Francisco Ferrer

From the link: "Nozick is increasingly being replaced as libertarianism’s canonical theorist by F. A. Hayek . . . Hayek replaced Nozick as the standard theoretician of the libertarian right." What? Not to disparage Nozick's contribution, but having followed the libertarian movement for nearly a half century, I am simply not aware of any significant number of libertarians who came to the philosophy by way of Nozick or who rely primarily on his work. Furthermore, the author fails to note that Nozick retreated from laissez-faire purity in his later writings. How can you have as a "canonical theorist" a writer who rejected many of libertarianism's core principles?

I am not accepting the violation of rights as an unfortunate reality. I am accepting the existence of the power that the government has to violate rights as an unfortunate reality. There is no reason to accept either property rights violation or the legal power to violate property rights as a necessary fact of man's existence. In the 1850's slavery was an institution firmly established in American law and custom. A decade later it was was gone. It disappeared in large part as a result of people who refused to accept it as an "unfortunate reality." And who would enforce that rule? Those who pool their resources to reduce or eliminate the initiation of force within a community. But if this group has sufficient military might to defeat anybody who might try to initiate force, then who could stop them should they decide to loot the community? The community itself. Mutual defense based on the premise that the initiation of force is evil would require a widespread respect for and cherishing of property rights. This would, of course, necessitate much prior educational-intellectual groundwork. (Ayn Rand repeatedly reminded us that the philosophical battle must precede the political battle.) But ultimately we might end up with something quite similar to what the Founding Fathers had in mind, not a standing army, but a well-armed citizenry. I see only two choices under your proposal: 1. You pay the tax under threat of heavy fines and prison term, in which case you are being forced to surrender what is rightfully yours to essentially an armed gunman. 2. You pay a bribe to a fellow citizen in exchange for his promise not to increase the loot collected by the state, in which case you are still being forced to surrender what is rightfully yours to someone else, even though a third party is holding the gun for him. Both are acts of coercion. Neither is a defense of rights. If there is a third alternative you've offered, I don't see it. Since all of this depends on the uphill battle of removing the secret ballot from U.S. elections, I would much rather work on the uphill battle of reducing taxation by first putting low spenders in office and later by making all government financing voluntary. Great! Then there is a third choice. Contrary to your statement that "If there were no negative consequences to the producer for not paying the bribe, then his promise to pay would not be credible," Citizen A would be allowed to refuse to pay the bribe and Citizen B would not collude with the state to raise taxes. This is wrong. The third choice is that the producer offers to pay half of the parasites more money than they can extract from him in taxes, excluding the parasite who proposed the tax bill, in exchange for their vote against the bill. Since every parasite would like to gain as much as possible, none of them wants to be the one to propose the tax bill, and so the tax bill is never proposed, and the producer never has to pay a single penny to anybody. You know, like I argued in the OP. An argument that you keep ignoring for some reason, and simply assert the opposite conclusion without ever justifying it. This plan would work perfectly in any society where there are no altruists. However, in a diverse population it is not hard to imagine that there would be at least one self-sacrificing do-gooder who would propose the bill in order that his comrades gain a higher portion of the total amount of private wealth in the land, either through the payoff or the threat that backs up the bribe request. Or, they could say "public opinion, individual rights, and free markets be damned" and lobby congress to regulate the competition out of existence, or get them to declare extremely unpopular wars to protect foreign investments. When that happens the corporation is no longer acting as a player in the free market but as a partner with and a part of the state. By comparison consider this exchange: X: Aren't you worried about the power that churches have? Y: What power? X: Well, churches could always take over the Congress and have a law passed to round up all the non-believers and make them convert or else be burned at the stake. Y: I see what you mean. Churches are a real threat to freedom.

