Funding of Proper Government

Hi everyone!

I came across Rand's philosophy some six months ago and now after reading Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Peikoff's Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand I have a solid foundation for my understanding of life. Obviously, it was not just the Objectivist literature, there was plenty of knowledge that I gained in my 35 years but I like having one consistent system of knowledge and the right method for obtaining more knowledge.

One question that I did not find a good answer to and keeps coming up in conversations with my friends is how Rand proposed to fund the proper government. I read somewhere that it would be the voluntary taxation but I really would like to see a detailed analysis. Would anyone please point me to the right place?

Thanks!

Sam

Post 1

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 6:11am

"Government Financing in a Free Society" in The Virtue of Selfishness

Post 2

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 2:37pm

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Sam:

Here is a proposal for voluntary taxation that I made some time ago and was a more detailed description of a previous post.

For what it's worth.

Sam

Helen Keller

Post 3

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 3:37pm

Sam,

I'd propose that a person's voting power is proportional to the amount they fund the government. When they fund the government, they specify which function they are funding (military, court, infrastructure, welfare) and the money can only go towards that function, and the voting power is only assigned to that function.

Maintenance of existing local public infrastructure like roads and bridges can be paid for by tolls or donations.

Voting power based on fund amount gives power to the producers and property owners. The purpose of government should be to protect their property, hence the people who fund the most should get the most say in how their funds are used to protect their stuff.

The current government does a lot more than it should, hence it is much more expensive than a capitalist government would be. Even if we still had taxes, but the government was limited to its proper role, we may still have "evil" taxes, but we would be in a much better situation. I'm not sure if we'd be able to transition to a significantly smaller government with our current voting power system.

Post 4

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 4:02pm

Dean:

I appreciate your basic point of view but I'll just comment on the weakest of your arguments, i.e. that of welfare. Why should the government be involved, at any level? If one believes that the only legitimate function of government is to protect individual rights and the government is involved then you tacitly believe that an individual has a "right" to be taken care of. I'm not denigrating charity, benevolence or feelings that one may have for those in need but it is up to individuals to step up to the plate for their voluntary donations to private charities.

Sam

Post 5

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 4:39pm

Or see "The Objectivist Sales Tax" in the Dissent forum here.

If natural law requires that government provide courts, police, and army, then, government must provide them. That means that the courts must exist and be in place and that they be available for citizens (and non-citizens) for conflict resolution between private parites, as well as for law enforcement, in addition to redress of grievances by citizens (and non-citizens?) against the government.
[...]
The courts also exist so that citizens can corral the government. If the government oversteps its authority, you take them to court, i.e, you get a court of competent jurisdiction to issue a restraining order (to prevent action) or a writ of mandamus (to require action). This is, as I understand it, a right that the courts must provide (regardless of your ability to pay for the operation of the court system).
[...]
Finally, in the narrow sense mentioned by Professor Machan and Ayn Rand, courts exist to arbitrate disagreements between citizens (and non-citizens?). So, if my dog digs up your roses, you can sue me. According to the theory proposed by Rand and Machan, there would be some question as to whether or not you could sue me if my dog destroyed your roses. Is there a contract? Who paid the court fees?

We are all Objectivists here, but within that there are distinctions and differentiations. Not everything Ayn Rand wrote or said is beyond further inspection. She suggested that only the police should be allowed to carry handguns, a thesis that most here reject. As a card-carrying criminologist, I think that it has merit as a philosophical theory, but whatever its merits, it is simply unworkable here and now.

Sam West wrote:" I like having one consistent system of knowledge and the right method for obtaining more knowledge."

Objectivism is, indeed, largely consistent; but it is not perfectly non-contradictory. It has lacunae and hiatuses, like any other complex system. Unlike just about 90% of whatever came before in philosophy, it has far fewer problems at the fundamental levels and so only a few problems at the higher. This is one of them. Like her thoughts on gun control and capital punishment, Ayn Rand never intended that her suggestion for a courtroom sales tax be finalized into constitutional law.

