Comment by jomtung | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jomtung | Hacker News Reader

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It's interesting that you view taxation as a violent fundamental wealth redistribution. Taxes do suck and I'm not going to argue that point, but it's interesting because without taxes we would be living in a fundamentally violent society (since there is no government support a monopoly on violence - e.g. Somalia - everyone then may be violent to achieve personal goals).

How about we all try getting rich (or just keep our wealth out of violent neighboring hands) without violence or a government. Try to even significantly increase any meager income in that situation.

My point is that without taxes and the government they support, there is nothing but violence to support any type of venture. This has historical bearing with places that were lawless yet aplenty with resource for ventures (e.g. North American colonies, Wild West, etc...).

If in particular you meant a progressive tax policy that increases the percentage of taxation with your income level is what you're describing as violent then I can see your point a bit more clearly. Why punish the people who are being more productive, right?

Well the thing is that the owners of capital get the most extreme benefit from government. Never the other way around. It makes sense to me that the biggest recipients become the biggest supporters.

For a brief anecdote, poor people who earn wages get social programs to help sometimes, which are then largely obfuscated from public comprehension so you'll need a social worker just to get started. Rich people who own capital get business subsidies in the form of cash on the books. They are both paid from taxes and supported by the government. Who do you think benefits most from the government here? The business owner or the wage earner? Who is being stopped more readily from using violence with this support from government?

So taxes support all of this precarious balance in a capitalist society because the government is the only thing we have found to solve this problem of violence.

How about we all try getting rich (or just keep our wealth out of violent neighboring hands) without violence or a government.

There's a pretty broad range of what you could call "government" in that discussion. The question of how to reign in would be aggressors isn't fully settled, but it certainly hasn't been proven that it takes the kind of government we have today. Especially given that the system we have today doesn't stop aggression, it just shuffles it around and renames it. See, for example, "civil forfeiture".

On violent taxation: when you don't pay your taxes, eventually someone with a gun comes to take your freedom (prison for tax evasion). So the threat of violence is always held over the head of the taxpayer. Taken a step further, the primary relationship of a government to its people is the threat of violence for not following the laws.

Please don't let your observation of present society confuse your ideas about a free society: The poor use the violence of the government to take money from others and give it to them via social programs. The business subsidies are a form of government privilege that is a corruption of free markets in which the rich use the violence of government against competitors.

Free market thinkers challenge the assumption that government should be granted a monopoly on force but rather there should be competition in all areas of society. As it stands, we see abuse of power in the courts, police, legislatures, and bureaucracy, all for the enrichment of those who have a legal monopoly on force.

> Taken a step further, the primary relationship of a government to its people is the threat of violence for not following the laws.

This is true in pretty much the same sense that it is true that the primary relationship of a people to its government is the threat of violence by the former against the latter for failure to deliver on demands. (The extent to which either is actually truly the primary relationship in practice is pretty much precisely the extent to which the government has lost legitimacy.)

> Free market thinkers challenge the assumption that government should be granted a monopoly on force but rather there should be competition in all areas of society.

The government is simply whatever entity (including a collection of entities) in practice holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. You can question what the nature, scope, composition, and role of government should be, but questioning whether it should have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force is exactly like questioning the assumption that a triangle should be a three-sided polygon.

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