Whose money is it, anyway?

So I have these Republicans in my life. I know, I know. It's okay, we muddle through.

Anyway, they're financially successful to the tune of a big paid-off house in an affluent suburb and one parent not working so's to spend more time with the kids. They got this way, mostly, by being relatively frugal and extremely hard-working (and of course with all the benefits of being born white and middle-class in the Midwest, college educations, etc). Nobody should begrudge them their success; it absolutely is a product of all the folksy aphorisms in the book.

They're crazy Republican, though, because of what they see as "tax-and-spend" liberals taking all the hard-workin' folks money and handing it out willy-nilly to welfare queens, drifters, homos, and assorted other Others. The root of this, I think, is revealed in how they constantly refer to the government as spending "our money" on things that they either don't see a direct benefit from or are ideologically opposed to.

The thing is, I don't know how to engage that. I would like to, because frankly I'm a hell of a lot more politically literate than they are in terms of current affairs and how the government actually works and I wish I could get them to see my point of view. As far as I can tell, they see everything from first principles: They got where they were with hard work (true) and nobody gave them nothin' (LOL) and why should we be taxed to help out those lazy layabouts in the Inner City (aka my neighbors, because working long hours as a taxi driver and raising a family when you struggle with the language and are super sub-Saharan black in Minneapolis is a fucking rose garden obviously).

I guess I don't see taxes as some kind of fundamental evil in the libertarian hand-waving sense of the government using its monopoly on force to coerce me into giving up my money. Some amount of money contributed by everyone to the common good seems entirely right and proper to me. Addressing tragedies of the commons, regulating externalities, compensating for the tendency of capitalism to concentrate wealth -- these all seem like absolutely vital activities for a government to engage in.

Well shit, maybe that's the tack I need to take. I guess I just needed to approach the problem in a medium I'm more skilled at (writing vs. off-the-cuff speaking).

Anyway, am I missing something in the philosophical underpinnings of the strain of American libertarianism that I'm engaging here? It's not like I studied it or anything.

Why do you want to engage with them? What's the point?

I dunno, making the world a better place by converting one libertarian at a time?

Because in contrast to their fears of taxes being wasted on "Others", they themselves are not Others to AdamB.

Tell them to invite brettmcd over for dinner.

I imagine you're fighting a losing battle (or at least, a deeply unrewarding and inefficient one), but... if I were to start, it'd be with exploding the welfare queen myth with some kind of actual real stories about what life on welfare is like, from someone as relatable-to-them as possible (close kin would be best, but I'm guessing they're aren't any in such a situation).

If what you just posted is accurate, they're not just libertarians, they're racists and bigots. Fuck 'em.

Eh. From what you're hinting at - the our-money-is-going-to-the-lousy-others stuff - it sounds like you're dealing with a bit more ideological difference than if you were dealing with FDP-voting Economist readers in Germany or something, so I'd say there's more than just "libertarianism" standing in the way of agreement.

Being able to mop the floor with people in debate and having logic on your side doesn't give you the ability to convert someone's religion or their tribal identity concepts. It doesn't give you a kill switch to seperate them from the thousand umbilical cords connecting them to the right-wing alternative reality infosphere that reinforces these ideas daily. And their right-wing reinforcement comes in the form of infotainment that flatters their prejudices and ego and concepts of group and self-identity, and is "enjoyable." Quite unlike the fucking irritation they'd experience from their "smarter-than-thou liberal friend with all of his fucking talking points he probably got from Daily Kos," trampling all over their cognitive dissonance.

The main question is what they feel an ideal situation is. A government must spend money on one of two things: either keeping it's citizens healthy in times of need, or cleaning up corpses in the streets for health reasons. Or the third option, which is face plague from leaving corpses to rot, but I think we can universally consider that last option off the table.

Once you've managed to come to an agreement on that point, you've opened the door that of course the government SHOULD be spending money on health concerns, so the actual discussion of entitlements of one of degrees, and not a black and white "should the government do this at all"

Notably, it's hard to change someone's mind without them going through a life crisis themselves. They'd be open to discussing the role of government protection if they were scammed out of everything they own and their house: naturally the scammer should be brought to justice and their possessions restored, whereas I feel like that might be natural selection and a waste of my tax dollars to help out entitled idiots. But without an actual nearby life changing event you usually just walk into people bunkering up when cracks appear in their world view.

