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There is nothing to debate, it is theft.

It seems like saving a child in the fire thought experiment is open to a possible parody argument. Since Dr. Crummett believes that some unborn fetuses are persons, we could ask, what if there was a fire and there was a 5 year old and a couple of 26 year old fetuses in incubators. My intiution would still tell me to save the 5 year old, even though I agree with Dr. Crummett that these are human beings with moral value. If this is the case and others share this intuition, it would follow that the thought experiment doesn't undermine newly conceived zygotes as having human value.

20:57 he makes some great points, how pro lifers will jump through hoops and make arguments to value the child over the fetuses that often mirror the ones said by pro choicers when confronted with the fire argument.

The biggest issue with the hypothetical they give is we can't really know. Is it that the cerebrum is a tool that functions as a door for observing the world, or does it generate the observation? Also how do we know that you is not an inherent aspect of the totality of an organism, but it just sits upon the cerebrum? Because of this if you went into the new body it wouldnt prove you are your mind, but if you didn't go into the new body it certainly would prove. It's a risk of ethics not worth taking at all. On the topic of that hypothetical how would you know which one is correct even if you ran it? I mean, if you have conscious thought in one body and such a mind moves to another body why would you know about the previous experiences of yourself? And if you brought the whole brain including the memories you still wouldn't know if you went into the other body, or if the memories from that other body were experienced by the self in that body then transferred over via memories.

Taxation Is Theft. Objectively provable.

So, in the post war era, the highest marginal tax rate was over 90%. that just means that over a certain amount, each dollar is taxed at that rate. but the effective tax rate, the important one, was much closer to what the wealthiest pay today, albeit significantly higher (40-50% versus about 25% today). However, Goff is making out the post war era to be a kind of controlled experiment. It was not. It was coming off the heels of a war which drastically boosted production and got us out of a horrible depression. Patriotism ran extremely, hard-to-relate-to high, and factories could shift from making war munitions to cars/appliances. Also, it's not a case of massive redistribution (what Goff is advocating), much less socialism. Most of the money confiscated (if taxation is theft) went to infrastructure, Europe (Marshall plan), and repaying the war debts. So, it hardly tells us that redistribution was good for society.

P1) Human beings have rights. P2) Among those rights is bodily autonomy. P3) The rights of any one human being extend only so far as to not infringe upon the rights of any other human being. P4) Direct interaction with a human being's body without consent is a violation of the right to bodily autonomy. P5) Most methods of abortion require direct interaction with an unborn human being. P6) An unborn human being is unable to consent. C) Direct interaction with an unborn human being is a violation of that human being's _equally valid_ right to bodily autonomy C2) Any method of abortion that requires direct interaction with the unborn is wrong. There's no need to appeal to any higher power. There's no need to appeal to intrinsic value. There's no need to appeal to the moment of conception. This is literally extending the argument from bodily autonomy to its natural conclusion; and to deny it is to commit a special pleading fallacy. One _could_ attempt to formulate an argument with an appeal to "personhood," but I've yet to encounter a distinction between being a "person" versus being a human being that withstands the application of reductio ad absurdum.

OMG! Watching an idiot like Goff almost makes me physically sick. Jesus, man, this guy is a professor? Huemer, on the other hand, did a fantastic job.

Philip makes no distinction between offense and defense and he equates the two. Someone who infuses their labor into land will naturally defend that land, it becomes an extension of them. If you build a hut and someone comes along and says this is a nice hut so I'm going to just live here now, the natural response is to defend your hut. Defending value you have created is completely different than taxation, which is offensive - give us your resources or die is completely different than I've painfully created this hut and you want to take so I'm going to defend it.

1:25:00 a flat land tax is better than what George described,,, because a value add land tax is susceptible to corruption, and a flat land tax is not.....food would be expensive in this system, but taxes would be zero :)

Great video!

For two philosophy professors, this debate was extremely sophomoric. I would’ve expected more from two undergrads debating. However, it was nice to listen to the discussion either way.

Taxation is extortion at the very least.

No I get much more back than I pay… my children can have their education no matter what happens to me and they actually also have a free healthcare… so I can sleep in peace… and every duty you do is an infringement..

Great discussion!

The Justified argument for taxation is the same argument for the holocaust. Not too good of an argument.

" Is Taxation Theft?" It's extortionism. The coerced funding of the state is the foundation of the corruption you see on the planet.

Keep up the good work!

Complete and utter rubbish!!! What you're essentially arguing is the individual matters more than group cooperation. That argument was settled shortly after we started to walk upright. The ONLY way humanity as a species survived, and thrived to become the top species was by putting the welfare of the group first, ahead of their own selfish wants. That trait is encoded - hardwired - into every cell of your DNA. So stop with the BS. Gun control is the group saying we matter collectively more than you do individually. You are either part of the group, or not! You choose! One choice will give you friends and neighbours, the other won't.

