Peak Oil Panic

[Hogeye]

Bottom line: The State threatens confiscation, imprisonment, and in the final analysis against resisters, death to those who don't pay. By the standard definition, this is not a voluntary thing, even if some people are willing to bend over.

[Dardedar]

and in the final analysis against resisters, death to those who don't pay.

DAR
Once again your comments are so factually incorrect as to be ridiculous. Never mind death, they won't even lock you up. The US doesn't even have a debtors prison. Taxes are filed on the honor system. I, like the vast majority of Americans, have never been audited and never will be.

D.

[Hogeye]

No imprisonment for tax resistance ("evasion")? Tell that to Donald Donovan (first google hit) or descendents of Al Capone? What planet are you on???

The maximum penalty for each of the tax evasion charges is five years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, and the costs of prosecution. The maximum penalty for each charge of willful failure to file is one year imprisonment, a fine of $100,000, and the costs of prosecution.

Darrel, are you claiming that the US jackboots would not pull a Ruby Ridge / Waco massacre over armed tax resistance? If they murder for someone having a shotgun a half inch too short or suspicion of unregistered weapons, they'd murder over a tax bill.

[Doug]

Darrel, are you claiming that the US jackboots would not pull a Ruby Ridge / Waco massacre over armed tax resistance? If they murder for someone having a shotgun a half inch too short or suspicion of unregistered weapons, they'd murder over a tax bill.

DOUG
I've never heard of anyone being killed over a sawed-off shotgun. That certainly isn't what happened at Waco or Ruby Ridge.

Of course, if someone in Hogeye's Ozarkia just decided to disobey Ozarkian law, Hogeye's private security force would do absolutely nothing, right?

[Hogeye]

Randy Weaver was killed for resisting govt over a shotgun a half inch too short at Ruby Ridge.

The story of Ruby Ridge is simple: the government wanted informants in a white-supremacist society near the home of one Randy Weaver. Weaver was a white-separatist who chose to live his philosophy peacefully. He had attended one or two meetings of the supremacist society but decided that he wasn't interested in joining... but the government had other ideas. They wanted him to join, and they wanted him to become their informant.

Weaver wasn't interested. You'd think it would stop there, right? I mean, how low is it to pressure someone to join a white-supremacist society?

But the government decided they really wanted that informant, so they sent out one of their undercover agents with a shotgun to Weaver's place. The agent wanted to get the shotgun sawed off, and Weaver accomodated him. Opinions differ on whether the resulting shotgun was short enough at that time to require a federal tax stamp, or whether the undercover agent sawed off a little more on his own later; either way, the length of the shotgun ended up being about a half-inch too short to be legal.

That's how the government figured to get their informant, you see. They would threaten Weaver with prosecution over the missing half-inch of barrel length sawed from the shotgun of one of their own agents, and they would agree not to prosecute if Weaver became an informant for them. But there was only one problem... Weaver wasn't interested. - Ruby Ridge

But maybe it was only 1/4 inch:

In 1985, the FBI approached Randy Weaver, a former Special Forces soldier in Viet Nam, and asked him to become an informant for the federal government. (The federals have over 12,000 paid informants nationwide, who's job it is to spy upon the American populace.) Weaver refused. He then filed an affidavit with his county recorder saying he feared for his life as a result of the refusal.

In August, of 1992, an eleven—day siege of the Weaver home in North Idaho began. A federal agent charged that Weaver had a shotgun with the barrel 1/4" too short. Weaver said it was a frame up for refusing to pimp for the government. Over 500 Federal personnel (federal marshals, FBI and ATF agents, US Army soldiers, some of whom had just returned from the killing fields in Iraq) surrounded the Weaver home; and above in the sky flew US Air Force planes and personnel. Included in the Federals on the ground were crack snipers, trained at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Their job was to kill Weaver. Weaver had vowed not to surrender to the Federals on the phony charges brought as punishment for refusing them. - The Randy Weaver Story

Of course, if someone in Hogeye's Ozarkia just decided to disobey Ozarkian law, Hogeye's private security force would do absolutely nothing, right?

