Coercion K - Symonds

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

1 Coercion K

Coercion K (1/2) Coercion K (1/2).............................................................................................................................................................1 Shell 1/2..........................................................................................................................................................................3 Shell 2/2..........................................................................................................................................................................4 Environment Links (1/5).................................................................................................................................................5 Environment Links (2/5).................................................................................................................................................6 Environment Links (3/5).................................................................................................................................................7 Environment Links (4/5).................................................................................................................................................8 Environment Links (5/5).................................................................................................................................................9 Environment Incentives Links (1/2).............................................................................................................................10 Environment Incentives Links (2/2).............................................................................................................................12 Global Warming Links (1/3).........................................................................................................................................13 Global Warming Links (2/3).........................................................................................................................................14 Global Warming Link (3/3)...........................................................................................................................................15 Taxation Links (1/4)......................................................................................................................................................16 Taxation Links (2/4)......................................................................................................................................................17 Taxation Links (3/4)......................................................................................................................................................18 Taxation Links (4/4)......................................................................................................................................................19 XT- Taxation is Theft....................................................................................................................................................20 XT- Taxation is Theft....................................................................................................................................................21 XT- Taxation is Theft....................................................................................................................................................22 IL Magnifier- Slippery Slope........................................................................................................................................23 Impact- Rights Violations- Extinction..........................................................................................................................24 Rights Violations O/W Extinction.................................................................................................................................25 Impact- Taxation- War...................................................................................................................................................26 Impact- Taxation- War..................................................................................................................................................27 Reject Coercion- All Instances......................................................................................................................................28 Reject Coercion- All Instances......................................................................................................................................29 Reject Coercion- Key to Ethics.....................................................................................................................................30 Reject Taxation- Immoral..............................................................................................................................................31 Reject Taxation- Immoral..............................................................................................................................................32 Reject Taxation- Immoral..............................................................................................................................................33 Reject Taxation- Immoral..............................................................................................................................................34 Ethics First....................................................................................................................................................................35 Turns Case- Regulations...............................................................................................................................................36 A2- Case Outweighs.....................................................................................................................................................37 A2- Warming Outweighs..............................................................................................................................................38 A2- Warming Outweighs..............................................................................................................................................39 Solves Warming............................................................................................................................................................40 A2- Permutation............................................................................................................................................................41 A2- Permutation............................................................................................................................................................42 ***Aff Answers***......................................................................................................................................................43 Perm Solvency..............................................................................................................................................................44 Environmental Coercion Key (1/3)...............................................................................................................................45 Environmental Coercion Key (2/3)...............................................................................................................................46 Environmental Coercion Key (3/3)...............................................................................................................................47 Environmental Regulations Ethical (1/1)......................................................................................................................48 Environmental Regulations Solve Coercion (1/1).......................................................................................................49 Environmental Destruction Undermines Rights...........................................................................................................50 Environmental Destruction Undermines Rights...........................................................................................................51 A2: Taxes Are Theft......................................................................................................................................................52 Taxes Key to the Right to Private Property...................................................................................................................53 A2: Private Property is Key to Individual Awareness...................................................................................................54 State Action Key to Freedom........................................................................................................................................55 A2: State Intervention Bad............................................................................................................................................56 Libertarianism Increases Suffering...............................................................................................................................57

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

2 Coercion K

Libertarianism Causes Genocide..................................................................................................................................58 Libertarianism Decreases Freedom...............................................................................................................................59 Libertarianism Ignores Consequences..........................................................................................................................60 Libertarianism Wrong – Positive Rights.......................................................................................................................61 A2: Libertarianism Creates Social Equality..................................................................................................................62 Libertarianism Results in No Government...................................................................................................................63 Top-Down Libertarian Revolution Fails.......................................................................................................................64 A2: Freedom Based Rights- Free Will is Never Lost...................................................................................................65 A2: Freedom Outweighs All.........................................................................................................................................66 A2: Negative Freedom Based Rights- Circular Logic Fails.........................................................................................67 A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Rothbard Flawed................................................................................................68 A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Hegel Flawed.....................................................................................................69 A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Fichte Flawed.....................................................................................................70 Negative Freedom Bad – Reduces Freedom/Equality..................................................................................................71 Negative Rights Flawed................................................................................................................................................72 Negative Rights Flawed................................................................................................................................................73 A2: Moral Imperative Comes First...............................................................................................................................74 A2: Must Reject Coercion in Every Instance................................................................................................................75 A2: Weigh Coercion First- Consequentialist Framework Key.....................................................................................76 A2: We Are “Libertarian Consequentialists” ...............................................................................................................77 A2: Libertarianism is Consistent With Consequentialism............................................................................................78

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

3 Coercion K

Shell 1/2 Environmentalism lends itself to the widespread expansion of governmental influence and authority at the expense of liberty George Reisman, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, 2001, Excerpt of a speech delivered at the Austrian Scholars Conference, http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=661&id=71 The same intellectual quarter that a generation or more ago urged the totalitarian control of all aspects of human life for the purpose of bringing order to what would otherwise allegedly be chaos, now urges a policy of laissez-faire—out of respect for natural harmonies. Of course, it is not a policy of laissez-faire toward human beings, who are to be as tightly controlled as ever. Nor, of course, is it a policy that recognizes any form of economic harmonies among human beings. No, it is a

toward nature in the raw; the alleged harmonies that are to be respected are those of so-called ecosystems. But while the intellectuals have turned against reason, science, and technology, they continue to support socialism and, of course, to oppose capitalism. They now do so in the form of environmentalism. It should be realized that environmentalism’s goal of global limits on carbon dioxide and other chemical emissions, as called for in the Kyoto treaty, easily lends itself to the establishment of world-wide central planning with respect to a wide variety of essential means of production. Indeed, policy of laissez-faire

an explicit bridge between socialism and environmentalism is supplied by one of the most prominent theorists of the environmental movement, Barry Commoner, who was also the Green Party’s first candidate for President of the United States. The bridge is in the form of an attempted ecological validation of one of the very first notions of Karl Marx to be discredited—namely, Marx’s prediction of the progressive impoverishment of the wage earners under capitalism. Commoner attempts to salvage this notion by arguing that what has prevented Marx’s prediction from coming true, until now, is only that capitalism has temporarily been able to exploit the environment. But this process must now come to an end, and, as a result, the allegedly inherent conflict between the capitalists and the workers will emerge in full force. (For anyone interested, I quote Commoner at length in Capitalism.) Concerning the essential similarity between environmentalism and

The only difference I can see between the green movement of the environmentalists and the old red movement of the Communists and socialists is the superficial one of the specific reasons for which they want to violate individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Reds claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as "exploitation," "monopoly," and depressions. The Greens claim that the individual cannot be left free because the result will be such things as destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, and global warming. Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity. The Greens want it for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage . . . [And in the end,] [b]oth the Reds and the Greens want someone to suffer and die; the one, the capitalists and the rich, for the alleged sake of the wage earners and the poor; the other, a major portion of all mankind, for the alleged sake of the lower animals and inanimate nature (Ibid., p. 102). If the world’s intellectuals had been open to the socialism, I wrote:

possibility that they had been wrong about the nature of capitalism and socialism—profoundly, devastatingly wrong—and taken the trouble to read and understand the works of von Mises in order to learn how and why they had been wrong, socialism would have died once and for all with the Soviet Union, and the whole world would now be moving toward laissez-faire capitalism

intellectuals have chosen to foist the doctrine of environmentalism on the world, as a last-ditch effort to destroy capitalism and save socialism. and unprecedented economic progress and prosperity. Instead, the

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

4 Coercion K

Shell 2/2 Federal regulations make us slaves to the state Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 221-22) It is important to understand how this argument differs from other libertarian arguments against taxation. It is not quite the same as the general claim that taxation interferes with individual liberty insofar as its enforcement is intrusive and it prevents one from doing what he wants with a portion of his income,2 for there are many who would find such infringements of liberty acceptable but nevertheless consider uncomfortable the notion that taxation also amounts to forcing people to work. The argument also differs from the objection that taxation amounts to theft in that forcing someone to labor and stealing from him are different offenses (although, if we take the former to involve specifically the stealing of labor, the difference between the objections may be one only of generality). Nonetheless, it is sometimes suggested that Nozick’s argument is essentially concerned with the violation of property rights or with theft, rather than with forced labor in that Nozick presupposes that one has a property right in the portion of one’s earnings the state takes in taxes, a right his critics claim he fails to establish (Kymlicka 1990, 107–18; Michael 1997, 141; Weinberg 1997, 336; Otsuka 1998, 71).3 Nozick’s argument, as stated previously, nowhere explicitly appeals to any claim about property rights, and it is by no means obvious that an argument objecting to some practice on the grounds that it amounts to forced labor needs even implicitly to do so. Clearly, I might still be forced to labor for someone else if I labor at all, even if I have no property right in the product of the labor: a slave may own no part of his master’s land or tools, and thus arguably he cannot own whatever he produced using them— vegetables, say—but he is nevertheless a slave, even if he is allowed to eat some of the vegetables and thus labors partly for himself. The master might even allow him to idle away the days if he likes, but insist that if he labors to any extent, some of his labor must be for the sake of the master: if the slave grows tomatoes because he wants them, the master will take a portion of them; if he tries to grow only one tomato for himself, the master will nevertheless take a third of it; if to avoid giving the master that third he tries somehow to grow only two-thirds of a tomato, the master will take a third of that tomato; and so forth. Insofar as the master “taxes” away a portion of the product of his labor, the slave has obviously been forced to work for purposes other than his own, even though he has no property right in the product of his labor (the portion of it he is allowed to eat also belongs to the master).