The OP does not advocate for the state power to tax, it merely accepts that power as an unfortunate reality. That's a very important distinction that I've had to make repeatedly, but you keep ignoring it for some reason. In the original post you wrote, "I propose that direct democracy is (theoretically, at least) the best possible defender of individual rights." Yet you cannot defend rights while accepting the violation of rights "as an unfortunate reality," any more than you can defend self-ownership while accepting slavery "as an unfortunate reality." Your so-called "defense" amounts to a confession of helplessness. And who would enforce that rule? Those who pool their resources to reduce or eliminate the initiation of force within a community. Suppose that we had a direct democracy, and a "significant" part (the majority) of the population recognized the importance of honoring individual rights and determined that they should be upheld consistently. Would that be acceptable to you? I cannot answer this question because so far you have resisted my attempt to determine exactly how your "direct democracy" would differ from the form of representative government currently in place in the United States. In Post #89, I wrote, "By the way, in a direct democracy would we get rid of the President, Congress and the Supreme Court? If not, what's so 'direct' about it? If so, wouldn't we have to go the the polls practically every week to approve ambassadors and judges, vote on pay raises, listen to hearings on Benghazi, and get morning briefings from the CIA about the Russians in the Crimea? Your answer was to reveal the "secret plot" of the thread. If there were no negative consequences to the producer for not paying the bribe, then his promise to pay would not be credible. If his promise to pay the bribe is not credible, then the parasites wouldn't offer their votes for sale, and settle on a tax instead. In that case you are not offering a defense of individual rights, but a plan by which unscrupulous opportunists would use the threat of increased taxation to loot wealthier citizens. Be it the status quo or your alleged "rights defense" plan, the productive citizen must still give up a portion of his wealth under threat of a government gun. I see only two choices under your proposal: 1. You pay the tax under threat of heavy fines and prison term, in which case you are being forced to surrender what is rightfully yours to essentially an armed gunman. 2. You pay a bribe to a fellow citizen in exchange for his promise not to increase the loot collected by the state, in which case you are still being forced to surrender what is rightfully yours to someone else, even though a third party is holding the gun for him. Both are acts of coercion. Neither is a defense of rights. If there is a third alternative you've offered, I don't see it. Since all of this depends on the uphill battle of removing the secret ballot from U.S. elections, I would much rather work on the uphill battle of reducing taxation by first putting low spenders in office and later by making all government financing voluntary. Great! Then there is a third choice. Contrary to your statement that "If there were no negative consequences to the producer for not paying the bribe, then his promise to pay would not be credible," Citizen A would be allowed to refuse to pay the bribe and Citizen B would not collude with the state to raise taxes. Couldn't you then also say that Corporate power can also grow without regard to public opinion, possibly to a very dangerous extent?Yes, for example, an automobile company could say "public opinion be damned" and manufacture millions of cars that consumers hate and refuse to buy. Any company could keep doing this year after year as long as it cared nothing about profits and had an unlimited bank account to draw on.

I'm quite certain that how much the state taxes plays a central role in the OP. The original post does not call for a removing the state's threat of force but for using that threat to obtain bribes from wealthier taxpayers. This does not constitute a defense of rights, but a plan for using the state's coercive arm to perform income redistribution. That's all well and fine, but it's beside the point. Which is that this simply assumes that a situation whereby taxation is voluntary and the state doesn't have the power to tax is possible, whereas it is what has to be proved. The state does not create the wealth it appropriates in order to perform certain civil functions. That wealth exists independently of the state and thus would be available to finance the same functions provided that the owners of that wealth voluntarily spent it for that purpose. Therefore, it is only a question of the willingness of citizens to provide for their own defense, of which there is little doubt, given that the overwhelming majority of Americans are not philosophical pacifists. Once again, you still have not shown how that can be done, or that it even can be done. One way is to enforce laws against extortion equally and universally. If the Mafia can be prosecuted for threatening a business owner with ruin unless he pays a "protection" fee, then the same rule should be applied to members of a certain government agency who regularly engage in a similar practice. That is the "how." What about the "can"? That would occur once a significant part of the population recognized the importance of honoring individual rights and determined that they should be upheld consistently. That change will not happen tomorrow. But then chattel slavery and the legal inequality of women did not end in a day either. Thomas Jefferson said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Eternal vigilance is a cost. That you have to expend time and other resources to defend your freedom is simply an obvious fact of life. Nonetheless, your analogy is misleading because, to repeat myself yet again, the argument in the OP demonstrates that the producer never has to actually pay the bribe. Additionally, the government itself never makes the threat of higher taxes, only voters do, which is completely different, unless you consider simply holding the opinion that some people should pay taxes involuntarily a violation of property rights. What would Jefferson say about the American colonials bribing Parliament not to tax them or not to quarter soldiers in their homes or not to shut down anti-Crown newspapers? It is clear that the author of the Declaration (who as President refused to pay tributes demanded by the Barbary pirates) preferred a readiness to an armed defense of rights to a system of permanent bribes. Now if your proposal is to have a bribe that nobody "has to actually pay," I'm all in favor of it if you mean that there would be no negative consequences to the citizen for not paying the bribe, that there would be no higher taxes--or for that matter no taxes at all. On the other hand, if you mean that the citizen can just ignore the demand for the bribe and "see what happens," then that "voluntary" bribe is no different than the "contributions" the Mafia solicits from its "donors." But you did say in your earlier post that state power can grow without regard to public opinion, which contradicts what you're saying now. State power can grow without regard to public opinion--but only up to a point. Revolutions are bloody things, and as Old Tom said, Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It's not a matter of choice. That the state can tax is simply a fact. There is no way, as far as I know, to take that power away. So if we want the state to not tax people, we have to plan around the inconvenient truths. Wishing them away won't work. To begin with, how much the state taxes the population is a matter of choice, and your original post, which was supposed to address defending rights, says nothing to acknowledge that fact. More to the point, there is no reason to suppose that individuals who consider defense, police, and a court system necessary wouldn't act of their own free will to finance those services. Of the military draft, Ayn Rand wrote, "It is often asked: 'But what if a country cannot find a sufficient number of volunteers?' Even so, this would not give the rest of the population a right to the lives of the country’s young men . . . Without the power to draft, the makers of our foreign policy would not be able to embark on adventures [such as Korea or Vietnam]. This is one of the best practical reasons for the abolition of the draft." The same arguments apply to the voluntary financing of government. This is a forum about Objectivist ideas, and in that context you ought to look up Rand's views on non-coercive funding of government, which can be found in her essay, "Government Financing in a Free Society." Unless of course it leads to a sustainable situation in which the productive are never taxed, as I've argued that it does in the OP. The surest way to eliminate extortion is to deprive the extorter of whatever weapon he is holding at his victim's head. In this case it is the state's power to seize private property. Once again, it does change the injustice of taxation by eliminating it. If you think that the government simply having the power to tax an redistribute wealth is an injustice in and of itself, then tough luck. That's never going away.No, your idea to have welfare recipients offer their votes for sale rests on the threat of force (higher taxes), which is just as much a violation of property rights as actual force. By comparison, a woman who pays a man not to rape her cannot be said to have escaped trespass on her property rights. If this is the case, then why isn't it a communist dictatorship yet? In large part because state propaganda machines have not completely overcome the American public's traditional distrust of centralization and authoritarianism. But be patient, the current regime is making great strides.

