Oddbean new post about login | logout Sharing is voluntarily giving money or goods for something or someone you want to support. Theft is involuntarily having your money or goods taken from you for something or someone you may or may not have voluntarily supported, if asked. Which is taxation?
in a democracy you vote for parties based on their taxation and other policies, and the ones favoured by the majority of people (or whatever system is used) are implemented. what you see as being involuntary theft could also be seen as belonging/contributing to the society in which you live, based on democratic principles. in a participatory democracy you would participate even more directly in political decisions and policies that affect your life. of course no one wants to give up their hard-earned money to be spend ineffectively or on the wrong things. this is why citizen participation, in all its forms, is important.
Even so, it's only not theft if those who didn't vote for the one who won the election can opt out of paying for the policies they enact.
In other words, it's only not theft if you affirmatively voted for the policy itself, or it was a policy that the politician ran on when they campaigned and you voted for them. Otherwise, if you ddidn't bote for them or their policies, it is still involuntary seizure of your property and is therefore theft.
sounds like your problem is with democracy
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting over what they will have for dinner, so yes, I am not a fan. The form we have here in the US, a representative republic with democratic elections, is probably the least bad form there can be, and certainly a better form of government than any other that has yet been tried. None of that changes the fact that if someone decides not to pay taxes for shit they don't agree with, men with guns will eventually come and lock them up. That's not sharing. That's theft with an official veneer to make it acceptable to the masses. People should have the opportunity to voluntarily opt to support the things they believe government should be doing, and opt out of supporting the things they don't want it doing. Put the onus on the government to convince the people that something is worth them sending in their hard-earned money.
democracy is the worst form of government...except for all the others
Let's put it this way. If you are part of a small democracy in which you have an equal vote with 10 other people, and 9 of them vote against you to take your stuff, that doesn't make it any less theft because the process was democratic. This principle doesn't change because we're dealing with larger numbers. It's still the majority voting to take the property away from the minority.
yeah but you are leaving out why they are deciding this, and how you got the stuff in the first place. i would say it's a collective decision to allocate resources for the public good.
Mam, if you dont constent to this it shouldnt be applicable. No amount of 3 mens grunts and growls negates the other 2 mens autonomy. If you believe that the collective good should be upheld over that of the individual then you only destroy others property en lieu of this utopian vision of an arbitrary " collective" that doesnt actually exist and only then becomes one group of individuals deciding for all of the others what direction they go and whos stuff gets taken for the greater good.
Sorry for jumping in here without reading the whole conversation, but criticising someone for having a problem with democracy, as though democracy is a priori a good thing, is flawed. Democracy is an insidious scam. See this for what I mean, even if you don't agree... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VAX3JL_l90
This video is easily the most subversive ban-able media I’ve ever consumed and it should be mandatory viewing material. It’s the most concise indictment of modern “society” I’ve ever watched. Holy shit.
spread it