Post 6

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 9:30pm

Sam,

If the budget and funding for the welfare branch of the government was separate, and the funding was 100% voluntary, then what is the issue? I am thinking that some people would want to fund such a thing.

Post 7

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 11:15pm

Dean,

I would object to a government welfare program even if it were voluntarily supported. Clearly it would not be nearly as bad as if it were funded by taxes, but it would still be a form of competition with private charity, it would be inefficient compared to private organizations, and it would expand the overall size of government. Much better that it be left to the private sector where it would be more efficiently run - even non-profits compete for available funds and the competition generates greater efficiency.

Post 8

Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 6:04am

Steve, what you call "welfare" I call crime prevention.

Human beings are not billiard balls. The failure of so-called "positivist" sociology as well as traditional absolutist morality as understood by some who claim to be Objectivist is found in the complexity of harms and crimes. Perhaps 50 different theories have been floated according to a scientific method in criminology: empirical evidence suggests a general rule which is tested and statistically validated.

Rational Choice
Routine Activities
Lifestyle Theory
XYZ Chromosome
Sociobiology
Differential Conditionality
Social Learning Theories
Modeling/Imitation
Differential Association
Differential Identification
Differential Reinforcement
Psychoanalytic Theories
Moral Development Theories
Criminal Personality Theory
Social Strain Theories
General Strain Theory
Social Disorganization
Anomie Theory
Subculture Theories
Culture Conflict Theory
Subculture of Delinquency
Cloward & Ohlin's Differential Opportunity
Focal Concerns
High Delinquency Areas
Subculture of Violence
Labeling Theories
Tagging
Primary & Secondary Deviance
Developmental Career Model
Radical Non-Intervention
Victimology
Social Control
Containment Theory
Social Bond Theory
Techniques of Neutralization
Low Self-Control Theory
Opportunity Theory
Power-Control Theory

The idea that someone who harms another should pay it back materially blanks out on their lack of resources in the first place. If you force them to work, you get the least from them, they learn nothing, and often just escape to cause more harms. The old methods of criminal justice are no more successful than economic regulation or Blue Book laws forcing Christian behavior, and for the same reasons: they lacked an objective basis for their theories of operation.

Objective justice begins with the nature of the actors. We have friezes from Sumeria of people being beaten for not paying their taxes. The problem is the beating, not that they should have only been beaten for "objective" harms to others.

Every one of the theories listed above explains some harms, crimes, actors, and victims -- but not all of them and not even the same of them in every different context. They can be grouped into classes so that rational choice explains crimes of opportunity. But if your only tool is a hammer, you will do nothing about a subculture of violence. Some people make themselves (or allow themselves) to be victims. The primary rule may be that we do not blame the victim, but when the same person returns time and again having found one abuser after another, the theory that we punish the perpetrator leaves much unaccounted for.

We pay $60,000 a year to incarcerate a state prisoner and $10,000 a year or less to educate a child. But we know for a fact that those with more education commit fewer crimes. Granted that money alone (versus parental involvement, say) is not the only answer to public education. Granted, also, that private delivery mechanisms are superior to government agenices, it still leaves the fact that it is better to spend six times more on any child now than to wait for them to harm 30 other people before you lock them up for the first time. (The average so-called "first time offender" has actually commited 30 felonies before his first prison sentence.)

A little welfare can go a long way to preventing crimes. Not all crimes and harms will be prevented or remediated, but as an opportunity, if voluntarily funded, welfare can be a proper function of the state.

Speaking as a card-carrying criminologist and lifelong Objectivist, absolutist and formalist theories and practices are no more successful than Keynesian economics -- and for the same reason: they are contrary to reality. You do not have to agree. That is what voluntary funding is. When you say that you are opposed to it, do you mean that you would not contribute, or that you would not allow anyone else to do so?

Post 9

Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 8:20am

Michael,

Human beings are not billiard balls.

Thank you, I feel so enlightened now.

The failure of so-called "positivist" sociology as well as traditional absolutist morality as understood by some who claim to be Objectivist is found in the complexity of harms and crimes.

Clearly, you are taking a swipe at someone. Why not have the balls to do so out in the open.
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You claim that welfare will reduce crime. Your example is education. But your only support of that claim is the correlation between more education and fewer crimes. That is very weak.

You admit that private organizations are superior to governmental agencies yet you support the government agency.

You didn't answer the issue of depriving the charity market of a degree of competition by the entry of government or the issue a larger government than needed with its gross incompetencies and dangers.

If you care about the particular goal, like education, keep government out of it - otherwise it will be damaged. We have government education right now, and it has drastically stunted private education and done great harm. (And you'll notice that total welfare in the case of education has NOT diminished crime.)
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It is wrong to attempt to justify the existence of a government welfare agency on the basis of self-defense against crimes that have yet to be committed. That is a precedent that would just cause great harm down the road. The next step someone would take is to use the theory that redistribution of wealth is the best form of crime-reducing welfare and off we'd go in that direction.
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The old methods of criminal justice are no more successful than economic regulation or Blue Book laws forcing Christian behavior, and for the same reasons: they lacked an objective basis for their theories of operation.

The "old methods of criminal justice" are to arrest, try, convict, and jail those who commit crimes. If those crimes are violations of individual rights, and those methods are vigorously pursued, I'm happy with them. Their objective basis is individual rights and the theory of personal responsibility.

Post 10

Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 11:15am

Michael Marrotta said:

We pay $60,000 a year to incarcerate a state prisoner and $10,000 a year or less to educate a child. But we know for a fact that those with more education commit fewer crimes. Granted that money alone (versus parental involvement, say) is not the only answer to public education. Granted, also, that private delivery mechanisms are superior to government agenices, it still leaves the fact that it is better to spend six times more on any child now than to wait for them to harm 30 other people before you lock them up for the first time. (The average so-called "first time offender" has actually commited 30 felonies before his first prison sentence.)

You are playing some sleight of hand with the math there, aren't you? How would you know which children were the proper targets of your $60,000 per year education? You wouldn't. You would have to educate every child at a cost of $60k per year, which would make incarceration of the few bad apples look very cost effective. Even before we get to that though, what about all of those people going to prison right now? In the U.S.A. wouldn't it be fair to argue that they were, for the most part, offered an education? Are you claiming that if we had offered them a $60,000 per year education instead of a $10,000 per year education it would have changed their life choices? What would you recommend we spend the extra $50k on?

Speaking as a card-carrying criminologist and lifelong Objectivist, absolutist and formalist theories and practices are no more successful than Keynesian economics -- and for the same reason: they are contrary to reality. You do not have to agree. That is what voluntary funding is. When you say that you are opposed to it, do you mean that you would not contribute, or that you would not allow anyone else to do so?

Protection of rights is the only proper function of government. Would I object to your voluntary contribution to a government program of cradle to grave education and welfare? Yes, I would. Perhaps that is only because you and I view government differently. If somehow the welfare government were a completely different entity than the military and police government, as it would be in a more anarcho-capitalist system, I could understand your point. However, in the more traditionally objectivist view of one government holding a monopoly over a specific geographic area, putting the education system, the welfare system, or any other system into the same hands that control the police and military is a dangerous mistake. Would you object to the same government that controls the military and police controlling a shoe factory and a car dealership, assuming they were voluntarily funded by some citizens? What if you were the private owner of a competing car dealership?

Post 11

Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 12:41pm

Michael:

But we know for a fact that those with more education commit fewer crimes.

P.M.H. ...Stating your argument another way:

If there is such a correlation it must be a weak one, thus your six fold hypothesis would break down. You have assumed that spending 6 times the amount on education for all students will result in no incarcerations.

