To most statists, including the person quoted above and my former self, the claim that we would be better off in an anarchic society seems so absurd that merely hearing the claim and a brief argument for it won't be enough for them to find it worth the time and effort to learn about how an anarchist society might function to provide law and order, help the poor, etc. I don't want to have to read a book if there is not one single idea that you can boil down to a few sentences that would make me stop and think how certain I am about what I consider true. > the problem is I have heard nothing that has made me think twice about anarchism. MYLIO REVIEW REDDIT FREEHowever, in my experience most people aren't willing to take the time and effort to learn about the likely outcomes of an anarcho-capitalist or free market system unless they feel they have a moral obligation to do so. I agree that educating people about the consequences of various things can be an effective way to help change their political views. Where you might get their support is by showing that states only provide token support for the poor, but that a stateless society cares for its poor more and in a more functional way. > They're never going to agree with you on those terms. Before I didn't realize that there was a threat of punishment and no consent involved, but now I realize that that is the case, and understand that the nature of taxation is such that it fits the definition of theft. It wasn't my moral intuitions that changed, but rather was my understanding of the nature of taxation that changed. See the last paragraph of section 1.6 of Chapter 1, or just do a search of the webpage for "political intuitions" and read from there.)Īlso note that in my own case, I had the same moral intuitions before I believed that taxation is theft as I do now. Michael Huemer provides three reasons in his book why people should trust their moral intuitions rather than their political intuitions. Peoples moral intuitions and political intuitions often conflict. ( EDIT: Note that people have political intuitions too, such as the intuition that having a government that imposes some taxes is good. He argues that taxation is immoral using "common sense" moral intuitions that nearly everyone agrees with, including leftists, as a basis for his argument. In his book The Problem of Political Authority Michael Huemer does exactly this. Most people intuitively agree that theft is generally immoral, so the only task left is showing them that taxation is theft. The fact that people get their ethics from intuition doesn't mean that they can't be persuaded that taxation is immoral. > Many people get their ethics through intuition therefore, you're not going to be able to convince a leftist out of taxing for the sake of the poor by "proving" taxation is immoral.
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