My thesis is that taxation is highway robbery, and the fact the State has to lie about this in the political formula is epistemic cancer, which causes civilizations to fall. Cancer is a lethal affliction. Falsehood is a deadly sin.
Land and Moldbug ran this cycle in micro.
First, they adopted a political science that's superior to democracy. They rewound the tape back to a superior state. Undid some of the democratic degeneration. However, they refused to go whole hog. They neither accepted that the State is inherently criminal, nor did they go full anarcho-optimist and posit a just, post-crime society. Ultimately their political science uses Satan as a core.
Because they hailed Satan, their brain got Satanized, and they lost all contact with Reality. The cancer metastasized, devouring the marginal piety they managed to accrue.
They were given a choice, and now we can see the choice they chose. They could have rewound the tape all the way to the beginning, but didn't. Their paths are clear.
5 comments:
I always said they were proposing Elysium which we already had at the time it wasn’t clear to them that techlords like serge and zuck were the problem not the solution.
> They neither accepted that the State is inherently criminal, nor did they go full anarcho-optimist and posit a just, post-crime society.
If I were to defend them, my answer would be that power deserves respect.
As long as you have power, you are not just a criminal. Once you lose power, you are indeed just a criminal.
> Once you lose power, you are indeed just a criminal.
After reflection, I would rephrase that as "you can be a criminal only after power overcomes you"
I enjoy your rephrasing.
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In general I see crime like bad weather. You need a roof. The weather isn't something you respect or disrespect, you just build a roof or get wet, so to speak. However, if someone complains that they're wet all the time but goes aggro if you suggest learning to make a roof, then there's an issue.
A criminal without some form of power can't commit any crimes and isn't a criminal. A threatening cloud that doesn't actually rain. E.g. imagine someone tries to steal your wallet and just trips when they lean forward. They don't manage to break the law.
In my opinion, a criminal with a lot of power merely commits a particularly large crime. If the lesser criminal isn't respectable, the greater criminal isn't either.
I go the other way: the person who refuses to defend themselves against crime is contemptible. Refusing to accumulate power with which to defend justice is certainly worse than someone who merely exploits these refuseniks.
Hmm.
To play devils advocate, pardon the phrasing - the state is a necessary technology to overcome human cognitive limitations, in particular, the dunbar number.
Taxation is theft when implemented as theft, legitimate when used to support a legitimate state apparatus. When you take my tax and use it to make a road for me to make getting to work more pleasant and less damaging to my transportation equipment, legitimate.
When public education teaches my children that decadence is the best way to live, theft.
The cancer sets in when thieves start using the apparatus to steal. Not publicly executing defectors in comedically outlandish ways, thats the cigarette. No one who lives in a nice, safe, cohesive and prosperous community says that taxation is theft, you dig?
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