Intervention - (Of nuance)
(Most of this is speculation, it may be correct, or it may be way off the mark)
The previous intervention was rhetorical. However the purpose of rhetoric was not to imply any contradiction and hence invalidate libertarianism, but to emphasize the nuance involved in the personal freedom argument. Now at risk of repeating, I am not well versed with libertarianism and hence this is speculation.
Now taxation as a rule involves coercion by state, with many people paying taxes only to avoid punishment by state, some of course even risking the punishment by evading tax. Hence taxation as policy does suppress and restrict personal freedom. Even then taxation doesn't introduce contradiction in libertarianism.
Now libertarianism comes in hazaar flavours (which is one of the reasons that I am not committing), however following statements holds true for most of the case.
"State will not restrict personal freedom of individual(s), (which includes transaction between two individuals) unless any non-consenting party is affected adversely as result of action of the concerned individual. "
From the above definition one may be tempted to conclude that taxation is unreasonable restriction of freedom by state. However this is not true, and not very hard to see why.
State collects tax to fund its activities and organization, without tax state can not exist.
But existence of state is assumed as given in the above definition of libertarianism.
This essentially implies that even with libertarianism while individual can not be stopped by state from exercising his freedom, his submitting to the authority of state is not subject to his agreement, he is coerced to accept the authority .
This means that personal freedom is circumscribed. This of course follows from definition of state and social contract.
I do admit that I am being Captain Obvious. Unfortunately people seem to miss obvious nowadays and increasingly consider Personal freedom to be either axiom to be used in deductive logic or holy grail of induhvidualism. It is nothing of sort.
8 comments:
May I know who this is???
My guesses:-
1. Mardi aka Gaurav Chaturvedi
KGP:
1. Gaurav Bhatnagar
2. Gaurav Srivastava
3. Gaurav Munjal
Work:
1. Gaurav Bansal
Mayuresh,
You have enumerated all the Gauravs you ever encountered, come on you can certainly do better :-)
Gaurav
Au contraire!
I have met anarcho-capitalists who have persuaded me that even if there was absolutely no tax, the state would run pretty effectively, just like a voluntary army works. I'm not going to provide the complete argument here. Since you claimed that you dont know too much about libertarianism, this is maybe an opportunity for you to read up on the anarcho-capitalist argument in favor of such seemingly bizarre things as private defence, zero taxation etc. Its hard to fathom, perhaps will never be applied, but nonetheless theoretically it seems sound to me. I hope you check them out!
Ooops, forgot one......
I guess it is Santra......
If not, I give up....
Tushar,
I am somewhat familiar, if not well versed with that line of argument, I very much doubt it is possible to subject state to individual scrutiny, it will never happen. I guess I will write on this at some later date.
As aside do read this and this
Mayuresh,
I think you can narrow down the list after all you are thrice born now :-)
Added you as a friend on Orkut :)
Actually anarcho-capitalism wants to do away with state altogether, so that the contradiction you mentioned doesn't arise - You can consult the wikipedia article on anarcho-capitalism or the faq link there. Minarchist libertarians are not altogether opposed to taxation on the other hand.
P. S. : No dude, I am not all that close to writing my thesis.
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