Rights violations should be rejected in all instances Petro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, 74 (Sylvester, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, Spring, p. 480. (PDNSS511) However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway – “I believe in only one thing: liberty.” And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume’s observation: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

5 Coercion K

Environment Links (1/5) Protecting liberty from environmental regulations is fundamental to avert totalitarianism Eric Englund, MBA from Boise State University, Surety Bond Underwriter, February 22, 2002, Global Warming: Socialism’s Trojan Horse, LewRockwell.com, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund5.html On February 14, 2002, President Bush provided details for his plan to combat global warming. The cornerstone of his plan is to promote voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

environmentalists were outraged that

Bush refused to adhere to the Kyoto Treaty

Naturally, President . It is President Bush’s contention that the Kyoto protocol would cost nearly 5,000,000 jobs in the U.S. alone. Of course, environmentalists claimed that there is a bigger picture here. All people, especially those living in industrialized

environmentalists have succeeded in eroding property rights in the United States in order to protect Mother Earth as they see fit (i.e. through the Clean Water Act, through the Endangered Species Act, through ridiculous wetlands legislation, through air quality laws, etc). Whether or not President Bush understands this, the real struggle is between liberty and totalitarianism. For if environmentalists succeed in gradually taking away our private property rights, then a free market and liberty cannot exist. Thus, it is my contention that the struggle against environmentalism is actually a struggle for liberty (using the classical liberal definition). countries such as the U.S., must sacrifice in order to win the universal struggle against global warming. As we have seen over the past three decades,

Undoubtedly, environmentalists will take exception to being called illiberal socialists (but I repeat myself). Perhaps there are those of you who are alarmed about global warming and sympathize with the environmental/green movement. My response is for you to be careful with whom you associate; which leads me to provide the following quote from Dr. George Reisman’s magnum opus

…it should not be surprising to see hordes of former Reds, or of those who otherwise would have become Reds, turning from Marxism and becoming the Greens of the ecology movement. It is the same fundamental philosophy in a different guise, ready as ever to wage war on the freedom and well-being of the individual. Capitalism:

Federal incentives towards environmental regulations are coercive Anderson and Leal, Political Economy Research Center, 94 (Terry L. and Donald L. Regulation: The Cato Review of Business & Government, Spring, “Enviro-Capitalism vs. Environmental Statism”, http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.html, 7/15/08) One exception to total command and control that recently has gained acceptance in the environmental community is market-based solutions such as tradeable pollution permits. Those are accorded at least a light shade of green from mainstream environmentalists because they still "let the government steer." But market-based solutions really have little to do with markets; they are simply ways of making command and control more efficient. Such market-based solutions have been advocated for some time by economists pointing out that those solutions improve efficiency. Under a system of tradeable permits, a party holding a permit will have an incentive to reduce his pollution and sell the permit if he can do so at a profit. That will reduce the cost of meeting pollution standards by encouraging those with the lowest cost of reducing pollution to do so. Unlike a market, however, the level of pollution is not determined by willing buyers and willing sellers, but by command and control. A market for pollution would have the polluter paying the receptor in a voluntary transaction. If the polluter is willing to pay the receptor more than the cost the receptor bears, more effluent will be emitted. That requires a system of well-specified property rights and a system of common-law torts that forces a polluter to pay for any damages he generates. Market-based solutions, on the other hand, establish the level of pollution through a political process with little if any compensation paid to those who receive the pollution. It is true that market-based solutions can make the process of meeting governmentally imposed pollution allowances more efficient, and free-market environmentalists applaud such efficiency gains. But there should be no mistaking the fact that the process of determining the level of pollution ought to be a market process. The alternative to environmental statism is free-market environmentalism. As Kellogg notes, freemarket environmentalism seems "like an oxymoron" but only because it does not depend on the coercive hand of government to steer the boat. Instead, free-market environmentalism depends on property rights and the law of contracts and torts, wherein willing buyers and sellers determine the course through their bargaining over the exchange of property rights. In the context of free-market environmentalism, pollution is not pollution as long as those who receive the byproducts are compensated for taking on what is unwanted by others. Hence the sign on the garbage truck that reads, "It may be garbage to you, but it's our bread and butter."

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

6 Coercion K

Environment Links (2/5) Environmentalist doctrines are intellectual toxins administered at great cost to human liberty; we are now at a crossroads, failure to uphold the freedoms of free market capitalism will spell the end of civilization George Reisman, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, 2001, The Toxicity of Environmentalism, http://www.capitalism.net/Environmentalism's%20Toxicity.htm What the cultural acceptance of a doctrine as irrational as environmentalism makes clear is that the real problem of the industrialized world is not "environmental pollution" but philosophical corruption. The so-called intellectual mainstream of the Western world has been fouled with a whole array of intellectual toxins resulting from the undermining of reason and the status of man [or woman], and which further contribute to this deadly process. Among them, besides environmentalism, are collectivism in its various forms of Marxism, racism, nationalism, and feminism; and cultural relativism, determinism, logical positivism, existentialism, linguistic analysis, behaviorism, Freudianism, Keynesianism, and more.

These doctrines are intellectual toxins because they constitute a systematic attack on one or more major aspects of the requirements of human life and well-being. Marxism results in the kind of disastrous conditions now prevailing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. All the varieties of collectivism deny the free will and rationality of the individual and attribute his [or her] ideas, character, and vital interests to his membership in a collective: namely, his membership in an economic class, racial group, nationality, or sex, as the case may be, depending on the specific variety of collectivism. Because they view ideas as determined by group membership, these doctrines deny the very possibility of knowledge. Their effect is the creation of conflict between members of different groups: for example, between businessmen [or women] and wage earners, blacks and whites, English speakers and French speakers, men and women. Determinism, the doctrine that man's actions are controlled by forces beyond his power of choice, and existentialism, the philosophy that man is trapped in a "human condition" of inescapable misery, lead people not to make choices they could have made and which would have improved their lives. Cultural relativism denies the objective value of modern civilization and thus undercuts both people's valuation of modern civilization and their willingness to work hard to achieve personal values in the context of it. The doctrine blinds people to the objective value of such marvelous advances as automobiles and electric light, and thus prepares the ground for the sacrifice of modern civilization to such nebulous and, by comparison, utterly trivial values as "unpolluted air." Logical positivism denies the possibility of knowing anything with certainty about the real world. Linguistic analysis regards the search for truth as a trivial word game. Behaviorism denies the existence of consciousness. Freudianism regards the conscious mind (the "Ego") as surrounded by the warring forces of the unconscious mind in the form of the "Id" and the "Superego," and thus as being incapable of exercising substantial influence on the individual's behavior. Keynesianism regards wars, earthquakes, and pyramid building as sources of prosperity. It looks to peacetime government budget deficits and inflation of the money supply as a good substitute for these allegedly beneficial phenomena. Its effects, as the present-day economy of the United States bears witness, are the erosion of the buying power of money, of credit, of saving and capital accumulation, and of the general standard of living.