We shouldn't because they won't. In fact, I think that the defense of individual liberties and laisezze-faire capitalism is a utopian pipe dream for reasons I've provided in some of my previous threads. The secret plot of this thread is kind of to get people to think critically about government institutions in a precise way and to break out of ingrained ways of thinking, so that they might come up with new and interesting ideas that I can then learn from. The problem when you do that, is that you create a powerful organization that has the capability to violate rights on an even larger scale than any of the "vermin". Read the OP. Nothing wrong with thinking critically and creatively provided that the thinking is also done logically. The problem is that the original post proposed a defense of individual rights while leaving in place one of the key violations of rights, the state's power to tax. Creating a marketplace for bribery, in which welfare recipients would collect tribute from productive taxpayers in exchange for not voting in higher taxes, does not advance freedom or the defense of rights or the rollback of the mega-state one inch. Employing the state's power to rob as a threat to leverage "private" welfare from productive citizens is simply another form of coercion. Nothing about the proposal changes the central injustice of using the government's monopoly on force to perform wealth redistribution. If, as you say, you're concerned about powerful organizations, then you'd do well to consider that, unlike corporations that must daily cater to consumer preferences, the state with its armed revenue collection power is able to expand and thrive without regard to the vagaries of public opinion.

That's easier said than done. The state and anybody who has an interest in maintaining the status quo, including most of the biggest corporations, (essentially, the most powerful people and organizations in the country) aren't just gonna sit back and let that happen. Actually, my argument in the OP suggests that direct democracy would not violate individual rights. And why should we suppose that "anybody who has an interest in maintaining the status quo" with its attendant and systematic violation of individual rights is just going to sit back and let your proposed rights-protecting direct democracy happen? By the way, in a direct democracy would we get rid of the President, Congress and the Supreme Court? If not, what's so "direct" about it? If so, wouldn't we have to go the the polls practically every week to approve ambassadors and judges, vote on pay raises, listen to hearings on Benghazi, and get morning briefings from the CIA about the Russians in the Crimea? The government's very power to tax isn't going to go away any time soon, or ever, pretty much. Unless you can give me a reason to believe that politicians would be willing to part with this power, I find the whole idea highly implausible. And I find it implausible that an institution that engages in massive and daily aggression should be regarded with any seriousness as a "defender of individual rights." And while we're on the subject of politicians parting with their powers, how to we convince them to do away with representation in favor of your direct democracy? A realistic kind. Anything else is just wishful thinking. So paying robbers and rapists and thieves not to ply their trade is more realistic than banding together to eliminate those vermin from society? In any case, I don't see how paying voters B and C not to vote in socialism provides security. This year, B and C want $5,000 each. Next year, no less than $7,000. The following year . . . ? In this very "practical and realistic" way we can attain the kind of income equality the Marxists only dreamed about.

