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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Taxation is theft?
Message-ID: <333@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 22:21:27 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.333
Posted: Mon Feb 11 22:21:27 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 01:47:20 EST
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 22

Laura Creighton writes:
>About the ``everybody being better off'' proposition:
>
>I have yet to hear *anybody* say that ``the rich'' would be better
>off if you took money away from them. 

But Laura, haven't you suggested that in a libertarian society, the rich
would voluntarily donate to charities, and if they didn't, you would try to
persuade them to share their wealth voluntarily?  If you are so certain that
the rich would be made worse off by someone's taking money away from them,
how on earth do you expect to persuade them to give away money voluntarily?
Do you plan to lie to them or invent fallacious arguments?  

Why do the rich in fact give money away, if they themselves do not think
they are made better off by doing so?  Perhaps they take seriously that
passage in the Bible about a camel going through the eye of a needle,
perhaps it gives them satisfaction to do some good in the world, perhaps
they are appeasing a guilty conscience, perhaps they  actually CARE
about their fellow human beings.  But however you explain it, the fact
remains that many rich people think they are better off with less money.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes