The Great Geolibertarian Offer
This is taken from a post I made on a blog of one of Jeremy's friends. He's somewhat of a modern liberal, as far as I can tell. Jeremy asked me to make a post over there to explain libertarian views on Social Security a little better, so I did. Below is my reply, and it seems to have impressed him somewhat.
Not all Libertarians are against the government doing some things beyond defense and justice. Lockean libertarians and anarcho-capitalists are against all forms of welfare, but geolibertarians (of which I am one) are not. However, there is a specific way it should be done.
First off, let's establish a couple philosophical starting points. (If you've debated with libertarians, you've probably heard them before but just bear with me, it'll go in a way you're not expecting.) Assume two things-you exist in time, and you own yourself. Because you own yourself, you own your past, present and future. If I kill you, I steal your future from you, and therefore murder would violate your natural rights. If I enslave you or somehow violate your liberty, I steal your present. If I take your money, which you worked for in the past, I steal your past. Therefore, you have natural, inherent rights to life, liberty and property.
There is a twist to this. Most libertarians would stop there, but there is more. You have one more right besides life, liberty and property-you have the right to an equal share of natural resources. You therefore have 1/280 millionth right to the natural resources (including land) of the United States of America, assuming you're an American citizen. However, since you most likely have no means to extract or process about any of those resources (including trees, oil, metals, gems, etc.) you are entitled to compensation for your share of these resources. This basically means that you have the natural right to a welfare check, paid by corporations that extract our natural resources.
Because nobody worked to create the wealth of natural resources, this means that property and resource extraction taxes are the only philosophically-sound taxes that can be levied. Taking the money collected from those taxes, one could pay for defense and the courts, and give the rest out as welfare checks, an equal share of the leftovers to every American citizen.
This money would be enough to provide for the basic material needs of every citizen, and do so primarily on the backs of the rich (who tend to be the main owners of stock in mining, oil, lumber and agricultural corporations), and so be one of the most progressive reforms ever undertaken by this country. It would also be eminently libertarian, as it calls for a free market unhindered by government and would do away with all other taxes.
With this system in place, the government wouldn't rob workers of their wages with an income tax. Personal privacy would be greatly increased with the repeal of an income tax as well, and since we already need deed registers in place to record who owns what property where, we could reduce the bureaucratic costs of tax collection to almost nothing compared to what it is now. And since you can't exactly hide a piece of land or an oil derrick, the rate of collection would spike.
Also, we wouldn't need a payroll tax to fund Social Security. We could actually do away with Social Security entirely-the old would be just as entitled to this money as everyone else, and they'd probably even be getting more money out of the deal anyway.
Just an example of how effective this would be-the state of Alaska has a system in place wherein taxes collected from oil companies operating in the state are distributed equally to every man, woman and child in that state. With JUST oil revenues being counted, each Alaskan citizen gets about $6000 a year from their government. Spread it nationwide and add in the lumber and mining industries as well as a flat-rate property tax on all land, and you could probably give each American $12,000 a year. The poverty line has recently been defined at about $19,000 a year, so without working every American would have their essential needs met without any frills. But those are only essential needs-meaning they'd still have plenty of incentive to work and add to the economy.
So if someone worked, they'd be able to afford a decent living, with enough money to save for a decent retirement as well.
Not all Libertarians are against the government doing some things beyond defense and justice. Lockean libertarians and anarcho-capitalists are against all forms of welfare, but geolibertarians (of which I am one) are not. However, there is a specific way it should be done.
First off, let's establish a couple philosophical starting points. (If you've debated with libertarians, you've probably heard them before but just bear with me, it'll go in a way you're not expecting.) Assume two things-you exist in time, and you own yourself. Because you own yourself, you own your past, present and future. If I kill you, I steal your future from you, and therefore murder would violate your natural rights. If I enslave you or somehow violate your liberty, I steal your present. If I take your money, which you worked for in the past, I steal your past. Therefore, you have natural, inherent rights to life, liberty and property.
There is a twist to this. Most libertarians would stop there, but there is more. You have one more right besides life, liberty and property-you have the right to an equal share of natural resources. You therefore have 1/280 millionth right to the natural resources (including land) of the United States of America, assuming you're an American citizen. However, since you most likely have no means to extract or process about any of those resources (including trees, oil, metals, gems, etc.) you are entitled to compensation for your share of these resources. This basically means that you have the natural right to a welfare check, paid by corporations that extract our natural resources.
Because nobody worked to create the wealth of natural resources, this means that property and resource extraction taxes are the only philosophically-sound taxes that can be levied. Taking the money collected from those taxes, one could pay for defense and the courts, and give the rest out as welfare checks, an equal share of the leftovers to every American citizen.
This money would be enough to provide for the basic material needs of every citizen, and do so primarily on the backs of the rich (who tend to be the main owners of stock in mining, oil, lumber and agricultural corporations), and so be one of the most progressive reforms ever undertaken by this country. It would also be eminently libertarian, as it calls for a free market unhindered by government and would do away with all other taxes.
With this system in place, the government wouldn't rob workers of their wages with an income tax. Personal privacy would be greatly increased with the repeal of an income tax as well, and since we already need deed registers in place to record who owns what property where, we could reduce the bureaucratic costs of tax collection to almost nothing compared to what it is now. And since you can't exactly hide a piece of land or an oil derrick, the rate of collection would spike.
Also, we wouldn't need a payroll tax to fund Social Security. We could actually do away with Social Security entirely-the old would be just as entitled to this money as everyone else, and they'd probably even be getting more money out of the deal anyway.
Just an example of how effective this would be-the state of Alaska has a system in place wherein taxes collected from oil companies operating in the state are distributed equally to every man, woman and child in that state. With JUST oil revenues being counted, each Alaskan citizen gets about $6000 a year from their government. Spread it nationwide and add in the lumber and mining industries as well as a flat-rate property tax on all land, and you could probably give each American $12,000 a year. The poverty line has recently been defined at about $19,000 a year, so without working every American would have their essential needs met without any frills. But those are only essential needs-meaning they'd still have plenty of incentive to work and add to the economy.
So if someone worked, they'd be able to afford a decent living, with enough money to save for a decent retirement as well.
posted by Kent Chamberlain at 2:06 PM
STUART RICHARDS
3 Comments:
Not all of socialism-how would the commons be used to justify public schools, or Social Security, or any of that?
Don't you think that the philosophical starting points here are a form of absolute morality that will not fit all situations? Not saying that it is a good thing to kill or steal or enslave, I am just saying that in this case one is starting off from a shaky philosophical base to say that certain actions are always bad.
I am a supporter of absolute morality/objective truth, however-subjective truth is self-refuting.
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