You still don't grok non-territorial law. In a free society, law would not be territorial (Ozarkian law), but contractual. Only if I join a PDA that regulates length of shotguns would such a law apply on my property. Please google "polycentric law." And/or check out this essay Anarchy and Efficient Law by David Friedman.

[Dardedar]

No imprisonment for tax resistance ("evasion")?

DAR
You will get imprisoned for fraud of course. And that is as it should be. But you claimed the state threatens "death to those who don't pay."

I will continue to point out your false statements (as time allows) and you can continue to run from defending them.

D.

[Doug]

Randy Weaver was killed for resisting govt over a shotgun a half inch too short at Ruby Ridge.

DOUG
So he was killed for...what? Not for the length of his shotgun. He failed to appear in court for weapons charges. They didn't just go kill the guy because of his shotgun. They charged him and tried to take care of it in court. Weaver didn't go. So a warrant was put out for his arrest for failing to appear in court.

The Weaver family refused to cooperate with the government in the legal enforcement of the law, actively resisted, and the government agents overreacted and violated their policies and practices and shot Weaver's wife, among other things. A government-ordered inquiry found that the arresting officers did not abide by the policies of their department. Since it is admitted that they violated policy, you can hardly claim that it is government policy to kill people for the size of their shotgun barrel, since that isn't even remotely what happened at Ruby Ridge.

[Doug]

Of course, if someone in Hogeye's Ozarkia just decided to disobey Ozarkian law, Hogeye's private security force would do absolutely nothing, right?

You still don't grok non-territorial law. In a free society, law would not be territorial (Ozarkian law), but contractual. Only if I join a PDA that regulates length of shotguns would such a law apply on my property.

DOUG
OK, and if someone agrees to the law but then does not abide by it, what do you do then? Tell them the deal is off? Do you really think that is an effective method of law enforcement?

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye still doesn't get that in a democratic republic, by virtue of being a democratic republic, taxes - at least in principle, if not specifically - have been approved by the people who pay them. Continually insisting that a government that operates with input from the people is the same as a government that doesn't is what leads him to make claims that can only be supported by redefining everything (sort of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland-ish) or taking extreme examples as being the standard condition. Of course Somalia, land-locked and desert, will by virtue of its lack of resources never have the kind of standard of living America does. However, Darrel specifically mentioned Russia as having "low taxes and/or incompent collection practices" and high levels of poverty. Russian has seaports, access to at least some good agricultural lands, and lots of petroleum, natural gas, and other high-dollar resources. Switching off to Somolia from a country that by resource-rich, resource-poor arguments should be doing well, but isn't does nothing but twist facts to "burke a thesis".

Taxes are defined as plunder only by Hogeye and those whose ideas he quotes - it is not the generally accepted definition by the general public, who may be exceedingly angry at what taxes are being used for at the moment (I know I am), but voluntarily pays those taxes just as it volutarily obeys other laws created and passed to facilitate the safety and social well-being of large numbers of people living together.

[Hogeye]

Hogeye still doesn't get that in a democratic republic, by virtue of being a democratic republic, taxes - at least in principle, if not specifically - have been approved by the people who pay them.

Wrong. In a democracy, taxes have been approved only by a majority of voters, at best - not by everybody. The critical idea is consent. If someone does not consent to taxation, then the forcible attempt to make them pay is robbery, pure and simple.

You're making the same mistake John Locke did in the latter part of his Second Treatise on Government - redefining "consent" to mean something contradictory to its normal meaning. Some people may not consent for others. Peter and Paul cannot legitimately consent to rob Mary. If Mary does not agree, then it is not consent. Locke himself knew that he was on thin ice. The earlier part of his treatise depended on real individual consent, but when he tried to justify the State he found himself in trouble, and had to invent a rather weak rationalization - the notion of implied consent. His resulting doctrine: that living in the territory of the monopoly State automatically bestows your consent to all the State's decrees and commands.

