Francisco Ferrer

The first sentence in the link: "Arguments don't have to be hurtful, but they can easily turn that way if you're not careful." Yes, let's all be careful not to call one another "unproductive failures" especially when we have no evidence for drawing such a conclusion.

Argue: "to present reasons for or against a thing." It is true, Morrie. You do not argue because you have no reasons.

Coolidge did not entertain the fantasy of abolishing taxes like you do, because he wasn't an unproductive failure like you are. (...and the hits just keep coming. ) Greg On April 28 you wrote, "I refuse to do business with people who complain the government is robbing them...because that means that they are robbing someone else." By that logic you would have no dealings with Coolidge, if he were alive, because he complained that the government was committing larceny and that would mean that he was committing larceny against someone else. Curious it is that you should post a video praising a man you would not associate with if given a chance. And if abolishing taxes is the "fantasy" of "unproductive failures," why would you frequent a website devoted to a woman who explicitly called for abolishing taxes in a free society?

Coolidge and his Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon bear some responsibility for the artificial boom of the 1920's and the bust that followed by their policy of suppressed interest rates and easy money: In a campaign speech in October 1924, Calvin Coolidge reassured "business" that, "It has been the policy of this administration to reduce discount rates." In March 1927 as a mild recession was in process, Treasury Secretary Mellon proclaimed, "There is an abundant supply of easy money which should take care of any contingencies that might arise." http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2014/04/04/monetary_policy_was_born_out_of_a_mistake_100991.html I find it interesting that you posted a video celebrating Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge was a critic of high taxes. In a speech after taking office he said, "A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny, It condemns the citizen to servitude.” In his first inaugural speech he said, "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny." High taxes as larceny? Well, I guess makes Coolidge an unproductive lout who was always blaming government for his own failures. The fact that he called taxation larceny must mean that he was committing larceny himself.

You'll never know. Greg If it is unknowable, then your theory is useless and inane.

Go Frank go!! Thanks, Celly!

That's the same fantasy as every other government needy unproductive parasite, Frank. People who don't have enough money with the government wouldn't have enough money without it, because losers lack the virtue necessary to make and properly manage money to begin with. You are smaller than your money. "Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it." "People who don't have enough money with the government wouldn't have enough money without it." First of all, just what constitutes "enough money"? A million, a hundred million, a billion? Secondly, since it's been quite a long time since the world has been without government, how would you know what people's financial needs would be in a state of anarchy? Once again: big theory, zero evidence. Regarding my proposal to abolish taxation, provide evidence that there is a single "unproductive parasite" who endorses that idea. If you cannot, then that will add one more bogus claim to your record. Finally, if, as you say, you don't need government, then you can have no objection to efforts to abolish government or deprive it of its coerced source of revenue. Your objections to critiques of taxation are pointless.

If you don't need it, then there can be no objection to a campaign to starve the beast by depriving it of taxes. Once taxation is abolished, you can still go on paying money to government if that's what makes you happy, Morrie.

Again and again, Frank just keeps telling everyone that he creates nothing. Greg Per your Post #103, whom did Ayn Rand rob?

What should you do (1) then what should others do (2). Not your sarcasm indicating impotence. You're a good ripper-downer. In capitalism it's called creative destruction, except for you it's sans the creative. You seem to need a partner. The best secondary argument for government is at least when someone shows up at your door and says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," you'll know immediately he's full of shit. --Brant In a libertarian legal framework, it's called putting violators of property rights behind bars. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. --John Galt You find me "sans creative"? Then by all means please spend less time on my posts and go read some original libertarian thinkers like Frédéric Bastiat, Étienne de La Boétie, Auberon Herbert, Gustave de Molinari, Albert Jay Nock, or Herbert Spencer.

Then then residents of Chicago should hire private protection agencies to investigate, arrest those responsible and try them in a private court--all under one law, of course. And the City of Chicago should stop collecting extortion fees taxes.

The theory that monopolies provide the best service is also flawed. Chicago Police Will No Longer Respond to Burglaries or Robberies

For Rand it was, specifically, Attila and the Witch Doctor.

If advocating the abolition of taxes makes one irresponsible, then Ayn Rand was clearly the most irresponsible woman in her lifetime. Real responsibility comes from the inside? Good, then it should not be difficult to be against taxes, which are imposed from the outside.

As much as I disliked Bradford for publishing cranky articles under pseudonyms just to start a food fight, the libertarian movement lost a hero when he died. The now defunct Liberty magazine brought together the greatest minds in the movement and there has been nothing since to take its place. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is still operational. Last issue was December 2014.

Hello Francisco, this is some great material. It is easiest to see how the public firefighting department can be replaced with private contractors, and I can see now also the case for private courts. Thinking about it, they already exist today in the form of various private arbitration agreements. What would you say about national defense, however. Would people "voluntarily" contract with a private national defense provider, knowing that if their neighbours contract, they can easily free-ride instead? And if they wouldn't, do you not accept the necessity of a public service and a forced taxation to pay for it? Gustave de Molinari's On the Production of Security (1849) was the first description of how justice could be provided without the state. You will find it online here. The Market for Liberty, a presentation of anarcho-capitalism by admirers of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, was published 35 years ago by Linda and Morris Tannehill and is now available in a free PDF download. Click here.