Sam

Post 12

Monday, November 28, 2011 - 4:57am

I cited 38 theories of crime, each one of which was suggested by empirical evidence and statistically validated. Some are large scale, others mid-range. Each describes and defines a different aspect of the harms people bring to each other. I offered education as one example of a known remedy for many kinds of crimes and harms. Clearly, education is actually an enabling factor in white collar crime, including academic fraud including misconduct in scientific research. That is why I began by pointing out that human beings are not billiard balls.

We hold Newtonian physics as a paradigm of scientific investigation, when it is not applicable to much of human action. That was a key point in the eponymous work by Ludwig von Mises.

Government institutions are not the only way to deliver education. I am surprised that no one perceived this as an opportunity to expand voucher programs and charter schools.

Without a history of entrepreneurial engagement to look back on, we will not know whether spending six times more on education will bring six, three, or a hundred times the benefit. But clearly, spending more on prisons has not brought much success... and spending less on prisons is not the answer either. The general solution is education. Incarceration is the failure mode.

We may need to accept that error point. Maybe locking some people up i.e., internally exiling them away from the community, is the only solution for them. However, it is obviously not the solution for most. The Red Hook Community Justice Center has been a model for others. (Use your browser to find more links.) It is a different delivery mechanism with a different goal entirely. The offender must acknowledge the harm they caused, admit it to their victim, and apologize - which is also different from traditional courts - but the ultimate goal is beyond retributive punishment. It is a different way of looking at the problem.

Of the theories - and I cited just over half - victimology would seem to me to be another where Objectivism suggests non-traditional solutions. Change the victim in front of you and the court can prevent the next crime. That requires the allocation of resources for justice, from trying to remedy the past to seeking to improve the future. It is another approach to one aspect of crime.

We accept that the state has a compelling interest to protect a child from active abuse. Why would the government - being charged with protecting our rights - not act to defend a child against passive abuses such as poverty and ignorance. Unless you want to create government orphanages - which are known to fail - the better outcome is to remediate the family, to fix the home.

It may not always be possible. Not every problem as a solution, or at least not an immediate, known, and cost-effective one. However, we watched black and white TV and now high definition and we still have to wear funny glasses to see 3-D in the theater. In other words, solutions need not be universal or perfect to be the exchange of a lower value for a higher one.

There are many ways for the government to act against crime in the protection of rights. As long as the funding is voluntary, then how that is enacted is for political scientists of the future to determine, as Ayn Rand suggested when discussing this topic, capital punishment, and gun control. Here and now, however, we lay the foundation for those future solutions, if we offer good ideas.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/28, 5:03am)

Post 13

Monday, November 28, 2011 - 10:11am

Michael,

Not so long ago you were an anarchist and now you appear to have become a big government liberal... or maybe I just misread you.

You wrote, "Why would the government - being charged with protecting our rights - not act to defend a child against passive abuses such as poverty and ignorance."

Do we now have the right to not be poor... and the right to not be ignorant? Why should anyone need to address that rhetorical question to you? You do understand why those are not rights, don't you?
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You talk about incarceration as the failure mode. You need a context for that. It is the success mode to the degree that it isolates crooks and thugs from society. It indicates a failure of the individuals who chose to violate rights, and it indicates a failure of a culture that produces so many criminals... but your leap to education as the answer is not supported and your further leap to calls for government intervention in education/families/homes is not warranted by logic.
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You wrote, "Unless you want to create government orphanages - which are known to fail - the better outcome is to remediate the family, to fix the home."

This is a variant of the same error made by the big government liberals... that if government doesn't do it, it won't be done. You imply that if government doesn't fix the family, the home, and provide education that we will need government orphanages. There may not be a utopia waiting around the corner from any proposal, but clearly, those proposals that involve government doing other than protecting against force, fraud and theft, will be less effective than those that don't so involve government.
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You wrote, "As long as the funding is voluntary, then how that [government fixing the family and the home and education] is enacted is for political scientists of the future to determine."

