One would think, but after some thought you’re apt to find that one 800lb gorilla is the same as another.
How do you reckon rulers came to power? Was it by virtue of regulation or by taking advantage of a lawless environment? If there are no laws, then I’ll get some buds together and oppress you. What could you do? Call the cops? Invariably, someone will rise to power and make new rules because if you have no rules, someone will have to establish a government to enforce the anarchy and that’s just silly.
Authoritarian government and anarchy are the same thing. The middle way is the best way. Only a gov can guarantee an equal playing field just like a referee is sure no one cheats in a game or fight.
Show me something (except natural selection) that can exist unmanaged:
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A garden left to nature will be a disaster. Besides, why interrupt the free market competition between plants? Let trees grow tall and shade your garden. Let the weeds take over. Let the strongest survive instead of governing it.
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Do you have pets? Do you kill the worms and fleas? Why? Let the free market dictate who survives. What right do you have to kill the fleas and worms?
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Do you vaccinate your kids? Why do that? Let the free market figure it out.
People who carryon with the freemarket mantra are the pinnacle of hypocrisy because they never practice what they preach and if they did, they would die.
Now I’m not advocating total control because no one should overmanage or micromanage, but there must be a middle way between the two extremes.
Stefan Molyneux is an anarchist who adheres to the nonaggression principle (NAP) and therefore says taxation is “guys with guns” stealing his money, but what he fails to see is coercing someone into servitude in the capitalistic system is itself aggressive.
I used to be an employer and I know how this works: Say I can do a job and make $50/hr all by myself. Then I hire a guy at $10/hr who then makes me an extra $50 - $10 = $40 per hour. Now I’m making $90 compared to his $10. You see, no one in their right mind would hire someone who costs them money, but the reason to hire someone is to make me money. In other words, his existence is to enrich my existence because otherwise I have no incentive to hire him. How is it coercive? Well, I’m taking advantage of the fact that he has nowhere to make more than $10/hr and his alternative is to make less or go starve. That is what we call “providing a service to the community” and I expect to be compensated unjustly for that service.
So, to right the wrong, the tax man shows up to redistribute the money back to the guy who should have had a bigger cut in the first place and that is what Stefan calls “theft” and violation of the NAP.
Let’s look at the situation from another angle:
Suppose we have a gold standard with a fixed money supply. Now, when one more person is born, who gives up their gold for that new person? If we dig it up, then the money supply isn’t fixed. I mean, if we can jut dig gold up whenever we need it, then it’s no different than printing. Clearly, there has to be an expanding money supply.
I’ve already shown how money flows uphill in the chain of employment and without printing new money to replace what flows uphill as the rich get richer off the backs of the workers, the bottom would run out. In fact, running out of money was the cause of the American Revolution:
archive.org/stream/TheMoneyMast … s_djvu.txt
[i]For those who believe that a gold standard is the answer for America’s current monetary problems, look what happened to
America after the Currency Act of 1764 was passed. Writing in his autobiography, Franklin said:
“In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that
the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed.”
Franklin claims that this was even the basic cause for the American Revolution. As Franklin put it in his autobiography:
“The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the
Colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.” [/i]
[i]Ben Franklin claimed that this was the real cause of the American Revolution. Most of the founding
fathers realized the potential dangers of banking, and feared bankers’ accumulation of wealth and power. Jefferson put it this
way:
"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have
raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks
and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. "
Benjamin Franklin was a big supporter of the colonies printing their own money. In 1757, Franklin was sent to London to fight
for colonial paper money. He ended up staying for the next 18 years - nearly until the start of the American Revolution.
During this period, ignoring Parliament, more American colonies began to issue their own money.
Called Colonial Scrip, the endeavor was successful, with notable exceptions. It provided a reliable medium of exchange, and it
also helped to provide a feeling of unity between the colonies. Remember, most Colonial Scrip was just paper money - debt-
free money - printed in the public interest and not really backed by gold or silver coin. In other words, it was a fiat currency.
Officials of the Bank of England asked Franklin how he would account for the new-found prosperity of the colonies. Without
hesitation he replied:
“That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the
demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers… In this manner,
creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.” [/i]
The purpose of printing money is to replenish the money to the bottom as the rich get richer. The purpose of taxation is to redistribute the money so that printing isn’t so necessary. Taxation is NOT to fund the government.
G. Edward Griffin wrote the book “The creature from Jekyll Island” which is the history of the Fed.
Start at 18:00 here:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsqGR31zoVA[/youtube]
Therefore, taxation is not theft and it is necessary for the health of the economy and without the redistributive effects of taxation then revolt would brew, suicides ensue as hopelessness sets in, drug use and crime would soar.
So now, look around, what do we have? Trump cutting taxes which are already low and too flat, the fed raising rates (stopping printing) and we have drug use at epidemic levels and people are taking to the streets. Look at Chicago and Baltimore. The prosperity started with FDR and ended with Reagan and we continue to slide into greater and greater divisions of wealth and all that has sustained us so far is the ever increasing amounts of debt that the middle class has taken-on to replace the wealth that has flowed uphill. Trickle-down is not enough to offset the deluge going up.
Conservatives need to wake up!
Long post, but figured may as well get it out there. I’ll try to upload some charts to further illustrate the situation.