Reconciling voluntarism and the state

[tiepolo]

So it occurred to me that it's possible to reconcile voluntarism with a (preferably minimalist) state. The objection is to being compelled to pay taxes with the threat of imprisonment. How about this: a system where you wouldn't be imprisoned for not paying tax. You would have the right to opt out of paying tax, but the cost would be that you could not use public services, not call the police, etc. 

 

This would seem the optimum arrangement. I think some government is needed. A nation is the common property of its citizens, and needs some management in the common interest. The roads etc. are the arteries of the nation. I don't like the idea of private police forces, private jails and private armies, either. The army and the police should be serving the country, not the free market. The arrangement just mentioned could allow for the possibility of some form of national health service, also.

[Mike Fleming]

The army and the police should be serving the country, not the free market. 

 

 

All of us make up the free market by our daily trading activities with other people.  So I'm not sure what your issue is with the army and the police not serving us.   What exactly do you mean by "the country"?  Are you referring to the people in the country, or are you referring to the actual land itself or the government?

 

As for your suggestion, I am largely fine with this.  I have said this before to many people. "You can keep your government as long as you release me from all obligations.  By the same token I can not take any of the benefits of government (what paltry few there are, govt workers aren't known for providing many goods or services that people want)".  It's relevant to note that I did not ever voluntarily choose these obligations, but instead had them thrust upon me at birth, much the way that the children of slaves automatically had slave obligations conferred on them at birth.  

 

Of course this means that there will have to be free market competition in all the services provided by the government so that I can contract with them.  I want protection and the benefits of law, I just don't want them provided to me by the government.  Oh, and I should have free passage across the border too without having to use a passport.  And I can still use the roads.  etc, etc

 

If you can do all that, basically if I can live a free life, then others are welcome to have a government lording it over them and paying their money toward it if that's what they want.  As long as I don't have to have anything to do with it.  

[cynicist]

So it occurred to me that it's possible to reconcile voluntarism with a (preferably minimalist) state. The objection is to being compelled to pay taxes with the threat of imprisonment. How about this: a system where you wouldn't be imprisoned for not paying tax. You would have the right to opt out of paying tax, but the cost would be that you could not use public services, not call the police, etc. 

 

If you can opt out then it's not a tax. Here you've described basically how any business works but then called it a 'state'. Which is it? There is no way to reconcile the state with voluntarism because they are opposites, just as force and voluntary participation are opposites.

 

This would seem the optimum arrangement. I think some government is needed. A nation is the common property of its citizens, and needs some management in the common interest. The roads etc. are the arteries of the nation. I don't like the idea of private police forces, private jails and private armies, either. The army and the police should be serving the country, not the free market. The arrangement just mentioned could allow for the possibility of some form of national health service, also.

 

Nations and countries are abstractions that do not exist in the real world so they cannot be property and people cannot serve them. It sounds like your fears are mostly around abuse of power/corruption coming from private entities, but do you really think things could get worse than police murdering people or federal employees being paid to surf the internet and do laundry? (while their bosses cover for them)

[tiepolo]

All of us make up the free market by our daily trading activities with other people.  So I'm not sure what your issue is with the army and the police not serving us.   What exactly do you mean by "the country"?  Are you referring to the people in the country, or are you referring to the actual land itself or the government?

 

As for your suggestion, I am largely fine with this.  I have said this before to many people. "You can keep your government as long as you release me from all obligations.  By the same token I can not take any of the benefits of government (what paltry few there are, govt workers aren't known for providing many goods or services that people want)".  It's relevant to note that I did not ever voluntarily choose these obligations, but instead had them thrust upon me at birth, much the way that the children of slaves automatically had slave obligations conferred on them at birth.  

 

Of course this means that there will have to be free market competition in all the services provided by the government so that I can contract with them.  I want protection and the benefits of law, I just don't want them provided to me by the government.  Oh, and I should have free passage across the border too without having to use a passport.  And I can still use the roads.  etc, etc

 

If you can do all that, basically if I can live a free life, then others are welcome to have a government lording it over them and paying their money toward it if that's what they want.  As long as I don't have to have anything to do with it.  

