Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[GE Morton]

If you buy something at a store, you consent to pay the store both the price it charges and the sales tax. That seems consensual to me.

Ah. Then if a mugger sticks a gun in your ribs and says, "Your money or your life," and you hand over the money, then you've consented to the robbery. Right?

An action taken or an assent secured under some sort of duress does not count as "consent."

Property is non consensual in general. It gives one person non-consensual control over other people. Taxes alleviate some of that non consensual control.

Well, yes, property is non-consensual. Consent doesn't apply to property; it applies to takings, by moral agents, of something belonging to another moral agent, or otherwise inflicting some injury or loss upon him. But no one's consent is necessary for taking something belonging to no one else. Nor do I need the consent of the thief if I prevent him from taking my property.

[Gertie]

When you walk out of your home onto the road and pavement other people paid for with their taxes do you have to get each of their consent first? Then ask all the other people in the shop/town/world/arbitrary location who might want that specific banana themselves for their consent before you take it? If you do so then are you enslaved by them?

No because that would be a stupid way of understanding the necessary structural give and take involved in living in a society. Unless you're an amoral anarchist who doesn't believe in consent, in which case you are free to take the banana and hope nobody uses force to make you pay for it. Or if you live in an anarchist society where there is no policing, rules, government or morality, then you can fight anyone else willing to fight for the banana. In which case, good luck with that, but I don't consent to living like that.

Like everybody else, our history doesn't leave such anarchists much chance to set up their own societies today, other people have already grabbed the useful land and organised their societies, which we're now born into. And they realised that fighting for every banana they want is not how they wanted to live. Thankfully. But I'd have no objection to such amoral anarchist groups being given uninhabited land in principle, and starting their desired society from scratch. Building their own roads, power generators, shelters, creating their own medicines, growing their own food, teaching themselves all those skills, etc and living how they want. As long as they don't steal the electricity network, food, roads, schools, health services, technology, infrastructure, etc I've happily paid for with my taxes and other means. I suspect banana laws would eventually arise, along with chipping in together for mutual benefit and larger scale projects - if they haven't already killed each other first.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Good_Egg,

Thank you for your reply!

It's not the hard to get large groups to give unanimous affirmative consent via affirmatively and freely consented to written agreements, such as the shareholders of a company or corporation using a board of directors and/or CEO to represent them via written bylaws that are affirmatively agreed to in writing without duress at the time a person of legal age chooses to become a member or shareholder.

Hi Scott,

You'll have come across websites that can't be accessed without clicking a button that says "I Agree" (to the Terms & Conditions).

And also websites that dispense with the button, but merely show you a sentence that says "by continuing to use this site you agree to the terms and conditions" .

Would you consider those mechanisms to comprise obtaining consent ?

South Park had a hilarious episode that I love about that, titled "HumancentiPad". It's episode 1 of season 15. It's even funnier if you are familiar with the gross movie, "The Human Centipede", which I unfortunately had the displeasure of watching.

In a specific situation, it depends on the exact details of the case, and isn't always black-and-white. The same thing happens with sex, in that many times after sex a couple will disagree about whether it was consensual. It really represent a philosophical disagreement, but rather one about people giving different accounts of what actually happening in a very specific interaction. It's a job for a private eye or Sherlock Holmes himself, not a philosopher.

Let's look at the example with in-store grape-eating that I gave earlier in this thread:

Nonetheless, to fix up the grocery store example to get it to involve consent somehow, we could imagine there is a sign out front that says "if you eat grapes without paying, you will owe us 10x the retail cost of the grapes you eat", and then one could indeed argue that a grape-eater consented to paying the excessive fee by entering the store. Then if the grape-eater can only afford to pay the retail cost of the grapes, but not the inflated fee for eating them in-store, it would raise the question of putting the grape-eater in prison. It's similar to when little kids buy non-refundable digital upgrades on kid games on their parents' mobile phones, but the parents technically affirmatively consented in writing to paying for such non-refundable purchases, even accidental ones by children, when they agreed to terms and conditions on the device or such.

For Sherlock Holmes investigating a specific dispute between a specific store and a specific grape-eating patron, all sorts of details could factor into the allegation that the grape-eater allegedly consented to paying the 10x inflated price of the grapes, rather than merely the regular sticker price. If for some reason I was personally charged with investigated that dispute and deciding who is right (e.g. if they ended up on Judge Judy and I was Judge Judy), some questions I might ask would be: How noticeable was the sign, such as in terms of its size, color, and proximity to the entrance? Did the grape-reader notice and read the sign? Would a typical person on average notice and read the sign before entering? Can we get an inkling or evidence of the store's actual intent? Did the store put up the sign and come up with the 10x penalty payment because they really don't want people to eat grapes in the store, or are they sneakily putting it and purposing obscuring it because they want people to eat the grapes without realizing about the sneaky fee so the store can use it as an excuse to charge an absurdly high hidden fee under the dubious claim it's been consented to.

