3.
If you have the right to speak for you, why doesn’t this right apply equally to everyone else?

4.
If there is a universal right of self-ownership, how is this consistent with your idea that rights are what the majority says they are?

Either way you are involved in hopeless self-contradiction, and that disposes of your entire argument.

However just to show that the rest of your argument is invalid:

5.
You failed to distinguish slavery from taxation because you applied a double standard.

You ask whether slavery is justified by whether the slaves would be better off if they were free, but whether tax is justified by whether the tax-payers would be better off without the service funded by tax.

To apply the same standard to slaves as you apply to taxpayers, you would have to ask whether the slaves would be better off without water.

6.
To apply the same standard to taxpayers as you apply to slaves you’d have to ask whether the taxpayers would be better off being free not to pay the tax (and buying the service voluntarily if they wanted it).

Obviously the taxpayers consider themselves worse off paying tax, or compulsion wouldn’t be necessary.

So again you lose the argument either way.

7.
You have simply failed to consider why services should not be funded voluntarily, which is what’s in issue.

If people aren’t willing to pay voluntarily for the services they want, they have no moral right to force other people to toil under compulsion for their own benefit, pleading how beneficial to their victims it is. This resolves both the ethical question of distinguishing slavery from taxation, and the utilitarian question about which services should be provided.

On the other hand, just because a service is provided by compulsion, doesn’t mean that that’s the only way to provide it, nor that it’s better funded that way, nor even that the state provides it passably well.

Thus again your argument is completely invalid from start to finish.

8.
You still haven’t explained why threatening to lock people in a cage is good or just as a basis of social action in the first place, and therefore you haven’t shown ethical reason why any given service should be provided by government.

9.
Your argument as to infrastructure provides no justification of government services that are not infrastructure.

10.
You don’t define how infrastructure is distinguished from other capital goods not to be provided by government.

How?

11.
> “Are the slaves better off if they were free?
> Are the taxpayers better off if the services their taxes went to were terminated?”
> Both would be for the slaves and taxpayers to decide, respectively.”

How can you say the decision whether slaves would be better off being free, is “for the slaves to decide”? It’s not for the slaves to decide, that’s the whole point!

> “Ignoring that that the slaves wouldn't actually have a say…”?
How can you ignore that? That’s what the bloody issue is!

So it’s either moral nonsense, or….

“The taxpayers are faced with a choice of maintaining the service with their money, or ending it and saving the money.”

It is just as illegitimate to confuse a taxpayer with the whole electorate, as it would be to confuse a slave with the whole society of which he is a part. You’re ignoring the fact that taxation intrinsically sets up two different classes – net tax-payers and net-tax consumers – which must be distinguished to resolve the moral issues, in exactly the same way as, under slavery, the slaves must be ethically distinguished from those who consume their coerced product.

Even if the whole society, slaves and non-slaves, were to vote on whether to approve slavery, and the majority vote went against the slaves, would that make slavery okay, would it?

Again, even if only the slaves voted, and a majority voted for slavery, are you saying that that would justify enslaving the minority of slaves who voted against it? It's ridiculous moral confusion.

So ... how is that different from taxation?

12.
You repeat the furphy about tax being voluntary contributions, which is simply false, both in fact and law. Taxes are a compulsory exaction by definition.

Repeating errors and fallacies doesn’t make them true.

13.
“… hyperbole … inane ...”

Fallacious; irrelevant.

14.
“So now you are saying that IF any form of service COULD hypothetically be staffed with slaves, it is no longer justified even when it actually isn't?”

Dishonestly misrepresenting me makes your argument worse, not better.

The problem is not that I don’t understand the difference between taxation and slavery, it’s that you can’t distinguish the relevant similarities.

15.
It is no answer to say everyone who doesn’t like it can quit society. People are not just a herd of chattels belonging to the most aggressive party, which is all your argument amounts to.

16.
“And again, you actually did not address the points.”

I addressed all the points, and you are lying in suggesting I didn’t; else name them.

Meg
Notice how the argument that human rights are what states define them as, just keeps degenerating into “might is right”, and cannot be maintained without reliance on a welter of fallacies?

But when you think about it, how could it be otherwise? How could it not be problematic for states – of all institutions the most notoriously belligerent and homicidal – to be presumptively selfless and competent and good to administer human rights and ethical standards? It’s a laughable proposition. As for the UN, it’s only an association of these problematic associations, even less accountable than its member states – all we need to know about the UN is that they appointed Gadaffi as their chair of human rights!

