Those 'freedoms', with the exception of your own body, are results of depriving other people of their stuff. If you need to deprive someone of their labor or property by force, it's not a freedom. ... Water is not a right. ...
The Constitution clearly spells this out, try reading it once.
It terrifies me that there are people who have bought so far into the commodification of EVERYTHING that they have lost their basic humanity.
Yaeger might not have picked the most eloquent example or given much of an explanation, but if you construe his or her post charitably, it does contain a substantive point that can't just be summarily dismissed -- certainly not with a bold assertion that this person is not human. That is a personal attack, not an argument. I think it's very likely that Yaeger is human, although I'm not completely sure given the progress discussed in the
AI thread.
As for the merits, Yaeger refers to the US Constitution. This is the same Constitution that specifically authorises Congress to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to ... provide for the common Defence and
general Welfare of the United States".
Art 1, § 8, cl 1 (emphasis mine). The power to provide for the general welfare through taxation necessarily involves taking the property of other people -- by coercive measures if necessary, up to and including violence -- and redistributing that property to those in need. This is clearly part of the vision of freedom that exists in the United States, as measured by the Constitution itself.
That said, we can and should recognise that employing coercive force to redistribute property is a serious matter that needs to be carefully considered at every step. As the National Taxpayer Advocate has
recently explained,
| | ... taxation involves taking money from one person and applying that taking to the greater good of many, if not all. That is an extraordinary thing to ask of people. ...
When we talk about taxpayers’ willingness to comply, we really have to consider the relationship between the taxpayer and the government. This essentially involves an analysis of the dynamics between power and trust. Specifically, the government — and by extension, the tax agency — holds the awesome power of the state . For the tax system to work, the taxpayer has to trust that the government will use its power wisely and legitimately. If it does, taxpayers will be more willing to comply with the tax laws and meet their tax obligations. |
Annual Report to Congress 2015,
Executive Summary at *13 (emphasis mine).
In conclusion, the US Constitution supports depriving people of their property by force in order to redistribute wealth, but that doesn't mean this is a trivial thing to do. It is an action that needs to be carefully justified.
