DEBATE: Is Taxation Theft? | Michael Huemer vs. Philip Goff

Is taxation theft? World class philosophers Michael Huemer and Philip Goff debate.
Huemer's books: www.amazon.com/Books-Michael-...
Huemer's blog: fakenous.substack.com/
Goff's books: www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Phili...
Goff's blog: philipgoff.substack.com/
My blog post on why taxation isn't theft: open.substack.com/pub/wollenb...

[@MajestyofReason]

is youtube a theft of my time? great vid!

[@fahimp3]

Yes 😅

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

Depends did you learn anything new?

[@theautodidacticlayman]

Also depends on how much attention you’re paying. 🫥

[@ParkerNotes]

Bro how did I not already have this convo on my pod hahah grateful you put this together!

[@going_awoll]

Thanks! (You been scooped dawg)

[@nosteinnogate7305]

All debates should be like this. Zero hostility. (besides intentional bloodsports ofc)

[@TheBongoJeff]

I Fell asleep

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

I do agree with Goff that if you want a successful country you need a vibrant MIDDLE class. You should do one on homeless problem and how much it cost taxpayers.

[@chloegrobler4275]

'MY BOOKSHELF HAS MORE BOOKS THAN YOURS' - my brain, said in a snarky, child like voice

[@timursalikov5911]

Goff also claims making workers more expensive is a good thing. Basic economics says when things get more expensive we buy and use less of. This was probably a huge contributing factor to all the outsourcing that happened later. Goff thinks there is a fixed number of workers that are needed and many them more expensive will just eat into the company’s profits. Not to mention the consumers themselves have to buy the same goods that are made more expensive with higher labor costs.

[@artemiasalina1860]

And everyone is a consumer, so everyone is impoverished when things become more expensive. There is only one way to raise everyone out of poverty, and that is for them to become more productive. The only way to do that is to stop taking their income without regard to their will, and to allow them to experiment with new ways of creating wealth. In other words the only way to increase wealth for everyone is through property rights and free markets.

[@danielboone8256]

@@artemiasalina1860 Austrian School?

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

@@artemiasalina1860 Keynes>Austrian nonsense

[@Nebukanezzer]

Labor cost is only one factor involved in outsourcing.

[@r.s6399]

Thomas Sowell explains this greatly in his book: Basis Economics

[@roberto_j]

This was far more insightful than I expected, thx for this :)

[@daniellittlewood8471]

Considering how reasonable he had been up to that point, I found Huemer's reaction to the 60% wealth inheritance kind of shocking. Why would it have to be a high tax rate? In equilibrium, people with less than 60% of the average wealth would pay an effective tax rate of zero. Why does he think it has to be recalculated every time someone comes of age, and immediately taken from everybody, even if their assets aren't liquid? Maybe you don't like the idea, but the notion that it would cause society to collapse is absurd.

[@upland20]

History shows how the US got by before the 16th amendment and beyond. Many years after the 16th amendment, withholding began with our last ( Declared ) war; WW2. A Constitutional clause allowing Congress to tax the People for a period not to exceed 4 years. The Federal Register shows the date it began and the date it ( Ended ) 4 years later. The tax code was readable in 1928 and it was smoked up in 1956. The supreme Court made many rulings on the 16th Amendment out to about 1932. Just one of those rulings stated that the 16th Amendment gave Congress No New powers of taxation. Yes it is theft or more accurately, Extortion. Philosophical views aside, it is just plain illegal here in the US simply because ( there is no law ). So much more to be known. 🙏

[@emptycloud2774]

Every argument that claims "property" is a "natural" right are cringe, and doesn't make sense when you think about how property is acquired historically. Property has always been about power. In a sovereign power, all that really matters are what laws are in place, and are they being enforced by that which has the monopoly of violence. Want tax to be considered theft? Well make it a law. Because, valid arguments, especially, extemely basic ones that rely mostly on crude definitions, as if reality is expressed by anything logical, or that all things defined as knowledge, are not sufficient conditions to make them true on the fundamental level of reality. Just saying "it is a natural right, therefore, it is true", can be applied to anything you want, and for most people, they are only legitmised if those natural rights serve their interests. This is nothing but an arbitrary social construct. Taxes serve all kinds of functions due to how they are enforced by law: E.g. disincentivise various behaviour considered unjust to the social order. Is this theft? Is your property right, defined here to include money, mean you can infringe upon the rights of others without limit? Which "natural rights" are more important than others? My point is justifying an entire argument on definitions of "natural rights" to make universal claims is weak. Tax and government spending arguments always annoy me because what money is, how it is created, and legally defined, are rarely accurately explored, so debates just turn into cringe ideology.