These intellectual toxins can be seen bobbing up and down in the "intellectual mainstream," just as raw sewage can be seen floating in a dirty river. Indeed, they fill the intellectual mainstream. Virtually, every college and university in the Western world is a philosophical cesspool of these doctrines, in which intellectually helpless students are immersed for several years and then turned loose to contaminate the rest of society. These irrationalist doctrines, and others like them, are the philosophical substance of contemporary liberal arts education.

the most urgent task confronting the Western world, and the new intellectuals who must lead it, is a philosophical and intellectual cleanup. Without it, Western civilization simply cannot survive. It will be killed by the poison of environmentalism. Clearly,

To accomplish this cleanup, only the most powerful, industrial-strength, philosophical and intellectual cleansing agents will do. These cleansing agents are, above all, the writings of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. These two towering intellects are, respectively, the leading advocates of reason and capitalism in the twentieth century. A philosophical-intellectual cleanup requires that all or most of their writings be introduced into colleges and universities as an essential part of the core curriculum, and that what is not included in the core curriculum be included in the more advanced programs. The incorporation of the writings of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises into a prominent place in the educational curriculum is the central goal that everyone should work for who is concerned about his cultural environment and the impact of that environment on his life and well-being. Only after this goal is accomplished, will there be any possibility that colleges and universities will cease to be centers of civilization-destroying intellectual disease. Only after it is accomplished on a large scale, at the leading colleges and universities, can there be any possibility of the intellectual mainstream someday being clean enough for rational people to drink from its waters.

The 21st Century should be the century when man [and woman] begins the colonization of the solar system, not a return to the Dark Ages. Which it will be, will depend on the extent to which new intellectuals can succeed in restoring to the cultural environment the values of reason and capitalism.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

7 Coercion K

Environment Links (3/5) Environmental regulations are paternalistic sacrifices of the autonomy of individuals to privileged environmentalist ideals John Earl Duke, J.D. Candidate, Boston University, February 2003 Boston University Law Review, Giving Species the Benefit of the Doubt, 83 B.U.L. Rev. 209 As a consequence, giving species the benefit of the doubt facilitates paternalistic rulemaking under the guise of "preventing" harm. Paternalism is "roughly the interference with a person's liberty of action justified by reasons referring exclusively to the welfare, good, happiness, needs, interests, or values of the person being coerced." 194 Some environmentalists use the ESA to restrict various land use projects because they think it is better, not just for themselves, but also for those who wish to engage in these projects. This is vividly exemplified by the Sierra Club's letter to FWS quoted earlier: "Adding the Barton Springs salamander to the list of endangered species will slow development to a sustainable level in one part of town - but overall the area will benefit by preserving a small bit of nature in the heart of the city." 195 However, "where the imposition of paternalistic duties is justified, this is often accounted for because individuals have a right against the authority (e.g., the State) that it shall protect them against their own folly, neglect, or ignorance." 196 As argued above, giving species the benefit of the doubt does not protect anyone against their own folly, neglect, or ignorance because when the data are inconclusive, FWS is just as ignorant as everyone else. Thus, giving species the benefit of the doubt results in unjustified, paternalistic restrictions on autonomy. In contrast, a rule giving landowners and developers the benefit of the doubt will help protect and promote our interests in autonomy and species security because such a rule allows them to decide on their own what to do, unless the available data indicate that it is more likely than not that a species is endangered or threatened, or that any particular action will actually harm a [*247] species. In other words, a much more sensible and defensible solution is to switch the burden of proof. As Gerald Dworkin has argued, "In all cases of paternalistic legislation there must be a heavy and clear burden of proof placed on the authorities to demonstrate the exact nature of the harmful effects (or beneficial consequences) to be avoided (or achieved) and the probability of their occurrence." 197 Or, as Hart has argued: Recognition of individual liberty as a value involves, at a minimum, acceptance of the principle that the individual may do what he wants, even if others are distressed when they learn what it is he does - unless, of course, there are other good grounds for forbidding it. 198

Federal regulation of ecosystems would be a substantial increase in governmental control J.B. Ruhl, Assistant Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University, Summer 1995 Colorado Law Review, Biodiversity conservation and the ever expanding web of Federal Laws regulating nonfederal lands: Time for something completely different? 66 U. Colo. L. Rev. 555 Indeed, there is by no means unanimous support that the federal government should have any meaningful role in shaping national biodiversity policy. For example, the Cato Institute advocates a federal biodiversity policy relying on maximum use of "noncoercive market processes." 15 That policy proposal, [*564] which has appeared to galvanize those who lean against an active federal role, is premised on a trio of assertions: that "the ecosystem concept . . . is inappropriate for use as a geographic guide for public policies," that "federal management of ecosystems would significantly expand federal control of the use of privately owned land," and that "greater reliance on market forces, rather than further movement toward coercive federal regulations . . . should guide federal actions." 16 Although the second of those propositions accurately defines the central defect of federal policy at present, this article demonstrates that the first and last of those premises are, at best, half true, and thus do not lead us in the direction of a passive federal policy role. Hence, as much as this article demonstrates that federal biodiversity policy thus far has been excessively coercive, it also demonstrates that a "no action" policy at the federal level is not a viable policy alternative. The question is what the federal government's proper role should be.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

8 Coercion K

Environment Links (4/5) Government Intervention in the market over environmental policy violates property rights Sebastian Storfner 2004 CAN MARKET FORCES SOLVE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS? NEOCLASSICAL VS. AUSTRIAN ANALYTICS University of Central England, Birmingham, U.K. In contrast to that, for Austrians government interventions are inconsistent with free markets and environmental problems are not due to market but to government failures since “government (…) has failed grievously to exercise its defence function”37. Ultimately, pollution is due to interpersonal conflicts, which neither taxes (central planning) nor tradable permits (violation of property rights) can resolve. Because of this, Austrians offer three solutions: Privatisation and the ‘first come first served’ principle to define property rights and the ‘polluter pays’ principle in order to enforce them. For sure, no theory is without controversy but it is fairly save to conclude that environmental problems could be solved by market forces and do not need government intervention since only markets effectively resolve interpersonal conflicts, something governments failed to achieve for centuries.

Environmental regulations violate property rights Ledford 01, Author(s): Kenneth F. Ledford Reviewed work(s): Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, No. 1, (Mar., 2001), pp. 147-150 this is a book reviewhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3079660.pdf "But the well-intentioned measures of democratic social welfare have also encroached on both property and freedom-more elusively and certainly less violently, but in the long run perhaps no less dangerously." The welfare state, in Pipes's view, has violated private property in so many ways that it increasingly approximates conditional tenure (p. 232). Taxation impermissibly takes from one individual property to redistribute it to the propertyless; environmental regulation amounts to a "taking" without compensation; social insurance violates freedom by breeding dependence; and freedom of contract has been derogated in manifold ways since 1937, resulting in evils such as the minimum wage, rent control, the Community Reinvestment Act, and es- pecially affirmative action, which violates the basic human freedom of the power to discriminate. Although the twentieth century saw democracy's victory over totalitari- anism, "even in democratic societies the concept of property has undergone substantial revision, transforming it from absolute dominion into something akin to conditional possession, and . . . as a result, the rights of individuals to their assets have been and continue to be systematically violated

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

9 Coercion K

Environment Links (5/5) Environmental regulations are coercive and prevent policy innovation- turns the case Anderson and Leal, Political Economy Research Center, 94 (Terry L. and Donald L. Regulation: The Cato Review of Business & Government, Spring, “Enviro-Capitalism vs. Environmental Statism”, http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n2-anderson.html, 7/15/08) Free-market environmentalism challenges the status quo by offering a way of "rethinking the way we think" about environmental problems. Most of us accept that food, housing, and the production of other basic necessities are best left to the marketplace. Why not the environment? Even environmental problems offer profit niches to the environmental entrepreneur who can define and enforce property rights. Political solutions may be called for in cases where the costs of establishing property rights are presently insurmountable, but there is no reason to begin with the premise that only command and control can produce environmental quality. To the contrary, free-market environmentalism points out that it is often "bureaucracy versus the environment" and that political solutions become so entrenched that they often stand in the way of innovative market solutions. Overcoming the mindset of environmental statism is no small task because this has been the dominant paradigm for environmental policy formulation for nearly a century. Moving beyond the status quo will require forming new coalitions and abandoning the anti-market mind-set. This has happened with water allocation because fiscal conservatives and environmentalists have found a common ground. Federal involvement in massive water projects designed to make the desert bloom like a rose seldom pass costbenefit muster and generally wreak environmental havoc. Because of this, progress has been made in removing water allocation from the political agenda and turning it over to market forces. Even in the case of enhancing stream flows for environmental purposes, there is growing evidence that markets can outperform politics. "We are all environmentalists now" because we in the United States and other wealthy western countries can afford to demand (as opposed to command) environmental quality. The basic premises of free-market environmentalism are 1) that environmental quality comes with increased wealth and 2) that free markets provide the incentive structure for increasing wealth and for producing environmental amenities. If coercive environmentalists with their elitist agendas continue to dominate environmental policy, the likelihood is that we will eventually have less wealth and fewer amenities. Of the three alternatives reviewed by Kellogg, only free-market environmentalism offers the prospect of more wealth, more amenities, and more freedom, the scarcest resource of all.