Really the only thing you can do is fight the idea that we have "entitlements" as much as everything down to police and the military and drinkable water is an entitlement, and what we have is a discussion over how many of them we need to have a functioning society. If they don't actually know many poor people they probably won't be able to understand that someone who is smart, talented, and working their ass off can still only have $100 in the bank because they work a low paying job, or that $100 in the bank doesn't actually go that far towards working your way up from there.

I was raised pretty well off, but in hindsight thankfully was close friends with enough people who simply didn't have much that I kept somewhat grounded in what reality actually was. I don't credit my success entirely on my personal choices in life (hell, I probably made more shit choices than the dude at Starbucks trying to puzzle out how to start saving with no money), but on the support network I grew up with and the opportunities it afforded me. I am in no way shape or form a self made man or an island, and it doesn't make me any less good at what I do to admit that.

Take them to a soup kitchen on the regular.

I know plenty of frugal, hard working poor people who mysteriously do not get ahead. I guess they're just not quite frugal and hard working enough.

Not really; it's sounds like basically warmed over racism and xenophobia if they are swear-to-god talking about "welfare queens." It's also not libertarianism if they complain about "homos", it's just traditional conservatism.

If you want to tilt at windmills you could try to convince them that the people they think are taking their money don't exist - which, you know, they don't - but I wouldn't hold your breath. There's always some anecdote.

My favorite tack if someone really pisses me off is "if you're so smart and hard working, how come I, the super-liberal, make so much more money than you? Do you think Microsoft operates off welfare or something?" is comedy gold.

Call your local department of public works and find out about how much it costs to maintain the roads in your city.
Then ask your friends how much they pay in taxes a year.
Calculate how much road they are maintaining by themselves and how much they use in a year.

I love the whole "All my money is going to welfare queens!" because motherfucker your piddling tax is a teeny tiny drop in a huge bucket that you get back ten fold what with your fancy running water and paved roads and sidewalks and police and sewers.

I actually find the taxes as theft argument somewhat convincing; it's just that I'm a pragmatist who thinks some degree of theft is okay if it keeps society from going to shit. As an analogy, it's wrong to steal bread from one person to feed another, but it's also wrong to sit around and watch someone starve when you have the power to fix the situation.

The most convincing argument I've heard against this view is that as members of a democracy we all have a say in how tax money is collectively spent, and so the situation isn't exactly theft. There's also the argument that all taxed individuals bear an obligation to the community for helping them obtain wealth in the first place, which I don't find persuasive.

When I discuss the matter with a hardcore libertarian, I usually go with the social-contract angle. Since, y'know, they love contracts so much.

The standard response ends up being "show me the contract, because I never signed it."

Ultimately it's pointless, you're arguing tribal identity stuff and it's a waste of time.

Taxes as theft is unrealistically simplistic, since you're using nearly everything taxes pay for. It would be theft if you weren't getting anything from it, in this case it's simply a fee for service based on your ability to pay. The idiotic alternative is simply running away from the sheer complexity of the world these days, and trying to bunker down in the idea that you only use roads and maybe water, and thus should only pay direct usage fees. It's also rooted in the idea that if you didn't win the election, it's results don't represent you and you shouldn't be bound by them. Which is considered stupid and childish behavior in every other social situation than politics.

A lot of this is an inability to cope with the modern reality that your life isn't entirely influenced by local sources, and nearly everything is interconnected to some level. I don't directly use roads in Iowa for example, but I'm positive that something I use at some point uses a few resources in Iowa, etc.

People have issues coping with scale sometimes. And it doesn't strike them that yes, helping with poverty in Chicago does in some small way help with the general quality of life in Peoria. For some reason "a rising tide lifts all boats" only applies to helping the rich. Also, it's never pointed out that a rising tide doesn't mean suddenly the entire planet has more water and every boat on the planet goes up. I really kind of hate that phrase on a mechanical level.

Also, I think I'm rambling at this point.

