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Episode 412: What Do We Owe Each Other? · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers
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brought to you by the good people at KHAKI, the Center for
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American Culture and Ideas. This week's episode comes about
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from a post that somebody made on words and numbers backstage
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on Facebook. Which you should join.
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Yeah, there are last count I think 1600 people there.
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Some of them, why would imagine a lot of them read what's there,
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but don't contribute. There's a bunch that do
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contribute, some quite a bit, some periodically, but there was
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a conversation that went on between US and basically four
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members, Chad Williams, Brendan Eck, Guy Higgins and Luke
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McCormick. And I'm not going to identify
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what each of the individuals said, but it was an interesting
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conversation centred around this question we decided to go ahead
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and do a whole episode on. But what prompts it is the more
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generic question that James and I have asked in the past.
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Do we owe each other something? Well, let's be fair, we ask,
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what do we owe each other? Which actually implies an
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answer. Yeah, yours implies a number as
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opposed to a Yes no. It implies an answer, right?
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You don't ask what do we owe each other unless we owe each
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other something. If you ask do we owe each other
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something? Well, nothing is no, right?
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That's a possible answer. But I don't think that's a
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possible answer. I don't think there's any way
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you can slice this up and have that be the answer.
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And I can hear the anarcho capitalists howling already, but
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they can howl away. That's what they do best.
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When you get right down to it, we're really talking about what
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social life is, what social living is, and if it brings with
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it costs of some kind. And I think we all know for a
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fact that it does. So then the obvious follow up
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question where I part company with the Anarcho capitalists is
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in answering this second question.
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OK, there are costs associated with living socially.
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How do we pay them? The anarchists will always say
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some kind of usage fee, and then we don't have to worry about the
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human element of you dealing with me and me dealing with you
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and the two of us dealing with others.
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But before we get into the details, this question, do we
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owe each other something or how did you phrase it?
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What do we owe each other? The question that comes, I guess
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alongside this, and they're related, which is the actual
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question somebody posted, is taxation theft.
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And I hear so many libertarians just kind of without even
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thinking it through saying, well, of course taxation is
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theft because it's money the government takes from you.
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And I point out, well, hang on, The claim that taxation is theft
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implies an answer to your question, James.
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And the answer is no, we don't owe each other anything.
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But if we do owe each other something, then actually the
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absence of taxation is theft. Now I don't know if I'd go that
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far, but I appreciate the sentiment.
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I'll tell you this. In the pre revolutionary period
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in what became the United States, there were arguments
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levelled against parliament that indicated that the colonists
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slot the taxation is specifically the Sugar Act, the
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Stamp Act, things like were in fact theft.
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They said it out loud, they said it repeatedly.
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And then they fought the English a revolution or a civil war,
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depending on which perspective you take.
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And against literally all odds, there was almost no chance of
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this outcome occurring. They won.
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What did they do the minute they had a constitution?
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Taxes, right, right. Because in the end, if you want
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to have a functioning government, you have to tax now
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what you tax and to what degree you tax.
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These are open questions. Now people are going to come
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back and say, well, but you can have a government by what is the
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term voluntarism, volunteerism. Yeah, no, you can't.
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Yeah, well, we tried that with the Articles of Confederation,
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where the states would voluntarily give money to the
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federal government, and nothing happened.
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And that was only voluntarism of 13.
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Entities, right? Yes, yes.
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Not 300 million, yeah. Because inside those states
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there was no such animal. They were acting as states
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always do. But I mean, I, I don't want to
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get too personal about it, but you were once an anarchist.
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Oh yeah, and I still believe in anarchism, I just don't think
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it's practical currently. Currently and and might never be
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right given this problem of human nature.
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It might be because there's this other thing, human evolution,
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and we'll see. Hmm.
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But as the chips lie right now, no.
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And the point I wanted to get to you're a former anarchist who
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still has deep anarchist leanings.
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And I think I've never been an anarchist, but I've always been
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a minarchist and I also have deep anarchist leanings.
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Why? Because I think the answer to
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most every problem doesn't involve let's have government do
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it. If you can't take me at my word
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there and then think through the things I've already thought
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through for 30 years. I don't know what to tell you,
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but I've thought a lot of things through.
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And they don't add up when you start talking about anarchist
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and they don't add up because I don't think the answer to the
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formative question here, what do we owe each other?
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I don't think the answer to that is nothing.
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I think if we're going to live socially, if we're going to live
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together in communities, certain expenses come from that.
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Now, I think a couple of people said on Backstage that, well, we
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owe each other to leave each other alone, to respect each
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other's property rights. That's a passive OI.
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Agree, but that's not what we're asking.
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But when? No, when we talk about, oh, we
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mean in an active sense, you actively owe somebody that you
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need to be doing something. Yeah, you got to.
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Write a check at the end of the year.
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Right, right. And people will say, well, look,
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everybody's on his own. Well, all right, what about
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these roads we got to build? I know it's a trite thing and
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everybody says who's going to build the roads, but I don't get
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a particularly good answer to the question who's going to
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build the roads? I wouldn't even go to the roads.
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I think you gave what I considered the most compelling
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argument once when you said, look, we believe that their
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property rights and they should be enforced.
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And what do you? Do when someone violates your
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property right, You need a system.
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You need some impartial person. This is the judging.
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Before that you need to clarify what the rights are.
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That requires a Congress, and then somebody's got to go out
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and arrest the guy or force him to make right for whatever
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violation you committed. That requires an executive
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branch, and all of that's got to be paid for.
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There's two arguments that come against that line of thought
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from the anarchist leading among us.
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They'll say, first, we don't need courts, What we need is an
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adjudicator. And people can agree to go to a
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private adjudicator and we do this now, sure.
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But the problem with that alternate resolution, ADR, it's,
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it's all the rage everywhere because you can get your case
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heard quickly, get a clear answer and move on.
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In a lot of instances, both parties pay less even though 1
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loses and one wins. Right.
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Yeah, yeah. Because it takes all the lawyers
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out of it for the most part, and you don't have to work it
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through the courts for eight years before you get an answer.
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So I get it. I'm in favor of this.
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This is great idea. But both parties have to walk in
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voluntarily. And when my neighbor violates my
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property rights, I'm dragging him in.
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Yes, the reason they walk in voluntarily is because there's
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the threat that you would drag him in to the regular court
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system otherwise. And they're not going to ADR
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unless they both think they have a legitimate chance of
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prevailing. Criminals don't think that way.
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They know they won't prevail in a court.
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The last thing they want to do is go someplace and see a judge
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there. You have to actually force them
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to go, which means not only do you need a court and a
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legislative body to enunciate the law, you're also going to
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need probably sheriff's and police officers.
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You're probably going to need something along the lines of
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jail. Stop me when it starts becoming
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obvious, right? There are all kinds of things
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that when we say we need this one thing, all right, well, you
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can't have this one thing unless you have these 75 other things.
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One of the people in this conversation said, and I'm
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sympathetic to this argument, that the market can handle so
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much of this and does through mutual aid societies, charity,
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nonprofits, and I grant, and I'm sure you would, all of that.
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I do. But the question is what happens
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to the cases that fall between the cracks, right?
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We're not arguing here that government should be doing wall
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to wall all this stuff, but we are arguing that there's a slice
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that we think the government's going to have to do.
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Yeah, it's an insurer of last resort in this respect.
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You talk about the social safety net, and people resort to
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platitudes pretty quickly. Well, private entities will
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spring up and take care of that, and they do to a point.
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But when I worked in Connecticut, I worked, and I'm
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going to say a word that I'm not allowed to say anymore, but this
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was the name of the organization I worked for.
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I worked for the Connecticut Department of Mental Retardation
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and I worked in a mental institution and people would
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kind of sheepishly come up and knock on the door and they would
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say I can't take care of my brother anymore, what do I do?