Political states in their very nature are based on double standards and the violation of the foundational human right from which all others follow. Any discussion of human rights by states can only involve moral and intellectual confusion which your article critiques, but does not escape.

The only way to defend any meaningful sense of human rights is by a radical critique of the state.

Well, Peter Hume, you have given us much to chew on, though we'd rather not.

In your perfect world the populace as a whole would determine the kind of world they would like to have, and how it should be paid for. You could have pay as you go, paying to travel on public transport, for going to public school or public hospital, but these would still be established and run from the public purse. Alternatively, you could rely on the private sector, in which case those in the bush would have very little. Either way the means (money in our archaic system) has to come from somewhere - from private sector industry, gouging the workers to make the profits to invest only in profitable services; or you have a lot of public infrastructure and workers with reasonable pay, and both business and workers contributing to the public purse. Or you could live off the land in the bush - but there ain't much of that left anyway.

So, you would like to live in security, with good services, and plenty of good well paying work. You will need a vibrant industrial society, a capable police service, and capable defence force so you are secure and nobody is going to come in and take it all away from you.

As for slavery, it has been outlawed - still happens in some areas, but is still against the law. (Or do you want to do away with laws, police, judiciary and legal services too?)

To have a vibrant society all should contribute in some way - either voluntary labour or monetary contribution. Everyone pays for education, even those who don't have children, because everyone's future lifestyle depends on the youth coming through. Everyone pays for services to be established, as being in the common interest.

Your world of non-tax is a pipe-dream, non-government is called anarchy, everyting for free is called communism, and it's free in name only. Would you be willing to give up your rights and freedoms, and if so, for what?

Hume it truly amazes me how silly you are willing to go to TRY to make a strawman.

Even to go so far as to insinuate I would support slavery because I point out that there is no such thing as a universal right.

Simply put, a right is something a single society regards as a basic legally-enforced entitlement of all people; with different societies having different ideas of what a 'right' is, and which rights take higher precedence than others.

Now, you try to avoid the point of my last post, and that is this;

A Public service is exactly like a corporation, where citizenship = shareholder status. If the shareholders feel the service is not justified to exist and drain company resources, they can vote to get rid of it. There are no 'classes'- every shareholder has an equal say, equally stands to benefit by that service being there, and an equal obligation to pay its upkeep if they chose to retain it, and equally stand to convince everyone else why it should stay or go;

The very reason it's not voluntary to NOT pay for it (as it currently exists) without a majority vote is specifically to AVERT the creation of a class of spongers (the very thing you were afraid of)- people enjoying and mooching off the services, but not helping to maintain them.

Your right to not pay taxes for the services you are enjoying is as strong as your right to break any other law because you personally don't feel like it.

Again, so long as you insist on being a part of society, and have yet to convince anyone why you are not a beneficiary to be exempt from paying taxes, you have no case.

Hazza
You haven’t answered the numbered questions which disprove you, because you know you’ll display that they disprove you.

As for your latest repetition of the fallacies I have repeatedly disproved, unfortunately repeating falsehoods doesn’t make them true. Society isn’t a decision-making entity. The state isn’t society. Society isn’t the state. People aren’t state property.

“Simply put, a right is something a single society regards as a basic legally-enforced entitlement of all people; with different societies having different ideas of what a 'right' is, and which rights take higher precedence than others.”

And the way you judge whether “a society” recognizes a right is whether *the state* does? So in other words, there is no such thing as a universal right to be free of slavery. Rights are whatever states say they are. Thank you for openly conceding your complete moral bankruptcy, and moral disqualification to participate in a discussion about human rights.

Anyway lots of rights are not an entitlement of “all people”, e.g. the dole, the pension, the tax-free threshold, workers compensation, refugee status, so even in your own terms, your definition is completely wrong.

“Even to go so far as to insinuate I would support slavery because I point out that there is no such thing as a universal right.”

But hang on. You have no objection on ethical principle if “a society” regards holding slaves as a “right”. Well? Societies have regarded slave-holding as a right in many more places and times than not. I keep asking you on what principle you hold against it. And you keep not answering, or confirming that you agree with their theory of human rights! So don’t complain against me when I point it out!

“A Public service is exactly like a corporation, where citizenship = shareholder status.”
A corporation’s revenues are paid *voluntarily*; a public – (translation: government) service’s revenues are from tax – *involuntarily*. A shareholder has voting rights in proportion to his capital contribution; a voter has an equal right regardless of his capital contribution. A shareholder can sell his share; a voter cannot.

(cont.)