And, of course, that is precisely what happened in the recent case of the bank bailouts. If our goal is to protect individual rights, then the first step should be to de-fang and de-claw the institution that is the single greatest violator of personal and property rights, the state. Whether the ruling elite is self-elected or put in power by 51% or more of all eligible adults, nothing changes if the state's ability to rob, kidnap and murder goes unchecked. It is the government's very power to tax (i.e. steal) that would make it necessary for your Citizen A to buy off potential voters for higher taxes. And what kind of "defense" is that anyway? What kind of "freedom" or "security" would a citizen enjoy if he had to pay thugs in advance for the non-rape of his wife, the non-kidnapping of his son or the non-stealing of his bank account? Yet this is the same principle at work in your suggestion that "A goes to C and says, 'C, if you vote against this bill, I will give you $57,234.'"

The question of whether one is entitled to a vote depends entirely on the context of what one is voting for. If A and B have equal and legitimate ownership of a barbershop, it is appropriate to give each an equal voice in how the shop is run, what prices to charge, what improvements to make, etc. However, voting rights do not pertain to decisions regarding property one has no rightful claim to. If A and B do not like the color of a house owned by C, a vote among the three would have no relevance in determining whether the color should be changed. That decision is C's alone to make. Similarly. as long as U.S. citizens are voting on how many stripes to put on the flag or what the National Anthem should be, one-man-one-vote is as good as any other system (though not inherently better). But not even the most perfect form of universal suffrage can legitimize a vote on the question of what all children must be required to learn in school, or which drugs one may not put into his body, or what percentage of personal income is owed to officials in Washington. This is perhaps what DeanGores had in mind when he wrote, "Voting is effectively using force. Allowing members of society to use force anonymously is foolish... because it too easily allows for oppression of the majority."

Whoa whoa whoa whoa... When did I say that defending property justifies the initiation of force? If you read the OP without bias, then you can clearly see that I'm saying that direct democracy (and I said nothing at all about the initiation of force) is best able to defend individual rights even when the government has the power to violate them, and even when the majority has an interest in doing so. I see. In your described system, all political power would rest in the hands of the people--except the power to tax.

It's not about what you want. It's about doing what is necessary to defend individual rights. Confiscation of person's possessions by a public official is morally no different than theft by a private gunman. That the motive of the public official is for the commonweal, the greater good (that is he acting to "protect property") does not change the nature of his action; it is still the initiation of force to compel the taxpayer to spend the money in a way he would not otherwise have done in the absence of force. Furthermore, if the importance of defending property justifies the initiation of force, then why wouldn't other worthy goals such as education, healthcare, aid to the indigent, public housing, wilderness preservation, trips to Mars, and public television also justify pointing a gun at a man's head? Eating is no less important than security, so why shouldn't we use the armed power of the state to make the public contribute to food banks? The proposition that stealing is necessary to prevent stealing (or that violating rights is a defense of rights) is self-contradictory and thus false.

The statement above is nonsensical. It states that "Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years" and that "There are no Palestinians." Does the author believe then that the area was uninhabited? The following paragraph is from The Handbook of Palestine published in 1922 by the Royal Asiatic Society. It is available online through Wikisource: Palestine, the land which has given to the world Judaism and Christianity and has played an important part in the early development of Islam, is now inhabited by representatives of many races. The largest element of the population is composed of Arabs and Syrians, both separately and in every degree of combination. The language of this element is Arabic ; its religions are Islam and Christianity. Next in numerical strength are the Jews, whose languages will be referred to below. Immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has contributed the bulk of the present Jewish population of Palestine ; the sole representatives of ancient Israel continuously inhabiting the country are to be found in the small remnant of the Samaritans {cf. infra). Other races are only represented on a small scale, and will be referred to below under their religious classifications. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex, with legitimate grievances on both sides. Nothing is accomplished by ignoring or rewriting the historical record.

Holzer believes in a strict construction of the Constitution whenever it is convenient to do so.

