This article is utter nonsensical garbage. TLDR: Goff claims that the morality of natural property rights is conditional upon a society respecting that morality - ie. the exact moral constructivist argument he claims not to use when he says:
F*wit Guff said:
(Please note, our focus here is specifically on social constructivism about property; we are not considering a more general position according to which morality as a whole is a social construction.)
Non-TLDR: Let's look at some of his egregiously manipulative tactics.
Goff’s article contains implicit bias. He begins by describing libertarians who hold the notion that taxation is theft as “radical”. He says, “outside of academia”, as if there were “academics” and “everyone else”. He says that the notion is “confused” because it isn’t present in a “serious” political theory, Goff adjudicating what is "serious" political theory, of course. Yet there are many notions, particularly in science and mathematics, that aren’t part of a political theory and yet are completely common sense and justified by airtight reasoning!
He makes a para-logical and para-moral judgement about the notion because:
- it prevents ‘economic reform’, assuming that the correct ‘reform’ would naturally exclude this notion, and its presence is directly preventing said 'reform'!
- claims that it’s in the economic interests of those who vote against it, with no evidence, despite that those votes are
direct evidence that those voting consider it NOT to be in their economic interests.
- claims it ‘corrects economic injustices’, as if those ‘injustices’ were self-evident (subjective) and a direct result of that one notion!
His statement that 'theft can be both legal, moral, or both', is presupposed on the arbitrary laws of a particular legal system. Different legal systems are based on different laws and customs. Therefore, taxation as a general concept can
only be referred to in the moral sense, because only that concept is
independent of the arbitrary laws it is being compared with. His dismissal of “legal theft” is also based on circular reasoning: legal theft doesn’t exist because the laws create legal claim!
Never mind that the person has to earn the money before it can be taxed, otherwise it’s not income!
Goff claims money is “delivered to you” via the “market”, not earned via agreed exchange! His idea of how people obtain money is a ridiculous abstraction. He then sets up a straw man by bringing up the justification for payment as based on “deserving”, an ambiguous concept, rather than agreement! He then unsurprisingly knocks "deserving" down easily, before setting up another, subtler straw man: "entitlement".
what you are entitled to is the result of your property rights
A completely meaningless distinction that attempts to shift the reader's focus towards 'rights' that are legally enforced by a central authority, and away from the concept of property obtained through ethical, mutually-agreed exchange.
He then creates arbitrary categories, “Right-wing libertarian; Left-wing libertarian; and social constructivist” and seems unconcerned with possible exceptions. But as we will see, Goff isn't concerned with the philosophical justification of individual theories from first principles.
it is not possible for one individual to acquire exclusive rights over land or natural resources in a way that excludes the equal moral claims of other citizens.
A side note: this conception of property rights assumes that primacy has no moral value, which may be an incorrect assumption.
The claims of future generations must also be taken into account, leading naturally to an inheritance tax
It's quite possible to have a “left-wing libertarian” theory of property that excludes this.
But Left-libertarian theories leave considerable latitude for the state to alter the distribution of wealth, perhaps through taxation, if some take more than their fair share of natural resources.
Goff's use of “taxation” here
implicitly contains the idea of forcible seizure - ie. theft, which Goff claims he’s arguing against! And he automatically implies the state is the arbiter of “fair share”.
The second requirement – the denial of equal rights over the natural world – is particularly implausible, and something I’ve never seen any justification of from Right-wing libertarians.
“I’ve never seen a good argument against it, and I think it’s implausible, so it must be.” Where is his justification FOR equal rights over the natural world, as he demands from the right-wing libertarians about exclusive rights? Again, emotional reasoning and moral bias.
The reason is that the world that Right-wing libertarianism theorises about is a very different one to the world we live in today.
"RWL'ism isn’t a viable theory because it doesn’t correspond to the 'reality' we live in today."
1) How exactly does the moral argument against taxation not correspond to reality when Goff claims that it prevents economic reform, people are voting based on it, it's causing 'economic injustices', and politicians like David Cameron talk about it in their speeches? Sounds like it's a pretty big part of the "world we live in today" to me.
2) I'm sure Goff's beloved abolitionists heard very similar arguments from slavers in their day. I guess they should have realised they weren't acting ethically because it was "very different to the world they lived in then."
But this is the case only if the market is perfectly free, ie if the state has no influence on the distribution of wealth. Yet there are very few countries in the world in which this is the case. In almost every country, there is a certain amount of taxation, at least to pay for roads and infrastructure, if not for education and healthcare.
The actuality (or not) of morality in practice does not effect the existence of a moral principle! And yet Goff claims that less than perfect adherence to such principles disproves natural property rights via their own presuppositions! UTTER HORSESHIT.
But even the smallest such state intervention entails that the market distribution of wealth no longer reflects the free choices of citizens, and hence by the lights of Right-wing libertarianism the citizens of these countries have no moral claim on their pre-tax income.
BY THE LIGHTS OF RIGHT-WING LIBERTARIANISM, I, PHILIP GOFF, DECLARE THAT ALL THE CITIZENS OF COUNTRIES WHO ARE NOT PERFECTLY LIBERTARIAN HAVE NO MORAL CLAIM ON THEIR PRE-TAX INCOME, BECAUSE, I, PHILIP GOFF, AM AN UTTER RETARD WHO THINKS HE IS MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE.
Although she is not directly paid by the state, the profits generated by Jones’s business are dependent on many things that are funded by the state:
"My hypothetical example assumes the use of state resources, therefore that is the reality for every business in real life."
In theory, Right-wing libertarianism does entail that people have a moral claim on their pre-tax income, and hence that taxation is theft, but only in hypothetical societies where there is zero or minimal state interference in the economy.
NO, NOT IN HYPOTHETICAL SOCIETIES, BUT AS A PREEXISTENT MORAL PRINCIPLE EVERYWHERE! THAT’S WHAT MORALITY MEANS! Goff comes out of the closet as a totalitarian postmodernist libtard here.
Even if the most radical forms of Right-wing libertarianism are true, it remains the case that you have no special moral claim on your gross income.
“Even if it’s true, it’s false.”
I thought Goff actually had half a brain based on what Laura quoted in her article series, but now I see he has just one solitary neuron screaming into the vast void of his skull. Good riddance.
