View source for My mortgage payments, stolen from me at gunpoint
From Critiques Of Libertarianism
Jump to:
navigation
,
search
<!-- you can have any number of categories here --> [[Category:Gene Callahan]] [[Category:Analyzing Libertarian Arguments]] [[Category:Taxation Is Theft]] <!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.--> {{URL | url = http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-mortgage-payments-stolen-from-me-at.html}} <!-- {{Other URL | url = }} --> <!-- {{Old URL | url = }} --> {{End URL}} {{DES | des = "Of course, taxes are no more "stolen from me at gunpoint" than are my mortgage payments. After all, if I stop paying the mortgage and try to keep living in my house, eventually people with guns will show up to clear me out." | show=}} <!-- insert wiki page text here --> <!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them. Use these explicit workarounds. --> <!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}} --> {{List|title=My mortgage payments, stolen from me at gunpoint|links=true}} {{Quotations|title=My mortgage payments, stolen from me at gunpoint|quotes=true}} {{Text | One way in which ideologies are kept afloat is by re-describing ordinary parts of social life in a colorful and surprising way: for instance, Proudhon famously re-described property as "theft." Using an extraordinary definition of an ordinary aspect of social life makes the ideologue feel like he is privy to some esoteric knowledge. Sharing that special knowledge with others who have adopted the same ideology builds group solidarity. Anarcho-capitalists like to do this with taxation. By redefining taxation as theft (note the similarity to Proudhon!) and then claiming that the government "steals money from people at gunpoint" and anarcho-capitalists can feel superior to the "sheeple" who don't have this special piece of information. Of course, taxes are no more "stolen from me at gunpoint" than are my mortgage payments. After all, if I stop paying the mortgage and try to keep living in my house, eventually people with guns will show up to clear me out. At this point, any anarcho-capitalist reading this is popping a vein in his forehead: "But, but... you took on your mortgage voluntarily!" Yes, my friend, and you live in this country voluntarily. And you participate in our economic system voluntarily, and one of the requirements for so participating is... paying taxes! Move to a yurt in the remote wilderness, and your taxation worries will be over! Why should you have to move to avoid paying these taxes you "never agreed to"? Well, how about the fact that 99.9% of us, although we might gripe about the level of taxation and many of the things the government does, feel that it is a perfectly acceptable trade-off to pay some taxes in exchange for some government. Where do you get off trying to impose life without government on the vast majority of us who do not want it? And in any case, even if there is a sense in which it might be argued that I undertook my mortgage "more" voluntarily than I did my US citizenship, what about alimony payments? What about damages due as a result of losing a lawsuit? In both cases there are legal obligations to pay money that were not voluntarily undertaken by the payer. And in both cases, if one refuses to pay up, eventually men with guns will show up. But it would be ridiculous to describe these payments as being "stolen at gunpoint." Just as ridiculous as it is to describe taxation that way. }}
Template:DES
(
view source
)
Template:End URL
(
view source
)
Template:Extension DPL
(
view source
)
Template:List
(
view source
)
Template:Quotations
(
view source
)
Template:Red
(
view source
)
Template:Text
(
view source
)
Template:URL
(
view source
)
Return to
My mortgage payments, stolen from me at gunpoint
.
Navigation menu
Views
Page
Discussion
View source
History
Personal tools
Log in
Search
Search For Page Title
in Wikipedia
with Google
Translate This Page
Google Translate
Navigation
Main Page (fast)
Main Page (long)
Blog
Original Critiques site
What's new
Current events
Recent changes
Bibliography
List of all indexes
All indexed pages
All unindexed pages
All external links
Random page
Under Construction
To Be Added
Site Information
About This Site
About The Author
How You Can Help
Support us at Patreon!
Site Features
Site Status
Credits
Notes
Help
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Special pages
Page information
Guidelines To Create
Indexable Page/Quote
Indexable Book/Quote
Indexable Quote
Unindexed
Templates
Edit Sidebar
Purge cache this page