Coercion K - Symonds

8/14/2019 Coercion K - Symonds

1/78


2/78

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 2Lacy/Symonds/Bowen Coercion K

Libertarianism Causes Genocide..................................................................................................................................58Libertarianism Decreases Freedom...............................................................................................................................59Libertarianism Ignores Consequences..........................................................................................................................60Libertarianism Wrong Positive Rights.......................................................................................................................61A2: Libertarianism Creates Social Equality..................................................................................................................62Libertarianism Results in No Government...................................................................................................................63Top-Down Libertarian Revolution Fails.......................................................................................................................64A2: Freedom Based Rights- Free Will is Never Lost...................................................................................................65A2: Freedom Outweighs All.........................................................................................................................................66A2: Negative Freedom Based Rights- Circular Logic Fails.........................................................................................67A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Rothbard Flawed................................................................................................68A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Hegel Flawed.....................................................................................................69A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Fichte Flawed.....................................................................................................70Negative Freedom Bad Reduces Freedom/Equality..................................................................................................71 Negative Rights Flawed................................................................................................................................................72 Negative Rights Flawed................................................................................................................................................73A2: Moral Imperative Comes First...............................................................................................................................74A2: Must Reject Coercion in Every Instance................................................................................................................75A2: Weigh Coercion First- Consequentialist Framework Key.....................................................................................76A2: We Are Libertarian Consequentialists ...............................................................................................................77

A2: Libertarianism is Consistent With Consequentialism............................................................................................78


3/78


Shell 1/2

Environmentalism lends itself to the widespread expansion of governmental influence and

authority at the expense of liberty

George Reisman, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Pepperdine Universitys Graziadio School of Business and

Management, 2001, Excerpt of a speech delivered at the Austrian Scholars Conference,http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=661&id=71The same intellectual quarter that a generation or more ago urged the totalitarian control of all aspects of human life for the purposeof bringing order to what would otherwise allegedly be chaos, now urges a policy of laissez-faireout of respect for natural harmonies. Of course, it is not a policy oflaissez-faire toward human beings, who are to be as tightly controlled as ever. Nor, of course, is it a policy that recognizes any form of economic harmonies among human beings. No, it is a

policy of laissez-faire toward nature in the raw; the alleged harmonies that are to be respected are those of so-called eco-systems. But while the intellectuals have turned against reason, science, and technology, they continue to supportsocialism and, of course, to oppose capitalism.They now do so in the form of environmentalism. It should be realized that environmentalismsgoal ofglobal limits on carbon dioxide and other chemical emissions, as called for in the Kyoto treaty, easily lends itself to theestablishment of world-wide central planning with respect to a wide variety of essential means of production. Indeed,an explicit bridge between socialism and environmentalism is supplied by one of the most prominent theorists of the environmental movement, Barry Commoner, who was also the Green Partysfirst candidate for President of the United States. The bridge is in the form of an attempted ecological validation of one of the very first notions of Karl Marx to be discreditednamely, Marxsprediction of the progressive impoverishment of the wage earners under capitalism. Commoner attempts to salvage this notion by arguing that what has prevented Marxs prediction from comingtrue, until now, is only that capitalism has temporarily been able to exploit the environment. But this process must now come to an end, and, as a result, the allegedly inherent conflict between thecapitalists and the workers will emerge in full force. (For anyone interested, I quote Commoner at length in Capitalism.) Concerning the essential similarity between environmentalism and

socialism, I wrote: The only difference I can seebetween the green movement of the environmentalists and the old red

movement of the Communists and socialists is the superficial one of the specific reasons for which they want to violateindividual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Reds claimed that the individual could not be left free because the resultwould be such things as "exploitation," "monopoly," and depressions. The Greens claim that the individual cannot be left freebecause the result will be such things as destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, andglobal warming. Both claim that centralizedgovernment control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity. The Greens want it for thealleged sake of avoiding environmental damage . . . [And in the end,] [b]oth the Reds and the Greens want someone to suffer and die; the one,the capitalists and the rich, for the alleged sake of the wage earners and the poor; the other, a major portion of allmankind, for the alleged sake of the lower animals and inanimate nature (Ibid., p. 102). If the worlds intellectuals had been open to thepossibility that they had been wrong about the nature of capitalism and socialismprofoundly, devastatingly wrongand taken the trouble to read and understand the works of von Mises inorder to learn how and why they had been wrong, socialism would have died once and for all with the Soviet Union, and the whole world would now be moving toward laissez-faire capitalism

and unprecedented economic prog ress and prosperity. Instead, the intellectuals have chosen to foist the doctrine of environmentalism on theworld, as a last-ditch effort to destroy capitalism and save socialism.


4/78


Shell 2/2

Federal regulations make us slaves to the state

Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000(Edward, Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft, The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 221-22)

It is important to understand how this argument differs from other libertarian arguments against

taxation. It is not quite the same as the general claim that taxation interferes with individual liberty

insofar as its enforcement is intrusive and it prevents one from doing what he wants with a portion of

his income,2 forthere are many who would find such infringements of liberty acceptable butnevertheless consider uncomfortable the notion that taxation also amounts to forcing people to work.The argument also differs from the objection that taxation amounts to theft in that forcing someone to laborand stealing from him are different offenses (although, if we take the former to involve specifically thestealing of labor, the difference between the objections may be one only of generality). Nonetheless, it issometimes suggested that Nozicks argument is essentially concerned with the violation of property rightsor with theft, rather than with forced labor in that Nozick presupposes that one has a property right in

the portion of ones earnings the state takes in taxes, a right his critics claim he fails to establish

(Kymlicka 1990, 10718; Michael 1997, 141; Weinberg 1997, 336; Otsuka 1998, 71).3 Nozicks argument,as stated previously, nowhere explicitly appeals to any claim about property rights, and it is by no meansobvious that an argument objecting to some practice on the grounds that it amounts to forced labor needs

even implicitly to do so. Clearly, I might still be forced to labor for someone else if I labor at all, even if Ihave no property right in the product of the labor: a slave may own no part of his masters land or

tools, and thus arguably he cannot own whatever he produced using them vegetables, saybut he isnevertheless a slave, even if he is allowed to eat some of the vegetables and thus labors partly for

himself. The master might even allow him to idle away the days if he likes, but insist that if he labors to

any extent, some of his labor must be for the sake of the master: if the slave grows tomatoes because he

wants them, the master will take a portion of them; if he tries to grow only one tomato for himself, the

master will nevertheless take a third of it; if to avoid giving the master that third he tries somehow to

grow only two-thirds of a tomato, the master will take a third of that tomato; and so forth. Insofar as

the master taxes away a portion of the product of his labor, the slave has obviously been forced to

work for purposes other than his own, even though he has no property right in the product of his labor

(the portion of it he is allowed to eat also belongs to the master).

Rights violations should be rejected in all instancesPetro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, 74(Sylvester, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, Spring, p. 480. (PDNSS511)

However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway I believe in only one thing: liberty. And itis always well to bear in mind David Humes observation: It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost allat once. Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import

because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny,

despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if onebelieves in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to

maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically

identified and resisted with undying spirit.