Frankly, I'd be less concerned about mere consent in that scenario, and more interested in whether it was a case of outright dishonest fraud, similar to lying to a person by telling them a cup of alleged coffee is just coffee when really it is a mixture of coffee and cyanide. If the store's intent was or is to deceive, then they were likely the one stealing, not the grape-eater.

Determining what actually happened in a situation isn't always black-and-white, not because consent is philosophically complicated (it's not) but because people lie and multiple different scenarios can match the same generic description. In analogy, imagine you ask me, "A man and a woman had sex last night, but today the man says he didn't consent; was it consensual?" I can say it's not black-and-white, but really it's not that philosophically it isn't black-and-white, but rather simply an aspect of the fact that people lie, that not all details can be known, and that either the description provided is insufficient.

If on the vast spectrum between utter obvious non-consensuality and total utter clear-cut affirmative consent, taxes by big non-local governments is roughly black, and what my girlfriend and I happily do when nobody's looking is white, and these issues of seemingly possibly purposely obscured clauses in hidden fine-print might be various shades of gray. How gray depends in part on all sorts of factors that very from specific case to specific case such as whether the document was actually read, and what effort the person seemingly hiding the written clauses in the document put towards getting it read or not, and whether the person putting the clauses in the document genuinely wanted the signer to read those clauses.

In other words, it's clearly way closer to being consensual than taxes, even if in a sense it still isn't totally and fully consensual in terms of full total clear-cut affirmative consent. I can hold my liqueur pretty well, but technically if I had one glass of wine before my girlfriend and I have sex, one could argue it wasn't quite as consensual as 100% sober sex since I did have that glass of wine.

Taxes aren't like that. Taxes are totally and utterly non-consensual. That is, at least, in regard to taxes by huge non-local governments, such as the huge Roman empire in its day or the British or Spanish monarchies, especially in colonial times, or in terms of the taxes that funded Hitler's government.

Unless, of course, one wants to make the argument that everyone who paid taxes to the German government during Nazi Germany did so consensually, which is an argument I'd be very interested to hear.

Is there a morally significant difference between them ?

I don't understand this question. I don't believe in morality. You could just as well ask me which one tastes better to unicorns.

As I understand it, the argument for taxation is that the core services of government [...]

There is no argument for or against taxes in this thread.

We are not discussing or arguing in support of or against taxes in this thread.

We are simply discussing whether taxation is consensual or not.

Specifically, we are talking about whether taxation by big non-local governments is consensual or not.

The consensus in the thread seems to be overwhelming that we all agree that taxes are clearly not consensual.

So that living in a state without consenting to pay one's share of the costs of defence is akin to going into a supermarket and eating one of the bananas on display and then protesting that one has not consented to pay for the banana. It may be technically correct in that no consent form has been signed, and no explicit terms and conditions of entry to the supermarket have been posted... But the banana has been consumed.

That analogy has already been proposed by another poster and (IMO) has already been utterly refuted.

The short version of is that it is clearly a false analogy. A non-false analogy would be that you put a gun to my head, ordered me to eat a banana against my will without my consent, and then demanded I pay you money to cover the cost of the banana, and possibly accused me of being a thieving shoplifter for not paying for the banana you forced me to eat against my will. Moreover, eating a banana at a grocery store or taking it out of the grocery store without paying has essentially nothing to do with consent; it's merely stealing. If you come to my house and take my stuff, it's not a matter of you consenting to pay for my stuff and then failing to do it or such. It's simply stealing. Consent really isn't a factor at all one way or the other in such a simple straight-forward case of stealing. You don't need to consent to not shoplift/steal for shoplifting/stealing to be shoplifting/stealing.

Here is the longer full reply I gave when the same false analogy of shoplifting was proposed earlier in the thread:

I agree with you that the government has NOT obtained consent from each and every citizen.

[...]

If you shoplift instead of paying, that's you violating the agreement you consented to. Thus going to jail is reasonable.

#1 -- The topic and question is not whether "going to jail is reasonable" whatever that means. You might think using non-consensual non-defensive violence is reasonable. That's not the topic. The topic is whether it is consensual, not whether it is reasonable.