Because what this dystopian civilisation really needs is a discussion which undermines the legitimacy of life-long monogamy and family stability. Live in the real world! intellectualising on such matters really is just counter productive if not actually destructive in my view.

Goff needs to read some economists that are not left-wing. At one point he just said, "the government can create new industries." And he also seems to think land is a major source of value in a modern economy -- look at the most valuable companies in the world. It's not because they have land. By all means, take the land from the English dukes, that does nothing. And that you could just somehow give everyone 60% of average wealth without massive cost -- not to mention what happens if you give a poor person a large lump-sum payment. Or just give everyone an acre of land (where is your land going to be, and as Huemer pointed out, how quickly do you sell it since most people obviously don't want it). Huemer needs to a little better prepared to deal with some empirical evidence and basic economic history.

A gun is designed to kill people or animals. Why do most people in the USA want to do that? Normal people have no such desire.

Kind of hilarious that you can tell what side these guys are going to be on just by looking at them. Also "natural property rights" based arguments are so obviously circular and irrational that it's almost shocking that people are willing to make them.

It's not "we", "our", "society" it's a group of people with guns forcing their views onto others using threats of extreme violence. Also, land is not property, that's a statist concept.

Very disappointing debate. In my opinion it would be much better if Michael defended his position from the first principles viewpoint, i.e non-aggression principle, principle that we cannot delegate a right that we personally do not have to anyone else(be it "government", "democracy"), so the whole "authority" that violates NAP is illegitimate etc etc. Would love to see Philip Goff debating Larken Rose on the issue of taxation and other moral issues that are broadly accepted as moral and neccesary.

Topic ignored.😊

Goff is entirely disconnected from reality here. He speaks in vague general terms of "How much do CEOs and investors get the piece of the pie?". He misunderstands that the entrepreneur, capitalist, inherently decided when and why he wanted to contractualize a profitable system (company). So if we were to deter him from the contracts by forcing him to sign a smaller piece of the pie (we already do this with interest rates and shareholder laws), the outcome would be less investment. That simple. You make it harder to be a boss, more people will want to be a mcdonalds worker. mcdonalds workers dont care about franchise strategies. They dont need to care.

If it were true the property rights were not inherently an individual moral virtue, then those who own property would not be better off than those who do not own property. That those who have more property are viewed and seen as "better off" than those who have less or lesser property. We see the cognitive dissonance already. One would have to wear a tinfoil hat.

He went from taxation is theft to well too much taxes are bad. Socialism doesn’t work because low paid workers don’t produce as much because we don’t pay them much and there aren’t enough skilled workers but we don’t pay them much. Me don’t like taxes.

I've always associated the "dignified approach" with the one which takes the non-violent high-road. As in, "I have so much value as an agent that I'm not going to stoop down to your destructive animalistic level."

Gandhi was actually pro gun: "'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving the whole nation of arms as the blackest"

This was cool

Philip Goff is an absolute nut and never before have I wanted to lean towards "taxation is theft" until today. His rational for why we should tax more and do trickle up economics growth makes zero sense to me. Logically, somewhere in the middle has always made the most sense to me. You don't want to do nothing for those who are suffering. But you absolutely should not provide a silver spoon towards those who provide nothing for the country either. There should be reward for merit/effort/skill otherwise you're going to be dealing with a lot of unqualified people.

No. Just saved everyone 90 minutes.

Considering how reasonable he had been up to that point, I found Huemer's reaction to the 60% wealth inheritance kind of shocking. Why would it have to be a high tax rate? In equilibrium, people with less than 60% of the average wealth would pay an effective tax rate of zero. Why does he think it has to be recalculated every time someone comes of age, and immediately taken from everybody, even if their assets aren't liquid? Maybe you don't like the idea, but the notion that it would cause society to collapse is absurd.

Socialist only wants to debat socialism wtf not the topic of the debate

I am commenting immediately after seeing the objection so this may be answered later on. But the response to objection 3 is a little naive and does not extend much further than Michael used it. The hermit who lives in the wilderness probably has a claim to their home and to some personal property. Going into someone's home and painting the walls, and using their private things, is usually wrong. But it's not universally wrong. It's easy to see this if you imagine the hermit less sympathetically. Imagine the hermit claims he has homesteaded the 100 mile radius around his hut. He may even have done some work on it - maybe he walks around sowing grass seeds all day. Do you really think that such a property claim would be granted, on intuitive grounds? It's a bit academic whether you call this response a basic rejection of property rights in extrema or a claim that "not all theft is wrong". But if you want to argue about "natural" property rights, and not the formal legal concept, you've lost the direct link to taxation. Indeed people do generally object to taxation when it takes people's clothes off their backs, no matter what the taxes are ultimately used for. They object a lot less when it takes people's yachts away. And when you poll people's attitudes toward taxation, they're along these lines: 99% wealth taxes above a generous lower limit are extremely popular policies.

Huemer seems to answer this resolution by saying “Yes, taxation is theft, but theft can _sometimes_ be justified.” And it seemed like Goff was stuck on answering the resolution with a “No, taxation is not theft,” which, to me, raises the question “Then what is theft?” and I feel like that kind of left this whole thing open… it was more about whether or not theft is justified, and that’s nebulous.

So natural property rights are bad because a foreign ruler came and took away everyone’s property rights? That just sounds like more of an argument for property rights to me. Also “social construction” is just a posh dork way of saying “it’s made up” like my imaginary friend Donny is a social construction. My mother recognizes Donny as my friend so do my siblings but at any point someone can tell me the truth “Donny’s not real bro” and the illusion fades. The fact that I can own property and have someone in a suit pull up and say “no you don’t we just changed the rules to live here” is so authoritarian and dystopian. So what if I have visitors of the wrong ethnic group in my house can I lose my property because that’s what the Nazis did. The soviets would take away your property if you were in the wrong social class or political party. Meanwhile in America as long as you pay taxes, you’re the king of your own acre. Pick one and tell me what’s better for humanity. I think if you want humans to flourish give them the choice to do whatever they want because self-preservation/self-interest are pretty high on Maslow’s Hierarchy and considering I know what’s best for me not some elected or appointed goon who doesn’t even live in my neighborhood. Property rights may be made up but it’s because we as humans naturally own property like how beavers naturally build dams. The beaver dam is not a social construct at no point can I say the beaver dam is just something we agree upon it just is. Like the beaver dam humans just build and create things we use on day to day basis. If I build a spear to go hunting that is not your spear it’s mine if you take it without permission I will evict your brains from your skull with big rock. Why would I do that? Because I need that spear to eat and without it I’m deprived.

According to Chalmers, my understanding is that it's wrong to set a hard boundary limiting myself or other people around me from experiencing a good thing. So would it follow that celibacy is wrong for the same reason that monogamy is wrong?

IMHO maxist ideas like socialism/communism are a creation of capitalism. Before massive wealth was created thanks to capitalism and consolidated a new paradigm of human cooperation and division of highly optimized labor like never seen by humankind, some visionary folks discovered it is easier to live off from the productive part of society instead of trying to work hard offering and innovating providing valuable solutions to their fellow humans that csn engage in voluntary exchange of goods and services

Saying taxation is theft is like saying capital punishment is murder. Murder and theft are words that refer to crime. A government by definition cannot do theft, or murder. So this just boils down to "I don't like taxes" which instantly reveals how immature the position is.

I do agree with Goff that if you want a successful country you need a vibrant MIDDLE class. You should do one on homeless problem and how much it cost taxpayers.

Every argument that claims "property" is a "natural" right are cringe, and doesn't make sense when you think about how property is acquired historically. Property has always been about power. In a sovereign power, all that really matters are what laws are in place, and are they being enforced by that which has the monopoly of violence. Want tax to be considered theft? Well make it a law. Because, valid arguments, especially, extemely basic ones that rely mostly on crude definitions, as if reality is expressed by anything logical, or that all things defined as knowledge, are not sufficient conditions to make them true on the fundamental level of reality. Just saying "it is a natural right, therefore, it is true", can be applied to anything you want, and for most people, they are only legitmised if those natural rights serve their interests. This is nothing but an arbitrary social construct. Taxes serve all kinds of functions due to how they are enforced by law: E.g. disincentivise various behaviour considered unjust to the social order. Is this theft? Is your property right, defined here to include money, mean you can infringe upon the rights of others without limit? Which "natural rights" are more important than others? My point is justifying an entire argument on definitions of "natural rights" to make universal claims is weak. Tax and government spending arguments always annoy me because what money is, how it is created, and legally defined, are rarely accurately explored, so debates just turn into cringe ideology.

Woah! First of all, hey Amos it's been a while :) Would love to catch-up sometime. This Santa thing is really interesting, haven't yet listened but will! There's something about epistemic credibility with children I keep wanting to dig into but haven't yet got around to. In case your memory is terrible or I've found the wrong Amos Wollen, this is Robbie from YMC/YMotY hehe

'MY BOOKSHELF HAS MORE BOOKS THAN YOURS' - my brain, said in a snarky, child like voice

good interview :3 , but what's up with your audio quality :0 ?

no, why is this debated

Goff doesnt seem to understand what Socialism is. Socialism has nothing to do with taxes or redistribution. You can have a 100% capitalist system with high taxes and a great deal of redistribution.

Coming into this as an anti-libertarian, I was surprised to see how good Huemers arguments were. Goff did not have the best showing here. Good debate though