- December 5th, 2024, 9:50 pm
#470451
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success..
A common misconception about libertarians is that we don't want our money going to schools, roads, and charitable causes. But the exact opposite is the case: The main reason violent big government theft of our money bothers us so much is because then we can't spend it on what we would like to, such as quality schools, local infrastructure, and charity.
Instead, the violent robbers get to decide how it's spent, after they have violently robbed the money from us, and that goes about how well you would think.
Violent robbers behave like violent robbers behave. They often pretend to be charitable. A mafia-style protection racket pretends to offer you a valuable service that is worth the cost and in your best interests, but it's not even close and it's not meant to be. It's a thinly veiled guise for self-serving violent people to use violence to make themselves and their cronies rich. Good ideas don't require aggressive violence.
When you add up all the different federal taxes, all the different state taxes, and all the different local taxes, the average American taxpayer pays about $60,000 in taxes. It's not really going to schools and charity.
The violent robbers might say they are spending the trillions (trillions!) of dollars stolen via taxes per year (in the USA alone) on things like a "war on drugs", or a "war on poverty", or "foreign aid", or "defense". But that's just dishonest labels in a budget. Roads and schools and such don't cost nearly that much.
For example, when you add up all the different federal taxes, all the different state taxes, and then all the local taxes in my city, over half of my income is taken in taxes. Nonetheless, with the measly less than half that's left to me, I (a libertarian) previously donated over $1,000 to a local elementary school to help build a new playground. It wasn't even the school my kids went to; it was one across town. Imagine how much would be spent on our local schools and such if half my income and that of everyone else in my town wasn't being violently robbed by a legal mafia and sent far away to millionaires in Washington so they could share it with their rich cronies and give it back as kickbacks to their wealthy campaign financiers?
Violent robbers behave like violent robbers behave, and they always will. Violent robbery will never be utilitarian. Government spending is just legal money laundering used to make the rich richer and the already powerful more power. In other words, it's money laundering designed to make the rich powers that be even more powerful and rich. In yet other words, it's legal money laundering designed to violently take money and power away from local communities and send it far away to millionaires and billionaires in the capital to launder into their own pockets and the pockets of their already rich cronies to make them even richer.
Where do you think billionaires come from? The USA Federal Government spends $7 trillion per year; that's 7,000 billions. They can make 7,000 new violent lazy people into billionaires each year with that stolen money, and that's basically what they do, though it may do it more in giving $100 million to 70,000 deep state insiders or such. So it could take a lazy violent deep state insider 10 years to become a billionaire from the money they rob from hard-working taxpayers.
And it's not merely that government's corrupt. Government isn't corrupt. I've never seen a corrupt government, not today and not in any of my reading of history books. A government that violently robs the productive people to use the stolen money to make the powers that be even richer and more powerful is not a corrupt government. It's a government doing exactly what it and every government ever has been designed and intended to do, since the very first king issued the very first tax.
The reason I prefer to not be violently robbed by the faraway King and prefer not to pay the faraway King isn't because I don't want paved roads and schools. I do want those things. Of course, I want those things. I want an even better version of those things than we have. But we can't afford it so long as we have violent robbers stealing from us.
To be fair, I'd still oppose violent robbery against peaceful people even if I thought it was in the utilitarian best interests and greater good. If I thought violent robbery was the best way to fund schools and roads, I'd still oppose the violent robbery. But it's a false chose, because violent robbery will never be the best way to fund or develop such things.
Violent robbers (e.g. big governments) will always continue to behave the way they have, which is the way violent robbers behave. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "I heartily accept the motto, – 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, – 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
The opposite of big government is self-government. Freedom means self-government, by definition; it's simply what the words mean. The main reason passionate libertarians are passionate about libertarianism and the Non-Aggression Principle is precisely because those passionate libertarians are frustrated at seeing how poorly their local roads, schools, and infrastructure are taken care of. They call an ambulance or call their local police about a violent criminal, and they get less than excellent service because the federal government has robbed their community to pretend to pay for such things as an expensive pretend war on drugs, since it's easier to launder money through that in a way that makes the rich richer. In the face of that massive large-scale violent robbery that hurts our communities, the libertarians passionately--and rightly--say: I want more self-government (a.k.a. freedom) and less violent robbery by big government.
Violent robbery (e.g. taxation) will always result in money being drained from local communicates, meaning less money for schools, roads, and charity.
Legal violent robbery (i.e. taxation) will always result in the rich getting richer. The ultra-rich ultra-powerful powers that be are the ones who, by definition, tax you (a.k.a violently rob you). They aren't going to use that power to help you. That's not because they are especially mean or 'evil' or such, whatever that would mean, but it's because they are human. Humans can be very social, charitable, cooperative, and kind when they are face-to-face, and around their neighbors, friends, and family. But it's a completely different story when you give any human tons of power and put them on top and charge with ruling over people far away. Every big government ever is simply the Stamford Prison Experiment on steroids.
Man is not fit to govern man. No human is fit to wield the power of non-defensive non-consensual violence over his or her fellow human, even locally such as with a mob boss or mafia-style protection racket, the existence or usage of that kind of power is never ever going to be in the utilitarian best interests of humanity.
But remember: Freedom means self-government. The antithesis of big non-local government is local self-government. Keep in mind, even full-blown communism is compatible with libertarianism. There is nothing stopping a group fifty thousand communists from forming a community town or city inside a libertarian state. In fact, most libertarians would strongly encourage such a thing, even if they wouldn't move there, and some surely would move there, especially if the schools and roads are good.
As I wrote in my book, In It Together, "the beauty of freedom is the creative diversity it engenders".
Indeed, to even ask a libertarian a question like the following doesn't make sense to them, "How do you think schools should be run and roads should be paved and HOAs should be setup?" It's like asking, "How do you think people should style their hair? What way should people arrange food in their refrigerator?"
To answer such weird questions would presumably to engage what I call, Orwellian Agent-Smithism.
What works for or is most desirable to people in one random Texas town or city won't be what works for or is most desirable to people in a random Connecticut town or city.
We believe in the Non-Aggression Principle. We believe in the peaceful principle of live and let live and to each their own. We oppose all non-defensive non-consensual violence (e.g. violent robbery), and thus we embrace freedom and peace, and we love the the creative diversity that that peaceful freedom engenders.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
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Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success.. Success at your chosen goal is guaranteed, whether it is a financial goal, fitness goal, or any other ambitious but at least theoretically possible goal. If your goal is to become a millionaire, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed. If you weigh 350 lbs and your goal is to lose 200 lbs and get 6-pack abs, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed.
A common misconception about libertarians is that we don't want our money going to schools, roads, and charitable causes. But the exact opposite is the case: The main reason violent big government theft of our money bothers us so much is because then we can't spend it on what we would like to, such as quality schools, local infrastructure, and charity.
Instead, the violent robbers get to decide how it's spent, after they have violently robbed the money from us, and that goes about how well you would think.
Violent robbers behave like violent robbers behave. They often pretend to be charitable. A mafia-style protection racket pretends to offer you a valuable service that is worth the cost and in your best interests, but it's not even close and it's not meant to be. It's a thinly veiled guise for self-serving violent people to use violence to make themselves and their cronies rich. Good ideas don't require aggressive violence.
When you add up all the different federal taxes, all the different state taxes, and all the different local taxes, the average American taxpayer pays about $60,000 in taxes. It's not really going to schools and charity.
The violent robbers might say they are spending the trillions (trillions!) of dollars stolen via taxes per year (in the USA alone) on things like a "war on drugs", or a "war on poverty", or "foreign aid", or "defense". But that's just dishonest labels in a budget. Roads and schools and such don't cost nearly that much.
For example, when you add up all the different federal taxes, all the different state taxes, and then all the local taxes in my city, over half of my income is taken in taxes. Nonetheless, with the measly less than half that's left to me, I (a libertarian) previously donated over $1,000 to a local elementary school to help build a new playground. It wasn't even the school my kids went to; it was one across town. Imagine how much would be spent on our local schools and such if half my income and that of everyone else in my town wasn't being violently robbed by a legal mafia and sent far away to millionaires in Washington so they could share it with their rich cronies and give it back as kickbacks to their wealthy campaign financiers?
Violent robbers behave like violent robbers behave, and they always will. Violent robbery will never be utilitarian. Government spending is just legal money laundering used to make the rich richer and the already powerful more power. In other words, it's money laundering designed to make the rich powers that be even more powerful and rich. In yet other words, it's legal money laundering designed to violently take money and power away from local communities and send it far away to millionaires and billionaires in the capital to launder into their own pockets and the pockets of their already rich cronies to make them even richer.
Where do you think billionaires come from? The USA Federal Government spends $7 trillion per year; that's 7,000 billions. They can make 7,000 new violent lazy people into billionaires each year with that stolen money, and that's basically what they do, though it may do it more in giving $100 million to 70,000 deep state insiders or such. So it could take a lazy violent deep state insider 10 years to become a billionaire from the money they rob from hard-working taxpayers.
And it's not merely that government's corrupt. Government isn't corrupt. I've never seen a corrupt government, not today and not in any of my reading of history books. A government that violently robs the productive people to use the stolen money to make the powers that be even richer and more powerful is not a corrupt government. It's a government doing exactly what it and every government ever has been designed and intended to do, since the very first king issued the very first tax.
The reason I prefer to not be violently robbed by the faraway King and prefer not to pay the faraway King isn't because I don't want paved roads and schools. I do want those things. Of course, I want those things. I want an even better version of those things than we have. But we can't afford it so long as we have violent robbers stealing from us.
To be fair, I'd still oppose violent robbery against peaceful people even if I thought it was in the utilitarian best interests and greater good. If I thought violent robbery was the best way to fund schools and roads, I'd still oppose the violent robbery. But it's a false chose, because violent robbery will never be the best way to fund or develop such things.
Violent robbers (e.g. big governments) will always continue to behave the way they have, which is the way violent robbers behave. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "I heartily accept the motto, – 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, – 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
The opposite of big government is self-government. Freedom means self-government, by definition; it's simply what the words mean. The main reason passionate libertarians are passionate about libertarianism and the Non-Aggression Principle is precisely because those passionate libertarians are frustrated at seeing how poorly their local roads, schools, and infrastructure are taken care of. They call an ambulance or call their local police about a violent criminal, and they get less than excellent service because the federal government has robbed their community to pretend to pay for such things as an expensive pretend war on drugs, since it's easier to launder money through that in a way that makes the rich richer. In the face of that massive large-scale violent robbery that hurts our communities, the libertarians passionately--and rightly--say: I want more self-government (a.k.a. freedom) and less violent robbery by big government.
Violent robbery (e.g. taxation) will always result in money being drained from local communicates, meaning less money for schools, roads, and charity.
Legal violent robbery (i.e. taxation) will always result in the rich getting richer. The ultra-rich ultra-powerful powers that be are the ones who, by definition, tax you (a.k.a violently rob you). They aren't going to use that power to help you. That's not because they are especially mean or 'evil' or such, whatever that would mean, but it's because they are human. Humans can be very social, charitable, cooperative, and kind when they are face-to-face, and around their neighbors, friends, and family. But it's a completely different story when you give any human tons of power and put them on top and charge with ruling over people far away. Every big government ever is simply the Stamford Prison Experiment on steroids.
Man is not fit to govern man. No human is fit to wield the power of non-defensive non-consensual violence over his or her fellow human, even locally such as with a mob boss or mafia-style protection racket, the existence or usage of that kind of power is never ever going to be in the utilitarian best interests of humanity.
But remember: Freedom means self-government. The antithesis of big non-local government is local self-government. Keep in mind, even full-blown communism is compatible with libertarianism. There is nothing stopping a group fifty thousand communists from forming a community town or city inside a libertarian state. In fact, most libertarians would strongly encourage such a thing, even if they wouldn't move there, and some surely would move there, especially if the schools and roads are good.
As I wrote in my book, In It Together, "the beauty of freedom is the creative diversity it engenders".
Indeed, to even ask a libertarian a question like the following doesn't make sense to them, "How do you think schools should be run and roads should be paved and HOAs should be setup?" It's like asking, "How do you think people should style their hair? What way should people arrange food in their refrigerator?"
To answer such weird questions would presumably to engage what I call, Orwellian Agent-Smithism.
What works for or is most desirable to people in one random Texas town or city won't be what works for or is most desirable to people in a random Connecticut town or city.
We believe in the Non-Aggression Principle. We believe in the peaceful principle of live and let live and to each their own. We oppose all non-defensive non-consensual violence (e.g. violent robbery), and thus we embrace freedom and peace, and we love the the creative diversity that that peaceful freedom engenders.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success.. Success at your chosen goal is guaranteed, whether it is a financial goal, fitness goal, or any other ambitious but at least theoretically possible goal. If your goal is to become a millionaire, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed. If you weigh 350 lbs and your goal is to lose 200 lbs and get 6-pack abs, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
Favorite Philosopher: Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
Signature Addition: View official OnlineBookClub.org review of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
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