#2 -- One doesn't consent to not stealing when one enters a grocery store because one doesn't need to. I don't need you to consent to not steal from me in any circumstance for you to be a stealer who I want charged with stealing if you steal from me. People don't have to consent to not steal (or rape or murder). Consent is not really involved in your shoplifting example at all. If I let you in my house, that doesn't mean I thereby give you permission to murder me or take my stuff from my house (i.e. steal from me), and thus I don't need you to consent to not do that. If while in my house, you want to buy something from me, that's a transaction of its own which is what transfers the property consensually such that then you can take it with you when you leave without it being stealing. Most likely, the consensual transaction will be reflected on a paper receipt of some kind. Nonetheless, to fix up the grocery store example to get it to involve consent somehow, we could imagine there is a sign out front that says "if you eat grapes without paying, you will owe us 10x the retail cost of the grapes you eat", and then one could indeed argue that a grape-eater consented to paying the excessive fee by entering the store. Then if the grape-eater can only afford to pay the retail cost of the grapes, but not the inflated fee for eating them in-store, it would raise the question of putting the grape-eater in prison. It's similar to when little kids buy non-refundable digital upgrades on kid games on their parents' mobile phones, but the parents technically affirmatively consented in writing to paying for such non-refundable purchases, even accidental ones by children, when they agreed to terms and conditions on the device or such.

#3 -- The shoplifting analogy appears to be a false analogy, since (according to you, ex hypothesi) the shoplifter allegedly consented to something upon entering (i.e. the grocery store obtains consent about something from each and every person who enters somehow), but as you say, "the government has NOT obtained consent from each and every citizen."

An accurate analogy would need to involve a group of people who are being charged money or forced to do labor or forced to do sexual acts or such, in which at least some of the people have clearly absolutely not consented.

A non-false analogy might instead be something like this: 7 people are on a boat in the ocean. 1 person says he wants to have a 7-way orgy. 4 others say, "oh that sounds great, let's do it." 2 say they don't want to. Most of the other 5 say they don't want to do it if it's only 5 people, so one of them pulls a gun on the other 2. The gun-wielder says, "you have to do our orgy because we want to have a 7-person orgy not a 5-person orgy. If you don't join us for a 7-way orgy, I'll shoot you." 1 of the 2 verbally protests, "I don't want to do it. I don't consent. I never agreed to that. I never agreed to go along with what the majority vote on this boat say." The gun-wielder says, "this is not rape because might makes right, and I'm governing you, so, via consent of the governed, you consent." The gun-wielder shoots him. Did the shooting victim consent to being shot?

You could probably re-write that to be about buying groceries instead of having group sex, but whether or not it's consensual would be the same.

I think it would clearly not be consensual. What about you?

Thank you,
Scott

[Ecurb]

If you buy something at a store, you consent to pay the store both the price it charges and the sales tax. That seems consensual to me.

Ah. Then if a mugger sticks a gun in your ribs and says, "Your money or your life," and you hand over the money, then you've consented to the robbery. Right?

An action taken or an assent secured under some sort of duress does not count as "consent."

Property is non consensual in general. It gives one person non-consensual control over other people. Taxes alleviate some of that non consensual control.

Well, yes, property is non-consensual. Consent doesn't apply to property; it applies to takings, by moral agents, of something belonging to another moral agent, or otherwise inflicting some injury or loss upon him. But no one's consent is necessary for taking something belonging to no one else. Nor do I need the consent of the thief if I prevent him from taking my property.

This is nonsense. Nobody is threatening you if you decide not to buy something, whether a product at a store, or a house. There is no duress involved. You can either buy it, or go without it, or, perhaps, make it yourself. It is not at all equivalent to being threatened with a gun.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Ecurb,

Thank you for your reply!

If you buy something at a store, you consent to pay the store both the price it charges and the sales tax. That seems consensual to me.

The store is (mostly merely symbolically) passing on the tax to the consumer, and then the consumer would arguably in some sense be consenting to pay the store by choosing to pay the amount the store is charging which includes a line item for the surcharge for the taxes they paid.

You've added an extra step to the consideration, but it doesn't actually change the consensuality of the taxes, since it becomes about whether the store themselves is paying it consensually.

In analogy, it's like I go rob the store at gunpoint every few days taking a few thousand dollars from them.

So then the store realizes they will go out of business if they don't recoup their losses from my robberies, so then they add a "robbery surcharge" to each paying customer's bill, that averages out to ultimately make you and the other paying customers pay them back for what I rob from them.

