Topic: How do you deal with the thought about taxes - page 2. (Read 2883 times)

Factory takeover? Riot cops.

You mean the attempted armed robbery, and possible murder of a factory owner?

Attempt to overthrow a slaveowning profiteer? Millitary bloodbath.

People are not property. We're on the same side here.

Strikes? Picket lines? More riot cops or at least arrests and brutality.

Not without a State. I wouldn't try to violently stop any strike-breakers, though.

Protesting company policy? Hundreds of riot cops.

Not without a State.

Your source is biased and wrong imo.

There's no chance in hell you've read Man, Economy, and State in the time since I gave you the link. I read Proudhon, and Marx. Least you could do is give Rothbard a shot.

Ever been on the wrong side of a line of riot cops?

AnCaps don't tend to get violent enough to bring out Riot cops. We do get arrested pretty frequently, though.

Ever talk to the Chief executive officer of exxon or shell, monsanto or any not hypothetical capitalist?

You're talking to one now.

Are you a 'sucessful' capitalist? Have you ever lived on or under the wages capitalists enforce?

In order: moderately, and yes. And they don't enforce those wages, sweetheart. That's the market. The only enforcement is the minimum wage. And that prices people out of the marketplace entirely.

Now, I'm done derailing this thread. If you'd like an explanation of free-market capitalism, I will be glad to answer any questions you have, and explain that capitalism is not your enemy, and in fact, both you and I share the same enemy.

In another thread. Wink

Elwar

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Quote from: Severian on May 19, 2013, 02:54:11 PM

Capital is accumulated wealth.

If you cut my grass and I promise you a meal that weekend as a thank you for a good job, you have just accumulated wealth.

It is mutual consent. If you cut 7 lawns and have a meal each day the next week you have accumulated wealth.

If instead of the promise of a meal, I give you money that is the equivalent of a meal which you then hold onto until you are hungry, you have just accumulated wealth. It is the same thing. The voluntary exchange of goods and services.

If you have accumulated knowledge and are the only person in the city that knows how to fix my car I choose between having no car or rewarding you properly for fixing it. I promise 1 meal a week for a month (or the equivalent monetary value).

If I have a computer system that needs someone to fix the database and you have accumulated enough knowledge to the point where you can fix it, I decide whether or not to have a broken computer system or reward you properly for fixing it. I promise 1 meal a week for a year in exchange for a week of your time dedicated to fixing it. Or more simply, I pay you enough money to afford 1 meal a week for a year. That is accumulated wealth.

All of these instances rely upon consent between the two individuals. If you do not want to do it, then you do not have to. If I do not want you to do the job, I do not have to ask you to do it.

Malawi

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One bitcoin to rule them all!

Quote from: Malawi on May 19, 2013, 02:30:17 PM

Ah - How I'd like to have a black/white worldview. Less thinking less strife.

If one is in favor of coercion, the world needs to be gray in order to accommodate the opinion.

In many nuances though ;-)

mmeijeri

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Martijn Meijering

Quote from: myrkul on May 19, 2013, 01:57:41 PM

Factory takeover? Riot cops.

A factory takeover involves violence or the threat of violence. In France today it sometimes even involves taking the management hostage. It is totally justifiable to resist that violence, the occupiers are the initiators of coercion.

Quote

Attempt to overthrow a slaveowning profiteer? Millitary bloodbath.

Slave ownership is clearly coercion and it is clearly right to resist it.

Quote

Strikes? Picket lines? More riot cops or at least arrests and brutality.

Strikes mean breaking a contractual promise. As a contractor, you wouldn't get away with it. People should be free not to extend their contracts, or terminate them with due notice if that's what's agreed in their contracts, but not to strike and break their contracts. Similarly, companies should be free to fire those who strike, evict them from the premises, and to hire strike breakers. Those who go on strike initiate the violence.

Picket lines are meant to intimidate fellow workers and management and involve barely hidden threats of violence.

CryptoJunky

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Let's talk Bitcoin had a pretty good segment about this in episode 8. While Bitcoin isn't entirely anonymous, at the moment it can be tough to tie specific addresses to specific people. I've heard some people argue that mining could be considered earned income and should be accounted for as such, and that appreciation of Bitcoin versus fiat should be declared as capital gains.

It's still a grey area at the moment though.

ktttn

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Capitalism is the crisis.

Quote from: ktttn on May 19, 2013, 01:48:14 PM

Capitalism proper requires that masses of people are physically kept by the threat of tax funded violence out of control of the means of production.

Wut?

Quote

Capitalism is defined as a social and economic system where capital assets are owned and controlled by private persons, where labor is purchased for money wages, capital gains accrue to private owners, and the price mechanism is utilized to allocate capital goods between uses.

No mention of "tax-funded violence." In fact, it seems that your definition of capitalism is actually socialism:

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Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.

"Social ownership," as in, the State.

Factory takeover? Riot cops.
Attempt to overthrow a slaveowning profiteer? Millitary bloodbath.
Strikes? Picket lines? More riot cops or at least arrests and brutality.
Protesting company policy? Hundreds of riot cops.
Your source is biased and wrong imo.
Ever been on the wrong side of a line of riot cops?
Ever talk to the Chief executive officer of exxon or shell, monsanto or any not hypothetical capitalist?
Are you a 'sucessful' capitalist? Have you ever lived on or under the wages capitalists enforce?
Am I derailing the thread, or being antagonized?

Severian

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Quote from: Malawi on May 19, 2013, 02:30:17 PM

Ah - How I'd like to have a black/white worldview. Less thinking less strife.

If one is in favor of coercion, the world needs to be gray in order to accommodate the opinion.

Malawi

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One bitcoin to rule them all!

Ah - How I'd like to have a black/white worldview. Less thinking less strife.

myrkul

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FIAT LIBERTAS RVAT CAELVM

Quote from: ktttn on May 19, 2013, 01:48:14 PM

Capitalism proper requires that masses of people are physically kept by the threat of tax funded violence out of control of the means of production.

Wut?

Quote

Capitalism is defined as a social and economic system where capital assets are owned and controlled by private persons, where labor is purchased for money wages, capital gains accrue to private owners, and the price mechanism is utilized to allocate capital goods between uses.

No mention of "tax-funded violence." In fact, it seems that your definition of capitalism is actually socialism:

Quote

Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.

"Social ownership," as in, the State.

ktttn

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Capitalism is the crisis.

Quote from: Severian on May 19, 2013, 12:31:44 PM

The sum history of capitalism is the history of a group of men building a new mechanism to oppress and use to death

That's the history of the State, not of free enterprise.

The State is the tool used by capitalists and communists (and other window dressing terms) as the means to oppress and kill the rest of us. Please don't confuse free enterprise and human ingenuity with the oppressive ends of the State.

Totally agreed. Semantics and the language of words is relative.
Free enterprise decoupled from state protection is another term for human ingenuity.
Capitalism proper requires that masses of people are physically kept by the threat of tax funded violence out of control of the means of production. Statism both complicates in terms of legislation and allows for capitalists to centralize ower into their own hands.
Pardon the seemingly communist rhetoric. Anarchists used those terms too. State Communism in practice is an even more violent evolution of capitalism.
With bitcoin, the means of production is anyone, by hook or crook, able to get their hands on a mineworthy computer.

myrkul

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FIAT LIBERTAS RVAT CAELVM

Quote from: myrkul on May 19, 2013, 11:55:48 AM

The interesting thing about the gift economy is that it works on the principle of consent, satisfaction and reciprocity

As does capitalism. Free trade.

Every time someone says capitalism relies on consent, I die a little.

Reading this book would be tantamount to suicide, then.

Severian

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Quote from: Zaih on May 19, 2013, 05:57:27 AM

The sum history of capitalism is the history of a group of men building a new mechanism to oppress and use to death

That's the history of the State, not of free enterprise.

