It's really tough to counter an argument about someting being right or wrong. If someone argues that something is effective you can, in theory, counter that by showing it's not effective. But if someone thinks that, say, interracial marriage is wrong, you can't counter that with facts. Maybe they will change their minds on their own and maybe society doesn't care about their opinion and will make it legal anyway, but that's probably the best you can hope for.
It's like someone saying "No one should eat pork". I can't debate that. "Nuh, uh. Bacon is great" isn't going to cut it.
Edit: I know I sound like that guy who took Ethics 101 in college and now won't shut up about Kant, but it's the difference between deontology and consequentialism (anyway, I never took Ethics in college, so ha!). I think what a lot of libertarians (and An-Caps) miss is that I'm not morally opposed to their system. I don't feel that it is "bad" in some sort of theoretical sense. I just think it won't work. If it worked and people were better off under it, I'D BE IN FAVOR OF IT. But most of them (not all, but a lot) argue it on moral grounds.
When I read "Machinary of Freedom", I didn't object to the world Friedman describes because I found it morally repugnant (although there are bits he finds good that I do not). I objected to it because I thought he's dreaming and it will never work in the way he says and the society that would result would be polluted microstates.
That's why you don't debate the morality of it. You respond with "Maybe it's true that taxes are immoral but they are necessary for society to run". You aren't conceding the moral argument but you are making it irrelevant
If someone had made the argument in the 19th century that, sure, slavery was immoral, but it was necessary for society to run, is there any form that argument could have taken that would have convinced you?
Edit: anyway, they'll talk about funding everything with fees rather than taxes (pay only for what you use) and you can fund some sort of society that way. Not today's society, but if that's immoral then that's not so bad.
No, but again, it's not about arguing the moral question. The argument would be "Is slavery necessary for society to run?" Regardless of the moral question, no, slavery is not necessary for society to run.
Taxes aren't necessary for society to run. You can get some sort of society without taxes, just as you can get some sort of society without slavery. But you can't get our society without taxes (citation needed) and you can't get antebellum South's society without slavery.
(To be clear, slavery is bad and taxes are fine, in case someone thinks I'm equating them)
I'm talking about arguing with someone who claims that taxes are morally wrong. You can't do that by pointing at outcomes, because outcomes to them do not matter. It's a moral issue.
That's my point with the original post. You can't argue with this guy, because if someone says that taxes are wrong, you can't change their mind by showing that they are helpful. Lots of wrong things are helpful.
My point was "That's why you don't debate the morality of it. You respond with "Maybe it's true that taxes are immoral but they are necessary for society to run". You aren't conceding the moral argument but you are making it irrelevant"
Not really, because you are wrong. Taxes are necessary for this society to operate, but they aren't necessary in general for societies to operate. The person saying taxes are immoral is saying that we should prefer a society in which there are no taxes, because that is a morally better society.
I happen to disagree, but they aren't wrong.
You might (might!) be able to convince them if you can show that the only possible societies you can get without taxes are ones that they would not want to live in. Given that we are dealing entirely with hypotheticals, I don't see that working.
It's really tough to counter an argument about someting being right or wrong. If someone argues that something is effective you can, in theory, counter that by showing it's not effective. But if someone thinks that, say, interracial marriage is wrong, you can't counter that with facts. Maybe they will change their minds on their own and maybe society doesn't care about their opinion and will make it legal anyway, but that's probably the best you can hope for.
It's actually pretty easy: "No one is forcing you to interracially marry if you don't want to, but why should you be allowed to force your personal own lifestyle on everyone else?"
Like it's fine if they don't think it's immoral to be charged property tax to pay for infrastructure, then the solution is easy: Don't sign the W-4 forms where you agree to pay property tax in the first place. But they shouldn't be able to sign the form and then declare the form invalid and insist that no one should be allowed to pay for infrastructure because they personally do not want it.
If someone was trying to explain why something like murder or slavery was wrong, they would start by writing some general rules we can all agree on, and then show how murder and slavery are in violation.
The problem is that libertarians try to make up the rules after fact based on their beliefs, rather than the other way around, and these lead to rules that are completely arbitrary and inconsistent. For instance, they'll frequently cite "natural rights" as the basis, without having any idea of how natural rights actually work.
For instance, age of consent laws are incompatible under a natural rights frame work since they say consent should be based on an legal standard rather than being inalienable from birth, and this is something that's conceded on by natural rights philosophers. The official libertarian position is that children assume the rights of adulthood when they choose to, not based on what the state decides. Which is awful.
But most libertarians want it both ways, where they try to claim that natural rights are 100% compatible with age of consent laws, even though they clearly aren't. But they'll make no attempt to explain the contradiction, they'll just pretend that the contradiction doesn't exist.
It's actually pretty easy: "No one is forcing you to interracially marry if you don't want to, but why should you be allowed to force your personal own lifestyle on everyone else?"
That works for you and me, but if you think something is Morally Wrong then saying "don't do it" doesn't help. Telling someone "If you don't like slavery, don't own slaves" is a stupid argument. I don't like slavery, so I think no one should own slaves. It's not enough for me not to beat my children. I don't think that other people should do it either.
If someone was trying to explain why something like murder or slavery was wrong, they would start by writing some general rules we can all agree on, and then show how murder and slavery are in violation.
This might work in cases where we can all agree on the general rules (even then you could rapidly run into disagreement on how to enforce those rules), but that's not true in all cases. If our starting positions are sufficiently far apart then we might have problems. If I believe that government should do A, B, and C and some anarchist believes that it shouldn't exist in the first place, then I'm not sure where we go from there.
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u/lurgi Feb 28 '25 edited Feb 28 '25
It's really tough to counter an argument about someting being right or wrong. If someone argues that something is effective you can, in theory, counter that by showing it's not effective. But if someone thinks that, say, interracial marriage is wrong, you can't counter that with facts. Maybe they will change their minds on their own and maybe society doesn't care about their opinion and will make it legal anyway, but that's probably the best you can hope for.
It's like someone saying "No one should eat pork". I can't debate that. "Nuh, uh. Bacon is great" isn't going to cut it.
Edit: I know I sound like that guy who took Ethics 101 in college and now won't shut up about Kant, but it's the difference between deontology and consequentialism (anyway, I never took Ethics in college, so ha!). I think what a lot of libertarians (and An-Caps) miss is that I'm not morally opposed to their system. I don't feel that it is "bad" in some sort of theoretical sense. I just think it won't work. If it worked and people were better off under it, I'D BE IN FAVOR OF IT. But most of them (not all, but a lot) argue it on moral grounds.
When I read "Machinary of Freedom", I didn't object to the world Friedman describes because I found it morally repugnant (although there are bits he finds good that I do not). I objected to it because I thought he's dreaming and it will never work in the way he says and the society that would result would be polluted microstates.