5/78


Environment Links (1/5)

Protecting liberty from environmental regulations is fundamental to avert totalitarianism

Eric Englund, MBA from Boise State University, Surety Bond Underwriter, February 22, 2002,Global Warming: Socialisms Trojan Horse, LewRockwell.com, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund5.htmlOn February 14, 2002, President Bush provided details for his plan to combat global warming. The cornerstone of his plan is to promote voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Naturally, environmentalists were outraged that President Bush refused to adhere to the Kyoto Treaty. It is President Bushs contention thatthe Kyoto protocol would cost nearly 5,000,000 jobs in the U.S. alone. Of course, environmentalists claimed that there is a bigger picture here. All people, especially those living in industrialized

countries such as the U.S., must sacrifice in order to win the universal struggle against global warming. As we have seen over the past three decades, environmentalists havesucceeded in eroding property rights in the United States in order to protect MotherEarth as they see fit (i.e. through the Clean WaterAct, through the Endangered Species Act, through ridiculous wetlands legislation, through air quality laws, etc). Whether or not President Bush understands this, the real struggle is

between liberty and totalitarianism. For ifenvironmentalists succeed in gradually taking away our private propertyrights, then a free market and liberty cannot exist. Thus, it is my contention that the struggle against environmentalism isactually a struggle for liberty (using the classical liberal definition).

Undoubtedly, environmentalists will take exception to being called illiberal socialists (but I repeat m yself). Perhaps there are those of you who are alarmed about global warming and sympathizewith the environmental/green movement. My response is for you to be careful with whom you associate; which leads me to provide the following quote from Dr. George Reismans magnum opus

Capitalism:it should not be surprising to see hordes of former Reds, or of those who otherwise would have become Reds, turning fromMarxism and becoming the Greens of the ecology movement. It is the same fundamental philosophy in a differentguise, ready as ever to wage war on the freedom and well-being of the individual.

Federal incentives towards environmental regulations are coercive

Anderson and Leal, Political Economy Research Center, 94 (Terry L. and Donald L.Regulation: The CatoReview of Business & Government, Spring, Enviro-Capitalism vs. Environmental Statism,http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.html, 7/15/08)

One exception to total command and control that recently has gained acceptance in the environmental

community is market-based solutions such as tradeable pollution permits. Those are accorded at least

a light shade of green from mainstream environmentalists because they still "let the government steer."

But market-based solutions really have little to do with markets; they are simply ways of making

command and control more efficient. Such market-based solutions have been advocated for some time byeconomists pointing out that those solutions improve efficiency. Under a system of tradeable permits, a partyholding a permit will have an incentive to reduce his pollution and sell the permit if he can do so at a profit.That will reduce the cost of meeting pollution standards by encouraging those with the lowest cost of

reducing pollution to do so.Unlike a market, however, the level of pollution is not determined by willing buyers and willing sellers,but by command and control. A market for pollution would have the polluter paying the receptor in a

voluntary transaction. If the polluter is willing to pay the receptor more than the cost the receptor

bears, more effluent will be emitted. That requires a system of well-specified property rights and a

system of common-law torts that forces a polluter to pay for any damages he generates. Market-based

solutions, on the other hand, establish the level of pollution through a political process with little if any

compensation paid to those who receive the pollution. It is true that market-based solutions can make

the process of meeting governmentally imposed pollution allowances more efficient, and free-market

environmentalists applaud such efficiency gains. But there should be no mistaking the fact that the

process of determining the level of pollution ought to be a market process. The alternative to environmental statism is free-market environmentalism. As Kellogg notes, free-market environmentalism seems "like an oxymoron" but only because it does not depend on the

coercive hand of government to steer the boat. Instead, free-market environmentalism depends onproperty rights and the law of contracts and torts, wherein willing buyers and sellers determine the

course through their bargaining over the exchange of property rights. In the context of free-market

environmentalism, pollution is not pollution as long as those who receive the byproducts are

compensated for taking on what is unwanted by others. Hence the sign on the garbage truck that

reads, "It may be garbage to you, but it's our bread and butter."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.html


6/78



Environmentalist doctrines are intellectual toxins administered at great cost to human

liberty; we are now at a crossroads, failure to uphold the freedoms of free market

capitalism will spell the end of civilization

George Reisman, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Pepperdine Universitys Graziadio School of Business andManagement, 2001, The Toxicity of Environmentalism,http://www.capitalism.net/Environmentalism's%20Toxicity.htmWhat the cultural acceptance of a doctrine as irrational as environmentalism makes clear is that the real problem of the industrialized world is not"environmental pollution" but philosophical corruption. The so-called intellectual mainstream of the Western world has been fouled with a whole array ofintellectual toxins resulting from the undermining of reason and the status of man [or woman], and which further contribute to thisdeadly process. Among them, besides environmentalism, are collectivism in its various forms of Marxism, racism, nationalism, and feminism; and cultural relativism, determinism, logicalpositivism, existentialism, linguistic analysis, behaviorism, Freudianism, Keynesianism, and more.

These doctrines are intellectual toxins because they constitute a systematic attack on one or more major aspects of therequirements of human life and well-being. Marxism results in the kind of disastrous conditions now prevailing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. All thevarieties of collectivism deny the free will and rationality of the individual and attribute his [or her] ideas, character,and vital interests to his membership in a collective: namely, his membership in an economic class, racial group, nationality, or sex, as the case may be, depending on the specificvariety of collectivism. Because they view ideas as determined by group membership, these doctrines deny the very possibility of knowledge. Their effect is the creation of

conflict between members of different groups: for example, between businessmen [or women] and wage earners,blacks and whites, English speakers and French speakers, men and women.

Determinism, the doctrine that man's actions are controlled by forces beyond his power of choice, and existentialism, the philosophy that man is trapped in a "human condition" of inescapablemisery, lead people not to make choices they could have made and which would have improved their lives. Cultural relativism denies the objective value of modern civilization and thusundercuts both people's valuation of modern civilization and their willingness to work hard to achieve personal values in the context of it. The doctrine blinds people to the ob jective value of suchmarvelous advances as automobiles and electric light, and thus prepares the ground for the sacrifice of modern civilization to such nebulous and, by comparison, utterly trivial values as"unpolluted air."

Logical positivism denies the possibility of knowing anything with certainty about the real world. Linguistic analysis regards the search for truth as a trivial word game. Behaviorism denies theexistence of consciousness. Freudianism regards the conscious mind (the "Ego") as surrounded by the warring forces of the unconscious mind in the form of the "Id" and the "Superego," and thusas being incapable of exercising substantial influence on the individual's behavior. Keynesianism regards wars, earthquakes, and pyramid building as sources of prosperity. It looks to peacetimegovernment budget deficits and inflation of the money supply as a good substitute for these allegedly beneficial phenomena. Its effects, as the present-day economy of the United States bearswitness, are the erosion of the buying power of money, of credit, of saving and capital accumulation, and of the general standard of living.

These intellectual toxins can be seen bobbing up and down in the "intellectual mainstream," just as raw sewage canbe seen floating in a dirty river. Indeed, they fill the intellectual mainstream. Virtually, every college and university in the Western world is a philosophical cesspool of thesedoctrines, in which intellectually helpless students are immersed for several years and then turned loose to contaminate the rest of society. These irrationalist doctrines, and others like them, arethe philosophical substance of contemporary liberal arts education.

Clearly, the most urgent task confronting the Western world, and the new intellectuals who must lead it, is aphilosophical and intellectual cleanup. Without it, Western civilization simply cannot survive. It will bekilled by the poison of environmentalism.

To accomplish this cleanup, only the most powerful, industrial-strength, philosophical and intellectual cleansing agents will do. These cleansing agents are, above all, the writings of Ayn Randand Ludwig von Mises. These two towering intellects are, respectively, the leading advocates of reason and capitalism in the twentieth century. A philosophical-intellectual cleanup requires thatall or most of their writings be introduced into colleges and universities as an essential part of the core curriculum, and that what is not included in the core curriculum be included in the moreadvanced programs. The incorporation of the writings of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises into a prominent place in the educational curriculum is the central goal that everyone should work forwho is concerned about his cultural environment and the impact of that environment on his life and well-being. Only after this goal is accomplished, will there be any possibility that colleges anduniversities will cease to be centers of civilization-destroying intellectual disease. Only after it is accomplished on a large scale, at the leading colleges and universities, can there be anypossibility of the intellectual mainstream someday being clean enough for rational people to drink from its waters.

