadly
>  violence to anybody who fails to meet their peremptory demands, and
>  therefore neither the state nor its victims can enter into a contract.
>  The threat of violence is sufficient to invalidate or pre-empt a
>  contract.

But as discussed above, the threat of force, usually implicit, is a
very common part of a contract. I won't trade with you unless I know
that I will be able to obtain adequate compensation if you cheat me,
and that may require the use of force. Similarly, you won't trade with
me unless you know you can obtain compensation if I cheat you. Now I
would *prefer* that the deal we agree to does not allow anyone to use
force against me, since then I can get away with cheating you, but of
course you won't agree to anything this one-sided. So unless we both -
grudgingly - agree to having force used against us, we will both be
denied the benefits of trade.

> >  I won't voluntarily pay (i.e. as charity) the amount I pay in tax even
>  >  for projects I consider worthwhile, but I will agree to pay on
>  >  condition that everyone else also agrees to pay.
>
>  ### You are in fact not capable of giving consent to pay taxes, simply
>  because you have no choice. Are you following it? No matter what is
>  your opinion, what kind of "conditions" you are imagining, you *have*
>  to pay the tax.
>
>  I know it may seem strange at first... but all you need to realize is
>  that to be able to legitimately say "yes", you must be able to say
>  "no". Without the right to refuse, there can be no legitimate
>  contract.

It's problematic when a group of people agree to a contract which will
be binding on all those in the group including those who voted against
it. However, this is what happens all the time in every organisation.
By joining the organisation, members agree to be bound by the
decisions of the group, even when they don't agree with it. They are
(or should be) free to leave, but it's difficult when the organisation
is a whole country, or potentially even the whole world. For example,
what do you do if a minority declares that they don't recognise
certain property rights, never agreed to be bound by any laws
regarding these rights, and therefore start taking whatever they feel
they need? You would be forced to say that there are certain rules
which apply to everyone living in your particular society, whether
they have explicitly agreed to them or not, and if they don't like it
they can leave.

>   This is why people in
>  >  general hate paying tax, but keep voting in a government that will
>  >  force them to pay tax.
>
>  ### Why people keep voting is a whole another issue, none of it
>  however can legitimize a tax as a form of contractual payment.

People are free, at least in many places, to vote for tax to be
voluntary for themselves and everyone else. Surely this is an
attractive proposition, for the naive as well as for the sophisticated
voter! A politician could become fabulously popular and make his
country fabulously wealthy (according to libertarian theory) if he ran
on a platform of reducing compulsory taxation to, say, 1% to run only
the essential machinery of government. Why when the low taxation/small
government zealots are in power do they balk when the spending cuts
reach a certain low level?

>  >  Yes, that might work, but it would have to be included in the original
>  >  contract since there would be a temptation to defect by selling to the
>  >  defectors, who would be very keen for trading partners.
>
>  ### Exactly! You have just described the heretofore missing ingredient
>  in our non-violent solution to global warming: provisions for
>  maintenance of secondary public goods, that is features of the social
>  order that are only important as means to achieve or protect primary
>  public goods. Here, the primary goods are parts of the
>  Save-Our-Happy-Planet conditional contract directly necessary to
>  prevent a collective heatstroke, while the secondary goods are
>  provisions meant to protect the primary good from being destroyed -
>  such as an injunction against trading with defectors. Note that once
>  you voluntarily sign the contract, you *may* be legitimately subjected
>  to violent reprisals for breaching it. If paragraph #22 says "Whoever
>  trades freely with a defector or refusnik, will have his right hand
>  taken off", well, then the other parties to the contract, and their
>  agents, may cut off your hand for selling beef at normal price to me.
>
>  This is why you should always read the small print in a contract.
>
>  ----------------------
>
>
>   But this isn't
>  >  any different to swapping fines and criminal prosecution for boycott,
>  >  ostracism or exile of businesses and individuals who refuse to pay
>  >  their tax.
>
>  ### Yeah, isn't this great? No thugs chasing you, just people turning
>  away from you, one by one. This makes unjust punishment so much less
>  likely.

So if the penalty for not paying tax was that the majority of the
population, who voted for universal taxation, would be forbidden from
trading with you, would that be OK? It sounds like just another way of
saying that if you don't want to pay tax, you can either leave the
country or stay in the country but not earn any income.

> >  That's all very well, but it doesn't address the urgency of the
>  >  situation. I don't want to punish the people responsible after the
>  >  train has crashed, I want to prevent the train crashing in the first
>  >  place.
>  >
>  ### Sure. As long as you manage to convince enough people that the
>  train could crash, you will be able to build a contract to prevent it.
>
>  To summarize, you were able to come up with all the significant parts
>  of a workable, non-violent solution to a major tragedy of the commons,
>  which so many short-sighted people see as unsolvable without
>  large-scale organized violence.
>
>  It took a bit of coaxing, but you did it, which means you could become
>  an excellent libertarian theorist.... if you only wanted to. You do
>  seem to have some habits of thought and emotion, such as seeing your
>  oppressors as one of "us" rather than "them", but that is nothing you
>  couldn't overcome.

I used to be very taken with anarchism as a political movement, with
quotes such as the following from Proudhon:

"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached
at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded,
by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the
virtue to do so.  To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every
transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured,
numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented,
forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.  It is, under pretext of
public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed
under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted
from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed;  then at the slightest resistance, the
first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrassed,
hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned,
judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to
crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.  That is
government;  that is its justice;  that is its morality."

I still see anarchism as the ideal to aim for, even if it's a utopian
ideal. One of my main concerns is that communitarian anarchism will
end in anarcho-capitalism, with the tyranny of the state being
replaced by a tyranny of powerful business interests. I see the state,
at least in the form of the more benign modern democracies, as the
lesser of two evils.




-- 
Stathis Papaioannou