Coercive environmental regulations rely on command and control over the market Glicksman, Professor of Law, and Earnhart Associate Professor, Economics, 07 (Robert L, Dietrich H, DEPICTION OF THE REGULATOR-REGULATED ENTITY RELATIONSHIP IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: DETERRENCE-BASED V. COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT, William & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev, Vol: 3, May, P. 17) An alternative model of environmental enforcement is the cooperative model. According to one account, this model is a “reaction to the adversarial enforcement methods suggested by the deterrence model.”41 The cooperative model emphasizes compliance, not the deterrence of noncompliance. Accordingly, the primary function of an inspection may not be, as it is under the deterrence model, to accumulate evidence of violations for subsequent enforcement actions, but rather to provide advice to regulated entities as a means of facilitating compliance. Under this approach, an inspection serves largely as an opportunity to resolve problems.42 Cooperative enforcement approaches have been described as an example of “negotiate and control,” as compared with the traditional “command and control” environmental regulatory regime with which coercive enforcement has traditionally been associated.43 Under both the coercive and cooperative models, facility inspections and enforcement actions serve as threats. Under the coercive model, the general deterrent effect of an inspection or an enforcement action of one facility derives exclusively from the threat it creates for other facilities that may be the subject of similar actions in the future. Under the cooperative model of enforcement, however, regulated facilities may be afforded more opportunities to avoid sanctions by resolving noncompliance before a penalty is assessed or other enforcement action pursued than under the coercive model. A cooperative regulator might even withdraw a pending sanction for past noncompliance once compliance has been achieved. Such a regulator may choose to refrain from sanctioning a facility that has violated its NPDES permit as a result of a cooperative history between the regulator and the facility. As a result, the cooperative approach “emphasizes flexible or selective enforcement that takes into consideration the particular circumstances of an observed violation.”44 Indeed, “[l]evying penalties is seen as a mark of

the [cooperative] system’s failure (to otherwise obtain compliance); compliance systems rely far more on rewards and incentives than penalties.”45

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

10 Coercion K

Environment Incentives Links (1/2) Incentive based environmental policies are coercively enforced on the federal and state level Glicksman, Professor of Law, and Earnhart Associate Professor, Economics, 07 (Robert L, Dietrich H, DEPICTION OF THE REGULATOR-REGULATED ENTITY RELATIONSHIP IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: DETERRENCE-BASED V. COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT, William & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev, Vol: 3, May, P. 1) At the same time, some research on environmental enforcement has discerned “broad agreement at the federal and state levels that the traditional, exclusive reliance on penalty-based enforcement approaches to compliance assurance is inadequate.”8 That was the premise that fueled a shift in emphasis during the 1990s by both federal and state environmental agencies to “a more partnershipfocused, less adversarial approach” that uses multiple tools to advance compliance assurance.”9 EPA, for example, concluded that a penalty-based approach is reactive rather than proactive and is incomplete because it fails to reward voluntary compliance.10 Regulated entities and state officials joined in “sound[ing] the theme that an approach based on cooperation is more likely to produce compliance in many cases than an approach based on deterrence.”11 During the 1990s, EPA responded to these calls for greater cooperation between the agency and regulated entities by adopting enforcement policies that are designed to provide a more flexible approach to inducing compliance with regulatory obligations by offering “compliance incentives” and “compliance assistance” to regulated facilities.12 The results of EPA’s response is evident. In 1995, an environmental enforcement expert wrote that “it seems most accurate to describe EPA’s enforcement practices as constituting, in the main, a deterrence system.”13 EPA’s subsequent commitment to the use of cooperative approaches to inducing compliance is reflected in a statement on its official website that “EPA’s enforcement efforts focus on assisting businesses and communities with compliance training and guidance.”14 Similarly, “it appears that many states have actually, to one extent or another, replaced traditional enforcement mechanisms with some form of cooperation based strategy.”15 One explanation of this shift is the states’ desire to retain and attract business by holding out the promise of less rigorous, or at least less confrontational, enforcement.16 To confirm the distinction between the two enforcement approaches, a cooperative relationship is one in which government regulators provide flexibility to regulated facilities, including the provision of a variety of forms of compliance assistance. This assistance is designed to induce facilities to address noncompliance proactively. Within the coercive approach, regulators deter facilities from noncompliance by imposing sanctions without flexibility.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

11 Coercion K

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

12 Coercion K

Environment Incentives Links (2/2) Environmental incentives are coercive as they are paid for with taxes to reward companies CHICHILNISKY, UNESCO Professor of Mathematics and Economics at Columbia University, and Heal, Professor of Public Policy and Corporate responsibility, 00 (GRACIELA, GEOFFREY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, “ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS: EQUITY AND EFFICIENCY,” http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae7_2_5.pdf, date accessed: 6/15/08) We have tried many remedies in the past. We have tried to dissuade polluters with fines, with government programs whereby all pay to clean up the garbage produced by the few, with a myriad of detailed regulations to control the degree of pollution. Now some even seriously propose that we should have economic incentives to charge polluters a fee for polluting—and the more they pollute the more they pay. But that is just like taxing burglars as an economic incentive to deter people from stealing your property, and just as unconscionable. The only effective way to eliminate serious pollution is to treat it exactly for what it is—garbage. Just as one does not have the right to drop a bag of garbage on his neighbor’s lawn, so does one not have the right to place any garbage in the air or the water or the earth, if it in any way violates the property rights of others. What we need are tougher clearer environmental laws that are enforced—not with economic incentives but with jail terms. What the strict application of the idea of private property rights will do is to increase the cost of garbage disposal. That increased cost will be reflected in a higher cost for the products and services that resulted from the process that produced the garbage. And that is how it should be. Much of the cost of disposing of waste material is already incorporated in the price of the goods and services produced. All of it should be. Then only those who benefit from the garbage made will pay for its disposal. (Anderson 1989) To put this into the language we have so far established, “markets” in pollution are illegitimate, not because particles launched into the air are “stolen,” but because they are illicit in yet another way: they violate property rights not through theft, but as trespass. Given, then, that there is no “right” to emit dust particles onto the property of other people, there can be no legitimate market in the purchase and sale of such “rights.” This means that TERs are a veritable contradiction in terms.

Environmental regulations are coercive Glicksman, Professor of Law, and Earnhart Associate Professor, Economics, 07 (Robert L, Dietrich H, DEPICTION OF THE REGULATOR-REGULATED ENTITY RELATIONSHIP IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: DETERRENCE-BASED V. COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT, William & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev, Vol: 3, May, P. 1) For years, scholars and environmental policymakers have conducted a spirited debate about the comparative merits of two different approaches to enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws – the coercive (or deterrence-based) and cooperative approaches. Supporters of the coercive model regard the deterrence of violations as the fundamental purpose of environmental enforcement. These supporters also regard the imposition of sanctions, which make it less costly for regulated entities to comply with their regulatory responsibilities and avoid enforcement than to fail to comply and run the risk of enforcement, as the most effective way for inducing regulated entities to comply with their regulatory obligations. Supporters of the cooperative approach to environmental enforcement focus more on compliance than deterrence. The cooperative approach, which emphasizes the provision of compliance assistance and incentives by regulatory agencies, operates on the premise that regulated entities react to a variety of motives that supply sufficient incentives to comply with regulatory obligations even without an overly punitive approach to enforcement. They contend that a coercive approach to enforcement may even be counterproductive if it engenders intransigence and ill will on the part of regulated entities.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

13 Coercion K

Global Warming Links (1/3) Blaming individuals for climate shifts caused by our entire civilization’s behavior is the supreme tactic of anti-capitalists to establish a regime of “Green Socialism”; the success of this initiative threatens to obliterate Western Civilization Eric Englund, MBA from Boise State University, Surety Bond Underwriter, February 22, 2002, Global Warming: Socialism’s Trojan Horse, LewRockwell.com, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund5.html By means of propaganda, the Communists succeeded in making people believe that their conduct had universal implications, relevant to humanity as a whole. Critics have often tried to make a distinction between Nazism and Communism by arguing that the Nazi project had a particular aim, which was nationalist and racist in the extreme, whereas Lenin’s project was universal. This is entirely wrong. In both theory and practice, Lenin and his successors excluded from humanity all capitalists, the bourgeoisie, counterrevolutionaries, and others, turning them into absolute enemies in their sociological and political discourse.

