Taxation is NOT Theft: Laughing at Libertarians & Anarcho-Capitalists.

my earlier video about libertarianism
was not aimed at or intended for an audience of libertarians and uh this is obvious even from the title the title suggests this is a video for non-libertarians and this was said in the opening how to deal with how to handle libertarians when these people make your life miserable by trying to insist on their petty set of principles that they think is much more important than the entire historical experience of the world because the historical experience of the world already has refuted their ridiculous principles ten thousand times over sorry to briefly digress the notion that education for the poor will be provided by the free market without any government regulation any taxpayer involvement it's been disproven in pretty much every society in the world we don't have to go back that far in recorded history whether it's in north america western europe or asia to go back to a time we have well-documented examples of how society functioned how people struggled to attain basic literacy in a society without the public provision of education without taxpayer involvement in providing education especially for the poor but in pre-modern times if you go back and look uh medieval europe or whatever a pre-modern japan the quality and availability of education even for the wealthiest of the aristocratic elite was abysmally poor the level of education was was terrible throughout society there is very good reason why all over the world step by step democracies and even kingdoms really decided to step up and have uh government involved in providing education especially for the poor but not only to benefit the poor to benefit society as whole there is very good reason why any senior rational person would look at that historical experience and come to the conclusion that no a libertarian society or an anarchist society would not be superior to a welfare state democracy in providing education for the rich or the poor that it would be inferior and these ideologies live in a constant sense this constant state of discomfort in dealing with the incongruous contrast between the extravagant claims they make about the future and what the implications of those claims would be if true were we to apply them in a fair and open minded way to the past but the point of the video was not to start a debate with libertarians or anarchists the point of the video was just to say to you these things are not worth debating they're not nobody thinks this is worth debating this is a tiny fringe political group that clings to principles that are so absurd i said it briefly in that video that are so absurd that the vast majority of people will just never sit down with them and talk through the ridiculousness of the notion that um poor people in remote and rural areas would be better off if the rich just gave up paying taxes if the rich could just spend more of that money on themselves and not have to pay taxes that would go to benefit the poor by providing them with access to school access to hospitals access to roads electricity running water sewage treatment etc that would just be this massive improvement for society that's what libertarians and antarctica capitalists are arguing and to some extent these related ideologies like minarchism all share in the same set of values now these debates um look real debates that are going on right now in a big way what is the future of china supposed to be currently you know communist china with its strange hybrid mix of uh you know socialist and capitalist elements um what is the future of china be do you think anyone is is seriously discussing this absolute nonsense do you think anyone is proposing that china would be better off in the future if they didn't have public education if poor people in china could not have free access to school and in some cases free access to university by the way i myself was a teacher recently in a program that was provided for free to students not all university programs are free in china but some are and thus provide a step up for poor people does anyone on earth aside from ideologues of this laughable friend genealogy does anyone think that the way forward for china is to embrace one of these fad libertarian ideologies abolish the provision of of education for the poor that would be getting rid of one of the only good things china has going for it one of the one of the few things it has that that's making a bad situation better you know politically socioeconomically and otherwise is anyone proposing that the future of syria or the future of afghanistan would be improved if the government just disentangled itself from education if the government just stepped back and said hey the free market anarcho-capitalism and libertarian forces the free market can take care of sewage treatment the provision of roads the provision of education the provision of electricity in afghanistan and in syria right now let alone china a situation with more stability more centralized government control is anyone debating this anyone at the united nations anyone um usaid anyone at any level of any charitable organization do you do you even think there are charities because i mean charities can be run by any crackpot who manages to get a few tens of thousands of dollars in donations do you think there are humanitarian agencies on the ground in afghanistan looking around saying wow you know you know what would improve this situation if we got rid of the little bits and pieces of the welfare state that are here if these people went back to more interco capitalist free market unregulated conditions you know what would improve things here if the government stopped trying to compete with the taliban in the provision of education to the poor when you talk about separating government from provision of education or provision of sewage treatment as i said earlier provision of roads who do you think steps in and takes over takes over as i said in my earlier video large organizations that resemble a government in a catholic country it may be the catholic church in afghanistan surprise surprise it will be the taliban or other muslim fundamentalist organizations that guess what collect taxation like the tithe tithe is a uniquely christian word you can look it up it's not part of normal modern english like collecting tithes uh in the catholic church in islam they collect zakat they collect donations they collect percentage of people's income and then muslim organizations again going back to the dark ages can use that uh indeed to operate things like schools and other institutions in in the public interest guess what a secular democratic government does a much better job providing education about even things like math math and science than the taliban are going to do let alone if you get into human reproduction uh sexuality politics getting things that are really challenging to the religion and it's in its world view yeah there's actually a huge fundamental advantage it's no surprise to anyone who studied history to stepping out of the dark ages stepping out of the horrible reality of the middle ages into the modern era modernity being in very large part defined by centralized provision of government services government services paid for by taxation so look my point is again nobody is going to have this debate with you i'm not going to i have no interest in debating this with anarchists and libertarians it's an absolute dead end whereas i'm very interested in debating what is the future of china what is the future of various places i've done research on to to varying extents and i'd like to do more research on so you know i have a reply here in the comments section go over this really quickly because i think the only thing that needs to be said in response to this is is just restating the very basic principle which most people won't bother to do if they're talking to a libertarian face-to-face or they're talking to an anxious face yes i support the concept of taxation the vast majority of human beings not just in democratic societies but in dictatorial societies support the concept of taxation you guys need to look in the mirror and realize that all your talk about taxation being theft and taxation being a crime and taxation being violence is just laughable even in the context of communist china that yes the vast majority of people do believe in the principle and believe in the practice and they can see the positive outcomes they believe that paying taxes so that roads and sewage treatment and education are provided not to mention uh the military and all the other things the government does they think that is a good thing they fundamentally do think that rich people should pay taxes for benefits that the rich may not experience themselves that are experienced by the poor or experienced by society at large this is not an ongoing debate in 2018 this is a fringe laughable internet subculture and you guys feel like you're a big deal but hey why do you think you don't have a seat at the table at the united nations why do you think in the midst of all the extreme ideologies competing for votes right now in europe or in north america or in this in the sudan or afghanistan or china why do you think you guys don't have a voice it's because from the perspective of the vast majority of people even in authoritarian societies let alone liberal western democracies you are a joke so this comment opens by saying just because an anarcho-capitalist is against the government doing something does not mean they were against that thing being done period so i already replied this in the first video oh so you think the world would be a better place if walmart provided education you think the world would be a better place if the taliban provided education and the catholic church provided education with no competition from government taxpayer-funded services that's what you think you think that in afghanistan you think that afghanistan will be better off without free education for the poor provided by the government taxpayers you think that poor people on a reservation first nations reservation indigenous people's reservation like a navajo reservation united states you think those people would be better off if the u.s government never provides them with free education if they just had to look for education from for-profit corporations religious groups like the catholics and muslim fundamentalists you think that would be a better world well nobody else thinks that nobody else looks around at that alternative and sees that as an improvement so that was already answered in the first video and i'm being redundant and answering again now there is nothing here to debate there's no discourse here for anyone to join in there are no possible positive outcomes to talking about this stuff and that's why the vast majority of people when they meet you guys face to face they just smirk and walk over to the punch bowl or talk to somebody else at the party this conversation is not worth having all right and again when you guys try to reassure us when you try to reassure the vast majority of the population that walmart without government regulation without taxpayer incentive without any kind of government just the free market whether it's called anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism that walmart is going to do a wonderful job providing education for poor people who can't afford to pay for that education or that the catholic church or muslim fundamentalists are going to do it we can look back at centuries and centuries of well-documented world history in many cultures and say that is just not true in point of fact i i know you guys have come up with ludicrous bend over backward arguments for why you know the problem is the problem is this unfair competition provided by taxpayers and that the free market would just step up and provide this stuff well you why don't you even look around the world right now at disaster areas where normal government has fallen apart and see why you why you don't have empirical evidence of the forces of the free market stepping forth and providing good education not for the rich but for the poor look in the mirror and ask yourself if you were on the ground doing humanitarian work in syria right now i don't know why you're not if you actually went out in the real world and got some practical experience whether in syria or afghanistan or in china china being a relatively orderly society do you think your own ideology would survive that practical hands-on experience of trying to help people and admitting to yourself what kind of government or non-government agencies and assistance would help them i do not think it would survive at all anyway so the claim that corporations can just step in and seamlessly take over these functions once government steps out there is plenty of evidence of the contrary whether you are left-wing right-wing so this commenter continues quote the problem is with forcing everybody for paid to a thing that they may not agree with so this is taxation he means with the threat of violence possibly up to and including death right the only thing i have to say back to this and again the vast majority of people who care about politics agree across the whole spectrum left right up down the vast majority of human beings are pro-taxation the vast majority of human beings do not believe as you believe that taxation is theft the vast majority of human beings do not think it is immoral to coerce a rich person to pay taxes to benefit a poor