The 21st Century should be the century when man [and woman] begins the colonization of the solar system, not areturn to the Dark Ages. Which it will be, will depend on the extent to which new intellectuals can succeed inrestoring to the cultural environment the values of reason and capitalism.


7/78



Environmental regulations are paternalistic sacrifices of the autonomy of individuals to

privileged environmentalist ideals

John Earl Duke, J.D. Candidate, Boston University, February 2003Boston University Law Review, Giving

Species the Benefit of the Doubt, 83 B.U.L. Rev. 209

As a consequence, giving species the benefit of the doubt facilitates paternalistic rulemaking under the guise of"preventing" harm. Paternalism is "roughly the interference with a person's liberty of action justified by reasonsreferring exclusively to the welfare, good, happiness, needs, interests, or values of the person being coerced." 194Some environmentalists use the ESA to restrict various land use projects because they think it is better, not just forthemselves, but also for those who wish to engage in these projects. This is vividly exemplified by the Sierra Club'sletter to FWS quoted earlier: "Adding the Barton Springs salamander to the list of endangered species will slowdevelopment to a sustainable level in one part of town - but overall the area will benefit by preserving a small bit ofnature in the heart of the city." 195 However, "where the imposition of paternalistic duties is justified, this is oftenaccounted for because individuals have a right against the authority (e.g., the State) that it shall protect them againsttheir own folly, neglect, or ignorance." 196 As argued above, giving species the benefit of the doubt does not protectanyone against their own folly, neglect, or ignorance because when the data are inconclusive, FWS is just asignorant as everyone else. Thus, giving species the benefit of the doubt results in unjustified, paternalisticrestrictions on autonomy. In contrast, a rule giving landowners and developers the benefit of the doubt will help

protect and promote our interests in autonomy and species security because such a rule allows them to decide ontheir own what to do, unless the available data indicate that it is more likely than not that a species is endangered orthreatened, or that any particular action will actually harm a [*247] species. In other words, a much more sensibleand defensible solution is to switch the burden of proof. As Gerald Dworkin has argued, "In all cases of paternalisticlegislation there must be a heavy and clear burden of proof placed on the authorities to demonstrate the exact natureof the harmful effects (or beneficial consequences) to be avoided (or achieved) and the probability of theiroccurrence." 197 Or, as Hart has argued: Recognition of individual liberty as a value involves, at a minimum,acceptance of the principle that the individual may do what he wants, even if others are distressed when they learnwhat it is he does - unless, of course, there are other good grounds for forbidding it. 198

Federal regulation of ecosystems would be a substantial increase in governmental control

J.B. Ruhl, Assistant Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University, Summer1995Colorado Law Review, Biodiversity conservation and the ever expanding web of Federal Laws regulating non-federal lands: Time for something completely different? 66 U. Colo. L. Rev. 555Indeed, there is by no means unanimous support that the federal government should have any meaningful role inshaping national biodiversity policy. For example, the Cato Institute advocates a federal biodiversity policy relyingon maximum use of "noncoercive market processes." 15 That policy proposal, [*564] which has appeared togalvanize those who lean against an active federal role, is premised on a trio of assertions: that "the ecosystemconcept . . . is inappropriate for use as a geographic guide for public policies," that "federal management ofecosystems wouldsignificantly expand federal control of the use of privately owned land," and that "greaterreliance on market forces, rather than further movement toward coercive federal regulations . . . should guide federalactions." 16 Although the second of those propositions accurately defines the central defect of federal policy atpresent, this article demonstrates that the first and last of those premises are, at best, half true, and thus do not leadus in the direction of a passive federal policy role. Hence, as much as this article demonstrates that federalbiodiversity policy thus far has been excessively coercive, it also demonstrates that a "no action" policy at the

federal level is not a viable policy alternative. The question is what the federal government's proper role should be.


8/78



Government Intervention in the market over environmental policy violates property rights

Sebastian Storfner 2004 CAN MARKET FORCES SOLVE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS?NEOCLASSICAL VS. AUSTRIAN ANALYTICS University of Central England, Birmingham, U.K.In contrast to that, for Austrians government interventions are inconsistent with free markets andenvironmental problems are not due to market but to government failures since government () has

failed grievously to exercise its defence function37. Ultimately, pollution is due to interpersonal conflicts,which neither taxes (central planning) nor tradable permits (violation of property rights) can resolve .Because of this, Austrians offer three solutions: Privatisation and the first come first served principle todefine property rights and the polluter pays principle in order to enforce them. For sure, no theory iswithout controversy but it is fairly save to conclude that environmental problems could be solved by marketforces and do not need government intervention since only markets effectively resolve interpersonal

conflicts, something governments failed to achieve for centuries.

Environmental regulations violate property rights

Ledford 01, Author(s): Kenneth F. Ledford Reviewed work(s): Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes

Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, No. 1, (Mar., 2001), pp. 147-150 this is a bookreviewhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3079660.pdf"But the well-intentioned measures of democratic social welfare have also encroached on both propertyand freedom-more elusively and certainly less violently, but in the long run perhaps no less dangerously."The welfare state, in Pipes's view, has violated private property in so many ways that it increasingly

approximates conditional tenure (p. 232). Taxation impermissibly takes from one individual property toredistribute it to the propertyless; environmental regulation amounts to a "taking" without compensation;social insurance violates freedom by breeding dependence; and freedom of contract has been derogated inmanifold ways since 1937, resulting in evils such as the minimum wage, rent control, the CommunityReinvestment Act, and especially affirmative action, which violates the basic human freedom of the power todiscriminate. Although the twentieth century saw democracy's victory over totalitarianism, "even indemocratic societies the concept of property has undergone substantial revision, transforming it from

absolute dominion into something akin to conditional possession, and . . . as a result, the rights of

individuals to their assets have been and continue to be systematically violated


9/78



Environmental regulations are coercive and prevent policy innovation- turns the case

Anderson and Leal, Political Economy Research Center, 94 (Terry L. and Donald L.Regulation: The CatoReview of Business & Government, Spring, Enviro-Capitalism vs. Environmental Statism,http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.html, 7/15/08)

Free-market environmentalism challenges the status quo by offering a way of "rethinking the way we

think" about environmental problems. Most of us accept that food, housing, and the production of

other basic necessities are best left to the marketplace. Why not the environment? Even environmental

problems offer profit niches to the environmental entrepreneur who can define and enforce property

rights. Political solutions may be called for in cases where the costs of establishing property rights are

presently insurmountable, but there is no reason to begin with the premise that only command and

control can produce environmental quality. To the contrary, free-market environmentalism points outthat it is often "bureaucracy versus the environment" and that political solutions become so

entrenched that they often stand in the way of innovative market solutions. Overcoming the mindset of

environmental statism is no small task because this has been the dominant paradigm for

environmental policy formulation for nearly a century. Moving beyond the status quo will require

forming new coalitions and abandoning the anti-market mind-set. This has happened with waterallocation because fiscal conservatives and environmentalists have found a common ground. Federal

involvement in massive waterprojects designed to make the desert bloom like a rose seldom pass cost-benefit muster and generally wreak environmental havoc. Because of this, progress has been made inremoving water allocation from the political agenda and turning it over to market forces. Even in the case ofenhancing stream flows for environmental purposes, there is growing evidence that markets canoutperform politics. "We are all environmentalists now" because we in the United States and other

wealthy western countries can afford to demand (as opposed to command) environmental quality . Thebasic premises of free-market environmentalism are 1) that environmental quality comes with increasedwealth and 2) that free markets provide the incentive structure for increasing wealth and for

producing environmental amenities. If coercive environmentalists with their elitist agendas continue to

dominate environmental policy, the likelihood is that we will eventually have less wealth and fewer

amenities. Of the three alternatives reviewed by Kellogg, only free-market environmentalism offers theprospect of more wealth, more amenities, and more freedom, the scarcest resource of all.

Coercive environmental regulations rely on command and control over the marketGlicksman, Professor of Law, and Earnhart Associate Professor, Economics, 07(Robert L, Dietrich H, DEPICTION OF THE REGULATOR-REGULATED ENTITY RELATIONSHIPIN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: DETERRENCE-BASED V. COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT, William &Mary Envtl. L. & Poly Rev, Vol: 3, May, P. 17)

An alternative model of environmental enforcement is the cooperative model. According to one account, thismodel is a reaction to the adversarial enforcement methods suggested by the deterrence model.41 Thecooperative model emphasizes compliance, not the deterrence of noncompliance. Accordingly, theprimary function of an inspection may not be, as it is under the deterrence model, to accumulate evidence ofviolations for subsequent enforcement actions, but rather to provide advice to regulated entities as a means offacilitating compliance. Under this approach, an inspection serves largely as an opportunity to resolveproblems.42 Cooperative enforcement approaches have been described as an example of negotiateand control, as compared with the traditional command and control environmental regulatory

regime with which coercive enforcement has traditionally been associated.43 Under both the coercive andcooperative models, facility inspections and enforcement actions serve as threats. Under the coercivemodel, the general deterrent effect of an inspection or an enforcement action of one facility derivesexclusively from the threat it creates for other facilities that may be the subject of similar actions in the

future. Under the cooperative model of enforcement, however, regulated facilities may be afforded more opportunities to avoidsanctions by resolving noncompliance before a penalty is assessed or other enforcement action pursued than under the coercive model. Acooperative regulator might even withdraw a pending sanction for past noncompliance once compliance has been achieved. Such aregulator may choose to refrain from sanctioning a facility that has violated its NPDES permit as a result of a cooperative history

between the regulator and the facility. As a result, the cooperative approach emphasizes flexible or selective enforcement that takes into

consideration the particular circumstances of an observed violation.44Indeed, [l]evying penalties is seen as a mark ofthe [cooperative] systems failure (to otherwise obtain compliance); compliance systems rely far more

on rewards and incentives than penalties.45
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.html


10/78


Environment Incentives Links (1/2)

Incentive based environmental policies are coercively enforced on the federal and state

level

Glicksman, Professor of Law, and Earnhart Associate Professor, Economics, 07(Robert L, Dietrich H, DEPICTION OF THE REGULATOR-REGULATED ENTITY RELATIONSHIPIN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: DETERRENCE-BASED V. COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT, William &Mary Envtl. L. & Poly Rev, Vol: 3, May, P. 1)

At the same time, some research on environmental enforcement has discerned broad agreement at thefederal and state levels that the traditional, exclusive reliance on penalty-based enforcement

approaches to compliance assurance is inadequate.8 That was the premise that fueled a shift inemphasis during the 1990s by both federal and state environmental agencies to a more partnership-

focused, less adversarial approach that uses multiple tools to advance compliance assurance.9 EPA, forexample, concluded that a penalty-based approach is reactive rather than proactive and is incompletebecause it fails to reward voluntary compliance.10 Regulated entities and state officials joined insound[ing] the theme that an approach based on cooperation is more likely to produce compliance in

many cases than an approach based on deterrence.11 During the 1990s, EPA responded to these calls forgreater cooperation between the agency and regulated entities by adopting enforcement policies that aredesigned to provide a more flexible approach to inducing compliance with regulatory obligations by offering

compliance incentives and compliance assistance to regulated facilities.12 The results of EPAsresponse is evident. In 1995, an environmental enforcement expert wrote that it seems most accurate todescribe EPAs enforcement practices as constituting, in the main, a deterrence system.13 EPAssubsequent commitment to the use of cooperative approaches to inducing compliance is reflected in astatement on its official website that EPAs enforcement efforts focus on assisting businesses andcommunities with compliance training and guidance.14 Similarly, it appears that many states haveactually, to one extent or another, replaced traditional enforcement mechanisms with some form ofcooperation based strategy.15 One explanation of this shift is the states desire to retain and attractbusiness by holding out the promise of less rigorous, or at least less confrontational, enforcement.16 Toconfirm the distinction between the two enforcement approaches, a cooperative relationship is one in whichgovernment regulators provide flexibility to regulated facilities, including the provision of a variety of formsof compliance assistance. This assistance is designed to induce facilities to address noncompliance pro-actively. Within the coercive approach, regulators deter facilities from noncompliance by imposing

sanctions without flexibility.


11/78



12/78


Environment Incentives Links (2/2)

Environmental incentives are coercive as they are paid for with taxes to reward companies

CHICHILNISKY, UNESCO Professor of Mathematics and Economics at Columbia University, and Heal,

Professor of Public Policy and Corporate responsibility, 00(GRACIELA, GEOFFREY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS: EQUITYAND EFFICIENCY, http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae7_2_5.pdf, date accessed: 6/15/08)

We have tried many remedies in the past. We have tried to dissuade polluters with fines, with

government programs whereby all pay to clean up the garbage produced by the few, with a myriad ofdetailed regulations to control the degree of pollution. Now some even seriously propose that we shouldhave economic incentives to charge polluters a fee for pollutingand the more they pollute the more

they pay. But that is just like taxing burglars as an economic incentive to deter people from stealing

your property, and just as unconscionable. The only effective way to eliminate serious pollution is to treatit exactly for what it isgarbage. Just as one does not have the right to drop a bag of garbage on hisneighbors lawn, so does one not have the right to place any garbage in the air or the water or the earth, if itin any way violates the property rights of others. What we need are tougher clearer environmental lawsthat are enforcednot with economic incentives but with jail terms. What the strict application of the

idea of private property rights will do is to increase the cost of garbage disposal. That increased cost

will be reflected in a higher cost for the products and services that resulted from the process that

produced the garbage. And that is how it should be. Much of the cost of disposing of waste material isalready incorporated in the price of the goods and services produced. All of it should be. Then only thosewho benefit from the garbage made will pay for its disposal. (Anderson 1989) To put this into the languagewe have so far established, markets in pollution are illegitimate, not because particles launched into theair are stolen, but because they are illicit in yet another way: they violate property rights not throughtheft, but as trespass. Given, then, that there is no right to emit dust particles onto the property ofother people, there can be no legitimate market in the purchase and sale of such rights. This meansthat TERs are a veritable contradiction in terms.

Environmental regulations are coercive

Glicksman, Professor of Law, and Earnhart Associate Professor, Economics, 07(Robert L, Dietrich H, DEPICTION OF THE REGULATOR-REGULATED ENTITY RELATIONSHIP

IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: DETERRENCE-BASED V. COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT, William &Mary Envtl. L. & Poly Rev, Vol: 3, May, P. 1)For years, scholars and environmental policymakers have conducted a spirited debate about thecomparative merits of two different approaches to enforcement of the nations environmental laws

the coercive (or deterrence-based) and cooperative approaches. Supporters ofthe coercive model regardthe deterrence of violations as the fundamental purpose of environmental enforcement. These

supporters also regard the imposition of sanctions, which make it less costly for regulated entities to

comply with their regulatory responsibilities and avoid enforcement than to fail to comply and run the

risk of enforcement, as the most effective way for inducing regulated entities to comply with their

regulatory obligations. Supporters of the cooperative approach to environmental enforcement focus more oncompliance than deterrence. The cooperative approach, which emphasizes the provision of complianceassistance and incentives by regulatory agencies, operates on the premise that regulated entities react to avariety of motives that supply sufficient incentives to comply with regulatory obligations even without anoverly punitive approach to enforcement. They contend that a coercive approach to enforcement may evenbe counterproductive if it engenders intransigence and ill will on the part of regulated entities.
http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae7_2_5.pdfhttp://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae7_2_5.pdfhttp://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae7_2_5.pdf


