Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone and the libertarian Institute. This is an interview by French journalist. Nicholas. Corey of Hans Hermann. Harbour. Our taxes consistent with individual freedom and property rights is a level of Taxation where it is, no more consistent. No taxes are never at no level of Taxation, consistent with individual, freedom, and property rights taxes, or theft, the thieves, the state, and its agents and allies Troy.
Their very best to conceal. This fact, of course, but there were simply no way around it. Obviously taxes are not normal, voluntary payments for goods and services because you are not allowed to stop such payments. If you are not satisfied with the product, you are not punished if you no longer by Renault cars or Chanel perfume, but you are thrown in jail, if you stop paying for government schools or universities or for Mr. Sarkozy and his pump nor is it possible to construe taxes?
As normal rent payments, as they are made by a renter to his landlord because the French state is not the landlord of all of France and all Frenchmen. To be a landlord. The French state would have to be able to prove two things first that the state and no one else owns every inch of France. And second that it has a rental contract with every single Frenchman concerning the use and price for this use of its property. No State, not the French, not
the German, Not The u.s. American or Or any other state can prove this, they have no documents to this effect and it cannot present, any rental contracts. Thus, there was only one conclusion taxation is theft and robbery by which one segment of the population, the ruling class and riches itself at the expense of another, the ruled. Is it wrong to not pay taxes? No, given that taxes are theft.
IE a moral wrong. It cannot be wrong to refuse to pay thieves or to lie to them regarding ones, taxable, income or assets. This does not mean that it is prudent or wise to do so, and not to pay taxes. After all the state is the coldest of monsters as Nietzsche, put it, and it can ruin your life, or even destroy you. If you do not obey, its commands, but there can be no. Question that it is just not to pay taxes. How do we know that a tax is?
Fair? Are there any criteria is progressive tax better than a flat tax. We know that no taxes, fair-weather Progressive or flat or proportional. How can Sefton robbery be fair? The best tax is always the lowest tax yet. Even the lowest tax is still a tax. The best because lowest tax is a head or poll tax. It's where everyone pays the same amount of taxes. Since even the poorest person must be able to pay this amount.
Such attacks must be low. But even a head tax is still theft and there was nothing fair about it. A head tax does not treat everyone, equally and install equality before the law for something happens with the tax revenue. The salaries of all state employees and dependents, like pensioners, welfare. Recipients are paid out of tax revenue, for instance accordingly. State employees and dependents pay. No taxes at all rather their
entire net income. After payment of their head, tax comes out of tax payments, and they are thus on net tax, consumers, living off, income and wealth, stolen from others, the tax producers. What is fair about one group of people living parasitically on and at the expense of another group of people. Do all philosophers agree. No, they don't. But that is hardly surprising. Almost all professional philosophers.
Nowadays are tax consumers. They do not produce any goods or services that they sell on the market to voluntarily buying or not buying philosophy consumers. As a matter of fact, as judge by actual consumer demand, the work for most contemporary philosophers, must be considered worthless rather nearly all philosophers today are paid out of taxes. They live off the money. Under confiscated from others.
If your livelihood depends on taxes, you will likely not oppose the institution of Taxation on principled. Grounds. Of course, this is not necessarily the case. Our Consciousness is not determined by are saying Allah marks.
However, any such opposition is not very likely indeed, as most intellectuals, philosophers typically suffer from an overinflated ego, they believed to do work of great importance and and the fact that Society does not compensate them accordingly, hence, if the issue of Taxation does not simply ignored by them philosophers have been at the Forefront of coming up with tortured attempts of justifying, taxes of masquerading theft, as something good, and in particular, their
own tax-funded philosopher, salaries, Should philosophers consider the economic efficiency of Taxation method, simultaneously with its ethical values. In order to speak of an action as efficient. It is necessary that we first Define a purpose. IE a goal or an end. Something can be judged as efficient or inefficient. Only in light of a goal that is assumed as given. It is the task of economists and so-called positive economics to determine which measures are
effective. Or ineffective in bringing about a given end. For instance. If you want to bring about mass unemployment, then economics tells you that it is efficient to raise the minimum wage to let's say 100 euros per hour. On the other hand, if your goal is to minimize unemployment, then economics informs you. That all minimum wage laws should be abolished, but economists, have nothing to say about the permissibility or desirability of the goals. In question.
This is the task of the philosopher. To determine which goals are just and permissible and which goals are not the economist. Then informs the philosopher, which means are efficient or inefficient in order to reach such justifiable goals, but as I already indicated, the philosophy profession simply has not done. Its job philosophers. Give plenty of advice about what to do or what not to do of course, but their advice carries little or no, intellectual wait in almost all cases.
Is it is mere opinion expression of personal tastes nothing more? If you employ more about the theory of Justice from which their recommendations supposedly flow. They have no such Theory. They can offer only some ad hoc collection of personal value judgments, which typically does not even fulfill the requirement of internal consistency. Any theory of Justice worth. Its salt must recognize first the most fundamental fact of human life. The scarcity of goods. Goods.
IE the absence of super abundance for only because of scarcity. It is possible that people can have conflicts with each other. I want to do x with a given scarce resource. And you want to do why with the very same resource without conflicts, there would be no need for rules or norms. And the purpose of norms then is conflict avoidance in the absence of pre stabilized, Harmony of all interest, conflicts can be avoided.
Only if all scarce resources. Are owned privately, IE by one identifiable owner rather than and at the exclusion of another and in order to avoid conflict from the beginning of mankind on. So to speak any theory of Justice must begin with a norm regulating. The first original appropriation of scarce resources as private property, most of contemporary political philosophy seems to be
unaware of any of this indeed. I often have the impression that that not even the fact of scarcity itself is recognized or fully comprehended. What then should be the goal of tax policy. Redistribution equality to diminish poverty. If taxes are theft, then, from the point of view of Justice. There should be no taxes and no tax policy. Every discussion about the goals
of tax policy. And tax reform is a discussion among Thieves or Advocates of theft who do not care about Justice. They care about theft, there is debate and dispute among them about, who should be taxed and how high and what is to be done. The taxes IE, who should get how much of the stolen loot, but all the thieves and all beneficiaries of theft tend to agree on. One thing, the greater amount of Loot and the lower the cost of collecting it, the better things are for them.
In fact, this is what, all Western democracies practice today. To choose tax rates and forms of Taxation, which maximize tax revenue. All current discussions about tax reform in France and Germany in the US and elsewhere discussions about whether certain forms of taxes such as wealth and inheritance taxes should be introduced or abolish whether income should be tax
progressively or proportionally. Whether capital gains should be taxed as income or not, whether Todd indirect taxes, such as the value added tax. Should be substituted for direct taxes, etc. Etc. And whether the rates of these taxes, then should be raised or cut. They are never discussions about Justice. They are not motivated by any principled opposition to taxation. But by the desire to make taxation more efficient, IE to maximize, tax revenue, every tax reform.
That is not at a minimum Revenue neutral is Nerd a failure and only reforms that increase tax. Revenue are deemed a success. I must ask again. How can anyone consider this Fair? Of course, from the point of view of tax consumers? This is all good. But from the Viewpoint of tax producers IE those who actually pay taxes. It is certainly not good, but worse than bad one. Last remark, on the economic effects of Taxation. Every tax is a redistribution of
wealth and income wealth. Income is forcibly taken from their owners and producers and transferred to people who did not own this wealth and did not produce this income. The future accumulation of wealth and the production of income are thus discouraged and the confiscation and consumption of existing wealth. And income is encouraged. As a result Society will be poorer and as for the effect of the eternally, popular, egalitarian proposal of taxing,
the rich to give to the poor. Or in particular such a scheme, does not reduce or alleviate poverty, but quite to the contrary it increases poverty. It reduces the incentive to stay or become rich and be productive, and it increases the incentive to stay or become poor, and be unproductive, should reach people be treated differently than poor people. Every person, rich or poor should be treated the same before the law. There are rich people who are
rich without having to fraud. Or having stolen from anyone, they are rich because they've worked hard, they've saved diligently, they have been productive and they've shown entrepreneurial Ingenuity. Often for several family. Generations, such people should not only be left alone, but they
should be praised as he arose. And there are rich people mostly from the class of political leaders in control of the state apparatus and from state connected Elites of banking and big business who are rich because they have been directly engaged in or indirectly benefited from confiscation. Theft trickery and fraud. Such people should not be left alone. But instead be condemned and despised as gangsters the same applies to poor people.
There are poor people who are honest people and therefore should be left alone. They may not be heroes, but they deserve our respect. And there are poor people who are Crooks and who should be treated as Crooks regardless of their poverty. Thank you for watching Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone and the libertarian Institute.