Just as Lenin and his successors excluded capitalists and others from humanity, Hitler and his henchmen excluded Jews, the infirmed, and others from humanity as well. Tens of millions of people were murdered at the hands of these totalitarian regimes. As written in The Green Book, Qadhafi clearly is attempting to exclude capitalists from humanity. Now do you see the connection? environmentalists want people (especially those living in capitalist countries) to believe their conduct is causing global warming and, thus, destroying our planet. Therefore, environmentalism has capitalism in its crosshairs. It is those of us Beyond a shadow of a doubt,

who benefit from the fruits of Western Civilization that are being turned into enemies in the daily sociological and political discourse of environmentalists. Americans, including President Bush,

environmentalism is a serious threat. If we succumb to the global warming propaganda being thrust upon then Green Socialism stands a chance of dismantling Western Civilization and throwing us back into the dark ages. Our rights to life, liberty, and property are at stake must come to understand that

us daily (with our left-wing press wittingly or not being used as the primary tool of terror/propaganda), here.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

14 Coercion K

Global Warming Links (2/3) Justifying governmental interference to cope with coming environmental disasters throws open the floodgates for the total pillage of our liberty Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Auburn University, February 24, 2004, LewRockwell.com, “Science in the Service of Power,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/machan/machan42.html Now when you hear word of impending disaster around the globe – be it about the ozone layer, the rain forest, the green house effect, or global warming – this sounds ominous, given how often it is supposed to be backed by hard science. Politicians love this stuff, of course, because they can stand up and ask for more and greater legal powers with which to regiment the rest of us who are clueless, making it seem impossible for life to go on without their constant expert-endorsed meddling by way of government inspections and regulations. who of us can confidently resist when the authority of the natural sciences is offered as backing for such calls for greater state power? Who but a few people, who spend the bulk of their time in think tanks studying this stuff, can stand up and reject those calls with confidence? If a scientist tells us that our home is about to become a toxic trap, how confidently are we going to keep out the meddlers, demand that they leave us in peace? We might be making a big mistake, just as we might about the famous weapons of mass destruction that experts insisted justified sending a bunch of Americans to their death! And

I am sorry, but my skeptical temperament doesn’t buy it. I am not convinced, actually, that ecology is much of a science apart from offering some explanations of how the globe’s living systems behave. But just as most of the natural sciences cannot give us any direction as to how we should conduct ourselves, what we should aim for in our lives, but only tell us about certain limits and possibilities, so with ecology. This is especially so when it comes to the constant finger-wagging environmentalists engage in with the supposed backing of ecologists. Consider the often heard lament that we are awash with people, that there is intolerable population explosion everywhere and that the resulting urban development, often dubbed "sprawl," needs to be contained. Is that really so? What demonstrates this? Most importantly, what standards are being used here, whose progress and flourishing is at stake so that such containment is imperative? Whenever I fly over the country – which is nearly 20 times a year – I take a look at terra firma and it amazes me how much open, totally undeveloped space exists below me. The American southwest, especially, just seems to stretch out as far as the eye can see without even so much as a village below. I think on such occasions about all this doom-saying and shake my head in disbelief. The same happens when I fly in Europe, Africa or New Zealand, places where I work once or twice every year or so. There is so much wilderness in all these places that the panic in the voices of environmentalists simply sounds less and less a function of reality, more a function of power-seeking.

no doubt, people, with their capacity to do things well or badly and their freedom to choose either, can mess things up a good deal when it comes to managing their environment. That’s just common sense, which is why some version of environmental ethics is likely to be sound. As far, however, as the more alarmist version of these concerns go, I remain very worried that we are near dealing with yet another bunch of people interested more in running everyone else’s life than in being genuinely helpful. Now,

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008

15 Coercion K

Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

Global Warming Link (3/3) Global warming legislation is socialism’s last best hope to undermine individual liberty on a large scale Sheldon Richman, Editor of The Freeman, senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, July 1997, “Warming People Up for Government Control,” Future of Freedom Foundation, http://www.fff.org/comment/ed0797d.asp President Clinton is moving at full speed to use global warming as a justification for control of our productive activities. He's planning a big propaganda campaign to prepare us for the painful times ahead. The goal is to reduce the emission of gases, largely carbon dioxide, that are said to be dangerously warming the atmosphere. That acute "greenhouse effect" allegedly will cause untold catastrophe.

curtailing production will lower people's standard of living. Americans are pretty close to unanimous in wishing to raise their living standards. So we have a clash between the citizen and the state. Moreover, the people in the developing world, whose living standards are still behind ours despite much progress since World The gases come from the burning of fossil fuels, such as natural gas and oil. So the only way to reduce greenhouse gases significantly is to curtail production. But

War II, stand to suffer immensely from any government-imposed slow-down in production. But doesn't something as serious as global warming warrant extraordinary measures? The issue is not that simple. While believers in global warming get most of the attention, there is a substantial literature from climatologists and other scientists pointing out the lack of evidence for warming. Fred Singer of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, says that "precise weather satellite data, available since 1979 and covering the globe for the first time, show a slight cooling trend." Computer models of the world's climate might predict warming but the data do not. The believers in warming are in the position of Groucho Marx, who cried, "Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?" Singer points out that the climate has been anything but stable over recorded history. The earth apparently has been able to cool and warm without any help from man. In the 1970s some of the same people now scaring us about global warming were preparing for global cooling. The funny thing is that in each case the solution was government control. The debate over global warming has gotten nasty lately. Believers say the skeptics are on the payroll of industrial interests. Some, but not all, get money from industry. But many of the believers get research money from government agencies. Why assume that a climatologist would sell out his scientific integrity to industry but not to government? The government is not likely to continue to fund research that undercuts its case for activism. Are we not also entitled to regard scientists working under tax-funded grants as tainted? Perhaps the believers should stop muddying the scientific debate with unproved charges of intellectual corruption and stick to the evidence.

Years ago socialists said that collective ownership of the means of production would out-produce capitalism. But with the fall of socialism, those who dislike free markets have been hard-pressed to argue that economic freedom can't deliver the goods. So a new strategy has emerged. Advocates of government control fault capitalism for producing too many goods -- at the expense of life and the environment. In their view, the only hope is to cut back on industrial activity and let government manage the economy in the name of environmental protection. mandating a cutback in production is dangerous. At a lower level of production, the world will not be able to sustain a population of five and a half billion people and growing. (Those who want population growth to be controlled should ask themselves whether In fact,

they wish government to decide how many children they may have.) The environmental movement should stop presenting its program as though it is costless. The future is always risky because it is uncertain. The late scholar Aaron Wildavsky liked to say, "Wealthier is healthier." He meant that since we don't know exactly what dangers the future holds, the best hedge is wealth. Wealth permits the resilience and freedom of action needed to respond to the unforeseen.

lbimits the key precondition for production, liberty.

Government is not good at producing wealth. On the contrary, it

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

16 Coercion K

Taxation Links (1/4) Taxation is an illegitimate use of power that functionally equates to forced labor; this use of coercion imprisons our liberty within authoritarian strongholds and undermines support for legitimate government functions Marjorie E. Kornhauser, Professor of Law Tulane Law School, Fall 2002 Buffalo Law Review, Legitimacy and the Right of Revolution, The Role of Tax Protests and Anti-Tax Rhetoric in America, 50 Buffalo L. Rev. 819 This second view of taxation, under which the people grant the state only limited rights of taxation, emphasizes the split between "we" the people and "they" the government, which is so important to the American conception of sovereignty. Although under a representative government, "we" the people are, in essence, the [*884] government, the people must always guard against the government's encroachment upon their liberties, especially through illegitimate taxation. Consequently, this view, coupled with a belief in the limited role of government, forges a philosophical and political connection between taxation and deprivation of freedom and liberty; in other words, "Government taxation takes time, labor, resources, and freedom from people and their families with every tax extraction. It takes from them portions of their lives." 175 In the extreme, this view leads to the libertarian belief, enunciated by Robert Nozick, that mandatory taxation is theft and "taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor." 176 Conservative politicians in particular echo these statements with frequent references to the tyranny of taxation. 177 Taxation, in this view, can be an illegitimate use of power that ultimately can undermine the legitimacy of the state itself by abusing the authority granted to it by the people.

