WEBVTT NOTE Panel Discussion 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Any questions? I'm going to check online if there are questions too, but if you have questions, that would be great. Anybody? 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:23.800 So with all the ways that taxes don't work and what not, is there an ideal way, regardless 3 00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:32.280 of whether or not it can ever happen, is there an ideal way where we can have services that 4 00:00:32.280 --> 00:00:40.280 that everybody participates in, but without the wastefulness of the government? 5 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:44.280 Well, I mean, I think the simple answer is that yes, there is. 6 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:47.280 I mean, if this is what you're asking, I mean, there is an alternative. 7 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:54.280 And the thing is, basically all the services that the government provides can be better provided in the market. 8 00:00:54.280 --> 00:01:00.280 And in fact, most of them already have long historical precedents of being provided to the market. 9 00:01:00.280 --> 00:01:16.280 If that's what you meant, then yes, it's entirely possible and they would be much less wasteful and more efficient ways of providing the same things. 10 00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:29.280 It's not just the market. There's a market society, but it's also civil society, family society that just because there are public goods 11 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:22.280 I would like to say a credit union versus a bank to make an analogy there, where the credit union is actually owned by the members, so it's the collectives when they provide the same services, but it's not like a government in the sense of taking them. 12 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:27.920 Yeah, I think you can use exactly those kind of analogies because kind of building on what 13 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:32.560 Danny was saying, I mean we talk a lot about the market and the market is of course very 14 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:38.640 important, profit and loss are very important, but these arrangements for getting around 15 00:02:38.640 --> 00:02:45.320 these problems of providing public goods, they're much wider than just the profit motive 16 00:02:45.320 --> 00:02:49.940 and so yes, you have all kinds of arrangements like this, like things like credit unions 17 00:02:49.940 --> 00:02:59.940 or cooperatives, collectives and all kinds of alternatives to strict profit and loss that come up to solve these problems. 18 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:11.940 And the reason that they're sort of unobjectionable is because they're just the result of people getting together and deciding that that's the way they'd like to organize the production of whatever this good is. 19 00:03:11.940 --> 00:03:41.940 and then so like the big point is that it's despite the fact of course that we do talk about the market a lot it's really the big distinction is between government and private individuals and the use of force and social cooperation those are the big things and it just happens to be that the market is one very important mechanism for social cooperation but yeah you have all these other arrangements too that people come up with to try and solve these problems 20 00:03:41.940 --> 00:04:00.440 What level of government would be acceptable? We have to have some form of government. If you just get away with everything, what's to keep complete anarchy from raining, complete total chaos? 21 00:04:11.940 --> 00:04:16.940 Park means rulers, so just because you don't have rulers doesn't mean you don't have rules. 22 00:04:16.940 --> 00:04:19.940 Oh, no, no, no, sorry. 23 00:04:19.940 --> 00:04:20.940 Go ahead. 24 00:04:20.940 --> 00:04:29.940 I think what you were trying to say is that we don't necessarily need government in the 25 00:04:29.940 --> 00:04:31.940 sense that it's conventionally understood. 26 00:04:31.940 --> 00:04:36.940 We need rules, we need law, we need a society, but it's not necessarily the case. 27 00:04:36.940 --> 00:04:50.940 I think we would argue that you need government in the sense of somebody who forces you to abide by laws that you did not in fact have a real role in setting up and that you never agreed to. 28 00:04:50.940 --> 00:04:59.940 So we do think that a lot of these fundamental services that government is supposed to provide in terms of just ensuring the very stability of society, 29 00:04:59.940 --> 00:05:05.980 Society, those can be provided by private individuals who don't need to force each other at gunpoint 30 00:05:05.980 --> 00:05:13.220 to follow each other's will. That's something that I think that we would agree on. 31 00:05:13.220 --> 00:05:21.340 And there's also a distinction between government and governance. So we do need governance. 32 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:32.340 We need security, enforcement of laws, judicial services, protection from foreign invasion. 33 00:05:32.340 --> 00:05:38.460 These are things that are important, but they're all things that have, at some point, been 34 00:05:38.460 --> 00:05:41.940 provided by private individuals. 35 00:05:41.940 --> 00:05:48.380 Every single one of these services has been provided by private services. 36 00:05:48.380 --> 00:05:54.700 In Ireland, for a thousand years, they were provided, they were all provided, and in most 37 00:05:54.700 --> 00:06:02.060 other societies, at least some of them have been provided in different ways. 38 00:06:02.060 --> 00:06:09.020 And just as a practical matter, a solution that was proposed by Joseph Sobert, he was 39 00:06:09.020 --> 00:06:14.060 a great libertarian writer, he just put it like this, he said, you look as a practical 40 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:41.140 Could you have a workable system that's more localized, in other words is part of our problem 41 00:06:41.140 --> 00:06:48.840 Today, in our United States government, the fact that so much of what we do is under the 42 00:06:48.840 --> 00:06:54.580 umbrella of the national, the federal level. 43 00:06:54.580 --> 00:07:00.980 If we were to, as a practical matter, if we were to be able to take away some of the functions 44 00:07:00.980 --> 00:07:05.980 of the federal government and put them more in the hands of state and local governments, 45 00:07:05.980 --> 00:07:11.980 Would that be more a move toward that kind of cooperative society? 46 00:07:35.980 --> 00:07:46.300 And that can be another process along the lines of what he was talking about before, 47 00:07:46.300 --> 00:07:54.580 of just taking off layers of government until you find the stopping point that works, but 48 00:07:54.580 --> 00:08:01.000 you can also secede until you find the stopping point that works. 49 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:05.940 You can have states seceding from the federal government, you can have cities seceding from 50 00:08:05.940 --> 00:08:12.180 from States, you can have neighborhoods seceding from cities, and ultimately, if it's possible 51 00:08:12.180 --> 00:08:20.820 and if it works, then you can have the individual seceding politically from that little microstate. 52 00:08:20.820 --> 00:08:24.460 Which is not to say that you're seceding economically. 53 00:08:24.460 --> 00:08:31.700 It's important to realize that we're not talking about economic atomism, that you still 54 00:08:31.700 --> 00:08:47.700 We still have the division of labor that just because we're not part of the same state as Canada doesn't mean that we can't buy and sell from Canada and that we're not part of the same civilization and part of the same society as Canada. 55 00:08:47.700 --> 00:09:00.700 And just like the Italian city-states, just because they weren't at one point part of one big Italian super-state didn't mean that they weren't a civilization that bought and sold from each other. 56 00:09:00.700 --> 00:09:11.700 is a great point, is that you have these two effects, because as you become more decentralized, politically speaking, at the same time, there's this great effect where you become more integrated economically. 57 00:09:11.700 --> 00:09:22.700 So even more decentralized type forms of government results in much more global communication and economic activity and so on. 58 00:09:22.700 --> 00:09:27.700 So it's an interesting effect that goes the other way, but that's an entirely good thing. 59 00:09:27.700 --> 00:09:35.500 So, there is a question from the online audience. Harold asks, which type of tax do you consider 60 00:09:35.500 --> 00:09:42.140 to be most destructive to society? Sales tax, personal income tax, or corporate tax? And 61 00:09:42.140 --> 00:09:47.020 what do you consider to be the most destructive aspect of that tax? Which tax do you consider 62 00:09:47.020 --> 00:09:51.500 to be most immoral as opposed to destructive? Thanks for the session. Thanks. 63 00:09:51.500 --> 00:10:01.380 Yes, as always, it depends on where you start from and exactly how you look at it. 64 00:10:01.380 --> 00:10:10.100 In general, you might say that corporate income taxes can be among the most destructive because 65 00:10:10.100 --> 00:10:14.420 if you're taxing, say, entrepreneurs who are supposed to be the driving force of the 66 00:10:14.420 --> 00:10:19.380 economy, if they're prevented through taxes from doing this, from playing this very important 67 00:10:19.380 --> 00:10:43.380 Murray Rothbard said that too much focus is given to the type of taxation and not enough 68 00:10:43.380 --> 00:10:45.940 to the level of taxation. 69 00:10:45.940 --> 00:10:49.620 That it's the level of taxation that matters the most. 70 00:10:49.620 --> 00:10:52.980 And so actually the most important part 71 00:10:52.980 --> 00:10:57.180 about the type of taxation is how it contributes 72 00:10:57.180 --> 00:10:58.980 to the level of taxation. 73 00:10:58.980 --> 00:11:02.980 So that's why Joe was talking about how a poll tax 74 00:11:02.980 --> 00:11:07.940 or a head tax, just people talk about flat tax 75 00:11:07.940 --> 00:11:10.260 as being like everyone pays the same percentage. 76 00:11:10.260 --> 00:11:12.420 No, a real flat tax would be everybody 77 00:11:12.420 --> 00:11:21.860 paying the same amount and that by its very nature would limit taxation because you can't 78 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:27.180 charge, like Joe was saying, that you can't charge too much of a tax because the poor 79 00:11:27.180 --> 00:11:28.340 have to be able to afford it. 80 00:11:28.340 --> 00:11:33.460 So it forces you to have a very limited, a very low tax. 81 00:11:33.460 --> 00:11:40.020 And so Murray Rothbard wrote an article about Margaret Thatcher because she tried to institute 82 00:11:40.020 --> 00:11:41.020 a poll tax. 83 00:11:41.020 --> 00:11:45.780 And he said, but she missed the whole point of the poll tax because she instituted it, 84 00:11:45.780 --> 00:11:47.640 but then she tried to make it really high. 85 00:11:47.640 --> 00:11:50.940 And that's missing the whole point of the poll tax is that it's supposed to force you 86 00:11:50.940 --> 00:11:51.940 to make it low. 87 00:11:51.940 --> 00:11:58.100 Oh, and then just to add also, because you asked about the morality of taxes too, a lot 88 00:11:58.100 --> 00:12:02.020 of people have made fairly convincing cases that things like personal income taxes are 89 00:12:02.020 --> 00:12:09.860 the most onerous sort of taxes from the moral perspective as well, because they're basically 90 00:12:09.860 --> 00:12:32.140 In general, internal taxes in general, including income taxes, but also including excise taxes, 91 00:12:32.140 --> 00:12:37.860 that those are particularly hated, especially in the Anglo-American tradition, because of 92 00:12:37.860 --> 00:12:40.780 of the Invasion of Privacy that they Entail. 93 00:12:40.780 --> 00:12:47.980 So that's part of the reason why the Americans were hated so much when the British switched 94 00:12:47.980 --> 00:13:01.220 from tariffs to excise and direct taxation, internal taxation, because it involved troops 95 00:13:01.220 --> 00:13:10.320 Results coming in and snooping around on your property and trying to assess how much you 96 00:13:10.320 --> 00:13:24.940 owe, whereas with a tariff it's paid at the dock and it's seen as less intrusive. 97 00:13:24.940 --> 00:13:34.860 But again, it's really the principle that really upset the Americans, that even though 98 00:13:34.860 --> 00:13:41.940 the revenue level was really low and that it was the principle. 99 00:13:41.940 --> 00:13:48.500 And so that's what's amazing about how easy we are in terms of the taxation that we're 100 00:13:48.500 --> 00:13:52.660 even just a tiny, tiny taxation, just the principle of it upset people. 101 00:13:52.660 --> 00:14:02.260 And like Ron Paul said, that once you give 1%, you're giving 100% of the principal. 102 00:14:02.260 --> 00:14:03.260 Oak? 103 00:14:03.260 --> 00:14:12.460 So how do we get from where we are now with the fairly high taxation to that point where 104 00:14:12.460 --> 00:14:19.260 you said that it would be like where the fabric of civilization sometimes would break? 105 00:14:19.260 --> 00:14:25.260 How do you get from here to there when everyone thinks that taxation is a game? 106 00:14:49.260 --> 00:14:55.660 is a much more difficult thing to actually do because it's not very wise to encourage 107 00:14:55.660 --> 00:15:00.780 people not to pay their taxes and nobody wants to risk imprisonment. 108 00:15:00.780 --> 00:15:07.460 But the real key is to just communicate this idea to people that taxes are unjust and that 109 00:15:07.460 --> 00:15:11.100 they are destructive to the economy. 110 00:15:11.100 --> 00:15:17.660 And when enough people realize this, really begin to understand this and put it into practice, 111 00:15:17.660 --> 00:15:45.660 In American history, one tactic that was used was just civil disobedience. Murray Rothbard 112 00:15:45.660 --> 00:15:52.540 Woodward has a great article on the whiskey rebellion, which was a widespread rebellion 113 00:15:52.540 --> 00:15:58.780 against an excise tax on whiskey that was successful. 