Taxes as theft only makes sense if you've never read up on the history of property theory. Short version:

Angle one: ownership
1. In the distant past, people theoretically "found property lying around for free" and acquired it by picking it up and doing something with it. Locke tries to make it sound fancier, but there you go.
2. However, for the past 10,000 years there's been untold theft and violent acquisition, so it's problematic at best to claim anything is legimately owned.
3. Even if it is, how do you justify inherited wealth? The little bastards didn't work for it.

Angle two: productivity
4. Virtually all of the historical increase in wealth and income is due to technical, process, and organization innovations in the public sector and private sector.
5. Anyone born today a best adds a tiny, tiny sliver to that pile.
6. Therefore, the vast bulk of their income is due to people long dead, who probably got somewhere between jack and shit compensation for it.

In practical terms a private property ownership structure with a market around it leads to better outcomes at the moment, but people fetishize the game board.

I've always preferred asking why contracts should be upheld by the government and nothing else. It seems like an arbitrary place to draw a line, and if we're drawing arbitrary lines, convince me that yours is better than mine.

Nothing will be won by this conversation, but I like pointing out that they're basically saying the government should only directly serve them, and not anyone else without grasping how hilariously selfish and bullshit that is.

Just dig something out of their couch cushions and tell them to eat it. When they refuse act all smug and say "What, you won't eat something if it doesn't rigorously conform to government standards??"

In Libertarian Paradise I go to eat at a sea food restaurant, get poisoned and die from unsafe foods, and the Free Market closes down that business because now no one will eat there! Meanwhile I'm still fucking dead.

I doubt they agree with you on this very basic point, so there's no point in trying to argue with them.

Are they religious? From the Christian perspective, everything we receive in this life is a gift, and none of us have done anything, really, to deserve it. It's a good idea to show that we appreciate it, but even if we do, we're still no more deserving of it than someone who doesn't.

This is the message of the maddening and deeply counter-intuitive parable of the prodigal son. (Luke 15:11-32).

"We're doing well because we deserve to, others shouldn't get anything unless they do as we have done" is exactly the erroneous mode of thought that Jesus is trying to educate his followers out of with this story.

If I were going to engage in an argument with these neighbours of yours, I'd start just by asking them what they think of this parable. What's do they think it's about? Don't push, don't argue for a point of view or an interpretation, just see what principles they draw from it. See if there's anything relevant that you can then draw across to a discussion of what they think of "welfare queens".

To summarize many of the responses here, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the [Other] no matter what...you'll never convince them...

Adam B, I think the most significant thing you can do is to simply continue to have contact with them. Views like you've described require a self-reinforcing bubble to remain intact. The more contact they have outside that bubble the better chance that they'll evolve out of it.

For a more specific prescription, I agree with what you wrote in the OP.

I would try relating the cost of not addressing certain things through the government. Just because you don't spend money up front to deal with an "entitlement" like education or public health doesn't mean you don't pay as much or more dealing with the problems that precipitated that government program in the first place. If we are going to end up paying one way or another, then lets take the route that most likely increases our own opportunities and quality of life. It can be expressed in perfectly libertarian-friendly terms of enlightened self interest.

Of course this mission will be a long term effort with no guarantee of success, should you choose to accept it. :) As I said, I think just being a connection outside the bubble will do more than any specific effort.

Current and historical benefits accrued through taxation

Roads, security, computers, the internet, google, having viable consumers for whatever crap these hard working titans produce, not living through a modern french revolution. The list is endless.

Basically, I suspect that if you break it down you can show them how much of their lives depends on current and historical government spending and the other members of society more generally. Whether they would listen is much less likely.

What society looks like with no taxes isn't a libertarian paradise; it's Somalia.

Birth Certificate, Social Security card, Driver's license, Voter registration, selective service registration (for men), every tax form ever, I-4s, W-2s, Mortgage documents, property tax documents, etc. Those all say you want to live and work here, and you sign a lot of them. Living and working here has a cost. Please deal with it.

Ask them what they would do if one of the family members came down with a medical condition that cost them 500k to a million dollars to treat, thus maxing out the lifetime cap on medical insurance? Hardcore conservatives suddenly are alright with Medicaid when this happens. Especially when they run a small business and are the ones buying the group insurance policy

From my critical thinking and philosophy course in college came the following on making persuasive arguments.