Depending on the exact circumstances, you could reasonably say the money you give the store is consensual, with your argument being that the store isn't robbing/taxing you, but rather I'm robbing/taxing the store.

Another analogy would be if I calculate how much I pay in income taxes each year to the USA government, and then divide that number by the amount of active people on the Philosophy Forums, and then required you to pay it to keep using these Philosophy Forums. If you paid my tax bill for me, is it consensual? You could say that you are paying me consensually, but it doesn't change the fact that the tax itself was not.


Thank you,
Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

When you walk out of your home onto the road and pavement other people paid for with their taxes do you have to get each of their consent first?

The roads in most of the condo communities and apartment complexes around here are private, and you do need some form of consent to be on them, lest you be guilty of trespassing.

The rest generally aren't built by or paid for by a big non-local government.

Let's stay on topic.

The topic is this: Is taxation by big non-local governments non-consensual or consensual?

Very specific definitions for "big" and "non-local" are available in the OP.

To supplement those precise philosophical definitions, here are some specific real life examples:

- Taxes paid to the government of the Roman Empire during its peak.

- Taxes paid to the British or Spanish monarchies during the peak of colonialism.

- Taxes paid to the German government before, during, and after Hitler's election.


Were those consensual?


I've often heard the saying, "All roads lead to Rome."

[GE Morton]

If you buy something at a store, you consent to pay the store both the price it charges and the sales tax. That seems consensual to me.

Ah. Then if a mugger sticks a gun in your ribs and says, "Your money or your life," and you hand over the money, then you've consented to the robbery. Right?

An action taken or an assent secured under some sort of duress does not count as "consent."

Property is non consensual in general. It gives one person non-consensual control over other people. Taxes alleviate some of that non consensual control.

Well, yes, property is non-consensual. Consent doesn't apply to property; it applies to takings, by moral agents, of something belonging to another moral agent, or otherwise inflicting some injury or loss upon him. But no one's consent is necessary for taking something belonging to no one else. Nor do I need the consent of the thief if I prevent him from taking my property.

This is nonsense. Nobody is threatening you if you decide not to buy something, whether a product at a store, or a house. There is no duress involved. You can either buy it, or go without it, or, perhaps, make it yourself. It is not at all equivalent to being threatened with a gun.

There certainly is duress involved --- the merchant is threatened with fines, revocation of his business license, etc., if he refuses to collect the tax. So he passes that duress on to you, the customer, leaving you with the choice of paying or doing without. The latter counts as an injury.

[Ecurb]

Hi, Ecurb,

Thank you for your reply!

If you buy something at a store, you consent to pay the store both the price it charges and the sales tax. That seems consensual to me.

The store is (mostly merely symbolically) passing on the tax to the consumer, and then the consumer would arguably in some sense be consenting to pay the store by choosing to pay the amount the store is charging which includes a line item for the surcharge for the taxes they paid.

You've added an extra step to the consideration, but it doesn't actually change the consensuality of the taxes, since it becomes about whether the store themselves is paying it consensually.

In analogy, it's like I go rob the store at gunpoint every few days taking a few thousand dollars from them.

So then the store realizes they will go out of business if they don't recoup their losses from my robberies, so then they add a "robbery surcharge" to each paying customer's bill, that averages out to ultimately make you and the other paying customers pay them back for what I rob from them.

Depending on the exact circumstances, you could reasonably say the money you give the store is consensual, with your argument being that the store isn't robbing/taxing you, but rather I'm robbing/taxing the store.

Another analogy would be if I calculate how much I pay in income taxes each year to the USA government, and then divide that number by the amount of active people on the Philosophy Forums, and then required you to pay it to keep using these Philosophy Forums. If you paid my tax bill for me, is it consensual? You could say that you are paying me consensually, but it doesn't change the fact that the tax itself was not.


Thank you,
Scott

Of course it's not quite as simple as my previous post suggested. Nonetheless, if the tax paying citizen is fully aware that he is contractually obligated to pay taxes if he buys things, or earns an inccome in government regulated industry, he has to some extent consented to pay the tax. It is true, of course, that going off the grid and avoiding taxes isn't so easy. But it is also true that avoiding predatory control by the "owners" of the means of production isn't so easy, either. Both are somewhat coersive. So if our economic system is to be run on the basis of government enforced coersion (as is clearly the case given property law, enforced with the billy clubs and gaols of the government)), it seems quibbling to complain about taxation, which is one of many slightly coersive features of capitalism and socialism. At least we have some say in how we will be taxed, and whence the taxes will go. What influence have we over the captains of industry from whom many of us must seek employment.