You still have not answered the points I raised about the damage to a marketplace that is done by government interfering. If government is in the family business, even with voluntary funding, there will be damage done to all the private attempts to 'fix the family' - same with education. Charities compete and there is benefit from that. And when the government comes into that marketplace it distorts and crushes competition.
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Post 14

Monday, November 28, 2011 - 6:13pm

Thank you, all, for your input!

I'll read the VOS after I am finished with the ITOE. The question of funding is an interesting one because it, I think, it can make or break the proper society. It is important to propose a scheme of funding that would appeal to reason and sense of fairness of an ordinary voter.

I have yet to read the suggested material but I am tempted to pose this question. Let's assume that we have enough of voluntary contributions for the police force. Who will decide how those contributions will be distributed? Like how much will the patrolmen will get vs. the chief? What their benefits are going to be? Is there going to be a retirement fund and who will be responsible for it, etc.? Should the police work be outsourced to private security firms and their contracts and performance evaluated on a regular basis and how? Who will make those decisions? How to ensure transparency?

Same goes for the courts and the army but with their own specifics.

Post 15

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 4:19am

How much you have to pay to get the people you want is an issue for any government, no matter where its money comes from, and for any employer, government or private. Benchmarking, following the job market and individual negotiation are among the ways to get this information. In the case of government, this job is delegated to elected officials and to adminstrators who work for them. The media and the political opposition tend to keep them from getting out of hand. If government is too big, things do indeed get out of hand, and the insiders deal the wealth to themselves. That is a matter of the wrong kind of government, not of government per se.

Post 16

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 7:53am

Sam West asked: "Let's assume that we have enough of voluntary contributions for the police force. Who will decide how those contributions will be distributed? Like how much will the patrolmen will get vs. the chief? What their benefits are going to be? Is there going to be a retirement fund and ... Who will make those decisions.

Ayn Rand suggested the contract fee (which I question). A lottery was also a suggestion. (Again, it would compete against private gambling. It would, of course, be voluntary, at least, so that is an improvement.) Some Objectivists here, Steve Wolfer, I believe, have suggested that even a non-voluntary tax to a strictly limited government would be morally acceptable if it achieved the goals of proper function and limitations.

Here in America, private pilots fly around courtesy of a free instructure of weather reporting and traffic control. In Canada, they pay for that. Some airports here do have landing fees, but they are billed only to commercial flights, not private pilots (again with a few exceptions). Again, they could all pay for what they use. I finally quit paying for my AOPA membership for several reasons, among them was the huge lobbying effort to keep private aviation infrastructure free for private pilots. The point is that in theory, the government could charge for many of the services it provides.

Moreover, the goverment could raise revenue through marketing. How much would you pay to have access to special features, such as a private showing of the Declaration of Independence, or your picture with the President, or a tour of Fort Knox or the US Mint? That does raise other issues, but it is, again, like Ayn Rand's suggestion of a contract sales tax, an opening for discussion.

As Peter noted above, the details you seek are not worked out. We just assume that much would continue as before... I doubt that it would. The very change itself would be predicated on a deep cultural shiift.

Just for one thing, the word "provides" is not defined. The government provides police forces. Actually, in reality, many former police functions from traffic and parking control to police dispatch have been contracted out. The government could have zero police officers on its payroll, as long as the minimum criterion of a geographic monopoly of law were maintained. The word "police" appears nowhere in the US Constitution; and we had a federal government for 50 years before the first police force was formed. So, how we pay for government depends on what you mean by "government." But all of that only begs the question you ask: who administers the contracts?

In the science fiction series Peacer War by Vernor Vinge, the State of New Mexico ran its legistlature as an active museum, charging people to see laws debated and enacted. If government were synonymous with legistlation, services such as the Library of Congress (now free to all) could be revenue streams.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/29, 7:57am)

Post 17

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - 1:48pm