Dennis

Dennis, concerning this, the second part of your post, I’m going to bow out and urge reference to the principal works on these topics, which I will list.

Stephen,

Thank you very much for your replies to my comments and questions. I will do my best to look up the references you have given me on this topic, although living in Japan, English references are not always easily available. I will start with the materials available on the web.

As you say, there is too much good in life. My primary interests take me in directions other than philosophy, so I don't have as much time as I would like to study any part of this fascinating field. I thank you greatly for the time you've taken to help me better understand a question that I have often pondered.

Dennis

Ba'al Chatzaf,

Your first statement shows that you agree with me about the point even though your tone suggests you're debating me about it. There needs to be a law above all others. Did you read the rest of my posts in this thread? I pointed out this problem with private arbitration quite explicitly in my reply to Stephen Boydstun.

Regarding your comments about taxation being required to support the state's use of force, do you have any evidence to support this claim, or is it just your opinion? Stephen Boydstun made an interesting case for why taxation might be reasonable in certain contexts in the article he linked to on RoR. Although I'm not sure I entirely agree with him, his arguments do make some sense and I will have to spend some time considering their further implications (much aside from some other ideas he put forth in the article). At this time, I've seen no other evidence to suggest that taxation is a requirement of a state.

Dennis

Welcome, Dennis.

The main right way and its rationale are shown here in this 1987 work:

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ArticleDi...ns/1912.shtml#6

Thank you, Stephen.

Thank you also for pointing out your article. It was a very interesting read. There were a couple of points I was unsure of in your article. First, you wrote:

Members of a successful alliance must come up with a scheme for imposing specific dues. Recourse to a procedure for selecting a representative portion of members to decide on assessments can be expected for large alliances.

One plausibly equitable cost-sharing scheme would have all landowners in the alliance pay a single percentage of their annual rents for real estate (but see Hardin 1982, 90–100). Owners drawing no rents in a given year might instead incur an equivalent lien against their property to be extinguished by future rents or sale. The percentage required to discharge the common security burden could be varied with necessity over the years.

...

Where property rights in land are perfected justly by the existence of an alliance, the alliance has the right to resist secession. It could agree to or acquiesce in a case of secession, but against the just alliance, the individual landowner could have no incontestable right to secede. A unilateral withdrawal of land from the jurisdiction of the alliance or a withholding of the due portion of rents for support of the security burden is essentially a breach of contract by convention. Then reciprocity is ended, and we are back where we began.

...

There are two basic ways in which actual states differ from the just land state. Firstly, they do things, in themselves legitimate, through illicit means such as taxation. Secondly, they do things that, like

taxation, should not be done by anyone; they systematically violate rights.

The dues you speak of are clearly a form of taxation, since a person cannot decide not to pay and cannot secede from the alliance. However, the tax is levied against income from land, whose operty rights exist only because of the alliance, so it is reasonable to demand that the cost of the alliance supporting the owner's right be paid by him. Is this how I should understand your meaning?

--------------------------------

--------------------------------

Another point about your article raised alarms. You said:

Subgroups of individuals within the territory of a land state could subscribe for fees to various ongoing organizations offering to assure public and just vindication of rights (beyond rights in real property). All such organizations would have to dovetail their laws with the law of real property, they would have to recognize the particular real estate titles recognized by the land state, and they would have to derive all their revenues from subscriptions or donations. Each such agency of justice would have to earn public confidence in its justness; otherwise, like individuals, these agencies would have no right, good against third party intervention, to wield retaliatory force (Nozick 1974, 12–18, 133–34, 140; see also Hardin 1982 101–24). George Smith has given reasons for believing such agencies would have economic incentives to reach demonstrably true verdicts (1979, 411–14, 421–24).

What happens in the case where two justice agencies come into conflict? I believe this was the whole point of why Rand believed that the use of force must be a government held monopoly. I give the following two examples.

Suppose two people enter into an agreement and write up a contract. However, these the wording of the contract has an ambiguity in it which neither person recognizes, but which each interprets differently. If these two people each subscribe to different justice agencies, how could this dispute be resolved? Would not a more reasonable solution be to have people entering into an agreement agree at that time on a justice agency to arbitrate any disputes, and register their agreement for a fee, rather than have such agencies work on a subscription system?

A similar dilemma could be suggested where two people, subscribing to different justice agencies, get into a fight which was witnessed by no others, and each claims the other was the agressor. Suppose both agencies investigate, but come to opposite conclusions based on the evidence, each supporting their own subscriber. How will these agencies determine whose assessment is valid to be enforced? The subscribers of each agency would demand that their agency upheld their verdict and failure to do so would result in a loss of business. It seems that there is need of an impartial agency which can, at a minimum, settle disputes of this kind.

Neither of these scenarios considers differences in rules by which such agencies would judge cases and determine punishment.

(I apologize if this material is covered in your references. Unfortunately, I do not have easy access to these materials to read the background to your assertions.)

--------------------------------

--------------------------------

Unfortunately, there seems to be very little discussion of this article in the original thread on RoR. Has there been discussion of it elsewhere?

