St. Paul and I Agree...
Taxation is not theft: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13 The key idea implicit here, and the one that turned me on the subject of whether or not taxation is theft, is that "every soul" owes obedience to the "governing authorities." Now, if that is a debt I truly owe , then, when those authorities levy the taxes they need to do the job of governing, I owe them those taxes, and attempts to collect them certainly do not constitute acts of theft. And obviously it doesn't matter at all, from this point of view, whether or not I "signed" any sort of "social contract." (In fact, the history of political thought since the Reformation can be read as an attempt to find a secular rep...
Great article Gene.
ReplyDelete"Things become resources when acting man conceives of how he can employ them to further his ends."
This is one of my favorite concepts. When I talk about resources with people I meet it is clear to me they totally miss most of my points because they have no idea this is where I am coming from. If I try to explain the above to them they seem to follow but only apply it the resource I use in the example...and even then they will go on to violate the concept we just agreed was 'true'. It never ends.
I enjoyed both those articles very much. One thing I'm not sure I understood: "I am using “profit” here in the accounting sense, meaning an excess of income over expenses, and not in the economic sense of an above-normal return on capital." In the economic sense, if prudent use of capital in some economic environment produces a return of 10%, does this mean that a return of 10% is profitless, and that a return of 15% shows a profit of 5%?
ReplyDeleteWhat's up with tinyurl.com, upon which you seemed to rely greatly? I've run into it somewhere else recently in connection with software.
How about that coffee that has to be shat through a lynx (or some sort of feline) and sells for $100 a pound? Let the Fair Traders set up a huge lynx farm and distribute the lynxes to the indigent coffee growers. Who said economics was hard?
Wabulon,
ReplyDeleteIn the economic sense, if prudent use of capital in some economic environment produces a return of 10%, does this mean that a return of 10% is profitless, and that a return of 15% shows a profit of 5%?
I think so, yes. Economic profits are returns above what you could otherwise get by investing capital in an equally risky venture.
Mischa: thanx.
ReplyDeleteIn re 'tinyurl': I looked it up. I understand now.
Erratum: for "Mischa" read "Micha."
ReplyDeleteYes, Micha is right -- setting aside the issue of risk, let's say you could invest in T-Bills at 4% per annum. Instead, you open a business the yields you 3%. You have suffered an (economic) loss of 1%.
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