1) The Choir -> Appeal to Emotion. If you're already preaching to the choir, appeal to emotion to fire them up. They already agree with you, so tie their logic to emotion and you can motivate them to take action.
2) The Undecided -> Appeal to Logic. These folks are open to a convincing argument either way. This is really the only group where having a good point or being factually right actually means diddly squat.
3) The Opposition -> Appeal to Authority. You need someone these people trust and would listen to tell them that you're right. Any logical argument coming from you is immediately suspect as being propaganda, and unless they're unusually intellectually curious they aren't going to take the time to come up with logic to refute it, they'll just have faith that such logic exists.

These folks fall squarely in category 3. So you need to figure out if there's anybody they do actually trust or respect and find a way to have them make the argument for you. If they're Christians, as mentioned above, Jesus and the Bible can be a start. On a side note, this is exactly why stuff like Chris Christie saying Obama acted presidential and did a good job handling the Sandy crisis hits the Fox culture so damn hard. Their entire demographic is category 3 (from your perspective, obviously category 1 from theirs), and that's precisely the kind of thing that actually stands to work on their viewers.

Sadly, it's hard to find people in category 2 anymore.

With hard core libertarians who are convinced the liberals are stealing their money, I try not to engage them in political discussions. Because if they're already convinced, really, what's the point.

However, once in awhile I can't help myself. Because I like to argue. So I like the following and just stay factual. Facts are hard for these people to deal with, since they mostly run on unreasoning frothy emotion.

First, go the health care angle. These people universally hate "ObamaCare". And how liberal it is. Ask them how it differs from what Romney put in place in Massachusetts, or what Newt Gingrich proposed in the 90s. And then ask them if the current system works better. You know, where the uninsured get routine care taken care of at the ER, where the hyper inflated costs are then passed through to all of those with insurance.

Second, most seem to be utterly convinced that the extra 3% of taxes (or whatever it is) that is rumored to be levied on those making over 250k a year will be a flat 3% decrease to their income. Surprisingly, most people don't know we live in a country with a graduated tax system...so that the 3% (or whatever) increase will occur only on income they make over 250k. And if they still are concerned about that, fuck them, because either they're really worried about a true pittance (if they make 300k, then they're looking at an effective tax increase of about 1500 bucks), or they have so much money anyways.

Finally, my most favorite is to slash and burn the Republican Party as the "party favoring small government." The largest expansion of the Federal Govt since FDR's new deal occurred under W.. The parties are more alike than different, in the end.

But in the end, none of this really matters. Most of the people I talk to are so convinced we live in a welfare state now it's comical. One of them, a highly educated and smart guy (physician) was so disgusted that Obama got elected, and so convinced that we'll be living in a socialized state, that he posted on a friend's Facebook page asking if they would let him and his family move to their house. To Canada. It's fucking unintentionally hilarious.

I'm sitting in that one to bring up later and torture the living shit out of him with it.

Pretty much! Mostly that reflects my interests and priorities. Things I am:
1) Liberal
2) Strongly interested in policy details
3) Interested in economics

Things I am not:
1) Interested in endless discussions of axiomatic first principles
2) A politician.

Given that I'm not a politician, nor am I interested in the endless abstract round and round regarding first principles (taxation is theft!), yeah, for the most part I'm not terribly interested in engaging with libertarians. Especially when (as the OP makes clear) their libertarian-ness is at least partially informed by simple animus toward Others.

Not sure what I expected when I made the thread (particularly in the Sanctum, heh), but this level of thoughtful discussion on points I hadn't thought of wasn't it. You guys are the bestest.

But yeah, probably next up is to try to dig into those first principles and try to illustrate why they don't align terribly well with observable reality.

There's also the godawful upper-middle-class thing where money is no longer a means to live your goddamn life free of misery so much as a score to be chased. But that's for another day.

Good luck digging into the first principles. I've found it's pointless; they're designed to be totally abstract and most libertarians explicitly reject utilitarian or consequences-based arguments. It doesn't matter if adhering to their first principles would have all sorts of massive negative consequences, wha'ts important is that IT WOULD BE MORAL (and I'd have to pay less taxes!)

