Excellent. Some of my best debates have been with anarchists of other 'stripes'. I'll read up on him after this post.
This is a caricature of what I'm saying-- taxes within reason aren't just non-harmful they are also necessary for the public interest. Your argument would assume several things, as an extention of this:
1) Charity harms yourself
2) Giving excess material goods/finances is also a harm
3) Taxing $1 means you will tax somebody into oblivion(Nobody's proposing that)
4) For the industry it taxes, I'd be much more in favor of slashing the subsidies that we give to big oil, for example. That being said, under your seemingly contradictory logic, we have a contradiction, yet again-- subsidies help industries by being profitable. But subsidies can only be paid for by taxes. What do?
Yes, charity harms yourself. People still do it, because they value the good feeling they get from dropping the dollar (quarter, whatever) into the bucket, more than they do the money itself, or, by extension, anything they could have bought with that money. In economic terms, it is an experiential purchase, similar to going to a movie or riding a thrill ride. Same goes for giving away excess goods.
I'm not saying that a $1 tax is equal to taxing someone (or some business) into oblivion. I'm saying both are harm. A pinch and a gunshot are not equal, either. They're both harmful, though.
1. You seem to have skipped the last half of the point I made. People donate now to charity. Not because some governemt put a gun to their head and said 'Do it!', but because it makes them feel good. this wouldn't change.
It totally would. I'd argue that the reason they give money in the 1st place is because of western style liberalism, and the society that they grew up in which prizes helping other people-- if your argument about redistribution of wealth is to be believed, then people are giving money primarily due to the government's example of wealth-redistribution. Give it a few generations, and under your system, that impulse to donate will be gone.
See my point above re: experiential purchase. Note that most charitable agencies today are run by churches. For all the harms done by the church in the past, today's churches are mostly benign, A fact I would attribute to competition. Since I don't see those going away anytime soon (now that they've figured out killing each other isn't the way to solve disputes, at least for the most part), I see no reason why the enjoyment of donating would fade.
3. People will donate to a cause which espouses values that they want to see spread. When a charity has a scandal, some portion (up to and including 100%) of those people will stop donating to that charity, instead picking one they do prefer. When a Government agency has a corruption scandal, you can not choose to stop supporting that agency, without risking life, liberty, or property. (stop paying taxes, and they'll come and shoot you or put you in a cage)
But once again, to say that all charities will always be corruption and poor management free is a pipe-dream. They will all be infected by it eventually, and as new ones come up, similar to new government agencies, there will be less incompetence and corruption, but it is a matter of time in both systems for it to fail.
Also, to say that all charities will be corrupt and poorly managed is nihilism. A sewer-pipe dream, if you will. I feel that more charities will be corruption free, well-managed, or both than will be neither, at any given time.
Agreed. A Job at McDonalds is not as socially beneficial than, say... an Astrophysicist. Thankfully, the Market has already made that calculation for you, and that is why a job at McDonalds will earn you less money than one as an Astrophysicist. More dangerous or 'undesirable' jobs will earn you more money. This is known as 'Hazard pay'
That is literally nonsense. A coal miner's median income is $59,495, and it is well documented how bad their health can be. Capitalists don't care if they harm employees, because there is a shortage of jobs-- the employers can be selective about their hirings.
A McDonalds employee's median income is $15,000, and I'm being generous. I'd say 4x as much pay per year is pretty good, considering the worst danger you're likely to see at Mccy-dee's is a burn on your hand (on day shift anyway - there's a reason the Night shift gets paid more...) You also fall into the trap of assuming there would be a shortage of jobs. In a thriving economy, it's actually the opposite. A shortage of workers
will allow those workers to be selective of what jobs they take.
See the debate going on up above. I don't think they have any definitional basis on which to challenge me.
Also, my alternative is utilitarian anarchism, based on Levinasian ethics.
I've seen that debate, and no offense, but you're not making any good points. I'll leave that debate to them.