The people only make up the free market when they are doing business. They make up the nation at all times. The nation is the people, a nation is a people with common bonds, generally including things like language, culture, heritage, lineage, shared history, common identity, values and allegiance etc. The land exists to facilitate the nation, but nation can exist without land. The Jews called themselves the 'nation of Israel' even during the two thousand years when they were without sovereign territory, and when they were scattered through many lands.

 

There is a distinct difference between the nation and the people within a territory. Even legal citizenship doesn't confer membership of a nation in a deep sense. Hence it is annoying for a true, born and bred Briton to hear, say, bearded, pijama-wearing, wife-veiling Pakistani Muslim colonisers in Britain referred to as 'Britons', on news reports, (especially when said colonisers do something like go off and fight as Jihadis for Islamic State in Iraq, indicating their lack of allegiance to anything Britain stands for). Being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse.

 

Dissenting and dissociating from the nation-of-origin is fine, both culturally and financially, in my book. So you can reject a national identity without being physically booted out, and you can opt out of taxes, etc. but just don't expect any support by the rest of the nation. As for passage across borders, that depends on the neighbouring nation, doesn't it? Your right to enter a foreign land is outweighed by the rights of the foreigners to say who they want to let in. It's funny that few advocates of open borders have taken out the walls and fences separating their homes and gardens from those of their neighbours.

 

If the neighbouring country wants to let you in without a passport that is their prerogative. Again this is not something you can impose without believing in presumptuous positive rights. 

 

A nation is a real thing, it is a population with common allegiance, usually laying claim to a particular territory which they maintain in order to continue to exist as a people and to safeguard their self-determination, This is more tangible a thing than abstract ideas which people here would not call into question, like 'liberty' and 'morality' and 'virtue'. A nation owning a homeland is no more abstract a notion than three brothers each co-owning a single car.

 

The main problem is when nations are reduced to administrative entities, and citizens are merely considered those under the authority of a particular government. This is backwards. The state should be the political expression of an organic, unified nation, existing to serve the people's interests, and reflecting their character, and providing a unifying focus and a connection to history. Obviously the state should also be publicly accountable to root out corruption. 

[Slavik]

Can you start with definitions please. 

 

Nation - an arbitrary geographical region with people controlled by government

 

Government - bunch of people controlling other people 

 

If you boil it down, its all just people.  You can not have a rule of or by majority or minority, it becomes logically inconsistent.  A majority does not get special powers which makes their decrees any more moral by the simple fact of numbers.  In all of your propositions you are suggesting a monopoly on force, how is this monopoly going to sustain itself ?  How does a state enforce its monopoly on police force ?  Do you think they ask nicely?  How do you imagine a monopoly of force to be accountable for anything?  What you have suggested here, is pretty much the way USA has started, and look where its now.  The main point I am trying to get across though, is the fact that you do not like something is really not an argument.  You absolutely have to stay logically consistent. 

[tiepolo]

I defined a nation just now, and it was nothing like that. 

[luxfelix]

Why do you want to reconcile voluntarism and the state? 

[tiepolo]

I don't know if I do, I'm in a state of flux.

[GRosado]

So it occurred to me that it's possible to reconcile voluntarism with a (preferably minimalist) state. The objection is to being compelled to pay taxes with the threat of imprisonment. How about this: a system where you wouldn't be imprisoned for not paying tax. You would have the right to opt out of paying tax, but the cost would be that you could not use public services, not call the police, etc. This would seem the optimum arrangement. I think some government is needed. A nation is the common property of its citizens, and needs some management in the common interest. The roads etc. are the arteries of the nation. I don't like the idea of private police forces, private jails and private armies, either. The army and the police should be serving the country, not the free market. The arrangement just mentioned could allow for the possibility of some form of national health service, also.

That is basically Panarchism. That's something I wouldn't mind as long as there is some sort of guarantee to my right to opt out.