13/78


Global Warming Links (1/3)

Blaming individuals for climate shifts caused by our entire civilizations behavior is the

supreme tactic of anti-capitalists to establish a regime of Green Socialism; the success of

this initiative threatens to obliterate Western Civilization

Eric Englund, MBA from Boise State University, Surety Bond Underwriter, February 22, 2002,Global Warming: Socialisms Trojan Horse, LewRockwell.com, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund5.htmlBy means of propaganda, the Communists succeeded in making people believe that their conduct had universal implications,relevant to humanity as a whole. Critics have often tried to make a distinction between Nazism and Communism by arguing that the Nazi project had a particular aim, whichwas nationalist and racist in the extreme, whereas Lenins project was universal. This is entirely wrong. In both theory and practice, Lenin and his successors excluded from humanity allcapitalists, the bourgeoisie, counterrevolutionaries, and others, turning them into absolute enemies in their sociological and political discourse.

Just as Lenin and his successors excluded capitalists and others from humanity, Hitler and his henchmen excludedJews, the infirmed, and others from humanity as well. Tens of millions of people were murdered at the hands ofthese totalitarian regimes. As written in The Green Book, Qadhafi clearly is attempting to exclude capitalists from humanity. Now do you see the connection?

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, environmentalists want people (especially those living in capitalist countries) to believe their conduct is causingglobal warming and, thus, destroying our planet. Therefore, environmentalism has capitalism in its crosshairs. It is those of uswho benefit from the fruits of Western Civilization that are being turned into enemies in the daily sociological and political discourse of environmentalists. Americans, including President Bush,

must come to understand that environmentalism is a serious threat. If we succumb to the global warming propaganda being thrust uponus daily (with our left-wing press wittingly or not being u sed as the primary tool of terror/propaganda), then Green Socialism stands a chance ofdismantlingWestern Civilization and throwing us back into the dark ages. Our rights to life, liberty, and property are at stakehere.


14/78


Global Warming Links (2/3)

Justifying governmental interference to cope with coming environmental disasters throws

open the floodgates for the total pillage of our liberty

Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at

Auburn University, February 24, 2004,LewRockwell.com, Science in the Service ofPower, http://www.lewrockwell.com/machan/machan42.htmlNow when you hear word ofimpending disaster around the globe be it about the ozone layer, the rain forest, the green house effect, orglobalwarming this sounds ominous, given how often it is supposed to be backed by hard science. Politicians love this stuff, of course,because they can stand upand ask for more and greater legal powers with which to regiment the rest of us who are clueless, making it seemimpossible for life to go on without their constant expert-endorsed meddling by way of government inspections andregulations.

And who of us can confidently resist when the authority of the natural sciences is offered as backing for such calls forgreater state power? Who but a few people, who spend the bulk of their time in think tanks studying this stuff, can stand up and reject those calls with confidence? If ascientist tells us that our home is about to become a toxic trap, how confidently are we going to keep out themeddlers, demand that they leave us in peace? We might be making a big mistake, just as we might about thefamous weapons of mass destruction that experts insisted justified sending a bunch of Americans to their death!

I am sorry, but my skeptical temperament doesnt buy it. I am not convinced, actually, that ecology is much of a science apart from offering some explanations of how the globes living systems

behave. But just as most of the natural sciences cannot give us any direction as to how we should conduct ourselves, what we should aim for in our lives, but only tell us about certain limits andpossibilities, so with ecology. This is especially so when it comes to the constant finger-wagging environmentalists engage in with the supposed backing of ecologists.

Consider the often heard lament that we are awash with people, that there is intolerable population explosion everywhere and that the resulting urban development, often dubbed "sprawl," needsto be contained. Is that really so? What demonstrates this? Most importantly, what standards are being used here, whose progress and flourishing is at stake so that such containment isimperative?

Whenever I fly over the country which is nearly 20 times a year I take a look at terra firma and it amazes me how much open, totally undeveloped space exists below me. The Americansouthwest, especially, just seems to stretch out as far as the eye can see without even so much as a village below. I think on such occasions about all this doom-saying and shake my head indisbelief. The same happens when I fly in Europe, Africa or New Zealand, places where I work once or twice every year or so. There is so much wilderness in all these places that the panic in thevoices of environmentalists simply sounds less and less a function of reality, more a function of power-seeking.

Now, no doubt, people, with their capacity to do things well or badly and their freedom to choose either, can mess things up a good deal whenit comes to managing their environment. Thats just common sense, which is why some version of environmental ethics is likely to be sound. As far, however, as themore alarmist version of these concerns go, I remain very worried that we are near dealing with yet another bunch of people interested more inrunning everyone elses life than in being genuinely helpful.


15/78


Global Warming Link (3/3)

Global warming legislation is socialisms last best hope to undermine individual liberty on

a large scale

Sheldon Richman, Editor ofThe Freeman, senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation,

July 1997, Warming People Up for Government Control, Future of Freedom Foundation,http://www.fff.org/comment/ed0797d.aspPresident Clinton is moving at full speed to use global warming as a justification for control of our productive activities. He'splanning a big propaganda campaign to prepare us for the painful times ahead. The goal is to reduce the emission of gases, largely carbon dioxide, that are said to be dangerously warming theatmosphere. That acute "greenhouse effect" allegedly will cause untold catastrophe.

The gases come from the burning of fossil fuels, such as natural gas and oil. So the only way to reduce greenhouse gases significantly is to curtail production. But curtailingproduction will lower people's standard of living. Americans are pretty close to unanimous in wishing to raise their living standards. So we have aclash between the citizen and the state. Moreover, the people in the developing world, whose living standards are still behind ours despite much progress since WorldWar II, stand to suffer immensely from any government-imposed slow-down in production.

But doesn't something as serious as global warming warrant extraordinary measures? The issue is not that simple. While believers in global warming get most of the attention, there is asubstantial literature from climatologists and other scientists pointing out the lack of evidence for warming. Fred Singer of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, says that "precise weathersatellite data, available since 1979 and covering the globe for the first time, show a slight cooling trend." Computer models of the world's climate might predict warming but the data do not. Thebelievers in warming are in the position of Groucho Marx, who cried, "Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?"

Singer points out that the climate has been anything but stable over recorded history. The earth apparently has been able to cool and warm without any help from man. In the 1970s some of thesame people now scaring us about global warming were preparing for global cooling. The funny thing is that in each case the solution was government control.

The debate over global warming has gotten nasty lately. Believers say the skeptics are on the payroll of industrial interests. Some, but not all, get money from industry. But many of the believersget research money from government agencies. Why assume that a climatologist would sell out his scientific integrity to industry but not to government? The government is not likely to continueto fund research that undercutsits case for activism. Are we not also entitled to regard scientists working under tax-funded grants as tainted? Perhaps the believers should stop muddying the scientific debate with unprovedcharges of intellectual corruption and stick to the evidence.

Years ago socialists said that collective ownership of the means of production would out-produce capitalism. Butwith the fall of socialism, those who dislike free markets have been hard-pressed to argue that economic freedomcan't deliver the goods. So a new strategy has emerged. Advocates of government control fault capitalism forproducing too many goods -- at the expense of life and the environment. In theirview, the only hope is to cut back on industrial activity and let government manage the economy in the name ofenvironmental protection.

In fact, mandating a cutback in production is dangerous. At a lower level of production, the world will not be able tosustain a population of five and a half billion people and growing. (Those who want population growth to be controlled should ask themselves whetherthey wish government to decide how many children they may have.) The environmental movement should stop presenting its program as though it is costless.