I'm totally different from you in my approach to life, Fred. I don't just passivly read about business. I'm actively in business... and all of my taxes get passed on to the clients just like every other cost of doing business. I'm productive enough to make a decent profit after all expenses are paid. You know... the more you post, the more you're making it clear that you don't have the slightest idea of what it means to make money. If every capitalist could simply pass his taxes forward, then this would be the answer to the question of how to solve the government's crisis of debt. The government could calculate what it would cost to pay off the debt in five years and then raise corporate income taxes accordingly. An automobile that cost $50,000 might now cost $100,000 or $200,000 or $500,000. Too high? Not a problem. Everybody else will be passing on the costs of his higher taxes to someone else who will pass it on to someone else ad infinitum and thus everything will work out just fine. Right? The supply of wealth available to the government would be limitless. I run highly productive and efficient businesses so what you can only complain about doesn't even matter to me, because all of my taxes get passed on to the end users. And if you chose to break free from your own self imposed slavery and also became an American Capitalist producer, you could do exactly the same... ...but it's already obvious from the nature of your comments that you choose to remain a victim, because inherent in all of your complaining and blaming is the intellectual justification for your slavery to the government. If tax slavery is truly self-imposed why is it necessary to send armed federal marshals to apprehend non-payers? Perhaps you're confusing taxation with the community chest. Your moral responsibility is to withhold your sanction to become the victim of the government. So it's your own fault for making yourself fair game to the government you deserve. My moral responsibility is to build a movement of freedom-loving men and women who will put hard limits on the government and prevent it from engaging in the same activities that it prohibits others from doing. Since you have not told us how to remove 100% of taxes, we still need to address ending the practice of legalized theft in this country. You can only fault yourself for failing to become an American Capitalist producer. You chose the path your walking on. So those rocks you're complaining about are on the path that you chose. Actions have consequences. And unless you connect what happens to you to what you are doing to make it happen, you'll remain a slave just as you are right now... and there is no one who can save you from yourself. You speak sympathetically of capitalism, but also of slavery. You have written previously: "I believe that in America today, slavery is deserved in all cases." Understand that capitalism and slavery are completely incompatible. One requires free labor, the other forced labor. One is based on persuasion, the other on violence. To the extent that you support capitalism, you oppose slavery. To the extent that you support slavery, you oppose capitalism. Your image is of an unproductive slave who deserves the government you are getting right now. If my image is of someone who is unproductive, why do I fill out an amount greater than zero for "tips wages, and earnings" on my 1040 form? And if some people deserve slavery, why should slavery be outlawed by the government? Perhaps you think America was better off when it was common in the American South for one man to own another? Didn't those slaves "deserve" what they got? Perhaps you favor the repeal of the 13th Amendment so that more people can get what they "deserve." You stole liberty from yourself by how you are living right now, and you don't have liberty because you don't deserve it. If people who have had money taken from them by force deserve the loss of that money, then surely you favor the release or robbers and burglars and fraudsters from prison. Those who take money from others, according to your view, would be performing an act of justice. If people who lose their property do not deserve it, then it follows that those who took it deserve it and should not be punished. If I "can't do," then why were the movements that I contributed to and worked for, ending the draft and legalizing gold, successful? I did not wait in vain. I helped make freedom happen. Similarly, I am working now to promote the philosophy of capitalism (the non-slavery kind) and individual rights because, as Ayn Rand has pointed out, philosophical change must come before political change. You're being silly now. You have already made it clear that you endorse slavery: "I believe that in America today, slavery is deserved in all cases." So now it is only a question of what other rights violations you also endorse. If it is permissible for one person to rob and enslave another, if the victims of robbery and slavery "deserve" it, then it would logically follow that other rights violations such as rape would also be just and deserved. Then nobody took the trouble to explain to you the connection between the stock and bond market and capitalism. I am not opposed to loopholes and deductions; I take full advantage of them. What I am interested in promoting is the non-initiation of force. Yes, it is appropriate to avoid others who would attack and rob you. It is not appropriate to treat attacks and robbery as just and deserved--especially in what is thought to be a capitalist society.

That's for employees. Businesses don't pay taxes. The end users of the products they make and the services they provide pay all of their taxes including both halves of FICA. Whenever a product is sold or a service is provided for others the taxes are already built into the purchase price. This is the reason I went into business for myself. So even with basically no education and a limited skill set, by my own creative innovation and useful productivity I could create the wealth to buy my economic freedom from slavery to the government. So no matter what the taxes are, they simply get passed on through the business just like any other cost. This is the beauty of American Capitalism... you can literally make the money to buy your economic freedom. Is suprizes me how you could remain so ignorant of how Capitalism works. You're a product of the government subsidized education system which grooms people to become indentured slaves... not independent American Capitalist entrepreneurs. Businesses do not operate in a bubble free from the effects of government policy. The idea that businesses can simply shift all of their taxes forward is a myth exploded by Murry Rothbard in Power and Market. At certain levels taxes destroy the market and the civilization that depends on it. Read Bruce Bartlett's "How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome." As for the moral foundations of capitalism, read Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which is not taught in any public school I know of. In that volume you find the essay "Man's Rights," wherein she explains that "A civilized society is one in which physical force is banned from human relationships—in which the government, acting as a policeman, may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use." Now, if under true capitalism, physical forced is banned from human relationships, then the government may not use or threaten force in order to fund itself. Taxes, including the income tax would be abolished. The economic system we live under is a mixed economy: a combination of property that is under government control and property that is under limited private control. Such a system allows men and women with government titles to seize private wealth and use it as they see fit. This activity has no moral distinction from highway robbery. Since you have already acknowledged that taxation is a feature of the the status quo, there can be do dispute that productive class is forced to surrender a portion of its wealth at the point of a gun. This is morally indefensible. That's your own fault for not being creatively productive enough to enjoy a good life regardless of taxes. Your government education only prepared you to be a cog in someone else's machine... but not to build your own machine. And you are paying dearly for your own lack of personal creative productivity. The moral responsibility for the initiation of force lies entirely with the perpetrator. If a woman forgets to latch her door and her purse is stolen, she may fault herself for not being more careful. But the point remains that by any measure of justice the purse belongs to her, not the thief. The thief did not earn it. The thief does not deserve it. Any society that is concerned with rights would require that he return it. Now the same principle holds with regard to taxation. We can fault ourselves for not finding enough loopholes and deductions. But the underlying principle is that the rulers have no moral title to anyone's wealth taken through force. They are not entitled to any of those things if they are funded through taxation. Since my image is one who does not steal and pays his own bills, the government I deserve is one that doesn't steal and pays its own bills. Since I do not break the Commandment "Thou Shall Not Steal," perfect moral justice is that I not be stolen from. You think like a slave and so you are a slave. In American Capitalism, businessmen deal with each other as peers when they voluntarily choose to enter into mutually beneficial value for value transactions. Pretending that something is true won't make it true. Pretending that the government does not take a portion of earners' incomes won't make the IRS vanish. What a silly adolescent utopian fantasy. You are utterly powerless to do that. Decent men learn how to grow in character and are able to prosper even in an indecent world just as it is by learning how to free themselves from it. Decent men spread the philosophy of individual rights and limited government. Decent men then become men in large numbers, powerful enough to control their political destiny. This is no utopian fantasy, but the historical record of how this country was founded. But perhaps this is something you'll never know because of your aversion to the "dead past." That is the government people created in their own image, and it is the government they deserve. Then let those who created and continue the income tax be the ones to pay it. No. I believe that in America today, slavery is deserved in all cases. You deserve your slavery to the government by how you chose to live. If slavery is deserved in all cases, then perhaps torture is deserved in all cases. And murder. And rape. And child abuse. There's no "rule". It just reveals a weakness in your character. Greg Then the author of "We the People . . ." must also have had a weak character.

Is that supposed to be an excuse? It's no wonder you don't have what it takes to be free. Being inordinately concerned over what others do is what kills off creative innovation. Anyways, it's not a matter of artificially declaring yourself anything. It's a matter of setting off in your own direction by creating a new business from nothing. Then you already are what you say you are and not the other way around. It's becoming more and more clear that you understand very little about how American Capitalism actually works in the real world. So don't ever give up being an employee. You'd fail if you were on your own. The fact some people may be able to reduce their tax burden by independent contracting and entrepreneurship doesn't change the fact that there is still mass theft performed on the workforce through the withholding tax and FICA. By comparison, avoiding a street mugger by buying a car to drive to and from work does not change the fact that it is the mugger who is initiating force, who is limiting freedom. And to tell a victim of the mugger that she is morally at fault because she didn't buy a car is to perform an act of propaganda for the legitimacy of mugging. Furthermore, the remaining taxes one still has to pay are still a violation of property rights, even if they are reduced. As long as taxes per se are legitimate in the public mind, when one source of revenue dries up, the government will merely increase theft on other sources. This is not difficult to figure out if one spends a little time with "dead history." And if "capitalism actually works in the real world," we should try it in this country sometime by abolishing government's authority to initiate force. That's true. I'm given carte blanche because most people have no idea how to do what I do. Michael had referred to three words: Autonomy Mastery Purpose Anyone who lacks even just one of those is a slave who is not free. So what? All you are affirming is that you have the slave mentality. When you innovate new processes and create new products, there is no one controlling you simply because they do not know what you know by your own personal experience. If you don't like the slave mentality, let's put the slave masters in jail. No masters, no slaves. Those in government who issue threats, enforce those threats with kidnapping, and take money that they did not earn and that is not rightfully theirs belong in the same institution that houses other violent criminals. Why should the very act that is forbidden to a private citizen be permitted to a public official? You're addressing your comments to someone else and not to me, since I'm a sole proprietor and have paid self employment tax for decades. But I don't pay it. Everyone who buys my products and services pays my taxes for me. It's called "making money". You might do well to read D'Anconia's Money Speech. He makes the case for Capitalistm far better than I ever could. Yikes. Considering where and when you are living, that comment alone qualifies you to be a slave of the government for the rest of your life. There is no question that government, by forcing the population regularly to surrender a large portion of its wages and income to it, engages in a form of slavery. Now the fundamental question is by what moral authority would the government forbid this activity to others (Amendment 13), but perform it itself? Your last sentence above makes it clear that you believe that slavery is legitimate or "qualified" in some cases. So what is the moral foundation? "Might makes right"? This has nothing to do with what others do. It's collectivist groupspeak to use the "Royal We" as if you're the self appointed representative of a group when you aren't. Use of the queenly we reveals a certain weakness in yourself. And it's that very same lack of character which keeps you a slave. Greg Where is the rule in grammar or in any other subject that elections or appointments have to take place before using the first person plural?

