Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Bacchus]

Fundamental concepts of taxation, of the need for state involvement in education, exist in the societal consensus. This is how laws have power, and they are broadly accepted in the social psyche as evidenced by their lack of broad challenge.

And so what? In the US until well into 19th century, slavery was "broadly accepted in the social psyche", and in the 20th segregation became all the rage (from progressives first and foremost, because science), homosexuality was a crime in the UK until mid-century by "societal consensus". All of these things -- racial hierarchies, eugenics, sexuality were billed as "fundamental concepts". Just a short while back in Japan and India it was completely normal, acceptable and fundamental to order of things that offspring of peasants remain peasants. Once you become familiar with the long list of ways in which oppression is normalized, and with the narratives that are constructed to achieve this normalization, it becomes very difficult to see taxation as anything but another entry in this list, especially as for most of human history it really was just that -- the guy with a big stick demanding payment from the subjects he disarmed.

Secondly, I don't understand your fixation on a distinction between fighting evil and doing good.

Not fighting evil, but fighting violence. To me, one of the first principles of civilized co-existence is that you don't resort to violence in a matter, unless violence has already been raised (by an aggressor).

Moreover, you have only proposed principled rejections. Practically, what are your solutions? Absent the coercion of the state, how can a certain level of education be guaranteed to the citizenry?

How is ensuring a basic level of literacy is provided to the most destitute - as a marginal case - a nefarious agenda of the state?

If the citizenry really wants to guarantee its members a certain level of education, I fail to see how the state should come into the matter at all -- the citizenry will do just that. If the difficulty is that the citizenry doesn't actually want to pay for a certain level of education, then clearly the citizenry's declarations are empty. Finally, there is the case where members of the citizenry want education to be provided at the expense of other members of the citizenry, those that themselves don't actually want to pay. And let's be honest, this is why the state is involved -- to force people to pay for other people's demands. There is nothing nefarious in what is being financed, it's how.

Assuming that you agree this at least should be provided, what is your model for providing it?

I think the discussion is meaningless in the abstract -- it would only become practicable if, say, we were setting up a society anew on the Moon, or something. If we are speaking about actually existing states, we need to be clear on a few points. Firstly, taxation arose as a purely predatory and self-focused activity of the state for its own needs (European settler colonies are a little special here, I am talking mostly of Old World states). Over time, once the subjects obtained regular political power in the form of democratic participation, they have been able to demand that some of the taxation revenues are re-routed to the needs of the citizenry. What you interpret as the people establishing a re-distributive order that they always desired, I interpret more as the people winning, over time, increasingly more of a say in how the money that was forcibly taken from them is spent. In this sense, the development of the welfare state is a positive -- if money is going to be taken, better that at least some of it comes back in the form of hospitals. It's a form of taking back ownership of what was yours in the first place. The problem is, though, that democratic rule stimulates not just the return of the people's labour to themselves, but a nationwide system of politically driven and violently backed redistribution, a system which creates its own privileged class and a system which seeks to grow and encompass as much of the economy as possible.

So what do I want, given the above? I want the system which redistributes by force to be kept in check, not encouraged. Wherever possible, we should be striving for creation of voluntary- and market-funded organisations to address our needs, and we should be working to decrease, overtime, the tax burden, ideally to 0. Not by cutting services, but by replacing tax-funded systems with literally anything else. I don't even mind the state setting up those organisations, as long as they are fully separated from the means of violence, which should only be used to fight violence. We can start by making taxes clearly earmarked (as some social contributions already are), and by moving them into opt-out schemes. We should also aim to move benefits into a form of direct cash transfers to people in need, to give businesses a chance to compete for providing the most relevant services. Coercion is bad, huge bureaucracies with bloated budgets which decide internally and without monetary consumer feedback on how to provide services are bad.

You start from the premise that state=violence. I start from the premise that a state is what it does, and at least in western Europe (and Canada, Australia and a few others) what it does is for the most part providing education, healthcare, trying to avoid ultimate poverty, security etc... Only the security part is violent

The thing is that states have existed for much longer than the last 100-odd years, but they only really started doing the social welfare things at the end of the 19th century. What the Napoleonic state of France, and the Ancien Regime state of France, and the modern state of France have in common, is the claimed monopoly on violence in the territory of France. That's what makes them states of France. So, I also look at what is it that states do, and what they have done -- and the common thing is not social welfare. I mean, if France stopped providing social welfare tomorrow, it wouldn't cease to be a state, would it? (It might cease to be a state as a consequence of a revolution that would immediately follow, but that's just the point -- as long as it successfully maintains a monopoly of violence, it is state).

[Nicolae Carpathia]

we need to build a wall around this thread

[Gavagai]

Seriuosly, a page and a half of posts for me to answer? I think I'll just restate my position because it doesn't seem to be understood clearly and then answer Old Harry in a separate post. I'm not intersted in a protracted debate, just want to explain my views.

So, when you say that it is preferrable for the state to do X, you assume that the state has some property due to which it does X better. This property should be unique to the state because otherwise it's unclear why we are dismissing alternatives.
Now, the only thing unique about the state is its ability to apply violence. Therefore, if we say that it is preferrable for the state to do X, we say that violence is somehow helpful in doing X.
Alternative explanation - that the state somehow channels the wishes of the society and that this is what unique about it - doesn't hold. Just as anyone can vote, anyone can donate money to a non-profit charity. It's unclear why a random charity can't claim to represent the will of the society like the state does. The only difference is that you need to actually pay a significant sum of money into a charity to excercise noticable control over it. On the other hand, you may pay zero net taxes but still have the same voting rights as a guy who pays billions. This is what makes state unique - it gives people control over money even if they don't contribute them. Of course, actual contributors would never agree to such arrangement if they were asked nicely, this is possible only because of implied or direct threat of violence. So, this alternative unique perk of government is also reduced to excersice of force.
Given that, I think we should expect the state to be a preferred instrument in activities where violence does produce added value - killing terrorists, for example, or defending property from robbers. But how exactly violence produces added value in healthcare? If you can answer this specific question, I will gladly listen.