The future is always risky because it is uncertain. The late scholar Aaron Wildavsky liked to say, "Wealthier is healthier." He meant that since we don't know exactly what dangers the future

holds, the best hedge is wealth. Wealth permits the resilience and freedom of action needed to respond to the unforeseen. Government is not good at producing wealth. On the contrary, itlbimits the key precondition for production, liberty.


16/78


Taxation Links (1/4)

Taxation is an illegitimate use of power that functionally equates to forced labor; this use of

coercion imprisons our liberty within authoritarian strongholds and undermines support

for legitimate government functions

Marjorie E. Kornhauser, Professor of Law Tulane Law School, Fall 2002Buffalo Law Review, Legitimacy and the Right of Revolution, The Role of Tax Protests and Anti-Tax Rhetoric inAmerica, 50 Buffalo L. Rev. 819This second view of taxation, under which the people grant the state only limited rights of taxation, emphasizes thesplit between "we" the people and "they" the government, which is so important to the American conception ofsovereignty. Although under a representative government, "we" the people are, in essence, the [*884] government,the people must always guard against the government's encroachment upon their liberties, especially throughillegitimate taxation. Consequently, this view, coupled with a belief in the limited role of government, forges aphilosophical and political connection between taxation and deprivation of freedom and liberty; in other words,"Government taxation takes time, labor, resources, and freedom from people and their families with every taxextraction. It takes from them portions of their lives." 175 In the extreme, this view leads to the libertarian belief,enunciated by Robert Nozick, that mandatory taxation is theft and "taxation of earnings from labor is on a par withforced labor." 176 Conservative politicians in particular echo these statements with frequent references to thetyranny of taxation. 177 Taxation, in this view, can be an illegitimate use of power that ultimately can undermine thelegitimacy of the state itself by abusing the authority granted to it by the people.

Taxation is coercion in its simplest form, imposition of taxes should spark revolutions

Rothbard, Dean of the Austrian School, 95 (Murray N., The Freeman/Ludwig von Mises Institute,September/October, Taking Money Back, http://mises.org/story/2882, 7/7/08)

The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of thecurrency. To understand this truth, we must examine the nature of government and of the creation of money.Throughout history, governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear:unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the

market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and

off society. Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue fromcoercion, from taxation. In older and saner times, indeed, the king was able to obtain sufficient revenue

from the products of his own private lands and forests, as well as through highway tolls . For the State toachieve regularized, peacetime taxation was a struggle of centuries. And even after taxation wasestablished, the kings realized that they could not easily impose new taxes or higher rates on old levies;

if they did so, revolution was very apt to break out.

Only the producer of the labor has the rights to the fruits, taxation is blatant coercive theft

Kearl, former special assistant to the secretary of defense and to the U.S. trade representative, professor of

Economics at BYU, 77 (J.R.,Princeton University Press/JSTOR , Autumn, Do Entitlements Imply Taxation isTheft?,http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticle, 7/7/08)

The question of who has rightful claim to the output from privately owned factors of production

(particularly labor) has long been important in political and economic philosophy . Proudhon's famousdictum that property is theft has been countered in recent years by the notion that taxation is theft. Thisquestion has surfaced once again with the publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.,I971) and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York, I974). Indeed, Nozick has been viewed assupporting the an,ti- Proudhon view. J.S. Coleman suggests that ... for Nozick, only the individual isentitled to the fruits of his own labor, and he has full rights to the use and disposal of them.... [Given] a

set of individuals each having produced certain goods through his own skills and efforts, the question is

then asked: Who has the right to these goods? The answer is self-evident.... Each has the right to the

product of his labor until and unless he chooses [emphasis mine] to transfer some portion of it toanother.1 Taxation must therefore be viewed eitheras theftby a collective agency or as the charity ofprivate agents, although it is basically non- voluntary and coercive
http://mises.org/story/2882http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticlehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticlehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticlehttp://mises.org/story/2882http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticlehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticlehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleService=showArticle


17/78



Liberty and Taxation are fundamentally at odds with each other; recognizing this conflict is

essential to preserving our basic freedoms


Auburn University, December 4, 2002,Ludwig von Mises Institute What's Wrong with Taxation?http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1103&id=70Liberty is incompatible with taxation. This despite that famous saying by Oliver Wendell Holmes that "Taxation is the price we pay for civilization." In fact,taxation is a most uncivilized way of obtaining funds, given that it boils down to nothing less than extortion.

Just think of it: You go to work for some company and are told you will receive a certain wage but actually receive but a fraction of what you have been offered. Why? Because a substantialportion is sent not to you, who earned it, but to other people. Why? Because if it isn't sent to them, they will declare the company criminal and sic the police on it.

So, the company is coerced to take part of your earnings and divert it to those who have this power to make them do so. If this isn't exactly like what the Mafia does when it engages in extortion Idon't know what is. Yes, some of the funds extorted will be used for purposes that may actually benefit you and some who are extorted don't protest. But maybe that's true about whom the Mafiaextorts, as well. And it doesn't matter because what is wrong with extortion isn't what the money is used for but how it is obtained, namely, coercively.

Often it is Robin Hood who is held up as the role model for justifying taxation: Didn't he "steal" from the rich to "give" to the poor? Well, not, not really.

In the original version of the legend, Robin Hood did just the opposite: He stole from those who stole from the poor and returned the loot to the rightful owners. In those days the upper classes,from the king to all his cronies, routinely engaged in extortion. They disguised this, however, with the phony claim that everything belongs to the king and his cronies. Yes, monarchs and thosewho rationalized monarchy spun this fantasy and managed to sell it to the people that they where the rightful owners "of the realm," that they had a "divine right" to rule us. This way when thebulk of the country went to work on the farm or wherever, they had to pay "rent" to the monarch and his cronies.

Of course, if I live in your apartment, I pay you rent. It's your apartment, after all, so you have it coming to you. But what if you got your apartment by conquest, by robbing a bunch of people of

what belongs to them? That is mostly how the monarchs got to rule the realm, by conquest. By all rights it is the folks who were working in the realm--on the land and elsewhere--who actuallyowned that realm, the monarchs being the phony, pretend owners, nothing better. But since they managed to bamboozle a great many powerless folks into believing that they did own the realm,the "rent" had to be paid.

Since, however, the American Revolution put the lie to this monarchical ruse, the institution of taxation could not be passed off as some kind of legitimate rent taking. That major political changeshowed once and for all that monarchs were sophisticated thugs who ran roughshod over the rest of the people, who violated their basic natural rights all over the place, by robbing andconscripting them.

Yet, because of the idea that we do need to have our rights protected by some means that involve costs, taxation remained a feature of the society that followed the change from monarchy toconstitutional republicanism.

Not a lot of taxation, mind you, because it seemed pretty clear to the Founders that taxation is in fact extortion. But they didn't see some other, legitimate, morally acceptable way of collecting thefunds needed to pay government for its service of securing our rights. Yet, they might have.

There are other ways governments could be paid for their service of securing our rights that couldn't exist withoutlegal protection. Contract fees, not taxation, could solve the problem.

But this alternative, legitimate method wasn't in the cards following the revolution, so taxation remained, albeit in a rather modest form. In time, however, it got out of hand.

After all, if the Mafia just took a tiny fraction of income from its victims, most would probably put up with it all rather than to resist. But when the amount moves on to 25 to 70 %, it turns into

big time extortion. And that is how we stand now where taxation has become big time extortion.

Some respond to this by noting that in other countries taxation is much higher. Sure, because they are even farther from having lived up to the spirit and letter of the revolution that Americaexperienced; namely, removing power from government and returning it to where it belongs, the individual citizens. After all, it is America that is the leader of the free world, with a lot of othercountries, including most of those in Western Europe, way behind. At least that is how it was supposed to happen.

