Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)

Lane Haygood · 19 May 2009, 21:51 · from 2009-May.txt.gz

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From: lhaygood at gmail.com (Lane Haygood)
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 16:51:17 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
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So your democratically-elected government gets to serve at the  
pleasure of a small but violent minority? I understand frustration  
with graft and waste, but calling for rebellion against a lawfully- 
seated state for carrying out the will of society?

At some point, you realize the value in cooperation, community and  
shared society. All civilization is based on this premise, that  
together a people can accomplish what one alone cannot.

The substitution of civil government/society with a profit driven  
market removes this universally-agreed as beneficial goal of  
cooperation and replaced it with a unilateral goal of profit. As  
wealth cannot be created ex nihilo, profit must arise from a producer  
taking more than a product is worth. This is only possible on a market  
where supply and demand are manipulated against the interest of the  
consumer.

Thus, the market is merely the latest iteration of the master-slave  
relation. It is the battlefield of class conflict. How does calling  
taxes imposed by a lawful sovereign equal theft, but the creation of  
profit not equal extortion by a self-selected, undemocratic oligarchy?

Individuals and individual liberty are only meaningful insofar as a  
civil legal system ensures they are protected. Authoritarian abuses by  
right and left ignore this. Free markets actively surpress it by  
economic manipulation.

Tell me again why I should kill lawfully-seated ministers of the civil  
government to preserve the rights of the people exploiting me?

Sent from my iPhone

On May 19, 2009, at 4:36 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:

> I said this in a recent post. I will expand upon it.
>
> Taxation, the extortion of money from the citizens, is permissible for
> things that are necessary. My list of necessary things includes the
> military and things related to the military, infrastructure and  
> certain
> kinds of research. I insist that the involuntary nature of taxation be
> explicit and resist the inevitable attempts at expansion of the
> things-to-be-paid-for-by-taxation.
>
> Of course, as a good Jeffersonian, I believe that from time to time  
> it is
> necessary to shoot the bastards and start over. We're not quite  
> there yet.
>
>
>
>
>
> .
>
>> On May 19, 2009, at 4:19 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> But we (the people on the other side of the argument) are none of us
>>> arguing for a complete lack of functional civil society and a
>>> Hobbesian
>>> all-against-all. Were you under the impression that we were?
>>
>> I don't see how you can get from the position that all taxation is
>> theft to the position that some governments are legitimate without
>> giving up on the first one.
>>
>> Adam
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>
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