[Jkaen]

On the Hilary thing, I found this article pretty interesting covering most of the issues raised with her above

(TLDR - It's because she is female)

With Breixt there is the half hope it shakes the parties enough to have the minor ones come in more and at least shift us to PR

[Gavagai]

@ Old Harry. I think the main difference between us is that I don't understand why equality is by itself a value. More specifically, I don't see how equal distribution of stuff is morally better than random.

Re: safety nets. I think, "safety nets" are an issue at all only because government manipulations of money supply made savings and credit non-trivial. If money were stable, it would be easy to save up money for retirement or to obtain liquidity during hard period. Provided that you are an honest, hard-working citizen, of course.
So, in principle, I think that welfare state should be abolished but only after financial system is stabilized. Currently welfare sort of fixes one government evil with another.

Re: basic income. I think, it's an OK compromise with the left - provided that the left meet us half-way. I'm relatively less concerned with redistribution than with monetary manipulations and buisiness regulations in general - those, I think, are the most harmful things which government does.

[Mr. Cairo]

So what do I want, given the above? I want the system which redistributes by force to be kept in check, not encouraged. Wherever possible, we should be striving for creation of voluntary- and market-funded organisations to address our needs, and we should be working to decrease, overtime, the tax burden, ideally to 0. Not by cutting services, but by replacing tax-funded systems with literally anything else. I don't even mind the state setting up those organisations, as long as they are fully separated from the means of violence, which should only be used to fight violence. We can start by making taxes clearly earmarked (as some social contributions already are), and by moving them into opt-out schemes. We should also aim to move benefits into a form of direct cash transfers to people in need, to give businesses a chance to compete for providing the most relevant services. Coercion is bad, huge bureaucracies with bloated budgets which decide internally and without monetary consumer feedback on how to provide services are bad.

While this sounds nice in the abstract, it isn't even theoretically possible, because without a state capable of violence, there is nothing to keep those voluntary- and market-funded organisations from ceasing to be benevolent. No way to ensure that they continue to do the job they were set up to do.

Say you have an education system that is run by a combination of private and volunteer schools (no government-run schools at all). Without a state capable and willing to use violence, there is no way to enforce a minimum/common level of standards, no way to ensure that everyone gets into a school, no way to ensure that the private schools don't buy up the volunteer-run schools, driving them out of business, and forming a for-profit monopoly on education. In the UK recently, the government has been trying to encourage schools to become what they term "Academies", state-funded schools which run themselves, instead of being run by the local government. In many cases these new Academies became more successful than they were before. But in many other cases, the opposite occurred, when you ended up with for-profit oragnisations running dozens or more of academies, which resulted in either a lack or improvement, or in some cases, a degradation of results.

If you separate the government from the services it provides and end its ability to enforce standards, all you'll end up with is that service being monopolized by a corporation or other for-profit entity, that will use violence (like withholding services if you don't pay).

[Nicolae Carpathia]

@ Old Harry. I think the main difference between us is that I don't understand why equality is by itself a value. More specifically, I don't see how equal distribution of stuff is morally better than random.

Re: safety nets. I think, "safety nets" are an issue at all only because government manipulations of money supply made savings and credit non-trivial. If money were stable, it would be easy to save up money for retirement or to obtain liquidity during hard period. Provided that you are an honest, hard-working citizen, of course.
So, in principle, I think that welfare state should be abolished but only after financial system is stabilized. Currently welfare sort of fixes one government evil with another.

Re: basic income. I think, it's an OK compromise with the left - provided that the left meet us half-way. I'm relatively less concerned with redistribution than with monetary manipulations and buisiness regulations in general - those, I think, are the most harmful things which government does.

jfc you do not want a deflationary currency because that kills investment and economic growth

gavagai is just filled with all these hilariously half-baked ideas gleaned off shitty blogs

[Mr. Cairo]

On the Hilary thing, I found this article pretty interesting covering most of the issues raised with her above

(TLDR - It's because she is female)

With Breixt there is the half hope it shakes the parties enough to have the minor ones come in more and at least shift us to PR

From that article:

Also, with the possible exception of one speech given to Deutsche Bank, all of Hillary’s 8 speeches to Wall Street were for a speaking fee of $225,000. That does not even break the top 20 of her highest paid speeches. For example she received over $275,000 each in three speeches she gave to The Vancouver Board of Trade, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, and Canada 2020. So apparently Canadians also “own” her. And I don’t know what those nefarious Canadians are up to, but it probably has something to do with goddamn poutine. Which would really piss me off except I just remembered that I kind of like poutine so never mind.

Quick, they're catching on to us!

[Gavagai]

@ Nicolae Carpathia "Deflation" was common in 19th century and it was compatible with economic growth. Even in recent times some isolated industries (e. g.: computers) had periods of rapid "deflation" wich coincided with rapid growth.

In fact, there are two different processes which are habitually called "deflation" - decrease of prices due to decrease of costs and decrease of prices due to decrease in money supply. It's only the latter one which is bad for economy.

[Commodore]

Ain't none of you guys ever teched Rifling? The good Chairman explains things much more succinctly.

Also, on the original Brexit today: