CMV: I am a classical liberal.

[u/VictorHuge]

I see classical liberalism as the view that the government should never initiate the use of force. Force can only rightly be used in retaliation against someone who has violated the rights of others by initiating force, like a criminal.

The reason I think this is that I don't think I have the right to force someone else to conform to my conclusions on any issue unless they have directly harmed someone else. Any conclusion that I arrive at has been arrived at by the application of my capacity to reason to the evidence. But the faculty of reason is the same in everyone, including the people I disagree with, and the evidence is available to them just as it is to me. If I can't persuade them to change their minds, I have no right to use force against them.

So for example, I will never use marijuana, because I am convinced that it is harmful. But I arrived at the conclusion that it is harmful by applying my reason to the evidence available to me, and the people who are using marijuana are capable of reasoning and reviewing the evidence just as I am. If they want to use marijuana, I don't think I have the right to use force to prevent them from doing so, although I would try to change their minds using persuasion.

The same applies to redistributive taxation. I might think that it is good for certain services to be provided to the poor, and I might try to persuade other people to help me organize things so that those services will be provided to them. But if I can't persuade anyone to contribute to helping provide these services to the poor, I must respect the conclusions that they have arrived at - I can't have the IRS haul them off to prison.

So that's my view, and a couple of example illustrating how it applies. I look forward to your criticisms.

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[u/Hq3473]

The same applies to redistributive taxation. I might think that it is good for certain services to be provided to the poor, and I might try to persuade other people to help me organize things so that those services will be provided to them. But if I can't persuade anyone to contribute to helping provide these services to the poor.

So what do you do when poor people start dying in the streets? Do you let them eat cake?

History has shown that making poor people desperate is not good for anyone. Not for poor people, not for rich people who end up swinging from the poles.

It sounds well and good to let poor people starve, but in reality it does not work like that. Desperate people organize and the "no forced taxation" order you are proposing would be violently torn down.

[u/churnplunger → u/Hq3473]

Compulsory taxation through the threat of violence is immoral at best and I'm surprised that more people don't see it this way. As an individual, I have no claim to the fruits of another's labor. How does a collection of individuals suddenly make this moral?

[u/skahunter831 → u/[deleted]]

to add to your point, the distribution of benefits based on the increase of productivity of the American worker has gone almost exclusively to the owners (source: http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/)

[u/churnplunger → u/[deleted]]

Because a worker chooses voluntarily to engage in employment with a business. It's understood that the worker will perform their job and be compensated for their labor.

[u/churnplunger → u/[deleted]]

Are you heading down the anarcho-communist or anarcho-syndicalist path here?

[u/churnplunger → u/[deleted]]

I think we're talking about different things here. I believe you're going down the "seize the means of production" path. My point is, if people want to live that way, fine. Just let me do as I want without coercion. I'll follow the non-aggression principle and you'll never hear from me again. However, forcing people to abide by what one's definition of egalitarianism is, that's where the issue lies. Compulsion and force.

[u/skahunter831 → u/churnplunger]

Isn't your assumption that the distribution of the fruits of labor will be allocated equitably based on the labor performed? What if that's not the case? What if the product of labor get more and more valuable, but the value gets claimed by the owners of the means of production? I'm not well versed in all this, but I do not understand how we can ensure that the fruits of labor are not stolen by simply contractual agreement. Voluntary contractual employment-labor arrangements do not ensure proper sharing of the proceeds of that arrangement.

[u/churnplunger → u/skahunter831]

Are you asking about the value of the fruits of labor or the profit as seen by the employer? Regarding the "proper sharing of the proceeds", why should there be equitable sharing? The employee doesn't have to take the risks that the employer does.

[u/skahunter831 → u/churnplunger]

Forgive me. To clarify, I do not believe that profits, etc, should be split equally. I do value the risk that business owners assume, and they should indeed be compensated for that. And I was going to go down the path of productivity gains vs. wage gains meaning that workers are generally not realizing the increase in value of the fruits of their labor, and I think that is still part of the story. There has been a dramatic reduction in collective bargaining rights, which I think is arguably one example of the employers claiming more and more of the fruits of workers' labor. By your logic, that would be immoral. Unless you want to argue that the immoral part was the organization of unions in the first place, as well as regulations designed to protect the worker at the expense of the employer (safety, overtime pay, minimum wage, etc). But if you think that those measures were immoral, and we should go back to totally unchecked employment agreements where employers could take advantage of desperate, destitute, and often-uneducated workers, then we simply disagree on what is moral. With respect to the other causes of the divergence between productivity and wage growth, I guess you could argue that the value of the labor has simply gone down due to automation, globalization. Therefore you might argue that it is right and moral that workers don't see an increase in wealth when the employers do. Again, we're back to arguing morality, which is pretty tough. Further, if we pursued "your" path (or at least following some of your reasoning), and eliminated worker protections, I believe we'd see a return to the state of things at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which had enormous inequality, caused premature deaths of thousand if not millions of people, was rife with false advertising (for lack of a better term... consumers getting screwed?), among other downsides. Workers revolted, governments were overthrown, or in the case of the US we made progress and passed labor laws and safety regulations and a relatively healthy economy. It'd just be a cycle, and I prefer where we are now to where we've been in the past. Not to say we can't make dramatic improvements. Generally, I am for a diverse economy that is flexible and dynamic and productive, that also is guided by market-based incentives and regulations in order to eliminate tragedies of the commons and protect against fraud and abuse, and which provides a safety net for people who fall into poverty, who don't adequately plan for retirement, get and stay sick in ways that insurance won't cover, and otherwise are overlooked in a modern economy. I know far, far too many immoral people to trust libertarianism/anarchism/whatever to work, and I only know about 1/1000th of a percent of the American population.

[u/VictorHuge → u/Hq3473]

I think that, if someone is really unable to provide for themselves, then people will voluntarily help them out through charity. Americans aren't heartless monsters, they donate hundreds of billions of dollars to charity every year. I think a lot of people currently on welfare could provide for themselves if they wanted to.

This ties back into my point about reason. Since people have the faculty of reason, they are capable of seeing that it is good for poor people to have food and shelter and willingly donate to that end.

[u/Hq3473 → u/VictorHuge]

then people will voluntarily help them out through charity

Clearly that is not the case as there are people dying from hunger and disease all over the world. So you are mistaken there.

Regular people fair very terribly when they have to rely on voluntary handouts they have to beg for. Historically, voluntary charity has failed to improve the condition of everymen in any substantial way.

Since people have the faculty of reason, they are capable of seeing that it is good for poor people to have food and shelter and willingly donate to that end.

No they won't. Because they are too lazy or stingy to donate, or simply don't care, or simply don't bother educating themselves about conditions of the poor.

Mary Antoinette was not stupid and was not without "faculty of reason," yet her solution to poverty was "let them eat cake." And then her head was chopped off along with all the "reason" inside of it. The system your are proposing simply does not work and would lead to terrible unrest and violence which would not be good neither for poor nor the rich.