Comments Elsewhere

Heinrich, again:

Yes, we could expel all of the human trash — bums, welfare-recipients, criminals, communists, and fascists (e.g., KKK-nutjobs) — and that would be good.

No, you can’t. Even if someone bought into your argument that roads, parks, etc. are collectively owned by tax-payers, your conclusion does not follow. Whether or not you can rightfully restrict their use of “public” property according to some weighted voting scheme, they don’t live on “public property.” They live on their own land or land that they have contracted to rent. You have no grounds on which to expel them; you can at most return them to their own homes if they step onto your alleged “public” property.

You haven’t said, incidentally, whether or not I can create my private helicopter shuttle service in Hoppe’s United States.

The people expelled would be net tax-consumers (in no case would it be appropriate to deport a net tax-payer), and this would increase.

(1) You’re bluffing here. Do you have any empirical evidence whatsoever that bums, welfare-recipients, communists, fascists, and KKK-nutjobs are as classes net tax-consumers in the Rothbardian sense?

(You might think that welfare-recipients are the easy case. Not so: most welfare recipients do receive more money from the government than they pay in formal taxes, but so what? Welfare recipients are disproportionately more likely to face systematic rights-violations at the hands of drug cops, hanging judges, wardens, petty bureaucrats, and the rest of the State apparatus of control. It’s not at all clear that if you consider all the illegitimate harms that the very poor typically suffer at the hands of the state, the pittance they receive from the government overcomes the losses inflicted.)

(2) Let’s say for the moment that you had succeeded in listing off classes of net tax-recipients here. Would that make any moral case for physically expelling them from the community? If so, why

It’s important to remember that receiving tax funds is not a crime under natural law; it’s taking the tax monies from their owners that is. Of course, people who are benefitting from expropriation and have some control over whether the money is taken and transferred have a moral obligation to exercise that control in such a way as to cut against the taking of tax funds. But it’s not clear that all or even most net tax-recipients do have any meaningful control over whether or not the money is taken. So it’s unclear that any particular blame falls on their shoulders.

As for those who are in positions such that blame falls on their shoulders: do you earnestly think that physical expulsion is a proportional response to the crime? Do you normally advocate exile and confiscation of property for thieves?

Hoppe suggests that the best thing to do is try to approximate how net tax-payers would act if they actually controlled “public property”.

Too bad for Hoppe, since socialist calculation is impossible.

I suggest a way to perhaps better do this, by a weighted vote.

Socialist calculation is still impossible. Changing the scheme from central planning to One Big Corporate Cartel doesn’t help.