Barbara, you and John Locke have fallen for the fallacy of composition - confusing the distributive and collective use of a term. All cars use more gas than all busses, therefore a car uses more gas than a bus. In a democracy, people consent in a collective sense when the majority (of often the minority) who vote approve of something, then one might colloquially say "the people consent." But of course that does not imply that every (or any particular) person consents. But it is this latter individual consent that matters morally. Otherwise, Tom and Dick can morally kill Harry if they so vote - democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Continually insisting that a government that operates with input from the people is the same as a government that doesn't...

As you see from the above, this is not the case at all. My claim is not that govt with input from people at large is identical to despotisms. My point is that individual consent is required before taking someones goods - or else it is robbery. It matters not the size or name of the robbery gang.

Saint Augustine, who is not famous for being a libertarian, did however set forth an excellent libertarian parable. He wrote that Alexander the Great had seized some pirate, and asked the pirate what he meant by seizing possession of the sea. And the pirate boldly replied: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber, while you, because you do it with a great fleet are called an emperor." Here Augustine highlights the fact that the state is simply robbery writ large, on an enormous scale, but robbery legitimated by intellectual opinion. - A Future of Peace and Capitalism by Murray N. Rothbard

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

While the specific law or tax may not have been consented to by every individual of voting age and with voting rights, unless you are dealing with a child or person who also does not have rights of mobility, consent to at least abide by laws, including taxes, approved by the majority is implicit in citizenship. That is the problem with the current administration - they were not elected by majority, they are in office by virtue of election fraud (with some complicity of the Supreme Court) , so little, if any, of what they do is actually by consent of the majority - but it is not logistically possible for that many people to leave America (nor for Canada and Mexico to accept them), so most of us are in a "wait it out and do as much damage control as possible" space, until the next election. I don't know how many stolen elections it will take before enough people decide that if ballots don't work, we're back to bullets - hopefully it won't come to that, but I wouldn't bet on it, if we get another stolen presidential (the only one the majority of this country pays any attention to).

[Hogeye]

Consent to at least abide by laws, including taxes, approved by the majority is implicit in citizenship.

I certainly don't consent to abide by all laws or pay tribute. On the contrary, like St. Augustine and Martin Luther King, Jr., I consider it praiseworthy to disobey unjust laws. Does that mean I'm not a citizen? If so, that's cool by me. I never have consented to citizenship, and if I had I would simply opt out, as any free person has a right to do. So long as citizenship is voluntary, and people can opt out, I have no problem with it - it's just membership in a voluntary organization.

... but it is not logistically possible for that many people to leave America (nor for Canada and Mexico to accept them), so most of us are in a "wait it out and do as much damage control as possible" space.

We agree then (contra Locke) that mere physical location does not constitute consent.

... before enough people decide that if ballots don't work, we're back to bullets.

Fortunately there are other options. Before people take up arms, they have to reject the legitimacy of the government. But once people reject that legitimacy, they have the option of setting up other governments. Secession is less likely to require bullets, and if push comes to shove requires fewer bullets, than revolution. You don't need to take over the massive coercion machine of the Evil Empire. All you have to do is opt out. Ignoring a State is easier than defeating it.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

You opt out of citizenship by leaving and applying for citizenship somewhere else, but under certain circumstances (your country being taken over by fascists, for example) the logistics of such a move are limited - that is the only situation in which "mere physical location" (in an adult) does not constitute consent. It's hard to believe that any citizen of a southern state, by whatever name he calls it, could believe that secession does not lead to bullets - much less anyone who's supposedly paid attention to the "Balkanization" of either eastern Europe or Iraq. You can "opt out" all you want to, if that means not voting, but you can't opt out of most taxes or any laws. A judge is not going to accept as a valid defense that you don't have to obey the laws because you've "opted out" of American citizenship.

[Dardedar]

DAR
I'm sure Somalia would take him. What's an anarchist doing living in a statist hell-hole, theorizing and fantasizing about the joys of anarchy when there is a wonderful real-life anarchy available?

D.