person on the contrary the majority of people who care about politics especially since thomas moore's utopia a genuinely medieval text of political philosophy by the way since thomas more's utopia the vast majority of people who've cared about politics have seen taxation the centralization of government power with taxation is a tremendous step forward from for society in every way including yes simple things like the provision of roads education water treatment etc so um this is part of what i said back to him i wrote back in my reply the proposition i'm defending in this video is precisely that it's indeed morally good to compel you to pay for sewage treatment and to punish you even with the threat of violence for illegally dumping your sewage into a river or a lake thus possibly poisoning others or at least subverting the aforementioned sewage laws so again i don't care you can describe taxation as theft you can describe this in these bombastic terms you can describe the enforcement of sewage treatment laws and regulations as some kind of terrible oppression that is precisely what i am in favor of and the vast majority of people even though they haven't examined it they are in favor of that too and the suggestion that society would prog progress and not regress but getting rid of those things is laughable to the vast majority of people especially people who care about politics so i i say openly i expressly support the use of coercion on both ends of that equation i believe in coercion to try to get donald trump to pay his taxes we've recently just had an expose about the extent which donald trump and his father have avoided or minimized paying taxes i expressly support the use of coercion and law enforcement to prevent people and prevent companies from polluting rivers with sewage and and what have you i do not see any moral problem with that and furthermore i want that role to be taken on by a democratic publicly accountable government under rule of law the rule of law plebiscite democracy public participation transparency and a rotating roster of people members of the public at large able to inspect and participate and govern those agencies that's what i want i don't want walmart to be in charge of sewage treatment i don't want the catholic church i don't want an irresponsible religious authority like muslim fundamentalists taking over sewage treatment i actively prefer it to be the government whether or not you use terms like coercion whether or not you refer to uh taxation of staff those uh hyperbolic descriptions are of absolutely no interest to me they don't change my perspective in any way and this has no impact with the vast majority of people again who just care about politics um i say in closing that comment what is more important for you to learn from the video is this most people will never bother to explain this to you as i've done in this video and as i'm briefly adam writing in this comment the basic concept of taxation and law enforcement for example for sewage treatment uh is so basic that nobody can be bothered to talk it through with a tiny laughable fringe minority that rejects the premise um so again he then writes back with the example of he is not he he concedes he is not against sewage treatment well in reality you are because you're against the only form and system of sewage treatment that has ever worked in the history of the world okay look at the history of sewage stream why didn't it happen in the dark ages in medieval england what exactly was the historical process that created sewage treatment as we have it today it was exactly the process of centralized taxation-based governments through coercion and legislation i'm sorry it's just not true back in the 14th century this didn't happen neither in europe nor in asia et cetera etc etc um anyway sorry so you say you're not against sewage treatment but you are actually opposed to the only example and the only model of working sewage treatment that has ever been proven to work in this to the world and has recurred separately in different societies all over the world but there is no free market anarchist model of sewage treatment that's ever worked and again in societies where due to war or earthquake or whatever where the government falls apart and stops operating where people do revert to something more like a free market anarchy situation one of the first things that falls apart is exactly the provision of sewage treatment it's not the case that the free market steps forward to provide those things and the free market does step forward and provide other things no one could claim that the free market is 100 non-functional in the absence of the state there are other things that it's good enough at doing back in 14th century europe everybody had access to beer but nobody had access to clean drinking water really think about that why because the free market is very good at packaging and marketing a product like beer medieval i was reading even 17th century europe people were drinking beer for breakfast because beer wouldn't poison you in italy there were factories where they drank wine from the moment the factory opened at 8am they'd drink wine all day because they could get a hold of alcoholic beverages like wine and beer on the free market that were not poisonous that we're not going to give them water-borne illnesses and it was actually incredibly difficult for them living in urban conditions in a pre-modern society without this kind of welfare state it was very difficult for them to get drinking water that wasn't carrying disease so yeah you know i mean this is historical reality some things the free market provides well especially when it's a packaged for-profit product and some things whether it's education prisons sewage treatment or roads are really a very big problem for the free market to provide and that's why all over the world again and again centralization of taxation has solved these problems in the way that it has um so he says he is morally opposed from he is morally opposed to taxing a hundred percent of people to pay for sewage treatment okay and he he refers to taxing as stealing right okay he asks should someone who lives off the grid and uses a composting toilet be taxed he says stolen from should they be taxed with the threat of violence if he doesn't pay in order to treat sewage now again all i have to say back to this basically is yes yes i absolutely believe that 100 of people should pay taxes to support sewage treatment if you're so poor that you can't pay taxes again all western liberal democracies as you know the burden of taxation is unwealthy people not on poor people issue of you know progressive taxation etc but this is irrelevant these kinds of details sure in principle even the beggars should pay a few pennies a year to