There is no way to reconcile the state with voluntarism because they are opposites

I think your misinterpreting him, I think he is equating Voluntary with Voluntarism. I don't think I put that correctly lol.

[higginsp]

"The people only make up the free market when they are doing business. They make up the nation at all times."

 

The distinction referenced by Robert Rak between abstractions and actual existents applies to both concepts you reference here: the free market and the nation. Neither of these are existing entities. Instead they are notions within our minds that 'exist' only conceptually -- they have no physical referent, but are rather terms describing alleged characteristics amongst a group of actual existents. Things like a 'common bond' or 'shared language' are not actually existing things; they are conceptual attributes. 

 

"A nation is a real thing, it is a population with common allegiance, usually laying claim to a particular territory which they maintain in order to continue to exist as a people and to safeguard their self-determination, This is more tangible a thing than abstract ideas which people here would not call into question, like 'liberty' and 'morality' and 'virtue'. A nation owning a homeland is no more abstract a notion than three brothers each co-owning a single car."

 

The same analysis applies here as well: a nation is not a real thing in the same sense that a physical object is (and for that matter, neither is a population). Both of these words are conceptual terms denoting a relationship between things (e.g. a relationship between individual people in an arbitrarily delineated geographical area), but the relationship itself similarly does not exist outside of our conceptual awareness. So it is not accurate to equate the ownership of a thing by individual people to the ownership of a thing by a concept referring to people as a conglomerated whole. There is a difference between the two, and you yourself have identified it: when you say that 3 people co-own a car you are saying that each of them as an individual has an ownership claim. It is not that they form some new 3-brother-based-entity that now has a new and unique ownership claim. Their ownership claim derives from their status as individuals. The error you commit is in assuming that the nation as a whole has an ownership claim akin to a 3-brother-based-entity. In other words, by comparing the ownership of a car by 3 individuals to the ownership of land by a conglomerated whole, you are tacitly concluding that the 3 individual brothers constitute a new entity apart from their status as individuals (in the same way that you explicitly argue that people with 'common bonds' living in an arbitrarily delineated geographical area constitute a new entity apart from their status as individuals). This is fallacious.

 

"Dissenting and dissociating from the nation-of-origin is fine, both culturally and financially, in my book. So you can reject a national identity without being physically booted out, and you can opt out of taxes, etc. but just don't expect any support by the rest of the nation. As for passage across borders, that depends on the neighbouring nation, doesn't it? Your right to enter a foreign land is outweighed by the rights of the foreigners to say who they want to let in. It's funny that few advocates of open borders have taken out the walls and fences separating their homes and gardens from those of their neighbors."

 

I don't think anyone here is opposed to the idea that associations should be voluntary, and that if you have not entered into a mutual association then you should not benefit from it unilaterally. That is a completely amenable proposition. The problem is if you think any particular organization ought to have a coercively enforced monopoly on any of these so-called public services. If that is the case, then you have stepped outside the realm of voluntarism.

 

As for immigration: it's important again to make sure you do not conflate the nation with individual people. The 'nation' as a concept referring to a conglomeration of arbitrarily delineated individuals is not embedded with some special moral status. Groups do not gain rights or enter into alternative moral categories by virtue of being collectives -- whether you call them groups, nations, clubs or whatever. The way immigration ought to be handled is voluntarily: according to the desires of the private land owners and potential arrangements made between them and new-comers wishing to relocate.

[Magnus]

Starbucks excludes me from their goods and services if I opt out of paying for them.  They do not threaten me with punishment if and when I do so. 

 

I find this to be an ideal arrangement. 

 

Whenever I have such a relationship with an organization, I would not call that a 'state' or a 'government.' 

[Phuein]

This is a non-argument, tiepolo. You're simply mixing up definitions, and instead, describing entirely separate ideas.

 

State. A nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.

 

Voluntary. Done, given, or acting of one's own free will.

 

Governments are strictly non-voluntary, by definition, because they govern people.

 

Govern. To rule over by right of authority.