114 00:15:58.780 --> 00:16:06.480 Even though George Washington actually came in militarily and put a stop to one particular 115 00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:15.620 revolt where they were actually manhandling tax collectors, it didn't stop there. 116 00:16:15.620 --> 00:16:19.620 You mentioned the Rothbard article on the full tax. 117 00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:22.620 At the end of the article it said that 118 00:16:22.620 --> 00:16:26.620 the government was still trying to collect the whiskey tax. 119 00:16:26.620 --> 00:16:29.620 So, ultimately, it was abandoned. 120 00:16:29.620 --> 00:16:37.620 That was the last time that there was a peacetime excise tax in America until the Civil War. 121 00:16:37.620 --> 00:16:38.620 Yes? 122 00:16:38.620 --> 00:16:43.620 You mentioned the Rothbard article on the full tax. 123 00:16:43.620 --> 00:16:52.620 In the beginning of the article it said that Scotland did not have a coercive tax and that a third of the population just refused to pay it. 124 00:16:52.620 --> 00:16:58.620 And then we were talking earlier about a circum. 125 00:16:58.620 --> 00:17:08.620 And so I wonder, there seem to be two voluntary taxes, two systems of government under Maury. 126 00:17:08.620 --> 00:17:37.860 Well, Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes the point that in a monarchy, you know who the state is. 127 00:17:37.860 --> 00:17:44.460 If King Obama tried to say the state is us, it wouldn't fly, and so there's built-in 128 00:17:44.460 --> 00:17:52.740 resistance because of that, and so that's one way in which that's true. 129 00:17:52.740 --> 00:18:05.820 But then you have kings like Philip the Fair who were really rapacious at the same time. 130 00:18:05.820 --> 00:18:09.820 Does the Federal Reserve have anything to do with taxation, and if it does, what does 131 00:18:09.820 --> 00:18:13.900 it have to do with it? 132 00:18:13.900 --> 00:18:21.580 There are some connections, but really, we tend to think of the Federal Reserve as an 133 00:18:21.580 --> 00:18:25.660 alternative way of influencing the economy. 134 00:18:25.660 --> 00:18:30.340 Generally speaking, you make a distinction in economics between monetary policy, which 135 00:18:30.340 --> 00:18:35.340 is the Federal Reserve, and basically just changes in the money supply, changes in the 136 00:18:35.340 --> 00:19:05.340 interest rates, things of that nature, and on the other hand there's fiscal policy, which is the government's budget, taxes, spending, and so on, and those are generally viewed as alternative methods of trying to influence the economy, push it in one way or another, so in that sense, the Federal Reserve is not connected to taxation, although of course, I think you were pointing out the inflation tax, of course this is one 137 00:19:05.340 --> 00:19:09.980 and the informal way that the Fed very much is involved in the business of taxation is 138 00:19:09.980 --> 00:19:13.420 because it changes the purchasing power of money. 139 00:19:13.420 --> 00:19:20.060 It imposes this implicit tax on all people who hold money. 140 00:19:20.060 --> 00:19:26.240 And at the same time, even if there isn't price inflation, I mean there's no such thing 141 00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:27.240 as a free lunch. 142 00:19:27.240 --> 00:19:33.980 I mean there's a certain amount of goods and services that are out there. 143 00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:41.820 And so if you print a bunch of money out of nowhere and give it to a bunch of bankers 144 00:19:41.820 --> 00:19:50.700 and suddenly they have the wherewithal to command a greater portion of these goods and 145 00:19:50.700 --> 00:19:57.420 services that are out there at any given moment, then when you're talking about one given moment, 146 00:19:57.420 --> 00:19:58.780 it's a zero-sum game. 147 00:19:58.780 --> 00:20:05.540 So if they are suddenly richer, then in that given moment, other people are poor. 148 00:20:05.540 --> 00:20:11.560 So anytime you just print money out of nowhere, it is redistribution. 149 00:20:11.560 --> 00:20:17.020 And so even if there isn't noticeable price inflation, it's still a tax, it's still a 150 00:20:17.020 --> 00:20:19.700 redistribution of wealth. 151 00:20:19.700 --> 00:20:24.340 Which goes to this question, which was, please comment on the evils of inflation as a hidden 152 00:20:24.340 --> 00:20:25.340 tax. 153 00:20:25.340 --> 00:20:27.500 Okay, should we wrap it up? 154 00:20:27.500 --> 00:20:30.500 Any other questions? 155 00:20:30.500 --> 00:20:31.500 Okay, thank you. 156 00:20:32.500 --> 00:20:33.500 Thank you all. 157 00:20:33.500 --> 00:20:34.000 Thank you all.