The State is the tool used by capitalists and communists (and other window dressing terms) as the means to oppress and kill the rest of us. Please don't confuse free enterprise and human ingenuity with the oppressive ends of the State.

Severian

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I believe in having an obligation to paying your country in return for the high living standards we receive. At the end of the day, they can spend it on what they want.

You are in error.

We're obligated to contribute to the society we live in. We're not obligated to support the government we live under.

People committing the logical error of confusing "society" for "government" is a cause of much of the chaos and strife caused by government. Society is consent, government is coercion.

ktttn

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Capitalism is the crisis.

Quote from: myrkul on May 19, 2013, 11:55:48 AM

Quote from: myrkul on May 19, 2013, 10:05:10 AM

Quote from: ktttn on May 19, 2013, 10:02:38 AM

Freeganism prohibits me from ever touching or spending federal reserve notes, especially on the uselesa consumer goods you can get for free if you try.

By that, I assume you mean the smartphone you're using right now? You didn't get that for free, you bought it with a pretty pebble.

Citrine, if I remember correctly. The gift economy is a really neat idea.
It was less that I bought, and more like a gift, then I gifted the rock as a thank you.

You say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe.

Quote from: madmadmax on May 17, 2013, 02:20:00 PM

The interesting thing about the gift economy is that it works on the principle of consent, satisfaction and reciprocity

As does capitalism. Free trade.

Every time someone says capitalism relies on consent, I die a little.
Capital is accumulated wealth. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
The ideology that accumulating limitless personal wealth is the goal of trade is an ideology that is to blame for more than a few really bad things, namely the disparity between the elite and the rest of the earth- enforced by institutional violence, supported by taxes. The sum history of capitalism is the history of a group of men building a new mechanism to oppress and use to death, millions of real people by taking advantage of the fall of serfdom to convince folks that its possible to buy their priceless and irredeemable time and labor in exchange for wages.
/anticapitalism micro-rant.

Severian

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Do you think Bitcoin will change that? Will it put the governments on a diet?

No, but it will allow people the flexibility to opt out of various government confiscation schemes.

Also, my favorite quote in the Bible, since we're doing literary references:

"It is time to destroy all who have caused destruction on the earth."

Rev 11:18

Mike Christ

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on May 18, 2013, 12:17:48 AM

Quote

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.”

3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5 The name written on her forehead was a mystery:

babylon the great

the mother of prostitutes

and of the abominations of the earth.

6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.

When I saw her, I was greatly astonished. 7 Then the angel said to me: “Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.

....

15 Then the angel said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. 16 The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire. 17 For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to hand over to the beast their royal authority, until God’s words are fulfilled. 18 The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

This is why I love Bible stories; they're so damn interesting! The writers often tell them in such ways that makes you want to read more and then try to interpret the symbolic relationships of each character, that same way The Divine Comedy works, where it's commanding and straight-forward yet makes you scratch your head and wonder what they're really trying to say.

Anyway, yeah, taxes suck. I will acknowledge no government which forces the people it services into paying for said services. As far as I care, that's a mafia, not a respectable business. I would gladly pay for protection if I could punish my protectors for not doing as I want them to do (of course, by refusing their service; I would then have the REAL power of voting, opposed to the rigged voting system of right now.)

myrkul

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FIAT LIBERTAS RVAT CAELVM

Quote from: myrkul on May 19, 2013, 10:05:10 AM

Quote from: ktttn on May 19, 2013, 10:02:38 AM

Freeganism prohibits me from ever touching or spending federal reserve notes, especially on the uselesa consumer goods you can get for free if you try.

By that, I assume you mean the smartphone you're using right now? You didn't get that for free, you bought it with a pretty pebble.

Citrine, if I remember correctly. The gift economy is a really neat idea.
It was less that I bought, and more like a gift, then I gifted the rock as a thank you.

You say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe.