I'd agree with you, but only if premised by a certain set of facts on the ground. I believe that the State, that government ought to be, and be percieved as by all, the joint property of the citizens of the state. The land itself should primarily be privately owned. Capitalism mostly works. However, If I believed government owned itself, that it was only meant to own itself, be its own entity, then I'd think your proposed solution would sound ideal, too. The State is the enemy if one allows the State to see itself as owning itself, as owning its allegience, its legitimacy, to itself, if the way it sees citizens is as simply a ressource or product. If achieving that state, is completely impossible, then I'd choose your solution, too.Speaker to Animals wrote: ↑Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:11 amHonestly, I think taxes become immoral when it's no longer to fund government but to redistribute wealth and property, and to provide services to people that are not properly the domain of government.
What socialists do is derive from the defensible proposition, that voluntary socialized institutions are ideal to solve a given problem, a new and indefensible proposition: that therefore we need forced state socialism to solve it.
If Americans just said, fuck it, let's set-up our own health insurance co-op that uses the entire national population as the basis for a single insurance pool, nobody could claim this was stealing. It would be socialism, but not state socialism. It would be voluntary rather mandated and forced.
Basing your government policy on stealing is just a matter of sowing evil seeds. You will only reap evil from that.
A few Social Democrats here have started discussing how the original Danish Social Democrat thinkers envisioned a welfare society, not so much a welfare state. The thinking was, that if the state took over too many of the duties society used to take care of without state intervention, then it could eventually be only the state binding people together. Citizens as nothing more than legal entities. Still not a favor of abolishing it, but there are signs of this trend popping up in our language. Like how the word for "care" and "caring" for the elderly and sick, "omsorg", has taken on an almost entirely bureaucratic, government-legalese meaning in the public discourse over the last 10-15 years. It's still not "Socialism", though. That the state holds alot of power can be a wrong thing, without that wrong neccesarily being "Socialist".
To me, Socialism's indefensible proposition is simply that their whole line of argument rests on the fever dreams of a German layabout who was sure capitalism would inevitably fail. It's the idea that history, "world" history even, has a set beginning, a middle and a glorious, golden, end where everything will be daisies and lollipops. And "End of History". A linear progression towards something better, History with a capital "H". It's a lazy philosophy, but perfect for the unthinking:
"Well, HOW will the world turn Socialist, and eventually Communist?"
"Oh, history will naturally progress toward Communism. It's completely scientific! I wrote a book!"
*claps delightedly*