Comments Elsewhere

Kevin: I think the net effect in this case, as in many hypothetical scenarios of dismantling the state in the wrong order, would be–as counterintuitive as it may seem–to increase the net level of exploitation carried out with the help of the state.

Well, I’m not sure that that’s especially counterintuitive. I’m perfectly willing to grant that there are plenty of cases where it’s true. What I’m trying to stress is that, as far as I can tell, we don’t disagree very much about the net consequences of different sequences of repeal. I agree that in the hypothetical case I gave, there might very well be a net increase in the predominance of class exploitation in the markets for labor, land, etc.

But, while I agree with you on that, I also think you have to keep in mind that when you make political choices you’re not just making choices about which God’s-eye-view net outcome you would prefer. You’re acting within the world, as one mortal creature among many fellow creatures, and when you deliberate about what to do you have to deliberate about what sort of person you, personally, are going to be, and what you, personally, are or aren’t willing to do to another human being. I know that I, personally, couldn’t live with deliberately choosing to shove around or rob another human being, or letting another human being go on being shoved around or robbed, for even a second longer, if all I needed to do to stop the latter would be to push a button, no matter how much I might prefer the results that I might be able to get from it. Because I’m not a thief or a bully, and I don’t want to let myself become an accomplice of thieves or bullies, either, even if it would otherwise improve my quality of life. Hence why I’d push the button, immediately and without reservation, even though I do in fact think that the net consequences of doing so would be substantially worse, in terms of things that I care about and which affect me personally, than the net consequences of repeal in the opposite order.

So I’m anti-gradualism not because I’m anti-dialectics, but rather because I think that there are personal obligations of justice involved in the political choices you make, and that dialectically-grounded praxis has to integrate those personal obligations into your course of action just as much as it has to integrate the general, big-picture view of class dynamics, socio-political structure, et cetera. In fact, if a process of deliberation abstracts away from the ground-level personal obligations of justice, fair treatment, etc. that we all have to each other, and only reckons what to do based on some very high-level structural-functional considerations about society as a whole and global-level net consequences, then I’d say that process of deliberation has become dangerously one-sided and acontextual. A praxis that doesn’t take into account what I could or couldn’t live with as a conscientious human being is an anti-dialectical and indeed an inhuman praxis.

But I fear that I’m beginning to throw a lot of jargon at the problem. Does that clarify or muddify?

Kevin: I’d probably even quibble as to whether it amounted to a reduction in statism even as such, since a high marginal tax rate on Bill Gates arguably amounts to the state ameliorating or moderating its primary act of statism in guaranteeing the income to Gates in the first place through IP.

Sure; this is a legitimate concern, to the degree that the exploitation in question is based not only on profiteering from the ripple effects of other, directly coercive acts, but where the exploitation is itself directly coercive (as is the case in government-enforced monopolies and captive markets). I would agree that there is some non-zero proportion of Bill Gates’s annual income, for example, which he actually has no legitimate property right to at all, and so no moral right to complain about taxation, any more than a slave-ship captain has a moral right to complain about a pirate making off with “his” gold, rum, and slaves. In such cases, my basic attitude is Tucker’s good old “No pity, no praise.”

But there are a couple problems in trying to translate this into any conclusion about income tax policy. Income tax policy has no way of distinguishing the legitimate portion of Bill Gates’s income (which I presume is also non-zero) from the extorted portion of it. In fact, in most cases, I think it would be impossible even in principle to calculate what the right proportions would be; in the absence of an actual free market process, there’s just no way to know how much of an intellectual monopolist’s income is legitimate and how much of it is an extorted monopoly rent.

And, beyond that, the tax also imposed alike on everyone in that income tax bracket, whether or not their income derives from direct violations of individual rights in the way that copyright and patent monopolists’ income does. Many if not most of the top 10% derive a lot of their income from direct coercion, but many of them do not (rather, they get fatter-than-free-market profits by profiteering of the ripple effects of other people’s coercion; but, while that’s also ethically objectionable, it’s a very different case from the standpoint of whether those profits can justly be expropriated). And if there’s even one single person who is robbed of even one cent of legitimately earned wealth by the general tax policy — and I think it’s next to impossible that nobody would be unjustly victimized by the tax — then, again, I think that’s reason enough to push the button. I couldn’t leave that one guy to go on getting robbed, even though all the rest of the people affected by the tax be a gang of pirates, swindlers, and extortionists. There are cases where expropriating the expropriators is legitimate and just; but government taxation is far too blunt a weapon to ever achieve it without inflicting a lot of collateral damage on innocent people.

Angelica,

So, just so we’re clear:

You’re fully aware of the rat problem at El Toro. You could just not eat there, but you choose to eat there anyway because you think the food’s good enough that it outweighs whatever risks you think the rat problem may pose to you.

You also could tell customers about the rat problem that you happen to know about, if you wanted to. You choose not to tell them because, for whatever reason, you don’t think it would be worth it to provide that information, even though you apparently think your customers would care about it.