This article, combined with the original thoughts sparked by Michael Stuart Kelly's article on rights, as well as some other material I've investigated since then, has given me some interesting ideas that I hope to expand on here in the coming weeks.

Dennis.

Michael,

Thank you for replying to my first post here at OL. I will add more of my own thoughts on the topic in a separate post at a later time.

Lottery. (Of course, this puts the government in the gambling business, which is problematic for advocates of laissez faire.)

The bigger problem with this idea is that any competing lottery is not going to be taking a cut off the top to support unrelated endeavors, so unless the government restricts others from entering this business, the government will not be competitive. The same is true of any business the government might go into for funding.

Payment for office. $1 million for House. $5 million for Senate. $10 million for a cabinet post. Or open it all to bids and auctions. Rich people might have some advantage -- and why not, after all? -- but anyone could sell shares of stock and raise the cash to bid. This model could describe what we have today in that those who vote for a candidate are supposedly willing to pay taxes after the election. This could work all the way down to the local levels for all offices. You might get some small salary or none, but in any event, the money for gaining the office would go into running the office.

This is an interesting idea that I've never considered before. Each time I try to make a meaningful reply to this idea I find a lot of interesting and seemingly important issues that make a quick reply unreasonable, so I'll have to spend some time thinking about this one. My first impressions are that this idea could not work out though. Can you point me to some other information regarding this idea?

User Fees for ports and harbors. I am also a member of the AOPA: the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. They fight hard and win against "user fees" for services like air traffic control. (Planes pay for landing. Typically waived at most places, the fee might be $5 or $15 for a private plane at a county airport but obviously much more to bring that 747 full of freight or passenbers from Heathrow to LaGuardia.) But, I am in favor of such fees, and in that I stand nearly alone.

User fees in general are a good idea for government services. But my advocacy of them is self-serving.

User fees were the gist of the article of Rand's that I originally mentioned, and they seem to be the most reasonable form of funding. After all, it makes sense that the people taking advantage of government services should help to foot the bill. However, this doesn't work in all cases. For example, it would be unreasonable to charge user fees on police services since you can't decide when you will need them in most cases.

As a side note, it doesn't seem appropriate for the government to be charging user fees for ports and harbors as these ought to be privately controlled enterprises.

One problem with a fee on contracts is that protecting the sanctity of contract is supposed to be one of the functions of government. If you have to pay extra for the service, then it is a market service, not a government. And what is a "contract"? Any agreement between two entities is a contract. So, you and I could forego paying the goverment fee and pay a different fee to some other (private) arbitrator? That sonds like anarchy. [We have these today. Check out the American Arbitration Association at http://www.adr.org/ -- ADR: Alternative Dispute Resolution. One reason why I am an anarchist.]

This system doesn't need to be anarchy at all. For example, in any contract the parties could specify an arbitrator of their choice and agree to abide by the decision of that arbitrator and pay whatever fees that arbitrator might charge them. However, the arbitrator cannot himself enforce his decisions as the use of force is a government held monopoly, so regardless of who performs the arbitration, it would be reasonable to pay a fee to the government if you want to make sure you can enforce the decision of the arbitrator.

In fact, I see no reason why the government need be involved in arbitration except possibly in the case of investigating fraud by private arbitrators.

By the same standard, why not pay a "voluntary fee" ahead of time to have the police show up when you need them? (We have this problem now, actually. In some places, if a business owner has a large cash deposit to make, they can get a police escort, but Aunt Shaynah in the ghetto does not get a cop to go shopping with her.) Unless, of course, you decide to pay your fees to private protection agencies. Again, that sounds like anarchy. [Check out ASIS International -- formerly the American Society for Industrial Security -- http://www.asisonline.org/ Their Security Industry Buyers Guide lists over 300 private guard companies including three that I have worked for AKAL, SECURITAS and Allied-Barton. Yet another reason why I support a free market in protection.]

There is no reason that a person shouldn't be able to hire private security. Private security presents no problem to the use of force rule so long as they are strictly used defensively. Self defense is a legitimate use of force and being prepared with the resources needed to defend yourself is a reasonable step to take.

The police helping a business owner on his way to the bank is an example of preventative policing, where the police go in advance to the site of a likely crime. This happens all the time and is a perfectly reasonable step for the police to take. The fact that the ghetto is always the site of a likely crime shows a serious problem in society and not a problem with police methodology. Of course, I would like to see crime stopped in the ghetto, but this is a separate issue.

Dennis

Hello,

I was reading Michael's essay about rights, and towards the end he raised a question that has often troubled me: how is government to be funded if not by compulsory taxes.

The passage which originally caught my attention is the fourth to last paragraph:

How this is to be funded and what to do in emergencies (or what to do about matters like depraved indifference) are still under consideration in my thinking.

Michael was speaking in the context of the government taking care of people who cannot support themselves. However, the question is equally applicable to any government endeavor. I have read Rand's essay suggesting the possibility of a fee on contracts to make them legally enforceable ("Government and Financing in a Free Society", The Virtue of Selfishness). Rand herself said that this was only a suggestion, and I believe there must be room for many other ideas in this area. I wonder if there is any other Objectivist material available on this topic, as it seems a vital one if a person is going to seriously discuss a government which does not impose taxes.

Dennis