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Property Rights
Shinto
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Dear Conservatives,
The idea that property rights are absoute and taxation is theft does not, in fact, rest upon a grand unified philosophy popular at early time of the American Republic. John Locke, the philosopher most heavily drawn upon by that generation, in fact held that a man's property was any material with which he had mixed his labor. Today, John Locke would be attacked as a socialist or communist for this viewpoint. This philosophy of Locke's led farmers from New Hampshire to cross the Connecticut river under the leadership of Ethan Allen in the 1760s and set up homesteads on land owned by distant landlords in New York City. The low level guerilla warfare between these settlers and the mercenaries hired by the landlords, and the victory of the settlers, was what created the state of Vermont.
Madison is often cited, along with Jefferson, as a champion of property rights. Yet both Madison and Jefferson attempted to organize a faction within the early Congress to argue for government interference with said rights. During the Revolutionary War many of the soldiers who fought were paid with bonds, the Continental Congress being short on funds. In the economic contraction which followed the end of the war during the period of the Articles of Confederation many of these veterans, simple tradesmen and farmers, sank into abject poverty. They sold their bonds at dirt cheap prices to financial investors in order to survive.
In the first years of the government established by the constitution motions were made by Alexander Hamilton and his faction to repay these bonds. Madison and Jefferson argued that it was morally wrong and that investors should reap the huge profits the repayments of these bonds would yield. Their faction decided that the government should try to create a moral solution to this situation by interfering with the private property rights of the investors who had bought the bonds. They proposed to give the investors a portion of the value of the bonds and then the larger remaining share of the value to the original veterans to whom they had been issued.
In short, there was no philosophical consensus on property rights at the time of the founding of the Republic and those among the founders who were the strongest proponents of strong rights and small government had absolutely no qualms or second thoughts about the government interering in property rights to create a moral outcome in a way that would barely even be considered today.
The End.
Please discuss and debate exactly how mind numbingly wrong the idea that taxation is theft is here. Also, other property rights discussion.
The idea that property rights are absoute and taxation is theft does not, in fact, rest upon a grand unified philosophy popular at early time of the American Republic. John Locke, the philosopher most heavily drawn upon by that generation, in fact held that a man's property was any material with which he had mixed his labor. Today, John Locke would be attacked as a socialist or communist for this viewpoint. This philosophy of Locke's led farmers from New Hampshire to cross the Connecticut river under the leadership of Ethan Allen in the 1760s and set up homesteads on land owned by distant landlords in New York City. The low level guerilla warfare between these settlers and the mercenaries hired by the landlords, and the victory of the settlers, was what created the state of Vermont.
Madison is often cited, along with Jefferson, as a champion of property rights. Yet both Madison and Jefferson attempted to organize a faction within the early Congress to argue for government interference with said rights. During the Revolutionary War many of the soldiers who fought were paid with bonds, the Continental Congress being short on funds. In the economic contraction which followed the end of the war during the period of the Articles of Confederation many of these veterans, simple tradesmen and farmers, sank into abject poverty. They sold their bonds at dirt cheap prices to financial investors in order to survive.
In the first years of the government established by the constitution motions were made by Alexander Hamilton and his faction to repay these bonds. Madison and Jefferson argued that it was morally wrong and that investors should reap the huge profits the repayments of these bonds would yield. Their faction decided that the government should try to create a moral solution to this situation by interfering with the private property rights of the investors who had bought the bonds. They proposed to give the investors a portion of the value of the bonds and then the larger remaining share of the value to the original veterans to whom they had been issued.
In short, there was no philosophical consensus on property rights at the time of the founding of the Republic and those among the founders who were the strongest proponents of strong rights and small government had absolutely no qualms or second thoughts about the government interering in property rights to create a moral outcome in a way that would barely even be considered today.
The End.
Please discuss and debate exactly how mind numbingly wrong the idea that taxation is theft is here. Also, other property rights discussion.
Shinto on
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Taxes suck still remains my official stance however.
Edit - Whee, wrong thread.
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This thread is not about capital taxes, that is an entirely different issue.
5th amendment, though I don't have a problem with Roe anyway, although I'm surprised it was so reliant on the 14th exclusively rather than mentioning the 9th as well.
Also, Kelo sucks big floppy donkey dick.
Huh? Kelo was right in line with the operation of the law.
There was no public use or benefit in the slightest. We might as well have the government get a realtor's license if you're going to base whether or not using ED is acceptable on an increase in property value/taxes after it forcibly changes hands.
Taxes and open to the public shoping centers both have public use as well as benefit.
And as well, it is for each jurisdiction to define public use.
From the Planet/Stars/Singularity?
The property was already being taxed since it was already owned by an individual. It wasn't government land or a barren site or even designated a blighted area, something that is far too loosely defined to begin with. As for the latter, well, I've never heard of a privately owned and operated strip mall referred to as public property or having a public use. The sidewalks on it, perhaps, and the mailbox if it had one, but not the starbucks.