Of course if we don't want to work for corporate America, we can go off the grid and avoid taxes. If we work for the corporations that can exist only with the legal and forceful support of the government, we deserve to pay taxes. Fortunately, the owners of the means of production get the same per-person votes as everyone else. so although they may support only those government expenditures of which they approve, the elected representatives sometimes collect money to spend on the needs and desires of the electorate, as well they should.

[Ecurb]

There certainly is duress involved --- the merchant is threatened with fines, revocation of his business license, etc., if he refuses to collect the tax. So he passes that duress on to you, the customer, leaving you with the choice of paying or doing without. The latter counts as an injury.

The merchant can prosecute shop lifters, prevent vandals from looting his store, and sell goods using legal tender only through the largesse and protection of the state. He is no more coersed than his customers. He need not take advantage of the laws and police protection without which his business could not exist. He can also go off the grid. But he contracts to pay a certain amount in taxes for the privilidge of the State's protection.

This is all obvious. The only excuse for your arguments is that you see property as somehow extra-legal and extra-governmental. Once you admit that property rights are merely contractual, then clearly any contract (including the need to pay taxes) into which the proprietor enters is (you guessed it) voluntary.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Ecurb,

Thank you for your newest reply!

If you buy something at a store, you consent to pay the store both the price it charges and the sales tax. That seems consensual to me.

You've added an extra step to the consideration, but it doesn't actually change the consensuality of the taxes, since it becomes about whether the store themselves is paying it consensually.

In analogy, it's like I go rob the store at gunpoint every few days taking a few thousand dollars from them.

So then the store realizes they will go out of business if they don't recoup their losses from my robberies, so then they add a "robbery surcharge" to each paying customer's bill, that averages out to ultimately make you and the other paying customers pay them back for what I rob from them.

Depending on the exact circumstances, you could reasonably say the money you give the store is consensual, with your argument being that the store isn't robbing/taxing you, but rather I'm robbing/taxing the store.

[Emphasis added.]

Of course it's not quite as simple as my previous post suggested. Nonetheless, if the tax paying citizen is fully aware that he is contractually obligated to pay taxes if he buys things, or earns an inccome in government regulated industry, he has to some extent consented to pay the tax.

It's not that it's less simple. It's quite simple: It's simply not consensual at all in the slightest, as shown by the example with me robbing the grocery store at gunpoint.

If anything, I'd say your point (which I took and agreed with) needlessly overcomplicates the matter. It's practically the creation of a scarecrow argument, in that you are describing a second separate transaction (that is presumably consensual) happening in addition to the non-consensual one.

If I politely and non-violently ask you to generously sign a contract to pay my income taxes to the USA government for me (that I have to pay anyway or go to prison), and you voluntarily sign that contract and voluntarily pay my taxes for me, the taxes are not voluntary. Rather, the discussed waters are just muddier because now we have brought into the equation a second entirely separate transaction that is itself arguably consensual.

It is true, of course, that going off the grid and avoiding taxes isn't so easy.

I am not sure if it is easy or not, but it is presumably illegal, and it is one of many ways that pacifists end up in prison (or shot dead by police).

If you come to my house and pay me to give you a massage, and I don't charge you sales tax and pay income tax to the USA government to help fund the war on drugs, the USA government to prone send armed men to break down my door come into my house and put in prison.

The same is true if instead of a house it is a tent in the woods.

Of course, I'm not poor, and I am white, so I might get away with it, since the IRS disproportionately audits poor people more than non-poor and disproportionately audits black people more than white people.

But I wouldn't risk it. The USA government is worse than even the most violent and aggressive mobs or mafias. So if you want a taxed massage let me know, but if you want an untaxed massage in the woods, go find someone who would rather be imprisoned or killed by the government.

As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government."

it seems quibbling to complain about taxation

The topic isn't about whether taxation is worth complaining about or complaintment-worthy or such, which seems subjective.

The topic is simply about whether taxation is consensual. I simply believe it is clearly objectively true that taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual.

Incidentally, depending on what you mean by complaining, especially in regard to quibbling complaining, it's likely something I just don't do at all about anything. Since I fully and unconditionally accept what I cannot change, and since I practice unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness, and since I don't have any unmet expectations at all, there's really nothing for me to complain about ever.

Both are somewhat coersive. So if our economic system is to be run on the basis of government enforced coersion (as is clearly the case given property law, enforced with the billy clubs and gaols of the government)), [...]

[Taxation] is one of many slightly coersive features of capitalism and socialism.

By "coersive" and "coersion", I am assuming you mean, in part, non-consensual.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like we completely agree: Taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual.




Thank you,
Scott

[LuckyR]

Hi, LuckyR,

Thank you for your reply!

If you reject the concept of Consent of the Governed (as I acknowledged in the other thread that some will), and only recognize Universal consent, then nothing involving large groups of people is consensual.

With politeness and respect, I disagree, for the reasons given in my previous post:

It's not the hard to get large groups to give unanimous affirmative consent via affirmatively and freely consented to written agreements, such as the shareholders of a company or corporation using a board of directors and/or CEO to represent them via written bylaws that are affirmatively agreed to in writing without duress at the time a person of legal age chooses to become a member or shareholder. I worked previously (as an unpaid volunteer) on the board of a non-profit charity in the state of Connecticut, for example. Like the President and rest of the board, I was elected by the dues-paying members of the organization. We collected member dues from chapters and people all over the state, which is bigger than some countries. It was all consensual, with lots of paperwork to back that up. Large groups can easily give power of attorney and such to individuals or small representative groups via unanimously consensual agreements that have been truly voluntarily agreed to. It's easily possible for a large group to be organized in which all the members unanimously affirmatively consent in writing to abide by what the majority wants according to written bylaws. It happens all the time in the NGO sector.

To expand on that, assuming no fraud is taking place and ignoring the corporate welfare they have received, I think that companies like Google and Apple and Samsung can function via universal consent, both in terms of their dealings with their voting shareholders and their customers. In principle, there is no need for anything to happen non-consensually in terms of the business dealings and functioning of huge companies like Google, Apple, and Samsung, which are bigger than some nations.


All of the above is presumably moot in regard to the titular question. In regard to the titular question, it appears we completely agree: Taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual.

more intellectually honest

That seems to be at least a borderline violation of Rule A.2. of the Forum Rules.

Thus for the purposes of this thread, "taxation" is too fine a distinction, it would be [...] to ask: is anything done by any government consensual? With a trivial, but true answer of: NO. You're very right, not complicated.

Certainly the same argument that applies to taxation applies to forced labor by the government and forced sex, since they really three aspects of the same more general category. Stealing the money someone gets paid for labor at gunpoint is effectively the same as slavery at gun point. If the worker is a sex worker (e.g. a porn star or prostitute) then the overlap and lack of differences becomes even more revealed.

I'm glad to learn that you also think most or even everything that governments do is not consensual, though I'm not sure I agree.

I'm not sure you can expand it to a anything and everything a so-called government does. If the King of England spanks himself on the butt, is that consensual? Maybe, maybe not, but I certainly don't have a problem with it.

If I buy a postage stamp to mail an envelope through USPS instead of using FedEx is that non-consensual? I don't see why it would be, but maybe. It's certainly not "dishonest" in any sense of the word at all remotely for me to not include things like the King spanking his own butt or me buying postage stamp from USPS or any of countless other things in my question. It seems off-topic, ad hominem, and rule-breaking to even have slightly speculated such a thing. No hard feelings, though.

In any case, I'm glad that we seem to firmly and absolutely agree that taxation is not consensual.



Thank you,
Scott

Several things:

Firstly, when I write that X is "more intellectually honest" than Y, I am stating that both are intellectually honest but in my opinion X is "more" so than Y. That's a comparison, not an ad hominem error, especially when it is backed up with a written reason. Doesn't make it correct, just reasonable.

Second, there is definitely not universal consent to create the armed forces, nor to deploy the armed forces. There's not universal consent to form the FBI, Cia, the ATF nor even the Post Office. There's not universal consent to acquire land to form National Parks, nor to spend money on interstate highways. There isn't UC for Social Security, Medicare nor Medicaid. Please name a governmental department, office, administration, program or task that 100% of citizens consent to being created or performed in their name. Only takes one crackpot saying "no" to make it NOT universal.

In your examples, if a group with a stated agenda is made up solely of individuals who agree with that agenda, you're right, you CAN receive 100% buy-in on certain general principles. Though your use of the word "elected" implies that you won a majority of the votes, which is not universal consent that you hold the post to which you were elected. Of course if a requirement of being a member of the group is approving the by-laws of the group one could finesse that detail. Of course governments don't have the luxury to excommunicate contrarian citizens. Your example of the taxation system is a very obvious one, but the principle is more "universal" than consent is when it comes to governments.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, LuckyR,

Thank you for your newest reply!

It's not the hard to get large groups to give unanimous affirmative consent via affirmatively and freely consented to written agreements, such as the shareholders of a company or corporation using a board of directors and/or CEO to represent them via written bylaws that are affirmatively agreed to in writing without duress at the time a person of legal age chooses to become a member or shareholder. I worked previously (as an unpaid volunteer) on the board of a non-profit charity in the state of Connecticut, for example. Like the President and rest of the board, I was elected by the dues-paying members of the organization. We collected member dues from chapters and people all over the state, which is bigger than some countries. It was all [unanimously] consensual, with lots of paperwork to back that up. Large groups can easily give power of attorney and such to individuals or small representative groups via unanimously consensual agreements that have been truly voluntarily agreed to. It's easily possible for a large group to be organized in which all the members unanimously affirmatively consent in writing to abide by what the majority wants according to written bylaws. It happens all the time in the NGO sector.

To expand on that, assuming no fraud is taking place and ignoring the corporate welfare they have received, I think that companies like Google and Apple and Samsung can function via universal consent, both in terms of their dealings with their voting shareholders and their customers. In principle, there is no need for anything to happen non-consensually in terms of the business dealings and functioning of huge companies like Google, Apple, and Samsung, which are bigger than some nations.

[Emphasis added.]

In your examples, if a group with a stated agenda is made up solely of individuals who agree with that agenda, you're right, you CAN receive 100% buy-in on certain general principles. Though your use of the word "elected" implies that you won a majority of the votes, which is not universal consent that you hold the post to which you were elected. Of course if a requirement of being a member of the group is approving the by-laws of the group one could finesse that detail.

The last sentence there is not a minor detail. Incidentally, I specifically mentioned the bylaws and paperwork. It's also one reason I mentioned companies like Google and Apple. I'm sure their board of directors don't also vote unanimously, and I'm sure their shareholders don't always vote unanimously. But the consent is still unanimous because non-unanimous voting is very compatible with unanimous universal consent, much like my family and I voting on what movie to watch for movie night.

Affirmatively agreeing to voting--and using a pre-signed contractual obligation to get each party to go with the results--is a great way to get unanimous consent in groups of more than two people, especially large groups. It comes up often when writing the bylaws of a private club, private organization, private business, or private corporation. The shareholders, board of directors or part-owners of a company do not need to all vote the same way for there to be unanimous universal consent. It's similar to people using a private arbitration company to arbitrate disputes, in which they sign an agreement in advance to abide by the arbitrator's decision. Instead of a single arbitrator it can be a group vote, but it's still all consensual.

Non-unanimous voting often does not mean there are any non-consensual interactions going on or that there isn't universal unanimous consent. The key is whether there is affirmative freely given informed consent to use the voting process or such, and to abide by its results, and generally that the paperwork exists to back that up, preferably with wet ink signatures.

With smaller groups it's easier (but legally riskier) to do it without paperwork. For instance, if three people are having three-way sex, and want to decide between which of two sex positions to do, they can hold a vote. If two vote one way, and one votes the other way, and then they proceed to do three-way sex using the position that got the two votes, it's still presumably completely consensual. All three of them are unanimously universally consenting.

Thus for the purposes of this thread, "taxation" is too fine a distinction, it would be [...] to ask: is anything done by any government consensual? With a trivial, but true answer of: NO. You're very right, not complicated.

Certainly the same argument that applies to taxation applies to forced labor by the government and forced sex, since they really three aspects of the same more general category. Stealing the money someone gets paid for labor at gunpoint is effectively the same as slavery at gun point. If the worker is a sex worker (e.g. a porn star or prostitute) then the overlap and lack of differences becomes even more revealed.

I'm glad to learn that you also think most or even everything that governments do is not consensual, though I'm not sure I agree.

Second, there is definitely not universal consent to create the armed forces, nor to deploy the armed forces. There's not universal consent to form the FBI, Cia, the ATF nor even the Post Office. There's not universal consent to acquire land to form National Parks, nor to spend money on interstate highways. There isn't UC for Social Security, Medicare nor Medicaid. Please name a governmental department, office, administration, program or task that 100% of citizens consent to being created or performed in their name. Only takes one crackpot saying "no" to make it NOT universal.

I'm not saying I disagree with your statement that anything a government does is non-consensual. There's a good chance if you make a topic with a title like, "is anything done by any government consensual? " and in it you post your best argument to support the conclusion that the answer is no, it's likely you will convince me. I'm just not convinced one way or the other yet. I'm agnostic about that question at the moment.

I prefer to believe and to state only what I'm more confident about. So, for example, you'll be more likely to hear me say highly qualified things like "at least almost all birds are yellow" instead of hearing me say, "all birds are yellow". The former is compatible with the truth of the latter, but it's also compatible with it not quite being true. If I am not sure I confidently deny that there might be even one single non-yellow bird out there, I would choose my words carefully. Likewise, my view that "taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual" is compatible with your view that 'anything a government does is not consensual. I am not convinced of the latter yet, but it's compatible with my view, and it's likely you could convince me.


In any case, I am very interested in your answer to the following two questions from my last post:

I'm glad to learn that you also think most or even everything that governments do is not consensual, though I'm not sure I agree.

I'm not sure you can expand it to a anything and everything a so-called government does. If the King of England spanks himself on the butt, is that consensual? Maybe, maybe not, but I certainly don't have a problem with it.

If I buy a postage stamp to mail an envelope through USPS instead of using FedEx is that non-consensual? I don't see why it would be, but maybe.

Thank you,
Scott

[Ecurb]

Hi,l
By "coersive" and "coersion", I am assuming you mean, in part, non-consensual.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like we completely agree: Taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual.




Thank you,
Scott

" Consent: Permission for something to happen or agreement to do something."

Clearly, consent can be coerced. The extent of the coercion varies. The store owner coerces his customers to pay for goods they take out of the store. If they don't pay, he will call the police. The store's customers "consent" to pay for the goods because they are coerced to do so.

Similarly, the store owner consents to pay taxes, in part, at least, because he is coerced to do so by threats of legal action. Nonetheless, he has "agreed to do something." So he has consented to pay.

Coercion does not utterly obviate consent. So, no, I don't think taxation is non-consrnsual.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Ecurb,

Thank you for your reply!

By "coersive" and "coersion", I am assuming you mean, in part, non-consensual.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like we completely agree: Taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual.

" Consent: Permission for something to happen or agreement to do something."

Clearly, consent can be coerced.

That is utterly inconsistent to how I use the term 'consent'. In my anecdotal experience, I use the term 'consent' the same way most people do. (Granted, words tend to have different meanings in different regions and cultures, so it could merely be a regional and/or a cultural discrepancy.)

In the way I (and I believe most people) use the terms, if there is a woman who doesn't want to have sex, and an ugly man puts a gun to that woman's head and says, "Give me permission to have sex with you, or I will shoot you," then the ensuing sex is not consensual, and the sex is thus rape. Even if he forces her at gunpoint to sign a contract or say on camera that she wants the sex and gives permission or such, it's still totally not consensual, and it's still rape; that is, at least, how I use the terms.

Are you sure that's not how you use the word 'consent'?

It's fine if you use the word differently; I just want to be sure I understand what you mean by it if you use it so differently than I do.


Thank you,
Scott

[Ecurb]

Hi, Ecurb,

Thank you for your reply!

By "coersive" and "coersion", I am assuming you mean, in part, non-consensual.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like we completely agree: Taxation by big non-local governments is not consensual.

" Consent: Permission for something to happen or agreement to do something."

Clearly, consent can be coerced.

That is utterly inconsistent to how I use the term 'consent'. In my anecdotal experience, I use the term 'consent' the same way most people do. (Granted, words tend to have different meanings in different regions and cultures, so it could merely be a regional and/or a cultural discrepancy.)

In the way I (and I believe most people) use the terms, if there is a woman who doesn't want to have sex, and an ugly man puts a gun to that woman's head and says, "Give me permission to have sex with you, or I will shoot you," then the ensuing sex is not consensual, and the sex is thus rape. Even if he forces her at gunpoint to sign a contract or say on camera that she wants the sex and gives permission or such, it's still totally not consensual, and it's still rape; that is, at least, how I use the terms.

Are you sure that's not how you use the word 'consent'?

It's fine if you use the word differently; I just want to be sure I understand what you mean by it if you use it so differently than I do.


Thank you,
Scott

Not many rapists force their victims to sign consent forms at gunpoint. I'll concede that if they did the form would have no legal standing.

But that's not comparable to a store owner paying taxes. Nobody is forcing him to own a store. He is aware before he owns the store of his legal obligations (and his legal protections). Therefore he consents to follow the law. It's implied contractually in his purchase of the store.

The same is true for all legal obligations. The store's customers can't legally walk off with merchandise without paying. The owners obligations are established by law and custom just as the customer's are.