If your value-structure really allows you to rationalize the notion that ‘It’s OK for me to be a slave owner, because I know I’d be a kinder slave owner than the next guy, so I’d actually be doing my slave a favor,’ all I can say is, Wow.
But I would point out, again, that you have been painted into this morally-dubious corner by your intransigence re the (frankly indefensible) meme that ‘taxation = theft.’ If you would drop this trope, it would allow you to say ‘No, I would not be a slave owner.’
What would you do? Please answer that. Consider that you have been born somewhere that thinks so highly of slavery that the government provides slaves.
Let’s make your scenario even more like taxation: You are required to own a slave in order to work. What do you do?
Edit: Since you vehemently agree with all things popular, I can tell you what you would do: Own as many slaves as possible, and treat them in the manner that would garner the most cool points.
That’s easy. I would decline to be a slave owner, and would either work to change that system, or (if such was obviously hopeless) I would leave the state.
As the return I receive on my taxes does not come in a form remotely akin to something as morally heinous as chattel slavery, the premise of your question (“Let’s makes the scenario even more like taxation”) is completely invalid.
In fact, if anything, the libertarian ‘taxation = theft’ rabbit hole leads to the opposite scenario. That is, because a portion of their income is being ‘stolen,’ it follows that citizens are being forced to work without pay–ie, they are slaves, owned by the government–for a certain portion of the year. So the logical extension of ‘taxation = theft’ is ‘tax payers are slaves,’ not ‘tax payers own slaves.’
Just saw your edit. It’s the sort of pointless, gratuitous, personal attack employed by someone who realizes they have lost an argument, but are unable to do so graciously.
Would you take a government issued slave to prevent them from being abused by another owner? If you had the means would you buy slaves to keep husbands/wives/families together?
Of course. I wouldn’t argue otherwise. In a society where slavery is treated the same way as taxes are in this one(you have to have one in order to work), however, the taxpayers would be like slaveowners.
I have to admire the lack of self-awareness possessed by progressives. “The culture in which I’ve grown up has no influence on me. I would be the same regardless of society. My beliefs are a product of biological evolution.”
If this is being directed to me: No. When you participate in a system, you implicitly approve of that system.
OTOH, if I had the option of immediately freeing my govt-issued slave year after year…The answer is still probably ‘no,’ but I’d have to give that one some thought.
Except, as pointed out above, the return on taxes is in no way the moral equivalent of chattel slavery, so there’s no way to countenance the hypothetical you proposed.
But I suppose you have risen above the influences of your culture?
Again, listen to yourself. Are you really going to draw an equivalence between your life and that of an actual slave (of which there are many millions around the world)? Do you really have that much gall?
Capable of expressing a thought that isn’t agreed with by the vast majority. I think that’s what I said. I’m not sure what you’re asking here.
Who said anything about goods and services being anything like slavery? Taxation resembles slavery, in that there is no choice on the part of the taxed or enslaved.
Taxation is the cost for agreeing to live in an organized society that attempts (we may disagree on how well) to have items for the greater good. Undoubtedly you have benefited from numerous services throughout your life and have had a much better chance of growing into a healthy and intelligent adult here than many other places in the world.
It is not like slavery because a choice exists. Going to places with lower taxation, starting a new society, etc. This is the price for living in this advanced society and all it’s many advantages. Advantages that for you must clearly outweigh any benefit to be gained by starting a new taxation free society or moving to places where no taxes or less of a tax burden exists. You can leave this place (or as you would say plantation) at any time. That you don’t says quite a bit about how little you must actually think you’re a trapped slave with no other options. Though I must say as I have said many times that I love reading and discussing things with you Nick.
You don’t decide to live here or anywhere else. You’re born here(or there). You decline to leave. You can be completely ready to leave but unwilling to abandon your family to do so. The only thing “love it or leave it” shows is that other things are more important to people than minimizing interference from government. Let’s say Donald Trump captures my family and me and puts us in a camp. I don’t see myself abandoning my family to seek freedom.
Well, the two can be considered somewhat alike in that both are done with the threat of force. However, I was actually pointing out a situation that would be, in my opinion, far worse than taxation, and saying I would not abandon my wife and kids even when faced with that.