Taxation is coercion in it’s simplest form, imposition of taxes should spark revolutions Rothbard, Dean of the Austrian School, 95 (Murray N., The Freeman/Ludwig von Mises Institute, September/October, “Taking Money Back”, http://mises.org/story/2882, 7/7/08) The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency. To understand this truth, we must examine the nature of government and of the creation of money. Throughout history, governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society. Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation. In older and saner times, indeed, the king was able to obtain sufficient revenue from the products of his own private lands and forests, as well as through highway tolls. For the State to achieve regularized, peacetime taxation was a struggle of centuries. And even after taxation was established, the kings realized that they could not easily impose new taxes or higher rates on old levies; if they did so, revolution was very apt to break out.

Only the producer of the labor has the rights to the fruits, taxation is blatant coercive theft Kearl, former special assistant to the secretary of defense and to the U.S. trade representative, professor of Economics at BYU, 77 (J.R., Princeton University Press/JSTOR, Autumn, “Do Entitlements Imply Taxation is Theft?”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265125?&Search=yes&term=theft&term=taxation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction% 2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtaxation%2Btheft%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=2&ttl=2976&returnArticleServic e=showArticle, 7/7/08) The question of who has rightful claim to the output from privately owned factors of production (particularly labor) has long been im- portant in political and economic philosophy. Proudhon's famous dictum that property is theft has been countered in recent years by the notion that taxation is theft. This question has surfaced once again with the publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., I971) and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York, I974). Indeed, Nozick has been viewed as supporting the an,ti- Proudhon view. J.S. Coleman suggests that ... for Nozick, only the individual is entitled to the fruits of his own labor, and he has full rights to the use and disposal of them.... [Given] a set of individuals each having produced certain goods through his own skills and efforts, the question is then asked: Who has the right to these goods? The answer is self-evident.... Each has the right to the product of his labor until and unless he chooses [emphasis mine] to transfer some portion of it to another.1 Taxation must therefore be viewed either as theft by a collective agency or as the charity of private agents, although it is basically non- voluntary and coercive

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

17 Coercion K

Taxation Links (2/4) Liberty and Taxation are fundamentally at odds with each other; recognizing this conflict is essential to preserving our basic freedoms Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Auburn University, December 4, 2002, Ludwig von Mises Institute “What's Wrong with Taxation?” http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1103&id=70 Liberty is incompatible with taxation. This despite that famous saying by Oliver Wendell Holmes that "Taxation is the price we pay for civilization." In fact, taxation is a most uncivilized way of obtaining funds, given that it boils down to nothing less than extortion. Just think of it: You go to work for some company and are told you will receive a certain wage but actually receive but a fraction of what you have been offered. Why? Because a substantial portion is sent not to you, who earned it, but to other people. Why? Because if it isn't sent to them, they will declare the company criminal and sic the police on it. So, the company is coerced to take part of your earnings and divert it to those who have this power to make them do so. If this isn't exactly like what the Mafia does when it engages in extortion I don't know what is. Yes, some of the funds extorted will be used for purposes that may actually benefit you and some who are extorted don't protest. But maybe that's true about whom the Mafia extorts, as well. And it doesn't matter because what is wrong with extortion isn't what the money is used for but how it is obtained, namely, coercively. Often it is Robin Hood who is held up as the role model for justifying taxation: Didn't he "steal" from the rich to "give" to the poor? Well, not, not really. In the original version of the legend, Robin Hood did just the opposite: He stole from those who stole from the poor and returned the loot to the rightful owners. In those days the upper classes, from the king to all his cronies, routinely engaged in extortion. They disguised this, however, with the phony claim that everything belongs to the king and his cronies. Yes, monarchs and those who rationalized monarchy spun this fantasy and managed to sell it to the people that they where the rightful owners "of the realm," that they had a "divine right" to rule us. This way when the bulk of the country went to work on the farm or wherever, they had to pay "rent" to the monarch and his cronies. Of course, if I live in your apartment, I pay you rent. It's your apartment, after all, so you have it coming to you. But what if you got your apartment by conquest, by robbing a bunch of people of what belongs to them? That is mostly how the monarchs got to rule the realm, by conquest. By all rights it is the folks who were working in the realm--on the land and elsewhere--who actually owned that realm, the monarchs being the phony, pretend owners, nothing better. But since they managed to bamboozle a great many powerless folks into believing that they did own the realm, the "rent" had to be paid. Since, however, the American Revolution put the lie to this monarchical ruse, the institution of taxation could not be passed off as some kind of legitimate rent taking. That major political change showed once and for all that monarchs were sophisticated thugs who ran roughshod over the rest of the people, who violated their basic natural rights all over the place, by robbing and conscripting them. Yet, because of the idea that we do need to have our rights protected by some means that involve costs, taxation remained a feature of the society that followed the change from monarchy to constitutional republicanism. Not a lot of taxation, mind you, because it seemed pretty clear to the Founders that taxation is in fact extortion. But they didn't see some other, legitimate, morally acceptable way of collecting the funds needed to pay government for its service of securing our rights. Yet, they might have.

There are other ways governments could be paid for their service of securing our rights that couldn't exist without legal protection. Contract fees, not taxation, could solve the problem. But this alternative, legitimate method wasn't in the cards following the revolution, so taxation remained, albeit in a rather modest form. In time, however, it got out of hand. After all, if the Mafia just took a tiny fraction of income from its victims, most would probably put up with it all rather than to resist. But when the amount moves on to 25 to 70 %, it turns into big time extortion. And that is how we stand now where taxation has become big time extortion. Some respond to this by noting that in other countries taxation is much higher. Sure, because they are even farther from having lived up to the spirit and letter of the revolution that America experienced; namely, removing power from government and returning it to where it belongs, the individual citizens. After all, it is America that is the leader of the free world, with a lot of other countries, including most of those in Western Europe, way behind. At least that is how it was supposed to happen. Instead, however, the American Revolution was betrayed and the U.S.A. has undergone a reactionary period in which it reverted, substantially, to the policies of earlier systems of government. This Europeanization of America is a shame, a damned shame. And it needs to be identified as such before it has any chance of being arrested.

The first step is to acknowledge, unapologetically, that the institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything, because it amounts to nothing less than outright extortion, a gross violation of human liberty.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

18 Coercion K

Taxation Links (3/4) Taxation is exploitation and the equivalent of forced labor Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 223-24) Some would argue that taxation of earnings from labor is not theft because the actions of the state, unlike those of a thief, are predictable and governed by law, the state’s powers to take income being limited and the citizen being fully aware of what is in store for him when he gets paid. Moreover, unlike the typical thief, the state uses the money it takes for the benefit of its “victims.” One might even suggest, given what I stated earlier, that because the state has implicitly recognized my right to the income I get from my employer, it cannot plausibly be viewed as stealing from me; it is taking only what it sees as in some sense due it, perhaps for services rendered (though of course, only a very few or even none of the services the state renders using my tax money can plausibly be regarded as services for me personally). That the taxpayer benefits from some of what the state does with his taxes is irrelevant to whether taxation is forced labor, however, for insofar as his tax money is used for functions that benefit not him but others, then he has been forced to labor for those others. Even the services that do benefit him are not necessarily services he voluntarily supports, for he may prefer to try to get them elsewhere. (Again, a slave who gets back from the master some of the vegetables he was forced to grow is still a slave.) Thus, Nozick’s argument does not and need not presuppose that taxation is theft, nor does it rest on any controversial theory of property rights. Some critics of Nozick’s argument do not quibble over whether it presupposes some theory of property rights, and they more or less grant its main contention. Jonathan Wolff (1991) concedes at least that taxation “has some resemblance to forced labour” (92). Alan Haworth (1994) is even more forthcoming, stating that “it is just plain true” that the labor expended to pay taxes is forced labor (92). But these critics defend such forced labor regardless of such concessions, taking Nozick’s objection to it in this case to be overwrought. A sardonic remark of Haworth’s reveals why: “For Nozick, the horror [of forced labor] . . . manifests its presence each time a millionaire is taxed a penny” (1994, 71). The quip may be funny, but it misses the point. Wolff and Haworth would insist that the infringement of liberty involved in taxation, though real, is relatively trivial, and therefore it is an acceptable price to pay for the benefits they would allege the state provides. But even they would object, it seems, to being forced to give up a penny—much less the thousands of dollars most people pay in taxes or the millions the very wealthy pay—to someone on the street who demanded it at gunpoint, even for a use of which they otherwise would approve. Our sense that forced labor is unjust stems not merely, or even primarily, from imagining forced labor as strenuous; it also stems from the involuntary character of that labor, from our belief that no one has the right to force another person to labor if that person does not want to do so. Slavery is slavery however well the master treats the slave.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