[@madra000]

what of a base right, parents? they possess the limits of their children and have levels of control on them, and there is not any way of diminishing such a argument Bcs of Biological fact.

[@emptycloud2774]

​@@madra000, how is that a right and not a responsibility? Are you talking "rights of the child"? Like as defined by the United Nations? How exactly is this a "natural right" and not just a "human rights" construction based solely on reason and ethics?

[@theautodidacticlayman]

Huemer seems to answer this resolution by saying “Yes, taxation is theft, but theft can _sometimes_ be justified.” And it seemed like Goff was stuck on answering the resolution with a “No, taxation is not theft,” which, to me, raises the question “Then what is theft?” and I feel like that kind of left this whole thing open… it was more about whether or not theft is justified, and that’s nebulous.

[@andrewkern2831]

Heumer defined theft as: taking someone's property without consent. I think that's a pretty common definition. With that definition, one could see how there are rare instances when it's justified.

[@thomistica597]

There's something hilarious about a panpsychist claiming property rights are not plausibly basic.

[@Hubert99999]

35:26 yes, it would absolutely suck to work and then have a somebody come and take a large portion of the value you generated. Obviously nobody would do even a days work under such circumstances, right?

[@milowhittle5579]

It's Huemer's world, we're all just living in it.

[@antdcttr]

☝☝☝

[@matriaxpunk]

“Socially constructed” doesn’t mean “enforced by the government”. Different people can have different concepts of property rights, but they are all socially constructed, independent of which of those concepts the government happens to enforce. Even the idea of natural property rights is socially constructed, you’re just socially constructing the idea that property rights are not socially constructed, which is totally fine. In the case of a desert island, the person living there would still have a concept of what property rights are and how they work, and that idea would also be socially constructed by the social context to which that person originally belongs to. And if that person somehow happened to have been born in that same island and have never had any contact with society, then it’s impossible to know a priori what kind of concept of property, if any, that person would have. Any attempt to say that they would have this or that particular concept of property is just a projection of our own social biases. The problem is that we can’t get outside of our own social context and imagine a state of consciousness totally devoid of any social and cultural bias. So saying that there’s a natural concept of property that is not socially constructed is just a nonsensical statement, since in reality individuals only exist within a social context. Also, even if that natural concept of property happened to exist, that wouldn’t mean that it’s good or that it’s the right concept to have. That’s a naturalistic fallacy.

[@sorgeelenchus]

It seems absurd to think that natural rights exist independently of any form of government. Where are your natural rights when a bear comes and destroys your hut, or a tornado rips through your hut? Is nature infringing on itself? Did nature forget about rights? Do you have some due process or recourse to hold nature accountable? These are just our ideas of how government should work, and I don’t see any point of rights outside of government.

[@matriaxpunk]

@@sorgeelenchus I agree, but there's a difference between material rights and the concepts and ideas of how those rights should work. Obviously, material rights need to actually be enforced, either by the goverment or by some other social actor, to be "real rights". Otherwise, they are just concepts and/or ideas.

[@nosteinnogate7305]

One scenario that would be interesting for Huemer to comment on: A (privately) owns land. B finds oil on land. A is (massively, much more than B) rewarded for selling the rights to extract the oil to an oil company. Is that ethical? Should A be taxed (massively)?

[@andrewkern2831]

1. Yes it's ethical, just as it's ethical for me to keep a suitcase of cash that was found by a contractor in the walls of my house. 2. It's unclear what taxes have to do with this hypothetical? If it were true that B was justly owed money, taxes would be a very poor means of correcting the problem.

[@nosteinnogate7305]

@@andrewkern2831 Lets say its gold instead of cash (because cash has no inherent value). Its not clear at all that you deserve that gold. Its just luck, you didnt do anything for that.

[@GukGukNinja]

@@nosteinnogate7305It is even more unclear to me how someone else could deserve to use violence to obtain a portion of that gold. There is nothing wrong with being lucky.

[@nosteinnogate7305]

@@GukGukNinja I would say on increasing the good in the world grounds. Wealth does not scale infinitely with human well being (far from it). And the less a person has the more well being can be gained by an extra increment. So it is far more optimal for overall well being to distribute highly concentrated amounts of wealth. If a person has achieved that wealth on her own, there is an argument to be made that even the small increments of well being she gets should not be taken away from her. But if she is just lucky, that reason falls away.

[@daniellittlewood8471]

@@andrewkern2831 Your example 1 is a very very bad one. It is far less justifiable to say money you find on land you happen to own, than that you can exploit natural resources on land you own. The money would have definitely been owned by someone, some time, and they have much more of a claim to it than you do. The ethics are much more complicated: what if they lost that suitcase of money, and needed it to pay for medical care? Do you really think you are in the right to keep it? Your argument is not many steps away from "bartender finds a wallet in his bar, finders keepers"

[@daniellittlewood8471]

I am commenting immediately after seeing the objection so this may be answered later on. But the response to objection 3 is a little naive and does not extend much further than Michael used it. The hermit who lives in the wilderness probably has a claim to their home and to some personal property. Going into someone's home and painting the walls, and using their private things, is usually wrong. But it's not universally wrong. It's easy to see this if you imagine the hermit less sympathetically. Imagine the hermit claims he has homesteaded the 100 mile radius around his hut. He may even have done some work on it - maybe he walks around sowing grass seeds all day. Do you really think that such a property claim would be granted, on intuitive grounds? It's a bit academic whether you call this response a basic rejection of property rights in extrema or a claim that "not all theft is wrong". But if you want to argue about "natural" property rights, and not the formal legal concept, you've lost the direct link to taxation. Indeed people do generally object to taxation when it takes people's clothes off their backs, no matter what the taxes are ultimately used for. They object a lot less when it takes people's yachts away. And when you poll people's attitudes toward taxation, they're along these lines: 99% wealth taxes above a generous lower limit are extremely popular policies.

[@SoxPox]

No. Just saved everyone 90 minutes.

[@curiousrodeo]

Re: Michael Huemer's first point, and relating it to a mugger that gives to the poor. Would be be stealing MH Dollars in this case?

[@cunjoz]

15:12 "we can shape them [property rights] how we want" 15:17 "doesn't mean we should shape them however we want" bruh

[@Acodered1]

That follows wym

[@___Truth___]

As ambiguous & unhelpful as it sounds, It does follow though, where the key is the difference between ‘should’ vs. ‘can’. What’s actually nonsensical/ doesn’t make any sense at all is to even say we can shape property rights any way we want, since that general possibility invites self-defeating forms of Property Rights.

[@timursalikov5911]

These guys need to pull up a chart with government spending vs the GDP from 1900 to today. Even though there were high taxes on paper, the government doesn’t spend and bring in more money then back in the 50s

[@wisdometricist880]

Government spending as % of GDP, USA 1900: 3% 1950: 13% 2022: 36% Government spending as % of GDP, UK 1900: 11% 1950: 33% 2022: 44% Source: IMF

[@Xarai]

no, why is this debated

[@Panzeroflake]

Taxation is theft

[@andrewkern2831]

Why not?

[@bismillah5060]

Coming into this as an anti-libertarian, I was surprised to see how good Huemers arguments were. Goff did not have the best showing here. Good debate though

[@Nebukanezzer]

Genuinely have no idea how you could think anything he said was "good"

[@danielboone8256]

Interesting discussion. Not sure how relevant it is, but I’d like to add that the Bible seems to assert that even God has property rights (Psalm 89:11, 24:1, Haggai 2:8, etc.), which would seem to conflict with a rule-utilitarianism view that prioritizes human flourishing as a basis for property rights. I wonder if any philosophers have conceived of a basis for property rights grounded in the nature of God somehow.

[@going_awoll]

I actually wrote about this here (section 5): philarchive.org/rec/WOLLAC-3

[@justincancelosa5773]

So natural property rights are bad because a foreign ruler came and took away everyone’s property rights? That just sounds like more of an argument for property rights to me. Also “social construction” is just a posh dork way of saying “it’s made up” like my imaginary friend Donny is a social construction. My mother recognizes Donny as my friend so do my siblings but at any point someone can tell me the truth “Donny’s not real bro” and the illusion fades. The fact that I can own property and have someone in a suit pull up and say “no you don’t we just changed the rules to live here” is so authoritarian and dystopian. So what if I have visitors of the wrong ethnic group in my house can I lose my property because that’s what the Nazis did. The soviets would take away your property if you were in the wrong social class or political party. Meanwhile in America as long as you pay taxes, you’re the king of your own acre. Pick one and tell me what’s better for humanity. I think if you want humans to flourish give them the choice to do whatever they want because self-preservation/self-interest are pretty high on Maslow’s Hierarchy and considering I know what’s best for me not some elected or appointed goon who doesn’t even live in my neighborhood. Property rights may be made up but it’s because we as humans naturally own property like how beavers naturally build dams. The beaver dam is not a social construct at no point can I say the beaver dam is just something we agree upon it just is. Like the beaver dam humans just build and create things we use on day to day basis. If I build a spear to go hunting that is not your spear it’s mine if you take it without permission I will evict your brains from your skull with big rock. Why would I do that? Because I need that spear to eat and without it I’m deprived.

[@tufflax]

This debate format is tiring. Let them just have a discussion!

[@going_awoll]

This was the format they preferred

[@jongtrogers]

Clearly Goff is less informed on this topic. He seems to be too convinced by underdetermined phenomena, because of the books he has read which advocated one view over the other. As for who won? The basic issue seems to be semantic. Huemer said taxation's theft by definition because of these cases, like the bread case. And we should build our ethical systems bottom up, from our intuitions. So the ethical system we devise has to account for why we presume that some cases of taking are theft and some aren't, even if they are just. Goff said he was sympathetic to this methodology. Huemer never said, we should never tax people, he said it was theft. Which seems to have stood till the end. So, is taxation theft? Yes, but sometimes it's justified. This is not a legal question, it is a moral one. Theft is taking property, without the expressed permission of the owner. Governments and their components ought be subject to the same moral constraints as everyone else. If the government takes something without the expressed permission of the owner, it has stolen it. Sometimes this is justified, sometimes it isn't. Because of the quality of badness that theft contains, the government should minimize its taxation only to those cases where it is necessary, and clearly justified, cases like feeding starving people (and other cases, depending on what normative system, like rule utilitarianism). Now, the question remains, if theft is justified, is it theft? Which seems to have not been resolved in this conversation. But, what has been resolved is that currently, governments tax for unjustified ventures, so taxation under both views, is theft as it currently stands. Huemer's side has won.

[@jongtrogers]

No disrespect to Goff, I hope I didn't come across that way. I deeply respect him and love his work.

[@jongtrogers]

Anyway if I have a block of wood, before it is transformed into a good, by someone, its value is quite low. But once it is made into a valuable tool, it suddenly is worth more, the value comes from the extraction, the alteration. In the land case, unless someone extracts from or alters the land, all of its potential value is moot, the transformation informs the value, not it's state prior to transformation, independent of it's potential value. So, unless you think the log is worth the same as the tool, you shouldn't think the land is worth the same as the product. As for the UBI case, if we want to be consistent, the value should not be exclusive to the members of the country, just as it should not be exclusive to the owner, and so, the money should be divided amongst the people of the world, not just the members of the country. Some countries have more value on their land than others; just as some individuals have more value on their land, and if we tax them on that intrinsic resource value, post extraction, because of the apparent unfairness/arbitrariness; we should do the same by country on the basis of unfairness/arbitrariness. What this means is that most of the natural resource income should leave the country, which is absurd. Ultimately, the problem is caused by Nash equilibrium, this conclusion doesn't seem as absurd under a world government.

[@queasybeetle]

No

[@kaseymonroe1063]

Very frustrating. Neither of them seem like they've ever thought much about how money works. The only source of US dollars or British pounds is that respective government. When your tax credit is issued by the taxing authority, you can call it coercion, but you can't call it theft. Money IS a tax credit. And if you want to get rid of coercion, there isn't a way to enforce any rights, property or otherwise.

[@joblakelisbon]

Money isn't always issued by governments at all. That's ahistorical. Furthermore, money is only given value by the economic activity of the populace.

[@andrewkern2831]

Money's not a tax credit. You're just claiming it is.

[@SamKGrove]

"We". Who is this "we".

[@Nebukanezzer]

Saying taxation is theft is like saying capital punishment is murder. Murder and theft are words that refer to crime. A government by definition cannot do theft, or murder. So this just boils down to "I don't like taxes" which instantly reveals how immature the position is.

[@Nebukanezzer]

LOL. His response is that we have "natural property rights". lol. You don't, by the way. There is no such thing as a natural right, because who the hell is going to enforce it? Go's? Again, it just boils down to "I don't like it when my stuff gets taken" but that hermit doesn't have any rights. You can say it's bad or immoral to take his stuff, but you cannot say that he has rights.

[@Nebukanezzer]

This is obvious if you think about it for two seconds. Whenever we discuss a legal right, you can replace "right" with "assurance". You can be assured that some force will step in and punish those who violate your rights. After all, we had to pass the civil rights act. Those rights did not exist before. Those legal assurances came into effect with the passing of that law. What assurance does some random old man in the middle of nowhere have? What promise has been made to him that if someone steals from him, it will be investigated, or if he is murdered, the culprit brought to justice? Obviously he has no such thing. He has no assurance of any kind besides what he can physically enforce himself, so he has no rights.

[@Nebukanezzer]

"You could just have it so the police don't protect you if you don't pay them" ok so you don't think those people deserve rights, then. This guy is demonic

[@andrewkern2831]

@@Nebukanezzer Huemer actually has an entire book defending the fact that we have rights. Ethical Intuitionism is the book, if you're interested. Your argument for why they don't exist is that no one enforces them? Why would that show they don't exist? If your answer is "because rights only exist if they're enforced," then you're using circular reasoning. Also, yes, the hermit has rights.

[@andrewkern2831]

@@Nebukanezzer We're not talking about legal rights. You are. The conversation is not about legal rights. It's about rights generally.

[@robertomartinez8966]

What an awful debate....This Philip Goff guy spitting non sense for every hole and then Michael Huemer just adopting a passive attitude and not addressing all that non-sense. Also this was to supposed to be a "Taxation is Theft?" debate, and it ended being a hardcore Marxist propaganda about how Society should be.

[@emptycloud2774]

You just wanted a debate on definitions? Lmao

[@SamKGrove]

Less regulation? Goff is out of touch.

[@flat-earther]

did I hear it right that huemer thinks property tax is justified?

[@danielboone8256]

He seems to have Georgist sympathies

[@Johnjackjack]

Socialist only wants to debat socialism wtf not the topic of the debate

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

Socialist wouldn't be for capitalism at all. Goff point is we need to use social programs to avoid all wealth gathering to top 1 percent and make a strong middle class.

[@PAGai.]

if taxation is theft, so is employment

[@andreacontu1792]

Why?

[@c.dennehy9319]

Taxation and employment are not equatable. Employment is based upon voluntary transaction I.e, Bob agrees to work for Bill, void of any coercion, to attain some end, likely money. Taxation is the antithesis of this, you are forced into this relationship by virtue of of the states monopoly on violence, you can not choose to pay tax, it is taken by force. The only way objection to this would be on the definition of coercion, in which case you would be presupposing positive rights, i.e Bob has the right to receive the ends that working for Bill would’ve otherwise provided or B, the the ‘contract’ between the state and the people is indeed just and thus no coercion is being employed, analogous to living at someone’s house - they have a legitimate property right and thus you have to accept the conditions or be removed/face some form of punishment

[@emptycloud2774]

​@@c.dennehy9319voluntary? Take my time and labour or else I starve? Yeah, how voluntary.

[@daniellittlewood8471]

@@c.dennehy9319 Even free of any coercion, there are contract terms which cannot be just. Most people agree that if I voluntarily sell myself into slavery, then those contract terms cannot be enforced. It is not hard to imagine a situation where someone would voluntarily do so. Those who say wage labour is theft only go a little farther, to say "there are certain rights which cannot be violated, even by voluntary agreement. the right to be free from slavery is one, and the right to own the product of your labour is another". So a contract whereby someone rents themselves in exchange for the product of their labour would be unenforceable. I don't know if this is what you mean by "positive right" exactly. I imagined you had in mind rights like "Bob has the right to food and shelter". The claim is that even if you deny these, "people can't be rented" is a perfectly good negative right that also results in the same sentiment.

[@c.dennehy9319]

@@daniellittlewood8471 a positive right is one in which it requires some kind of labor, an example would be when people advocate for a right to healthcare, a negative right would be one that does not require labor, an example being when people say they have a right to guns.

[@NotreDameStudent]

It seems to me that (P2) is unmotivated. According to (P2): "Taxation takes property without consent." But this assumes what? That your entire salary is your property, say? Why think that? Why isn't part of your salary the government's property? Why should I think that if an employer salaries you at $85K, say, then all $85K is your property? After all, what the government takes out of your gross salary may be thought to be baked into what that gross salary is... You may also be thought to have consented to this by taking a job with such a baked in government take.

[@DavidRibeiro1]

That would take the discussion to another point, to the existence and/or inexistence of political authority, which was not the theme of debate anyway.

[@danielboone8256]

I think Huemer addressed this in his response to the social contract objection

[@DavidRibeiro1]

@@danielboone8256 Yes, but not in detail.

[@sachaweisz2108]

Huemer’s and Wollen’s haircuts could be improved

[@going_awoll]

I just had a haircut; Huemer's should never change

[@jacobsandys6265]

I can't picture them any other way their haircuts are so them

[@StunningCurrency]

I think goff had a more reasonable argument , but his talk about socialism was cringe. in the end yeah this issue comes down to empirical questions.

[@staubsauger2305]

Yes, but more than that, taxation is SLAVERY. It must be that because taxation requires coercion, by definition. There are alternatives to taxation that do not require coercion, such as donations, contributions, "user pays" systems. However, for the slave owners of the taxation plantation it is just easier to threaten the coercive measure (that is, extort) than persuade voluntary exchanges. Remember, the USA had greatest growth before Federal taxation was created - you don't need taxation for many things proponents of taxation claim are only possible with taxation. Also, because taxations are generally "progressive" these days they discriminate against a minority of the most productive (who receive large net negative benefit from taxation) who are outnumbered by the less productive (that receive net benefit). This is exploited by the politically ambitious to rob the productive. Taxation is fundamentally immoral.

[@theplutonimus]

Bro compares today's globalised economy to the 1800s 💀

[@tangoalpha1905]

@@theplutonimus The Pluto... *Potato.* They had those in the 1800s too. If you transported back in time you'd fit right in.

[@theplutonimus]

@@tangoalpha1905 Yes I wasn't making my actual point, my bad. But with today's geopolitical situation, with US as the world's superpower, how can it maintain high defense spending without taxes ? Generally, I'm on the side of libertarians, but taxation is entirely theft ? I disagree. But I suppose this is an issue only really prevalent in US, because here in my developing country, there's no hyperindividualistic culture.

[@tangoalpha1905]

@@theplutonimus No, in your culture there's Only Plantation Slavery. Kneel for your master. Potato.

[@patricksmith8262]

Watching the debate. But... Of course taxation is theft. Why this is still even debatable.

[@patricksmith8262]

Goff's delusion is strong.

[@HugoMccreddie]

@@patricksmith8262 how stupid do you have to be to think a topic like this isn't debatable

[@dominiks5068]

Goff absolutely crushed it. Also, I have never seen Huemer *not* lose a debate when talking politics.

[@danielboone8256]

I can’t watch this. I’m too distracted by your chiseled jaw.

[@going_awoll]

many are saying this