support the sewage system uh i'm entirely in favor for that and the millionaires should pay thousands of dollars to support it so i quote back what he says in our reply quote should someone who lives off-grid and uses a composting toilet be taxed with the threat of violence if he doesn't pay his taxes to treat sewage my answer is yes parallel question one should a wealthy person who only uses private transportation be taxed to provide public transportation to benefit poor people answer yes it doesn't matter that you're never going to use the bus or maybe you're so rich you're never going to use the road that you that you personally will never use these things yes i absolutely support the use of taxation to tax wealthy people to provide roads and buses for poor people again not debated go to afghanistan go to syria go to china do humanitarian work anywhere do humanitarian work wherever you're from do humanitarian work in rural ontario and first nations reservations and communities and poverty-stricken hopeless awful indigenous people's uh reservations and you look around and you tell me you know what would make this better if we got rid of the buses and the roads and the public transportation is that really what you're gonna include you know make this better if we got rid of government provided health care and access to education for these people so they had nothing if you even do humanitarian work within canada within ontario go to atawapascat at wapascat as a first nations reservation it's been in the news for a lot of its problems it's had problems with sewage treatment too as i recall go and take a look at this human reality and you tell me why it is you think that less support from taxpayers that taxing the rich to benefit the poor why it is you think that would be an improvement and wouldn't be devastating for these people in any of these kind it's laughable the political philosophy your support you're supporting is just laughable and it is laughed out of the room in any negotiations but any real world situation okay um so but no i don't think there's anything immoral about donald trump paying for poor people to ride the bus even though donald trump may never ride the bus himself i don't think there's anything immoral about donald trump paying taxes so that poor children on a navajo reservation or a cree reservation can have access to education when donald trump's own children will never go to a poor people's school in a remote ruler of that no quite the contrary i see no problem with that and neither did thomas more in writing his utopia okay um so yeah my parallel question two is should a wealthy white person be taxed to provide schools for poor navajo people on remote reservations where that white person's children will never benefit from the education themselves my answer is yes okay none of this is debated in the real world in the real world we're debating the future of china syria and the usa but nobody is engaged in debating these laughable fringe issues that you clear to pardon me these laughable french issues that you cling to so sincerely okay guys there are things i care about passionately that are fringe that almost nobody else cares about okay and i am used to i am accustomed to explaining to people why they matter or on a purely human individual level why they matter to me it's obvious that democracy in cambodia is never going to be front page news it's never going to be a major headline it's never going to be something the public in canada takes seriously or cares about frankly i mean right now there's a little bit of interest the future of democracy in china it's amazing to me how little people care about this the concept that chinese people should actually elect their government instead of having a dictatorship uh it's amazing to me how fringe the whole question of democracy in athens uh you know the legacy of a major author like aristotle it's amazing to me how fringe even major major political philosophy questions like that in history it's amazing to me but i'm able to sit down in a detached manner or give an account of why these issues matter to me and what kind of positive outcome uh the debates i'm engaged in the debates i'm inviting others to engage in what kind of positive outcome they could have in the real world okay and that is what you also have to be willing to do with your political philosophy whether it's libertarianism or veganism democracy or otherwise whatever the set of ideas are that you're advancing you have to be able to give an honest and humble account from the fringes that takes account of why it is that you're on the fringes in the first place okay and with that attitude with that humble attitude mind present to us what is the positive difference you can make because guys guess what politics ultimately is about helping people if there's nothing i can say or do to help the people of cambodia to help the people of afghanistan to help the people of china or to help the people of rural ontario that i actually don't have a political platform to stand on and the mode of discussion that anarchists and libertarians tend to engage in is not helpful it is purely destructive and they carry on within their own intellectual echo chamber be with basically support from people who want lower taxes people who will support any ridiculous set of notions or excuses to lower taxes for the rich eliminate taxes for the rich that's what minarichism boils down to to demonize taxation itself and claim that taxation is theft well who are you helping go out in the real world get some practical hands-on experience go and look at how education for the poor works today look at the history of how it worked in the 14th century 15th century 16th century down to the present take a look at the progress of society and centralized government that's produced the institutions we never lie institutions that i detest institutions that i'm a critic of institutions that i do regard as oppressive to a definite extent i mean my own experience with government education is very very negative but i'm not deluded in thinking that walmart would do a better job that the catholic church would do a better job etc i have no such delusion as bad as that may be and as worthy as critique as it may be you guys are on the lunatic fringe and you need to stop and recognize where you are on that fringes why you're on those fringes and then put together the case for how you can make the world a better place how you can help the people who really need help donald trump does not need you advocating for lower taxes and you can wrap yourself in the rebel flag of anarchism in the rebel flag of libertarianism invoke the great name of liberty but the reality is the cause that you are stumping for is neither more nor less than lower taxes for donald trump