...and you never will as long as you continue to live the way you do. By personally assuming all of the financial risks and rewards of being an independent American Capitalist entrepreneur, and by becoming my own autonomous business entity, I get to enjoy all of the tax write offs just like any other business. Most of the American workforce cannot simply declare themselves independent contractors or entrepreneurs. The IRS has repeatedly made this clear: You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer (what will be done and how it will be done). This applies even if you are given freedom of action. What matters is that the employer has the legal right to control the details of how the services are performed. If an employer-employee relationship exists (regardless of what the relationship is called), you are not an independent contractor and your earnings are generally not subject to Self-Employment Tax. The idea that 117,000,000 Americans can simply quit their jobs and overnight become entrepreneurs is no better than saying that the average Jew in Nazi Germany could hop on an airplane to New York. A government that forces a citizen to flee his home or job and rebuild his life is not a free one. It makes as much sense as saying that getting raped on campus is simply rolled into the cost of going to college. Robbery, violence, or the threat of violence is not the free market. True, government is not the source of liberty. It is the source of aggression, loss of property, and enslavement. Since I never denied that there are some liberties still enjoyed by Americans, your premise is in error and your conclusion is false. Whereas taxes are payments under threat of force and whereas you have already acknowledged that even "American Capitalists" pay some taxes, then the the accusation I have accused the government "unjustly" is false. The only way a tax can be just (i.e. consistent with the natural rights of man) is when it is completely voluntary, at which point it ceases to be a tax. Furthermore, taxes are only one weapon in the government's arsenal of coercion. There is inflated currency, kidnapping of people for possessing forbidden chemicals or forbidden weapons, forced indoctrination in propaganda factories, monopolization of key industries such as transportation and banking, and thousands upon thousands of unnecessary and often ruinous regulations, This is not the day after ratification of the Constitution. This is the Founding Fathers' worst nightmare. If you think it's collectivist for more than one person to read your posts, please take advantage of the private message service and write only to me.

I blame Obama because it wasn't the government in Oslo, Cairo or Columbo that threatened me with prison for not turning over my wealth. It was the government in Washington. No, I can't free myself at present. Sometimes the bad guys have more firepower than the good guys. Sometimes people like Kira get shot. Really? Tell us exactly what you did in order to get the IRS from taking your income. But he did. Through the threat of sending me to prison, Obama and his Treasury Dept. got $26,000 from me last year. So what exactly did you say in the letter to the IRS to get them to back off? By that stunning logic a business owner who does not have non-arson deserves arson. A woman who does not have non-rape deserves rape.

You did not answer this simple question, and so I'm asking you directly again: Why haven't you freed yourself from being a slave of the government? Greg I answered you yesterday in Post #115: "For the same reason the 'pathetic' Jefferson, Adams and Franklin couldn't free themselves from the Intolerable Acts in 1774. The Revolution hadn't started yet . . . The American Revolutionaries were not dumb enough to think that each of them acting alone could overcome the king's army. But acting in union and in coordination they were able to defeat the most powerful military force in the world." America may not be as close to a change in power as it was in 1776, but certainly the objective conditions are ripe: the federal government is sinking ever deeper in debt and will soon run out of willing creditors, and the financial markets only need to see the collapse of one or two major players to produce a domino effect of no confidence. If those who are devoted to capitalism and individual rights can influence a significant part of the population, America might just get a second chance at freedom when the dust settles. I certainly don't think I can exert much influence if I'm lying in a jail cell for non-payment of taxes, owning a fully automatic weapon, or using contraband drugs.