Instead, however, the American Revolution was betrayed and the U.S.A. has undergone a reactionary period in which it reverted, substantially, to the policies of earlier systems of government.This Europeanization of America is a shame, a damned shame. And it needs to be identified as such before it has any chance of being arrested.

The first step is to acknowledge, unapologetically, that the institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaricmethod to fund anything, because it amounts to nothing less than outright extortion, a gross violation of humanliberty.


18/78



Taxation is exploitation and the equivalent of forced labor


Some would argue that taxation of earnings from labor is not theft because the actions of the state,

unlike those of a thief, are predictable and governed by law, the states powers to take incomebeing limited and the citizen being fully aware of what is in store for him when he gets paid.

Moreover, unlike the typical thief, the state uses the money it takes for the benefit of itsvictims. One might even suggest, given what I stated earlier, that because the state hasimplicitly recognized my right to the income I get from my employer, it cannot plausibly be viewed as

stealing from me; it is taking only what it sees as in some sense due it, perhaps for servicesrendered (though of course, only a very few or even none of the services the staterenders using my tax money can plausibly be regarded as services for me personally).

That the taxpayer benefits from some of what the state does with his taxes isirrelevant to whether taxation is forced labor, however, for insofar as his tax money isused for functions that benefit not him but others, then he has been forced to labor forthose others. Even the services that do benefit him are not necessarily services he voluntarilysupports, for he may prefer to try to get them elsewhere. (Again, a slave who gets back from

the master some of the vegetables he was forced to grow is still a slave.) Thus,Nozicks argument does not and need not presuppose that taxation is theft, nor does itrest on any controversial theory of property rights. Some critics of Nozicks argument donot quibble over whether it presupposes some theory of property rights, and theymore or less grant its main contention. Jonathan Wolff (1991) concedes at least that taxationhas some resemblance to forced labour (92). Alan Haworth (1994) is even more forthcoming,stating that it is just plain true that the labor expended to pay taxes is forced labor(92). But thesecritics defend such forced labor regardless of such concessions, taking Nozicks objection to it in this case tobe overwrought. A sardonic remark of Haworths reveals why: For Nozick, the horror [of forced labor] . .. manifests its presence each time a millionaire is taxed a penny (1994, 71). The quip may be funny, butit misses the point. Wolff and Haworth would insist that the infringement of liberty involved in taxation,though real, is relatively trivial, and therefore it is an acceptable price to pay for the benefits they wouldallege the state provides. But even they would object, it seems, to being forced to give up a pennymuch

less the thousands of dollars most people pay in taxes or the millions the very wealthy payto someoneon the street who demanded it at gunpoint, even for a use of which they otherwise would approve. Our

sense that forced labor is unjust stems not merely, or even primarily, from imagining forced labor as

strenuous; it also stems from the involuntary character of that labor, from our belief that no one has

the right to force another person to labor if that person does not want to do so. Slavery is slavery

however well the master treats the slave.


19/78



One should not sacrifice yourself to the state voluntarily. We must reject this eye-ball

distribution approach even if we dont agree with self-ownership.

Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000(Edward, Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,

The Independent Review,Volume: 5, Fall, 224)

Cohen also suggests that because Nozick allows that one could voluntarily enter into a condition of fullslavery, he cannot plausibly object to the involuntary partial slavery entailed by taxation , which isarguably less harsh. But like his first reply, this one does nothing to show that taxation does not amount toslavery. In any case, Nozick is wrong to hold that an individual could voluntarily enter into slavery, notbecause he could not enter into a condition in which he would behave in a slavelike manner for the rest of hislife, but because if he did so voluntarily, his condition would not be slavery. Cohen argues that if Nozickaccepts the possibility of voluntary full slavery, he should accept also the legitimacy of involuntary partialslavery. But there need be no inconsistency in the libertarian position on slavery. Self-ownership rules

out all slavery. Cohens attempt to deal with the eyeball-lottery scenario is no more compelling. His

approach is to develop examples that are similar to it but (he alleges) do not imply the thesis of self-ownership and to argue that the eyeball-lottery scenario is , despite appearances, also best accounted forin terms that do not involve self-ownership. First, we are to imagine a case in which people are bornwithout eyes, and the state provides artificial ones that are implanted at birth and become workable only

when used by an individual from infancy to adulthood (1995, 24344). Suppose occasionally an adult,through no fault of his own, loses his artificial eyes, and the state takes one from someone else to give to him(because only those eyes used from infancy are of any use). Surely we would object to this transfer just asstrenuously as to the eyeballlottery case. There is no question of these individuals owning the artificial

eyes because the state may well retain ownership of them. So our objecting to the practice cannot have

anything to do with ownership; it springs instead from the excessive interference in peoples lives the

practice would involveand the same can plausibly be said of the original eyeball-lottery case. We can

object to eyeball redistribution, then, even if we reject the thesis of self-ownership.

Taxation makes us slaves to the state and no matter how hard we work, the master state

will always steal that which was ours

Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000

(Edward, Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft, The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 221-22)It is important to understand how this argument differs from other libertarian arguments against

taxation. It is not quite the same as the general claim that taxation interferes with individual liberty

insofar as its enforcement is intrusive and it prevents one from doing what he wants with a portion of

his income,2 forthere are many who would find such infringements of liberty acceptable butnevertheless consider uncomfortable the notion that taxation also amounts to forcing people to work.The argument also differs from the objection that taxation amounts to theft in that forcing someone to labor and stealing from him aredifferent offenses (although, if we take the former to involve specifically the stealing of labor, the difference between the objections may

be one only of generality). Nonetheless, it is sometimes suggested that Nozicks argument is essentially concerned withthe violationof property rights or with theft, rather than with forced labor in that Nozick presupposes that one has

a property right in the portion of ones earnings the state takes in taxes, a right his critics claim he fails

to establish (Kymlicka 1990, 10718; Michael 1997, 141; Weinberg 1997, 336; Otsuka 1998, 71).3 Nozicksargument, as stated previously, nowhere explicitly appeals to any claim about property rights, and it is by nomeans obvious that an argument objecting to some practice on the grounds that it amounts to forced labor

needs even implicitly to do so. Clearly, I might still be forced to labor for someone else if I labor at all,even if I have no property right in the product of the labor: a slave may own no part of his masters

land or tools, and thus arguably he cannot own whatever he produced using them vegetables, saybut he is nevertheless a slave, even if he is allowed to eat some of the vegetables and thus labors partly

for himself. Themaster might even allow him to idle away the days if he likes, but insist that if he labors to any extent, some of hislabor must be for the sake of the master: if the slave grows tomatoes because he wants them, the master will take a portion of them; if hetries to grow only one tomato for himself, the master will nevertheless take a third of it; if to avoid giving the master that third he tries

somehow to grow only two-thirds of a tomato, the master will take a third of that tomato; and so forth . Insofar as the master

taxes away a portion of the product of his labor, the slave has obviously been forced to work for

purposes other than his own, even though he has no property right in the product of his labor (theportion of it he is allowed to eat also belongs to the master).


20/78


XT- Taxation is Theft

The interference of taxation in peoples lives subjects them to the eyeball-lottery type

cases which are immoral to both the giver and receiver.