19 Coercion K

Taxation Links (4/4) One should not sacrifice yourself to the state voluntarily. We must reject this “eye-ball distribution” approach even if we don’t agree with self-ownership. Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 224) Cohen also suggests that because Nozick allows that one could voluntarily enter into a condition of full slavery, he cannot plausibly object to the involuntary partial slavery entailed by taxation, which is arguably less harsh. But like his first reply, this one does nothing to show that taxation does not amount to slavery. In any case, Nozick is wrong to hold that an individual could voluntarily enter into slavery, not because he could not enter into a condition in which he would behave in a slavelike manner for the rest of his life, but because if he did so voluntarily, his condition would not be slavery. Cohen argues that if Nozick accepts the possibility of voluntary full slavery, he should accept also the legitimacy of involuntary partial slavery. But there need be no inconsistency in the libertarian position on slavery. Self-ownership rules out all slavery. Cohen’s attempt to deal with the eyeball-lottery scenario is no more compelling. His approach is to develop examples that are similar to it but (he alleges) do not imply the thesis of selfownership and to argue that the eyeball-lottery scenario is, despite appearances, also best accounted for in terms that do not involve self-ownership. First, we are to imagine a case in which people are born without eyes, and the state provides artificial ones that are implanted at birth and become workable only when used by an individual from infancy to adulthood (1995, 243–44). Suppose occasionally an adult, through no fault of his own, loses his artificial eyes, and the state takes one from someone else to give to him (because only those eyes used from infancy are of any use). Surely we would object to this transfer just as strenuously as to the eyeballlottery case. There is no question of these individuals’ owning the artificial eyes because the state may well retain ownership of them. So our objecting to the practice cannot have anything to do with ownership; it springs instead from the excessive interference in people’s lives the practice would involve—and the same can plausibly be said of the original eyeball-lottery case. We can object to eyeball redistribution, then, even if we reject the thesis of self-ownership.

Taxation makes us slaves to the state and no matter how hard we work, the “master” state will always steal that which was ours Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 221-22) It is important to understand how this argument differs from other libertarian arguments against taxation. It is not quite the same as the general claim that taxation interferes with individual liberty insofar as its enforcement is intrusive and it prevents one from doing what he wants with a portion of his income,2 for there are many who would find such infringements of liberty acceptable but nevertheless consider uncomfortable the notion that taxation also amounts to forcing people to work. The argument also differs from the objection that taxation amounts to theft in that forcing someone to labor and stealing from him are different offenses (although, if we take the former to involve specifically the stealing of labor, the difference between the objections may be one only of generality). Nonetheless, it is sometimes suggested that Nozick’s argument is essentially concerned with the violation

of property rights or with theft, rather than with forced labor in that Nozick presupposes that one has a property right in the portion of one’s earnings the state takes in taxes, a right his critics claim he fails to establish (Kymlicka 1990, 107–18; Michael 1997, 141; Weinberg 1997, 336; Otsuka 1998, 71).3 Nozick’s argument, as stated previously, nowhere explicitly appeals to any claim about property rights, and it is by no means obvious that an argument objecting to some practice on the grounds that it amounts to forced labor needs even implicitly to do so. Clearly, I might still be forced to labor for someone else if I labor at all, even if I have no property right in the product of the labor: a slave may own no part of his master’s land or tools, and thus arguably he cannot own whatever he produced using them— vegetables, say— but he is nevertheless a slave, even if he is allowed to eat some of the vegetables and thus labors partly for himself. The master might even allow him to idle away the days if he likes, but insist that if he labors to any extent, some of his labor must be for the sake of the master: if the slave grows tomatoes because he wants them, the master will take a portion of them; if he tries to grow only one tomato for himself, the master will nevertheless take a third of it; if to avoid giving the master that third he tries somehow to grow only two-thirds of a tomato, the master will take a third of that tomato; and so forth. Insofar as the master

“taxes” away a portion of the product of his labor, the slave has obviously been forced to work for purposes other than his own, even though he has no property right in the product of his labor (the portion of it he is allowed to eat also belongs to the master).

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

20 Coercion K

XT- Taxation is Theft The interference of taxation in peoples lives subjects them to the “eyeball-lottery” type cases which are immoral to both the giver and receiver. Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 228) The problem with this response is that it is not obvious that serious interference with people’s lives is all we object to in eyeball-lottery-type cases. Suppose someone was unknowingly the recipient of an eye stolen from someone else, and the original owner demanded that the eye be returned. Surely, however much we sympathized with the unwitting transplantee, we would agree that he should give up the eye to the original owner. Both parties will have had their lives radically interfered with, but it is nevertheless clear that one has suffered a greater wrong, and surely the reason why is that he is the owner of the eye. It even seems plausible that Cohen’s example is at least slightly less horrific than the eyeballlottery scenario precisely because these people were granted their eyes at the discretion of the state, which thus has some say over who gets them and under what terms. One is tempted to say, “Well, they are the state’s artificial eyes, I suppose, so perhaps it is acting within its rights, but still . . .” Nonetheless, the two cases seem indistinguishable unless we assume that the reason the original eyeball-lottery example is (at least slightly) more horrific is that people are the rightful owners of their body parts. Cohen’s other example presents most newborn infants as receiving eyes when passing under “ocular trees” on which eyes grow and from which they fall, but some unlucky infants pass under the trees when nothing falls and therefore they receive no eyes (1995, 244). Cohen maintains that no one, neither lucky eyeball recipients nor the state, would own the eyes, yet we would still object to eyeball redistribution; hence, it is not self-ownership to which we are committed in rejecting such redistribution. But this example is ambiguous. If we think of the ocular trees as easily manipulable external natural resources that can come to be owned (perhaps by the state) as other natural resources are, then the scenario is more or less identical to Cohen’s first one and has the same problems. But if we think of the trees on the model of the genetic factors responsible for eyes in the actual world or even as similar to conditions in the womb, then the scenario is more or less identical to the original eyeball-lottery example, in which case it gives no non-question-begging support to the notion that we need not account for the immorality of the example in terms of self-ownership.

Taxation is theft and fundamentally flawed Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 228-29) In sum, Cohen has failed to undermine the arguments usually given for the thesis of self-ownership, a thesis that hardly requires much argument and is as self-evident as a fundamental moral principle can be. We tend intuitively to take the thesis of selfownership to be true; and if we do, as Cohen acknowledges, we must also reject taxation of earnings from labor as immoral. The reader will no doubt have noticed the qualification—taxation of earnings from labor—that has appeared in my discussion (as it does in Nozick’s). Is the libertarian case against taxation incomplete? Does even the self-ownership argument condemn labor-income taxes but leave open the possibility that other forms of taxation— for example, tariffs or property taxes—might be legitimate? Perhaps not, for it is plausible that other taxes, though less regular and less directly tied to labor, differ from the taxation of labor earnings only by degree. We might argue that in collecting a sales tax every time I buy certain products or in collecting an inheritance tax when I try to leave something to my heirs upon my death, the state is once again claiming a slaveholder-like right over the product of my labor, even if it does so intermittently and inconsistently. If this suggestion fails to convince, however, the libertarian hostile to taxation in all its forms has another weapon in his arsenal, a more general argument against taxation: taxation of any kind is a straightforward violation of property rights. Taxation is theft.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

21 Coercion K

XT- Taxation is Theft Taxation from the state is akin to robbery. The refusal to pay taxation to the state is grounds for extermination. Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 229) Rothbard’s argument ([1982] 1998, chap. 22)—which he adopts from the nineteenthcentury anarchist Lysander Spooner, although the same idea has appeared in various forms in countless libertarian and anarchist tracts—is simplicity itself: when the state collects taxes of any sort, its action differs in no relevant respect from that of a robber; it steals, it takes by force property that does not belong to it. Just as the everyday robber threatens your life or liberty if you do not surrender to him what he demands, the state threatens imprisonment and ultimately death (because you may be killed if you resist arrest) if you fail to surrender to it what it demands. One cannot, Rothbard asserts, get around this claim by suggesting that taxation, at least in typical Western countries, is really voluntary because citizens, through voting, have power over the taxation system. Those who vote against a particular tax or against any taxation at all are, when outvoted by the majority, as coerced into paying taxes as they would be if they had no vote. I am no less coerced when a majority of citizens imposes a tax on me than I would be if a single dictator did so. Would anyone have the temerity to suggest that if the majority voted to have me gratuitously imprisoned or executed and proceeded to do so, I could not complain because my misfortune resulted from a democratic process in which I had a vote?