( psst, Fred... the revolutionary war already ended... and the Americans won. ) So why haven't you freed yourself from being a slave of the government? Greg Here's where your antagonism to studying the "dead past" lets you down. The Revolution was betrayed. The victory achieved by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Washington was undone. The principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were steadily eroded by successive generations of cowardly, mendacious, and power-hungry politicians. The assault on liberty was further compounded by "temporary" powers grabbed during the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Cold War and the War on Terror. (Not that the founding charter was perfect. As Rand put it, "Certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism.") Thus we now have a bigger, more powerful, more invasive government and far less freedom than we did when this land belonged to the British Empire. Tax rates alone show this. Under British rule, the average American paid about 2% in taxes. Today it is about 23%. I am working to restore the birthright Americans gave away for a mess of pottage.

Why? Pennsylvania was not kicked out of the union in 1780 when it abolished slavery.

If you supposedly "know" that... then why can't you even free yourself from being a slave of the government? How pathetic is that? For the same reason the "pathetic" Jefferson, Adams and Franklin couldn't free themselves from the Intolerable Acts in 1774. The Revolution hadn't started yet. By not initiating force against others I set an example of the appropriate way to conduct oneself in a social setting. I thereby enhance my credibility as I spread the word about the greatness of capitalism, the necessity of rights, and the need for limited government. The American Revolutionaries were not dumb enough to think that each of them acting alone could overcome the king's army. But acting in union and in coordination they were able to defeat the most powerful military force in the world. It's like a tyrant demanding that the people work harder and harder while the tyrant spends more and more on himself. Eventually, the people will have had enough, and the tyrant will be what you like to call "dead history." So, following Ayn Rand, I will be an advocate of capitalism, individual rights and limited government. The end I seek is no more utopian than the government that began in 1776.

But I do know how: work to restore the Constitution to its original meaning and the Republic to its original promise, "to secure the blessings of liberty."

...that you will NEVER enjoy that liberty unless you first live a life that is deserving of those rights.When I quoted for every temptation there is a way of escape, I already told you those words would fall on your stone deaf ears. It's your own damned fault you can't figure out how to live like an American, and that your failure has made you a slave to the government just as you rightfully deserve. Greg A man deserving of liberty is not someone who believes it is his duty to pay tribute to Barack Obama, to the statists in his regime, and to the Marxist academics in public universities who day and night weave his cloak of lies and propaganda. The men and women who deserve liberty are those who teach the greatness of capitalism, the necessity of man's rights, and the treachery of modern government

God-given rights to liberty mean, among other things, being able to develop one's land without regard to the EPA, own any firearm without regard to the BATF, sell any security without regard to the SEC, hire anybody at any wage and withhold nothing, leave one's fortune to anybody with no Marxist inheritance taxes attached, and purchase or sell any drug without regard to the FDA. That is what freedom meant to the Founders. The welfare state as we know it did not exist in their time--could not have existed--because of their unclouded vision of what rights mean. You say Obama is not a slave of government? Damn right, he's not. He's one of the beneficiaries, one of the masters. Just like Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. I have said that the income tax makes me a slave to the government for the first four months of the year. I have never said that I am not a slave to the government for the first four months of the year. Non-contradiction. A man deserving of liberty is someone who pays his own way, creates his own wealth, uses his own brain and sweat to produce products that sell in the free market, A man not deserving of liberty is one who uses force or the threat thereof to steal from society's innovators, creators, entrepreneurs and dedicated workers. If you do not think I deserve liberty, then you are in perfect agreement with the Marxists: from each according to his ability to each according to his need. You already do... those user fees are called taxes. It seems that the vast difference between the income tax and the toll on a turnpike may be too subtle for you. So I'll put it this way: Since I have never used Aid To Families With Dependent Children, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Head Start, the Legal Services Program, FEMA, NASA, the FHA, the Dept. of Agriculture, the Dept. of Commerce, the Dept. of Labor, or the Small Business Administration . . . I'll take my so-called "user fees" back. It's Obama and his Marxist apologists who need to grow up. An adult is independent and self-reliant. He makes his own way in the world and takes responsibility for himself. Obama, his leftist worshipers, and the welfare client-voters he rewards are the ones who are whining: insisting always that someone else take care of them, feed them, clothe them, house them, and provide them free high-speed internet. The citizens of the early Republic, who shed their blood for a vision some considered utopian, were the true Americans and wouldn't have put up with that nonsense for a minute.