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And then I would say, well, there's a waiting list, but it's
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probably 5 or 6 years long. There are private agencies that
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have group homes and their waiting lists are 8 to 12 years
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long. Or you can abandoned them here
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right now. And people said I can't
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abandoned my brother. And I said, well, if you abandon
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him, I have no choice but to take him in.
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And they would say meet my brother, right?
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And that was a person who didn't have any place to go and who
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didn't have the wherewithal to get his own place and never
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would. Now, are you willing to say some
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people just have to die outside in the cult?
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If you're willing to say that, OK, you're consistent in your
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principles, you're also a peg of a human being because a good and
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decent society takes care of those who cannot take care of
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themselves. And notice the words I said.
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I didn't say who don't want to take care of themselves.
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I didn't say who refused to take care of themselves.
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I said those who cannot take care of themselves.
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And there are any number of people more than you would think
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who actually fit that description to AT.
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So the question becomes, do we owe something to them?
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Because they are part of us, They are part of each other.
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And I can't see a way in which a Humane Society can say no.
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And it's odd, right? Because we look at poor
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countries around the world and we see, you know, the disabled
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among them living in the streets.
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And as those countries become wealthier and wealthier, what do
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we see? The first thing countries do
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when they finally have some money is they start taking care
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of people who were formally kicked out into the street.
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Right. Right.
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They do this all the time. I'm not talking about
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totalitarian states. I'm talking about relatively
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liberal, relatively Western countries.
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Well. You know, as you say this, a
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thought occurs to me. You're, you're talking about us
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owing and I'll paraphrase, we owe those who can't take care of
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themselves. And this is after private
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charity has done is doing everything it can and now
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picture the people who can't take care of themselves falling
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through the cracks. We owe them something by virtue
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of their being human. Well, I think there's two
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things. I think yes, it's by virtue of
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our shared humanity on the one hand, and by virtue of our
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shared citizenship on the other. Yeah, I don't want to go there
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yet, but the claiming that we owe it to these people by virtue
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of our shared humanity or their humanity, that argument is
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ringing a bell. That's the argument we make for
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natural rights. Yes, that.
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You have rights by virtue of your status as a human being.
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It's the Jeffersonian formulation.
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And that's kind of interesting that those two, our obligation
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and our rights, would have in some sense the same core, the
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same root. Yeah, I think it does.
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And notice I wanted to hook citizenship to that pretty
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quickly, because if I don't, then everybody has the
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obligation to support people everywhere all the time.
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I don't know, maybe we do. No, we don't.
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We absolutely don't. And we don't, because other
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people in other places are largely suffering, not always,
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but largely suffering because of the poor decisions that they
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make, not as individuals per SE, but as individuals who are also
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part of a collective, right. So year after year after year,
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you make lousy decisions and lousy policies, and then
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everybody's hungry at the end. In Venezuela right now, of
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course they're all hungry. Of course they are.
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That's their fault. And that matters.
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I don't know. You have to decide how far
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responsibility goes. The anarchists say
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responsibility exists in and only in the individual.
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And I'm saying no, it's more profound than that.
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It extends to the larger community.
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How large a community becomes the question.
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We're going to have an attachment to our locality, to
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our state and to our nation. But you've.
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Broken the link that I just was making between the fact that we
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owe people something because by virtue of their being human, I'm
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linking that to natural rights, which we have by virtue of our
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being human. Taking your argument, there
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would be in other countries maybe people who don't have
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natural rights. No, in other countries right now
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there are people who are not enjoying their natural rights if
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you take a good long look. Well, let's pick a country out
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of the air I ran where a woman is being beaten because she had
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the nerve to sing a song online without covering her hair.
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Now her rights are being abused something awful.
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Oh, they're being abused, but she still has them.
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Right. She has them.
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There's nothing we're going to do about.
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It OK, fair enough. You will agree she has these
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natural rights by virtue of her being human.
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Of course I do, but she's outside of whatever boundary
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we've decided we have control over.
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We can't do anything about that. We're sorry.
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That's up to the Iranians to fix, or maybe more likely, the
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Israelis. Yeah, in terms of her rights now
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what? If she's starving by no fault of
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her own, do we have an obligation to her?
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No, and not a political obligation.
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You might have a moral obligation that is far, far
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greater than any political obligation you might have.
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And This is why people give money to children in foreign
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countries all the time. Well, this is interesting.
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You just made a distinction I have not been making between
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political and moral obligation. When I'm talking about what we
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owe each other, do we owe each other or something?
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I'm speaking from a moral perspective.
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It's a moral question in its nature, right right down to its
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marrow. It's a moral question, but it's
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immediately followed by. And where does that apply as an
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American? I'm not going to say that
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anything I decide applies in Ethiopia.
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That's for The Ethiopians to decide.
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Now, there are times throughout human history where I would have
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been an interventionist had I been alive.
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If you had shown me concentration camps in World War
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2, I would have said, well, all right, fire up the tanks.
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We're going because that's just beyond the pale, right?
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But if you showed me what was going on in the former
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Yugoslavia, I wouldn't have been as quick to do it where there's
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still gross violations of human rights in Yugoslavia.
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Yes, but it wasn't of the same rank.
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And that matters, right? Anything outside of our
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boundaries, we play by different rules out there.
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If I was seeing something in Texas that was even 11
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thousandth as bad as I was seeing in Europe in 1940, I
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would say we need to get to Texas right now because that's
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us. That's our own, and different
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rules apply when it's us, and that matters, right?
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How you define us matters, and how you define us matters.
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When you answer the question, do we owe each other those two
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pronouns right? OK, so I'm going to try and and
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make your argument here. I can buy that argument that
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things change when we're talking about people in foreign
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countries. And I'm going to argue that
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that's the case because to a great extent we have to respect
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their right of self determination.
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And if they have chosen a brand of government that's giving them
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these outcomes, that's. Even if they haven't, right, If
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they've acquiesced. To the government, right?
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Right. I say this often and I don't
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think people hear me for what it really means.
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I always say sooner or later, people are responsible for their
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governments. They take that in a very
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typically Western or United States sort of way.
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But I mean that about the North Koreans, too, right?
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If you let it slide for long enough, that's on you.
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Would it be nearly impossible to overthrow the yoke of Kim Jong
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Illinois right now? Yeah, probably.
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Really, I was going to say the other way.
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It should be pretty easy. No, no, not with the military
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he's got. But sooner or later, you have to
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look at what's gone on and say, well, you know, we did this.
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We allowed this to happen. He went and took it.
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Well, his father went and took it.
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But despots have been doing that since human beings first walked
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the earth. So I'm not terribly surprised by
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that. I am surprised that nobody can
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realize the level of responsibility that incurs.
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I want to go back to the question of what we owe each
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other, because you went, and I think it's fine to go there, to
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the question of, well, we need governmental infrastructure to
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protect the very rights that we're claiming are so important.
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Something different occurred to me from my time in Spain, where
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I can't speak the language. There are subtleties to the
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social interactions that I don't get.
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And it occurred to me, you know, this thing that's so
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fundamental, you can't operate in society, forget about
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society. You can't even operate within
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the economy well if you don't speak the same language that
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everybody else speaks. And that's just given to me.
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This invaluable thing is given to me for free.
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And where did it come from? It's spontaneously erupted from
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our society over time. In a very real sense, the
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language is a gift from society without which I can't function.
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And add to that the morays, the sort of the, you know, behaviors
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that to me represents something tangible I have received at 0
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cost that by rights, if you want to go to the full anarchist
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image of all sacrosanct property rights, by all rights I should
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be paying for and I'm not. Well, there's a difference, a
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considerable one, between society and government, right?
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And we talk about society. And, you know, I refer to Tom
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Paine on this all the time. He said society in every state
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is a blessing. Government is at best the
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necessary evil. But it was a necessary evil
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according to Paine, right? I think that's exactly right.
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Society in every instance is in fact a blessing, and the
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blessings that emerge from it are the things you were just
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talking about. And I think those things could
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conceivably come from voluntary interaction.
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I could see where you might have a very small group of people
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living on a plot of land somewhere who still somehow
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manage the blessings of language and certain other things are
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behavioral more. It's like you were talking
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about. It's when we get into a larger
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group and the larger you get, the more impersonal it becomes.
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And that's something that I think is lost on a lot of people
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now. It always matters closer to
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home. So I deal with things here in
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Tucson, AZ, and you deal with things there functionally in the
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DC metro area, and then we each deal with things that are more
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national in scope. But because of my proximity to
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the Mexican border, I deal with things just over that border.
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Those things matter to us here. They don't matter to you at all.
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Why would they, right? They don't matter to us nearly
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as much 5 feet over the border as it does 5 feet on the other
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side. Why not?
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Because this is our side, populated by us.
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That's their side, populated by them and us and them.
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That doesn't have to be pejorative.
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That's just us and them, and we could get along famously.
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And I think we generally do with the Mexicans, contrary to what
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you hear coming out of Trump's mouth most of the time here in
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Tucson, when they say the Mexicans are coming, we say,
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God, I hope they bring more tacos.
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We love tacos, right? And it just so happens we don't
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mind Mexicans either. Weekly I am in a store in which
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I'm the only English speaker. No big deal, right?
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There's a way to get by with this.
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And that's, I think, the biggest lesson I took from Iraq.
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The day I got left there, I walked in my apartment and I
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found a little box of cookies and some instant coffee and I
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thought, I haven't eaten in 24 hours, better get somewhere.
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Some people have heard me tell the story, but I was able to go
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outside, hail a cab, pay for the cab with American money, tell
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the cab driver to stay put while I walked into the grocery store,
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did my grocery shopping, paid that with American money, got
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back to the cab, went back to my apartment and back upstairs and
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in where I cooked my first meal in a couple of days.
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All without speaking a word of the language.
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All right, There's something about human beings that allows
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us to communicate even when we don't really communicate.
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You could drop me anywhere in the world and I can find a way
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to ask for a cup of coffee, right?
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It's just not that hard. And most other people can do
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that too. And there is something about our
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shared humanity that I think is incredibly important.
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And I think people overlook that.
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But the obvious question is, what's it all worth to you?
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And here you and I have done some research on this, such that
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it is. And by research, I don't mean
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we've done extensive opinion polling.
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I mean, we've asked probably at this point, thousands of people,
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if we do owe each other something, that means we're
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going to have taxes. What percentage of your income
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do you think would be fair? That's the perfect question to
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ask, right? Because it allows everybody to
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tell you exactly what they think we owe each other.
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And there's an overwhelmingly correct answer to this question.
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Yeah, it's surprising. They come in around about 20%
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plus or minus. There's a few that are at 15,
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there's a couple of Jack at 0, there's a few at 25, there's a
23:53
couple of Marxist fools at 100, and the vast majority of
23:57
everybody else lands right on 20 and they land right on it.
24:01
Not only they land on it, but if you break it down as I have, by
24:05
income level. And what should the poor pay in
24:08
the middle class? In the one percenters, there's
24:11
also pretty consistent in their opinions.
24:14
It runs roughly 5% for the poor, 1015% for the middle class and
24:19
30% for the 1% in all sorts of ways.
24:23
And by the way, that matches, roughly speaking, our current
24:26
tax code. Roughly speaking, yeah.
24:29
Oh, and the total income, right, that the government collects is
24:32
about 18% of the economy. So also, yeah, where we're off
24:36
is on our spending, but our tax code is hitting where people
24:39
think it should. Yeah, more or less it's hitting
24:42
it straight on the nose. But in the interesting thing is
24:45
when regular people are asked, they all think the poor should
24:49
pay income. Tax.
24:49
Yeah, yeah. The only people who don't think
24:52
that are politicians and the poor.
24:54
Everybody else thinks, hey, get some skin in the game, you won't
24:57
be poor for long. I want to go back to something I
25:01
proposed earlier. When people say taxation is
25:05
theft and I push back on them. They come back as, and it came
25:08
up in this group discussion that taxation is theft because the
25:13
individual has their money taken from them by force.
25:17
And I try to point out to people that that statement itself
25:22
implies that we don't owe each other anything.
25:25
And I want to go back to this because my claim is if it is the
25:29
case that we do owe each other something, let me just pick a
25:32
number out of the air 20%. We each owe each other 20% of
25:35
what we earn. Then if you aren't paying that
25:38
20%, you have property that belongs to the rest of us.
25:43
And if we don't take it by force, that's a violation of the
25:47
property. In other words, our property
25:48
rights are already being violated.
25:50
The way to rectify it is to take it by force.
25:53
I'm sympathetic to this argument too, and really the only open
25:57
question I have is what the correct answer is.
26:00
Now I know most people will say 20%, I think it's actually quite
26:03
a lot lower, but that's me and this is again something we would
26:09
have to decide together. And I think it's one of the
26:12
places that libertarians go off the rails.
26:14
When they start saying taxation is theft, The implication,
26:18
whether they're aware of it or not, is that we don't owe each
26:20
other anything. And I think that's patently
26:22
false. The question of what should the
26:25
taxes be, that's a separate question.
26:28
Yeah, a good question, a very good question.
26:30
I'll have people come to me saying, Oh no, we don't owe each
26:32
other anything. Look at how high the taxes are.
26:34
That's a separate issue. Yep, apples and Pontiacs, right?
26:38
Not even apples and oranges. Yeah, so begin here.
26:40
Do we owe each other anything? If the answer is yes, OK, then
26:44
let's move on and try and figure out what that might be.
26:46
And if the answer is no, are you willing to live with the
26:50
ramifications of that answer? Because there are ramifications
26:54
to that answer. I don't think they yield a post
26:57
apocalyptic hellscape like you would see, say, in Kevin
27:00
Costner's magnum opus, The Postman.
27:03
God for the garbage movie that. But it's not livable either.
27:08
So what is it that you want? You know, there's this thing
27:11
early on in Plato's Republic, the young men are gathered
27:14
around. This is a nice way to with
27:16
Socrates at a table and they're trying to found a city in
27:20
speech. They want to design the perfect
27:24
city and they sell. It's real easy.
27:27
You have some farmers and a guy who makes shoes and you know,
27:30
you trade shoes for farming produce and this kind of thing,
27:35
and there you. Go perfect.
27:37
And then one guy says, what about relishes?
27:40
And what he says in standard American English is, what the
27:43
hell kind of life is that? Is that the kind of life you
27:46
want? You could probably have it, but
27:49
God, isn't there so much more. And how do we get there?
27:53
Well, I think you just put human beings together and take your
27:56
hands off of them, and they do remarkable things, but in the
27:59
end, they don't do everything. They don't do a couple of
28:03
necessary things, things that simply must get done.
28:06
We can talk about it in the way we have, which kind of centers
28:09
around social things, or we could talk about military
28:13
things, if that would be someone's preference.
28:15
Machiavelli in the 16th century wrote that if you're relying on
28:19
mercenaries for your military, you will be beaten because they
28:24
don't have a devotion to your plot of land.
28:28
They have a devotion to the money they're getting, and it's
28:31
not worth their lives. It's just not.
28:33
But they'll leave. The first time they think
28:35
they're going to get killed, they're out the door.
28:37
So if you just don't care that some people are going to shiver
28:41
cold until they die, or maybe you care that the Canadians will
28:44
come streaming over the northern border without an adequate force
28:47
to repel them everywhere you look, there's another problem
28:52
when you rely solely on a forceless society.
28:56
Which is why the founders of the United States tried very hard to
29:00
make a government that would be incredibly powerful in the
29:04
things it could do, but would be limited in the things it could
29:09
do. And that's all the time we've
29:12
got this week on words and numbers.
29:13
Until next time. Send us e-mail
29:15
wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com. Try to be nice to one person who
29:20
doesn't deserve it till next week.
29:22
Can't take it easy. See you next.
29:23
Week, James.