The problem with this response is that it is not obvious that serious interference with peoples lives is

all we object to in eyeball-lottery-type cases. Suppose someone was unknowingly the recipient of an eye

stolen from someone else, and the original owner demanded that the eye be returned . Surely, howevermuch we sympathized with the unwitting transplantee, we would agree that he should give up the eyeto the original owner. Both parties will have had their lives radically interfered with, but it is

nevertheless clear that one has suffered a greater wrong, and surely the reason why is that he is the ownerof the eye. It even seems plausible that Cohens example is at least slightly less horrific than the eyeball-lottery scenario precisely because these people were granted their eyes at the discretion of the state,which thus has some say over who gets them and under what terms. One is tempted to say, Well, they arethe states artificial eyes, I suppose, so perhaps it is acting within its rights, but still . . . Nonetheless, the twocases seem indistinguishable unless we assume that the reason the original eyeball-lottery example is (at leastslightly) more horrific is that people are the rightful owners of their body parts. Cohens other examplepresents most newborn infants as receiving eyes when passing under ocular trees on which eyes grow and

from which they fall, but some unlucky infants pass under the trees when nothing falls and therefore theyreceive no eyes (1995, 244). Cohen maintains that no one, neither lucky eyeball recipients nor the state,would own the eyes, yet we would still object to eyeball redistribution; hence, it is not self-ownership towhich we are committed in rejecting such redistribution. But this example is ambiguous. If we think of theocular trees as easily manipulable external natural resources that can come to be owned (perhaps by the state)as other natural resources are, then the scenario is more or less identical to Cohens first one and has the sameproblems. But if we think of the trees on the model of the genetic factors responsible for eyes in theactual world or even as similar to conditions in the womb, then the scenario is more or less identical to

the original eyeball-lottery example, in which case it gives no non-question-begging support to the

notion that we need not account for the immorality of the example in terms of self-ownership.

Taxation is theft and fundamentally flawed


In sum, Cohen has failed to undermine the arguments usually given for the thesis ofself-ownership, a thesisthat hardly requires much argument and is as self-evident as a fundamental moral principle can be .

We tend intuitively to take the thesis of selfownership to be true; and if we do, as Cohen acknowledges,we must also reject taxation of earnings from labor as immoral. The reader will no doubt have noticedthe qualificationtaxation of earnings from laborthat has appeared in my discussion (as it does inNozicks). Is the libertarian case against taxation incomplete? Does even the self-ownership argumentcondemn labor-income taxes but leave open the possibility that other forms of taxation for example, tariffsor property taxesmight be legitimate? Perhaps not, for it is plausible that other taxes, though less regularand less directly tied to labor, differ from the taxation of labor earnings only by degree. We might argue thatin collecting a sales tax every time I buy certain products or in collecting an inheritance tax when I try

to leave something to my heirs upon my death, the state is once again claiming a slaveholder-like right

over the product of my labor, even if it does so intermittently and inconsistently. If this suggestion fails

to convince, however, the libertarian hostile to taxation in all its forms has another weapon in hisarsenal, a more general argument against taxation: taxation of any kind is a straightforward violation

of property rights. Taxation is theft.


21/78



Taxation from the state is akin to robbery. The refusal to pay taxation to the state is

grounds for extermination.



Rothbards argument ([1982] 1998, chap. 22)which he adopts from the nineteenthcentury anarchistLysander Spooner, although the same idea has appeared in various forms in countless libertarian andanarchist tractsis simplicity itself: when the state collects taxes of any sort, its action differs in no

relevant respect from that of a robber; it steals, it takes by force property that does not belong to it.

Just as the everyday robber threatens your life or liberty if you do not surrender to him what he

demands, the state threatens imprisonment and ultimately death (because you may be killed if you resistarrest) if you fail to surrender to it what it demands. One cannot, Rothbard asserts, get around this claimby suggesting that taxation, at least in typical Western countries, is really voluntary because citizens, throughvoting, have power over the taxation system. Those who vote against a particular tax or against anytaxation at all are, when outvoted by the majority, as coerced into paying taxes as they would be if they

had no vote. I am no less coerced when a majority of citizens imposes a tax on me than I would be if a

single dictator did so. Would anyone have the temerity to suggest that if the majority voted to have me

gratuitously imprisoned or executed and proceeded to do so, I could not complain because my misfortune

resulted from a democratic process in which I had a vote?

Taxation from the state is illegitimate for the same reasons protection services from the

mafia are illegitimate.

Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000(Edward, Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft, The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 229)

The reply that the state does not really steal from us because it provides services in return (Kearl 1977)also fails, even if we grant the controversial assumption that the average citizen really does get back from thestate services commensurate to the amount he is forced to pay. After all, the Mafioso providing protectionservices in return for extorted payments may in many cases really protect his clients from other

criminals, yet we would not count his actions any less illegitimate for that reason. The upshot is that,

whether or not I am given anything in return for my tax dollars, those dollars are still taken from me

involuntarily even if I do not want the services provided or would prefer to get them elsewhere. No onewould consider the local florist any less a thief if, after taking some of my property by force, he sent me

flowers.


22/78



At the point where labor becomes your ownership of self, stealing from the product of that

labor isnt justified and is fundamentally theft.


The Independent Review,Volume: 5, Fall, 231-32)

We may nonetheless want a theory of original acquisition: questions do arise about how exactly one comesto own something. Mere declaration of ownership is clearly insufficient. To suppose, for example, that Ican come to own Saturns moon Titan just by declaring that I own it seems absurd. But it seems so notbecause it would be unjust for me to make such a declaration, but because my declaration would be

manifestly ineffectual. In what sense could I be said to own Titan, given that I have never been there, cannotget there, and cannot influence what happens there in any way? If, however, a corporation were to send a shipto Titan and proceed to mine it, that companys claim of ownership (at least over the portion of the moon towhich it was able to gain access) would not be at all absurd, even if one disapproved of it. Having access tosomething, being able to manipulate and alter it, and so forth are typical marks of the ownership of it, just orunjusthence the lingering sense that, whatever its problems, Lockes labor-mixing theory has somethingright. But such marks of ownership are nothing more; they do not signify initial ownership that is just,because there is no such thing as just or unjust initial ownership. Justice comes into play only after

initial ownership has been established. Justice becomes relevant only in the theory of transfer of what

has already come to be owned. Theories of initial acquisition are not, properly speaking, theories of justiceat all. The question of what counts as an initial acquisition of unowned resources is a question of logic,not of morality, a matter of the analysis of the concept of acquiring something. 8 There is no question,then, of the justice or injustice of the initial acquisition of unowned resources, and therefore no

grounds exist, or can exist, for the claim that in taxing its citizens, the state is merely rectifying an

injustice in the original appropriation of resources from the state of nature. One cannot avoid the

conclusion that taxation is theft merely by appealing to a theory of initial appropriation.


23/78


IL Magnifier- Slippery Slope

Every justification for coercion, no matter how legitimate, conditions us to accept further

limitations on our liberty


Auburn University, 2002,Liberty and Hard Cases, p. [xvii xix]We are not unfamiliar with the ha zards of the slippery slope in our own personal lives. If a man hits his child in some alleged emergency, the very act ofdoing so may render him more amenable to smacking the kid under more typical circumstances. Slapping someone who ishysterical may make it easier to slap someone who is only very upset or recalcitrant or annoying or just too slow fetching the beer from the refrigerator. Similarly, a minor breachof trust can beget more of the same, a little white lie here and therecan beget lying as a routine, and so forth. Moral habits promote a principled course of action even in cases where bendingor breaking the principle might not seem too harmful to other parties or to our own integrity. On the other hand, grantingourselves reasonable exceptions tends to weaken our moral habits; as we seek to rationalize past action, differences of kind tend todevolve into differences of degree. Each new exception provides the precedent for the next, until we lose ourprinciples altogether and doing what is right becomes a matter of happenstance and mood rather than of loyalty toenduring values.

The same is true of public action. When citizens of a country delegate to government, by means of democratic and judicial processes,the power to forge paternalistic public policies such as banning drug abuse, imposing censorship, restrainingundesirable trade, and sup

Documents

Coercion K - Symonds