In short, while you no doubt harbor some idle dislike for the situation, you manifestly don’t think it’s enough of a problem for you to stop eating there, nor enough of a problem for you to stick your neck out by giving customers the straight dope, or, as far as I can tell, to really inconvenience yourself in any way at all over this issue, either for your own sake or for others’.

On the other hand, even though you’re not willing to do anything personally about this putative problem through nonviolent means and on your own dime, you are willing to endorse a third party barging in to force the restaurateur to do what you want him to do (or else), because that course of action allows you to get your own way while forcing other people to bear the costs of your own hygienic preferences.

Have I got your position right, or is there something that I’m missing? If so, what?

If not, then I don’t understand how this is intended as an argument for the legitimacy or the desirability of State hygienic intervention. Rather, it sounds a lot like you started off presuming what you claimed to be proving.

Man, a “anarchists can’t get organized” joke. Ho ho ho. Never heard one of those before.

“ANARCHISM … the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.” – P.A. Kropotkin

I don’t mean to be an old stick in the mud, but really, this old chestnut involves such a complete misunderstanding of what the overwhelming majority of anarchists in the history of the world (who have tended to assign a lot of importance to freely constituted, participatory assocations) have thought, that it really just fails as humor.

Viwy,

The Phelpses have been down to Alabama before; they showed up to picket on behalf of Roy Moore (who promptly issued a press release repudiating any association with them), and one of the Phelps brothers sent a long letter to the Plainsman ranting about the feature story they’d run a couple weeks before on the Auburn Gay and Lesbian Association. Based on my past experience with them, I’m pretty sure I know what they’re thinking: that using this poor girl’s death as an occasion to court public hatred will get them and their websites mentioned in the news again. And they’re right; it will.

You know the saying “No publicity is bad publicity?” Well, the Phelpses actually believe it. If there were something even lower than the lowest of the low, they’d rush to be it, as long as it got their names in the paper.

Auburnrules2008,

I surely hope that nobody does anything so stupid as that. The last thing that we need is for a group as despicable as the Phelpses to be dignified as free speech martyrs.

When the Phelpses have picketed funerals of soldiers, AIDS patients, gay-bashing victims, etc., what people have done about it is to gather up a group of supporters to form a disciplined, nonviolent circle around the funeral site in order to protect the mourners from having to see or hear the Phelpses’ vile antics. The Phelpses thrive on courting hatred and provoking reaction; the best way to deal with them is to shield the grieving family and friends, and let the Phelpses do their disgusting little rant-and-rave at nobody in particular.

Kevin,

I’m not actually sure that we disagree about that. Or, if we do disagree, then what we disagree about may be a bit different from what it might initially seem that we disagree about.

I actually agree with you that a dialectical understanding of the role of particular government programs in the statist social order is important. And I also agree with you that some sequences of repeal would lead to better overall results than other sequences of repeal, and I suspect that we largely agree with each other about what sequences would be preferable; for example, because of my understanding of the class dynamics of statist power, I think that abolishing the Wagner-Taft-Hartley first and then the antitrust laws later would have better overall results than abolishing the antitrust laws first and then the Wager-Taft-Hartley system later, in that the one first opens up space and time for de-regimenting organized labor and opening up space for workers to organize against exploitation by bosses, while the other opens up space and time for bosses to further consolidate and fortify their command-posts in the labor market.

Similarly, suppose you had a Sedition law, and a Hate Speech law, the first of which which banned anarchist speeches, and the second of which banned fascist speeches. Ideally, the best thing to happen would be for both laws to be struck down immediately and completely in favor of complete free speech. But if the political debate was such that it’s more or less unavoidable that one will be struck down before the other, then I suppose that the sequence of decriminalizing anarchist speeches, then decriminalizing fascist speeches would have better overall results than the sequence of decriminalizing fascist speeches, then decriminalizing anarchist speeches.

However, I don’t think that accepting either that method of social theory or those conclusions about likely results settles the question as to whether you should be a gradualist or an immediatist. I’m an immediatist, not because I deny that there’s ever an importance difference in the likely results of repealing A-before-B as versus repealing B-before-A, but rather because I think that there are things that nobody ever has the moral right to do to another human being, no matter what results you can get from it, and one of those things is coercing her in her use of her own person and property. If both A and B are genuinely coercive, then I’d argue that there’s never any justification or excuse for continuing to do either of them. Even if it would be better for A to go first and then B, rather than B to go first and then A, if the opportunity to repeal B arises before the opportunity to repeal A does, then I’d say that it’s morally obligatory to repeal B anyway, because neither you nor I nor anybody else has the right to go on coercing anybody for even a second longer, whatever our considered judgment about the likely results of their freedom may be.