The property was not generating income taxes, the property taxes on improved[commercial] structures will increase not decrease.
Edit: and the rest, the law is public USE not public property. Privatly owned strip malls are public use, and if they arent, the owners are going to get fined to hell and back for discriminatory practices.
Fuck you, that was a great decision.
Lies.
Go back to mid-19th century France.
How is taking someone's privately owned property, by government force, and then giving it to another private owner because, hey, you can tax this new guy even more a great decision?
The decision was that the representatives of the people of Connecticutt had passed a law via the legislative and executive branches to enable the state to do it in light of the emergency of economic depression which had persisted in New London for more than a decade, and the state supreme court scrutinized the development deal twice, finding it clean of any corruption.
I support local government power to deal with local problems.
Which means that theft is property, and anything I steal from you after I club you over the head is rightfully mine.
I don't think that taxes are theft, or anything silly, but I do believe that anything you morally and legally acquire is rightfully yours, and that the government should protect your claim on it as much as possible. If I walk into a store and buy a hammer, that should be my hammer. That should be the default state of that hammer from there on out. It is not my neighbor's hammer, it is not the government's hammer, it is not the people's hammer. I paid for it, it is mine.
Similarly, money I earn for services performed should be mine, by default. I agreed to do a job for a sum of money, and after I complete that job, the money that is given to me should be considered mine. It is no longer the property of the person I worked for, and it is not the government's by default until they decide to be nice and let me have a share. It is mine, because I earned it.
Now, it's a given that we need a government to run a reasonably sized society. And it's a given that governments require money, and that this money must come from the people somehow. So yeah, the government is going to have to take some of my money. That's cool, I can understand that. But if we recognize that this money is mine, first and foremost, we should recognize that the government should not be taking more than is necessary to perform the duties it absolutely must be performing. We should recognize that taking money from people is something that must be done, not something that is really wonderful to be doing.
Money and property should not be viewed as the government's first and foremost, to do with as they please. The net paycheck you receive after taxes have been deducted should not be viewed as money that the government "let you keep". Any time tax revenue needs to be extracted from the people, it should be done with the understanding that we are being forced to take from people what is rightfully theirs in order to keep society functioning. I won't go so far as to call taxation a necessary evil, but I will say that commanding someone to give you part of what is theirs should not be construed as something noble and good. It's not good, it's not evil, it's simply what must be done.
I don't much care what the opinions of the founding fathers were on property rights, and I don't much care what other philosophers thought of it, except as a matter of interesting trivia, and perhaps a useful means of ascribing legal precedence and the like. I think property values are important because I see it as self-evident, in the same way I see value in human life. I believe asserting that property values are overrated because the founding fathers would agree is just as silly as asserting that property values are awesome because they would agree.
The idea was that they didn't have a problem with this case, but they expected similar cases in the future which were not so squeeky clean and they would issue new rulings to address problems as they arose rather than trying to anticipate them.
Anyway, nice OP.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
No, income is property.
Didn't the Supreme Court rule at some point that, in fact, income isn't property? At least for the purposes of taxation?
My memory is a bit hazy on this.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
No. They ruled that the Constitutional amendment allowing the taxation on income was firm legal ground to tax income.
Case in point:
Before Europeans came to America, there were an estimated 100 million people living on this continent.
The first colonists were like biological WMDs. They carried plagues that wiped out 90 percent of the population. Decades of war and bloody battles led to the massacre another 9 million people. People could trade in native scalps for money. They drove the remaining million people onto reservations and stole their land.
This was pretty much the biggest act of genocide in human history, although the majority of the colonists were simply fleeing oppression in the Old World, only to oppress others in the New World. Unfortunately, it was also followed up by a slave trade which mirrored the subservience present in the despotism of the Old World as well.
Law is really only most effective within a society, not between societies.
Exactly.
We kicked their asses. Can I get a "Whooooooaaa, America!"?
USA! USA!
Property rights are important for the same reason any rights are important: people want them, and they want them so much that they cannot function happily without them, so their desire for them becomes a need. And like other rights, they do not exist except that we agree they do. I own a car, but the car does not know I own it; it's just that we have collectively agreed that I alone will get to determine how, when, and by whom the car gets used. Underlying that agreement is the knowledge that if people cannot rely on access to the things they own they become miserable. So, ownership becomes a useful fiction that satisfies a human need. But society has other needs as well, and to the extent that those needs trump this one, my claim of ownership ceases to be valid, and society can tax my property away.
Ever wonder if Karma has plans for revenge?
Hah.
Bible also says you reap what you sow.
Was Kelo the Eminent Domain case?
If so, fuck eminent domain, we just set up the fucking legal basis for a communist government.
Wow, that was astonishingly off topic.
You deserve a medal.
That was perfectly on topic with the concept of American Property Rights.
The European Occupation of North America is still an ongoing issue.
The Slave Trade, which treated other Human Beings as property.
If you choose to ignore past examples, thats your own decision.
Man what?