"Rusty shivs," huh? Congrats Draugnar, I think you came up with a great name for a new game. I'm down to one game and might be enticed to play if the terms are right. :-)

No, taxes exist to support the social contract. It's your end of it.

Anyone who cries that they were not asked whether they wanted the help of the government, so how can they be expected to pay tax, in my view, does not understand the social contract as it exists in practice.

In practice, it is an entity unto itself. It is not something you get to decide to sign. There are a large number of things about the universe and the world that you get no say in and my view is that society's expectations of you in the form of the social contract are one of those. It cannot and would not work if you had to agree first before it began to accrue benefits to you. That's why it's "paid forward."

Just as we must live with the fact that we have to find food and water to stay alive, even though we were never asked if we wanted it that way, we must live with the fact that it is our responsibility to pay tax to the government that made our existence possible*


*This is based on the following assumption:

before the social contract was "signed", was the time before complex civilization, the time of egalitarian hunting and gathering (though you can even argue that there is a non-consensual social contract among apes). The population of the world around this time before agriculture was tiny. We will generously say that it would have been, at max, 1% of the current population.

Now, what is the likelihood that, had there been no social contract, no civilization, no government, you would have been one of those 70 million people living on earth? Well.. 1%, duh.

So, for all intents and purposes, you owe your very existence to the existence of government, technology, and civilization. If you reject the premises on which these institutions are based, it is a bit hypocritical, because you could not have existed to reject them at all without their establishment in the first place. It would be like a fish cursing the ocean.

http://qkme.me/3s2v9t

Go for a nice laptop but I would avoid the touch screen until more games have the interface for it built in.

Oh and something nice for Mrs. Draugnar.

Haven't read the whole list of messages for this so it might already be said but donate to Weddip :) lol, most worthwhile cause!

Mrs Draugnar got her nice out of the first round of this year's bonuses. I bought her a 2 Carat eternity band (diamonds all the way around). Not highest end, but very good color, cut and clarity from Jared's.

@Thucy - You confuse causation andcorrelation. The social contract didn't cause society to grow. Society's growth forced us to adopt the social contract.

Draug, I think that's an oversimplification, as is Thucy's statement. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and a lot more murky. Thucy's point still rings true, however. Taxes are necessary to maintain the standard of living that has made our lives possible, and anyone who thinks that they have no obligation to pay them is rather naive.

They are necessary, true. I was taking exception with his view that society owes everything to the social contract and the earth would only have 1% of it's present population.

Can we please rename "social contract" already? That term drives me up a wall. It's not a contract if you don't sign it. That's so obvious as to be beyond controversy. I appreciate the argument being made (and this isn't a critique of the argument), but god the analogy to contracting is terrible.

PE, if you don't like it, don't live here. By being a citizen of the United States, you have an obligation to help keep it running. The contract is implied.

Depends on how you define contract

President Eden,

Do you believe future generations can be bound to contracts signed by their ancestors? Do we have to re-ratify the Constitution every couple of years in your world?

Taxes are what we pay for civilization.

What drives me up the wall is President Eden's fairy tale notion of rights without responsibilities.

>"this isn't a critique of the argument," just the analogy used to popularize it
>2 of the 3 next comments assume I was critiquing the argument instead of the name and don't respond at all to what I was saying

@SC - a contract is definitionally an agreement between mutually consenting parties to do X, I'm not sure how one can define out the "mutually consenting parties" bit

make that 3 out of 4. you guys are too cute, continue attacking nothing

Many contracts are signed under duress, including most labor contracts. Consent is in the eye of the beholder.

But wait, PE believes in this mythological world where private entities don't coerce people into signing contracts all the time.

Just a month ago I was coerced into signing a contract giving my employer the right to dock my wages for any property damage done to an ipad that I'm forced to use with my work with autistic children - who frequently damage property all the time.

Oh but I could refuse to sign the contract, and then I could be terminated on the spot. If social contract theory is based on a fiction, it's not nearly as fictional as modern day theory of voluntary contracts.

Really? You think most labot contracts are signed under duress? What duress would that be? At least in the US you are *always* free to not sign and go look for work elsewhere. Just as you are always free not to sign the mortgage papers or the lease and find a place to live elsewhere or not sign the car loan and buy a car elsewhere. That isn't duress. You have a choice to work for that company or not to.

The term for that is "tainted consent," and most respectable systems of contract law account for undue pressures and allow for annulment of contracts made under duress. The issue at hand isn't tainted consent - that is, a person agreeing to something under undue pressure, when absent that pressure the person would refuse. It's that there wasn't even a request for consent. It's akin to somebody else signing a contract for you, or me, or anyone. That's not a contract.

Which doesn't necessarily mean the argument is invalid, to be clear. Just that it needs a new name....

Draugnar, if that were true real wages wouldn't be declining for 4 decades now. If that were true employers wouldn't get away with slashing benefits and pushing healthcare costs on their employees. They wouldn't get away with taking away retirement they promised their employees. But they get away with all of it because "working or starving" is not choice. It's coercion. Mutual consent is based on equal parties. When one side holds all the cards they have your balls in a vice. There is no guarantee of employment so this idea that you can "always find a job elsewhere" is utter bunk.

Damn, that's an impressive straw man. It's not even based on anything I've said in this discussion. Remarkable work. 10/10

If we're gonna go that route, I find it rich that a Red Army apologist just uttered the phrase "Consent is in the eye of the beholder."

I guess the fact I've never been out of work more than 6 months, and that was voluntarily as I needed a break, and that my present employer just renewed our health insurance with *no* increase in benefits and that I have only ever interviewed with three businesses before getting an offer when I was out of work and thast I typically have my choice of jobs... Oh wait, maybe if people worked smarter when looking for work and didn't just throw their resumes around everywhere but let a headhunter do their job, they wouldn't be in those positions. Or am I just special somehow? </sarcasm>

"The term for that is "tainted consent," and most respectable systems of contract law account for undue pressures and allow for annulment of contracts made under duress."

And they have a very narrow view of what counts for duress.

" It's that there wasn't even a request for consent. It's akin to somebody else signing a contract for you, or me, or anyone. That's not a contract."

Implied contracts are actually a real thing in law you know. Pretty much any exchange between buyer & seller has an implied contract.

Does President Eden ever actually respond to anything or does he just repeat that nobody else responds to him even though everybody has? I can't count how many ways PE always tries to duck and run.

"Or am I just special somehow? "

Yes, you're special. You make way above the median income but think you're just better than everybody else, rather than privileged. You don't live in the real world, which is why you have godawful politics and no capacity for empathy.

How many times are going to go through this game where PE insults and condescends to everybody but still manages to whine that nobody bothers to reply to him?

*Yes it did have everything to do with what you posted.*

You were carping about "mutual consent" being necessary for contracts. I exposed that argument as being utter nonsense, because most contracts aren't based on consent in any meaningful sense of the term.

Implied contracts exist all over the place. You evidently neglected that aspect of contract law because it doesn't fit with your ideology. Surprise surprise.