Oddbean

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

None of anyone else's business, quite frankly. I treasure responsibity for myself. I don't need a gubment to force me to do things. In fact, that coercion makes me want to do those things less, and, in fact, makes me less capable of doing those things since taxation steals my ability to care for things.

Putting the controversial aspects to one side, Participatory Budgeting is a thing and should be supported as a transitional arrangement at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting Direct Democracy > Elective Oligarchy > Unelected Careerist Bureaucracy

I love sharing! I just don't like being forced to do it in accordance with the choices of a few well-armed people. One of the things that we tend to miss in these conversations is scale: in a tribe of people, you have enough close relationships - and enough accountability of the leaders - that taxation as sharing for the public good makes a lot of sense. In a system with millions of people and no accountability for those forcing the "sharing," it's theft. To make it worse, those same thieves can also print the money that you're forced (again, under threat of violence) to use, and your assets go up in price because they're debasing the money. We can discuss all those things you mentioned, and do that within a small enough community that we actually have a say in how the money is being spent and what taxation should look like.

Yes, scale is really important. I think a lot of the opportunities for resource distribution and coordination of public goods/services are at the local level. At the scale of the municipality, or even the neighborhood. I think the question to ask is: what are the requirements for a decent standard of living and how can a society be structured so that everyone has at least a minimum level from which to thrive. I would say some key elements for wellbeing include access to housing (shelter, water, sanitation, electricity etc), safety, education and healthcare.

At the local level, with everyone having full access to the decision making (and ability to adjust course as needed), that sounds lovely. How do you define safety, education and healthcare? Those in particular have changed meaning substantially over the last 100 years, so you'd need to get very clear on them if a community is going to agree to support them. E.g. for me access to healthcare means good food, water, and sunshine with a nearby emergency room in case of an accident, but in this age of corporate control over what is generally called public health, "healthcare" usually means access to pharmaceuticals.

yes it does 😊 i think these things are understood and defined differently in different contexts, and any collective decision-making requires trade-offs and compromise. i like the idea of expanding our notion of what these "rights" comprise and totally agree that corporate control over healthcare is a massive problem. moving away from this will actually mean healthier and happier societies.