The only example you've shown me is that you're not decent responsible and productive enough to prosper regardless of the government. That's why you complain about it so much... while the only sound you make is the ring of the leper's bell. Greg Here's Ayn Rand ringing the leper's bell: In view of what they hear from the experts, the people cannot be blamed for their ignorance and their helpless confusion. If an average housewife struggles with her incomprehensibly shrinking budget and sees a tycoon in a resplendent limousine, she might well think that just one of his diamond cuff links would solve all her problems. She has no way of knowing that if all the personal luxuries of all the tycoons were expropriated, it would not feed her family—and millions of other, similar families—for one week; and that the entire country would starve on the first morning of the week to follow . . . . How would she know it, if all the voices she hears are telling her that we must soak the rich? No one tells her that higher taxes imposed on the rich (and the semi-rich) will not come out of their consumption expenditures, but out of their investment capital (i.e., their savings); that such taxes will mean less investment, i.e., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices for scarcer goods; and that by the time the rich have to lower their standard of living, hers will be gone, along with her savings and her husband’s job—and no power in the world (no economic power) will be able to revive the dead industries (there will be no such power left). It bears repeating: "taxes will mean less investment, i.e., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices for scarcer goods." If the U.S. government had set out to create a depression in the high end boat building industry, it could not have done better than by placing a 10% tax on yachts. From the Broward County Sun-Sentinel: Nationally, yacht sales dipped from 7,500 in 1990 to 3,500 in 1992. There were 30,000 jobs lost nationwide, 8,000 in South Florida, where one in every four of America`s boats is built. The drop in sales and jobs was not the result of businesses failing to provide value for value, but of government suddenly tilting the playing field and placing domestic yacht factories at a great disadvantage vis–à–vis foreign yacht manufacturers and vis–à–vis sellers of other goods available in the marketplace. The private enterprise-killing effect of higher taxes is not something dreamed up by a university economist; it is an effect reported by entrepreneurs themselves. T.J. Rogers, the highly successful founder of Cypress Semiconductor and an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, explains how taxes on the rich kill investment: A couple of years ago, I decided to invest in my hometown of Oshkosh, Wis., by building a $1.2 million lakefront restaurant. That restaurant now permanently employs 65 people at an investment of $18,000 per job, a figure consistent with U.S. small businesses. If progressive taxation in the name of "fairness" had taken my "extra" $1.2 million and spent it on a government stimulus program, would 65 jobs have been created? You keep talking about personal responsibility. The surest way to make everyone 100% responsible for themselves is to abolish taxes. When that happens, virtually the only dollars held by individuals will be those they earned through work or obtained through persuasion. As long as we have taxation, millions of unproductive people will be able to count on the monopoly of force to provide them with a livelihood. That is not personal responsibility.

The lynch mob in The Ox-Bow Incident rushed to judgment, hanged three innocent men and thus committed a "serious offense, especially one in violation of morality." So did the legal executioners in the Jesse Tafero case.

Now that I have been revealed as a "whiner," you'll know in the future to skip my posts. They are likely to consist of extended whining about socialism, the welfare state, and centralized power.

Natural law exists independently of the state. crime: "3. A serious offense, especially one in violation of morality."

Yes I do, Frank. By your complaining victim's view of the government and your abysmal lack of understanding the most fundamental operational principles of business have you repeatedly revealed the values by which you live. We each have different views of government because the government treats each of us differently... and the government treats each of us differently because we each live by different values. I never do business with a people like you. You ring the leper's bell, Frank. Your claim that the government is robbing you only means that you'd rob me as you are robbed, because you aren't productive enough to prosper regardless of the government... ...and that's what only Americans can do... while you can't. Americans prosper regardless of the government. Greg As I have shown with examples, it is a fallacy to suppose that taxes are neutral and can in all cases be shifted forward to the consumer without negative consequences to the merchant. The fallacy was thoroughly refuted by Murray Rothbard in Man, Economy and State. The fallacy is certainly not one of the business principles that helped make the success of anti-tax entrepreneurs Roger Milliken and John Mackey or anti-tax celebrities Ayn Rand and Penn Jillette. If you do not like a "complaining victim's view of the government," you will certainly want to avoid an entire genre of literature that was written in the 17th and 18th centuries against government with unlimited powers. The most famous of these documents is a long list of complaints Thomas Jefferson wrote about the British Crown. It is known as "The Declaration of Independence." You repeat the charge that those who claim that the government is robbing them means that they would rob others as they are robbed. The measure of a theory is how well it can be supported with examples from the real world. You have presented not a scrap of evidence that critics of taxes are more likely than not to engage in robbery. Thus your theory is no more truthful than the old misconception that one side of the moon is always dark or that lightning never strikes the same place twice. So is your assertion that Americans prosper despite government. The depression of the boating industry in the 1990's immediately proves this wrong. So does the jailing of Michel Milken and Martha Stewart. Looking at the bigger picture, the higher the public debt, the less the economy can grow. This has been shown to be the case in numerous studies. A detailed discussion of how government weakens the economy can be found here. Yes, there is a fundamental difference here: between a person who draws conclusions from real world data and one whose theories have no basis in fact.

Hello Francisco. I originally started with Luca making that claim, too - "all taxation is extortion" but I had to tone that down a bit by now. I am not familiar with Ayn Rand enough, but even in Atlas Shrugged she defends some functions of the government, eg. Ragnar refuses to attack the navy because national defense is a proper function of the government. Clearly, this has to be paid for somehow. So, which forms of taxation would you consider just? Do you object only to income tax as it punishes ability but are fine with say VAT being demanded to cover the government's overhead? Because taxation is by definition a payment made under duress, it is a violation of an individual's rights and should be treated as a crime just as the government currently outlaws and punishes the actions of private robbers. In the same way that firefighting services can be privately contracted, so can justice services. I will refer you to an excellent paper by the scholar and frequent contributor to this forum, George H. Smith, "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market."

I on to you, Frank. I know what you're up to. All of your verbiage boils down to the need to blame (unjustly accuse) the government for your own personal failure, when it was your own free choice to be an employee instead of becoming a producer. So it's the consequences of your own choice which account for your view being so completely different from mine. I chose what you didn't, and became a producer by creating my own job instead of an employee who needs to be given a job... so naturally I don't think like you do. Because you think like an employee, you feel that you are entitled to security that you will never deserve. You never worked to earn it for yourself, because you felt entitled to someone else giving it to you. Greg You know precisely zero about my work, my finances or the quality of my life. So any statements you make in that regard serve as further evidence that your worldview is non-reality-based. When a debater does not respond to the substance of his adversary's position but focuses on what he regards as personal weaknesses, he has drifted into the orbit of irrelevancy and irrationality. My position in this debate is that taxation is a form of crime, is destructive of private wealth and is therefore harmful to productive individuals, businesses, and a free economy. There are approximately 120 million full time employees in the U.S. Where is the evidence that a majority of them hold views anything like the above? And, per your Post #103, whom did Ayn Rand rob?

How would a soldier in the U.S. Army cover higher taxes by raising his "prices"? What I am agreeing with Greg on is that shrink and other overhead is built into the cost of the product. It's a cost of doing business, same as labor cost or lawyers fees. The fact that you are trying to dispute that is surprising. Honestly I thought that you (and a few others on this forum) controlled a business but that sort of ignorance to the " cost of business" is hard to reconcile. I am not disputing the fact that taxes (or other forms of theft) may be part of the cost of doing business. What I am challenging is the Moralist's position that all losses due to crime can be shirted forward without consequences to the business. The sales declines and the job losses that followed the re-imposition of the luxury tax in the 1990's is evidence that taxes are not neutral but harmful. The fact that the Moralist sneers at "employees" and at the same time is happy to have tax-paid employees deployed on missions abroad to protect "U.S. interests" provides a measure of his inconsistency.

...only for poorly run companies with crappy business models. That's just a natural process of the weak getting weeded out while the strong thrive. Americans prosper in spite of government... only the failures whine about how "the man" is keeping them down. But you'll never understand this process because you produce nothing. You're just wordy intellectual theory like the tenured eunuchs of government funded academia. You have no real world business experience. The more you write, the more you're making it clear that you think like an employee. Employees think of "lost jobs" because they need to be given a job by someone else. In direct contrast to you, Americans create their own jobs. Something you'll never be able to do. Greg When the government suddenly imposes a tax on, say, boats, resulting in potential buyers canceling or postponing their orders or spending their money on something else, it is not the boat manufacturing industry that is poorly run; it is government. At one time, most turnpikes and schools in America were privately built and operated. There was nothing wrong with their business model. It wasn't market forces that ended these enterprises. Instead, the private operators were pushed aside by government, which by nature is expansive, monopolistic and destructive of private wealth. It is clear that no one has taken the time to explain to you the essential difference between market forces and government force. The former consists of goods and services being exchanged voluntarily. The later operates through violence or the threat thereof. There is nothing "natural" about taxation or the personal and commercial losses that result from it. Taxation is about as "natural" as rape at gunpoint. As for "the weak getting weeded out while the strong thrive," that is in a sense what happened in Soviet Russia. The "weak" who lived by voluntary exchange, like Ayn Rand's father, were "weeded out," while those who lived by brute force, like Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, thrived. The difference between seizing private wealth for the "public good" in the Soviet Union and the contemporary U.S. is a matter of degree, not kind. And, by the way per your Post #103, since Ayn Rand considered taxation robbery, whom did Ayn Rand rob? If advocating the radical reduction of and eventual abolition of taxation in America makes one an "employee," then quite obviously we need more of them. If you were truly interested in private jobs being created, you would advocate zero taxation. If you truly favored 100% personal responsibility, you would advocate zero taxation. Whom did Ayn Rand rob?