Of course, if there isn’t any opportunity to repeal either A or B at the moment, then the question is what sort of strategy you ought to adopt in the effort to make the opportunity arise. And in that case, it’s perfectly reasonable for your considered judgment about likely results to determine your strategic priorities, in terms of which forms of coercion you will first and most intensely focus on making repeal-able, given your limited time and resources. And I think that we largely agree about

So I reckon that the question is this: suppose you had a rather limited version of Rothbard’s Magic Button, which would allow you to magically repeal (say) personal income tax on the top 10% of taxpayers, while leaving all other personal income tax and FICA payroll tax in place. And let’s take it for granted that we all dialectically understand the role of the State, and its different functions, within the social order of power and its relationship with the dynamics of class exploitation. Still. There’s the button. Would you push it, or would you refuse to push it, on the grounds that you need to cut taxes either from the bottom-up or else not at all?

Personally, I would push it. I would prefer the bottom-up-first sequence, if it were available (after all, that’d benefit me more personally, let alone the rest of the working class), but I don’t believe that I have the right to let other people go on being robbed, if I could stop it with nothing more than a button-push, just so that I can, or some other people that I care about can, enjoy a higher quality of life.

What about you?

A young woman is shot to death and her car is gutted and set on fire in a campus parking lot. This is not considered reason enough to conclude there’s enough of an “immediate threat” to the campus community to active AU Alert.

Students find out the next day and start to talk about what happened amongst themselves. These rumors, which may affect the University’s P.R. with parents and alumni, are considered reason enough to conclude that there’s an immediate threat to the campus community to activate AU Alert.

And that right there tells you all that you need to know about the Auburn University senior administration’s attitude towards campus safety and violence against women in the Auburn “campus community.”

-AU graduate, class of ’03

He does apparently refuse to pay his income taxes and my hat is off to him. I don’t know how he’s pulled it off for so long without getting caught. Karl Hess had to become a hermit or something.

Well, what happened is that Hess was classified as a tax resister in the course of an already-existing audit in the mid-1960s. He had been targeted for a retaliatory audit by Lyndon Johnson for his time as a Goldwater speechwriter, and ended up getting pissed off enough with the process that he sent the IRS a “fuck you” letter along with a copy of the Declaration of Independence. At that point they reclassified his case as a “tax protest” case (not surprising, since they were already ill-disposed to him and he declared in the letter that he’d never pay taxes again), then seized nearly all his property and imposed a 100% lien against future earnings.

The back-to-the-land and community technology stuff was mostly a matter of ideological preference and personal taste, which he started getting into later on, during the early 1970s. The most that harassment and persecution from the IRS contributed directly to that lifestyle was that he learned a craft (welding) and used barter to avoid generating taxable income. He said that the experience of learning a craft is part of what led him to think about community technology, and using barter to make a living probably made him more sympathetically inclined towards survivalist ideas and non-monetary forms of exchange than he otherwise might have been.

I don’t see how the rest of you are that different from me in your actions though, but maybe there’s something you’re doing (or not doing) I’m unaware of.

I could be mistaken, but my impression is that most of the bloggers here don’t disagree very much with Billy Beck about the attitude that you should take on matters of principle. What they disagree with him on is the specific content of the principles that he sticks on, especially the notion that individualists should feel obliged to confront the State over tax resistance.

Micha,

Oh come on.

Isn’t it obvious?

Kevin,

Thanks for the reply. Here’s mine, on the minimum wage: GT 2008-03-06: On crutches and crowbars.

On dual strategies and the medallion cartel, I agree with you that there are some potential payoffs for the legal reform approach, including some payoffs that might accrue to making the counter-economic approach easier to pursue. But it does seem to me that there are already a lot of smaller-government reform types (IJ, etc.) who are already working that angle. As I see it, it’s usually better for anarchists to specialize in what we really want, and the most direct routes to it, particularly when (as I think is the case here) there’s lots of self-consciously libertarian effort already being put into the less radical solution, while relatively little self-consciously libertarian effort is going into the more radical solution, even though the more radical solution seems to be producing more in the way of concrete results. I figure that it may be a good idea not only to mention, but really to emphasize the ultra-radical position, which doesn’t have a lot of advocates right now, and let the reformists, which there are already more than enough of, do their thing in our wake.

Sabotta: All the serious traitors … up here in Seattle ….

“Traitors” to what?

If you mean that the people you have in mind are “serious traitors” to the United States, or some other political fabrication, who cares? <a href=”http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-0.htm’>I hear that some dude wrote an essay demonstrating that so-called treason against non-consensual governments is no crime, indeed not even a vice.

If you mean that they are “serious traitors” to liberty, or anarchy, or something like that, then I wonder how many of the people you have in mind really ever professed loyalty to liberty, or anarchy, in any way that matters. To betray you first have to be a friend. Most people in the world, and the worst exponents of statism in particular, never were friends of liberty, or anarchy, or anything of the sort, and never really claimed to be; to that extent they are not traitors, but open enemies.