Attacking their first principles won't likely accomplish much - it'll simply label you in their minds as trying to attack their beliefs and they'll get defensive. They'll reiterate fallacious arguments back at you but fail to see the fallacy, and in so doing will just further convince themselves of how right they are, how wrong you are, and it will make discounting anything you say in the future all the easier because they'll convince themselves you're trying to trick them.

Walk in with a guy dressed as the Monopoly Guy and a sledge hammer. Have the Monopoly Guy hand you a hundred dollar bill and say that the Free Market demands you take out a wall. Look your friends right in the eye and ask if there are any competing bids.
Yell "Freeeeeeeee market" when you swing.

Either that or "Fuck you Day by Daaaaaaayyyyyyyy"

Just wear this mask

Let me give you some Sanctum advice. Next time you see these people and get into a political discussion, see how quickly you can Godwin the conversation. If they are immune to that, put a burning cross in their yard when they aren't around. When they you tell of the horrifying cross in their yard, tell them, "oh yeah, I did that for you guys. I figured, what with your beliefs and all that you'd want one!"

A lot of times it's really hard to say what makes people like this come around, if anything can do it. I used to have some shock value effect on a subset of dumb ideas as a recently minted veteran but that has less traction these days. In general it's a long process that involves a great deal of patience and subtle, non-confrontational work on the contradictions in their arguments, in my experience. This is also how I am most often convinced to change my mind on things I believe strongly.

This might also be where aspects of the Dunning-Krueger effect are useful, not for insulting the people in question but for targeting your arguments. They will probably be a lot more nuanced about things they know more about, and you can do a lot with that if you can build bridges from there. The usual D-K example of a roomful of, say, engineers being compromise-oriented and negotiating ideas carefully when it comes to the best ways of putting together a structure, and being a bunch of stereotyping, confrontational dickbags when it comes to things they don't know much about is useful, I think.

Taxes as theft is a valid analytical category for philosophical or historical discussions in an academic context, or anything resembling it in other conversations. Your short version illustrates nicely why an encyclopedia entry is not the same as "reading up" on something. The main problem with taxes as theft is that it makes no sense as a political polemic when applied applied ham-handedly by people that don't know shit about anything within the realms of economics or history aka libertarians. You know, the kind of guy who points to an out-of-context quote from John Stuart Mills (they like the extra s for some reason) with a big fucking grin like they just found out the cure for cancer is people blowing them.

So I think it's really part of a broader issue of analytical categories that have valid applications within academic discourse leaking out to people that communicate in talking points exclusively. For other examples see popular renditions of feminist advocacy, atheist advocacy, and so on. It goes without saying that they are not all equally pernicious because of the power dynamics in which these conversations take place, but I just mean that they are appealing to the same sort of faux credibility that achieves its peak in the Omniscient Gentlemen of the Atlantic format of thinking but has plenty of currency among otherwise normal people.

The Sovereign Citizen movement uses this logic to destructive ends. It's not actually anything you sign, it's simply your continued presence that makes you part of the social contract. SCs refuse to sign anything, drive without licenses and never file taxes, and claim this means they're not subject to US laws. They're absolutely wrong in this regard.

The idea of government is effectively that individual actors cannot reliably solve social dilemmas like common resource usage. Without an inherent social contract and agreed upon central arbiter society will collapse either via flat out shit behavior (I have more weapons, your shit is now mine. Libertarians agree this is a poor outcome, but don't explain why we should have a social compact to deal with that vs public health) or unintended shit behavior (hey, I took all the drinking water. Sorry, I needed it for my swimming pool.)

The issue is entirely one of degrees. And I've yet to have a good conversation that explains exactly why everything contractual and property based should be enforced/protected, but everything health based should be up to individual actors. It always seems to wind up selfish reasons, such as ".. well, I want more money in my pocket", which has never struck me as a persuasive argument.

Cut these people's insurance and give them cancer. Then ask them how much money they have in their pocket.

The only difference between this forum and the (ugh) other forum is that is that the Sanctum is better in every way AND includes me.

Hrmmmm, ok.