Taxation from the state is illegitimate for the same reasons “protection services” from the mafia are illegitimate. Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 229) The reply that the state does not really steal from us because it provides services in return (Kearl 1977) also fails, even if we grant the controversial assumption that the average citizen really does get back from the state services commensurate to the amount he is forced to pay. After all, the Mafioso providing “protection services” in return for extorted payments may in many cases really protect his clients from other criminals, yet we would not count his actions any less illegitimate for that reason. The upshot is that, whether or not I am given anything in return for my tax dollars, those dollars are still taken from me involuntarily even if I do not want the services provided or would prefer to get them elsewhere. No one would consider the local florist any less a thief if, after taking some of my property by force, he sent me flowers.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

22 Coercion K

XT- Taxation is Theft At the point where labor becomes your ownership of self, stealing from the product of that labor isn’t justified and is fundamentally theft. Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 231-32) We may nonetheless want a theory of original acquisition: questions do arise about how exactly one comes to own something. Mere declaration of ownership is clearly insufficient. To suppose, for example, that I can come to own Saturn’s moon Titan just by declaring that I own it seems absurd. But it seems so not because it would be unjust for me to make such a declaration, but because my declaration would be manifestly ineffectual. In what sense could I be said to own Titan, given that I have never been there, cannot get there, and cannot influence what happens there in any way? If, however, a corporation were to send a ship to Titan and proceed to mine it, that company’s claim of ownership (at least over the portion of the moon to which it was able to gain access) would not be at all absurd, even if one disapproved of it. Having access to something, being able to manipulate and alter it, and so forth are typical marks of the ownership of it, just or unjust—hence the lingering sense that, whatever its problems, Locke’s “labor-mixing” theory has something right. But such marks of ownership are nothing more; they do not signify initial ownership that is just, because there is no such thing as just or unjust initial ownership. Justice comes into play only after initial ownership has been established. Justice becomes relevant only in the theory of transfer of what has already come to be owned. Theories of initial acquisition are not, properly speaking, theories of justice at all. The question of what counts as an initial acquisition of unowned resources is a question of logic, not of morality, a matter of the analysis of the concept of acquiring something.8 There is no question, then, of the justice or injustice of the initial acquisition of unowned resources, and therefore no grounds exist, or can exist, for the claim that in taxing its citizens, the state is merely rectifying an injustice in the original appropriation of resources from the state of nature. One cannot avoid the conclusion that taxation is theft merely by appealing to a theory of initial appropriation.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

23 Coercion K

IL Magnifier- Slippery Slope Every justification for coercion, no matter how legitimate, conditions us to accept further limitations on our liberty Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Auburn University, 2002, Liberty and Hard Cases, p. [xvii – xix] If a man hits his child in some alleged emergency, the very act of doing so may render him more amenable to smacking the kid under more typical circumstances. Slapping someone who is hysterical may make it easier to slap someone who is only very upset or recalcitrant or annoying or just too slow fetching the beer from the refrigerator. Similarly, a “minor” breach of trust can beget more of the same, a little white lie here and there can beget lying as a routine, and so forth. Moral habits promote a principled course of action even in cases where bending or breaking the principle might not seem too harmful to other parties or to our own integrity. On the other hand, granting ourselves “reasonable” exceptions tends to weaken our moral habits; as we seek to rationalize past action, differences of kind tend to devolve into differences of degree. Each new exception provides the precedent for the next, until we lose our principles altogether and doing what is right becomes a matter of happenstance and mood rather than of loyalty to enduring values. We are not unfamiliar with the hazards of the slippery slope in our own personal lives.

The same is true of public action. When citizens of a country delegate to government, by means of democratic and judicial processes, the power to forge paternalistic public policies such as banning drug abuse, imposing censorship, restraining undesirable trade, and supporting desirable trade, the bureaucratic and police actions increasingly rely on the kind of violence and intrusiveness that no free citizenry ought to experience or foster. And the bureaucrats and the police tell themselves, no doubt, that what they’re doing is perfectly just and right. Consider, for starters, that when no one complains about a crime—because it is not perpetrated against someone but rather involves breaking a paternalistic law—to even detect the “crime” requires methods that are usually invasive. Instead of charges being brought by wronged parties, phone tapping, snooping, anonymous reporting, and undercover work are among the dubious means that lead to prosecution. Thus the role of the police shifts from protection and peacekeeping to supervision, regimentation, and reprimand. No wonder, then, that officers of the law are often caught brutalizing suspects instead of merely apprehending them. Under a paternalistic regime, their goals have multiplied, and thus the means they see as necessary to achieving those goals multiply too.

The same general danger of corrupting a free society’s system of laws may arise when government is called on to deal with calamities. There is the perception, of course, that in such circumstances the superior powers of government are indispensable, given the immediateness of the danger. The immediate benefits—a life saved by a marine—are evident. Yet the dangers of extensive involvement by legal authorities in the handling of nonjudicial problems are no less evident, if less immediate in impact.

Using state based incentives to solve public harms creates a perpetual cycle Hazlitt, founding board member of the Mises Institute and Journalist for The Wall Street Journal, 07 (Henry, Can the State Reduce Poverty? http://www.mises.org/story/2526)

From the beginning of history, sincere reformers as well as demagogues have sought to abolish or at least to alleviate poverty through state action. In most cases their proposed remedies have only served to make the problem worse. The most frequent and popular of these proposed remedies has been the simple one of seizing from the rich to give to the poor. This remedy has taken a thousand different forms, but they all come down to this. The wealth is to be "shared," to be "redistributed," to be "equalized." In fact, in the minds of many reformers it is not poverty that is the chief evil but inequality. All schemes for redistributing or equalizing incomes or wealth must undermine or destroy incentives at both ends of the economic scale. They must reduce or abolish the incentives of the unskilled or shiftless to improve their condition by their own efforts; and even the able and industrious will see little point in earning anything beyond what they are allowed to keep. These redistribution schemes must inevitably reduce the size of the pie to be redistributed. They can only level down. Their long-run effect must be to reduce production and lead toward national impoverishment. The problem we face is that the false remedies for poverty are almost infinite in number. An attempt at a thorough refutation of any single one of them would run to disproportionate length. But some of these false remedies are so widely regarded as real cures or mitigations of poverty that if I do not refer to them I may be accused of having undertaken a book on the remedies for poverty while ignoring some of the most obvious.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

24 Coercion K

Impact- Rights Violations- Extinction Violation of freedom negates the value of human existence and represents the greatest threat to human survival Ayn Rand, Philosopher, July 1989, “The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism,” p. 145 A society that robs and individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment, a society that sets up a conflict between it’s ethics and the requirements of man’s nature – is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society destroys all values of human coexistence, has no possible justification, and represents, not a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat to man’s survival. Life on desert island is safer than and incomparably preferable than existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

25 Coercion K

Rights Violations O/W Extinction Placing survival over individual autonomy replicates authoritarian regimes of control, subjugating individual rights to the values held by those in power Christopher H. Schroeder, Professor of Law, Duke University; Visiting Professor of Law, UCLA 1985-86, 1986, Columbia Law Review, Rights Against Risks, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495 Actually, expanding the idea of preservation to include bodily integrity on the basis of quality of life considerations has already pointed the way to a more realistic statement of those individual characteristics worth protecting. The same considerations of quality of life counsel recognizing some freedom of action and

is consistent with a long political and philosophical heritage. 90 placing survival or bodily integrity absolutely above all other ends would be tantamount to saying that the life plan that one ought to adopt is that of prolonging life at all costs. That idea is unacceptably authoritarian and regimented. It would be extremely anomalous for a theory supposedly centered on the autonomy of the individual to result in a conception of justice that constrained all individuals to a monolithic result. Individual human beings want more from their lives than simple [*520] bodily initiative within the definition of the morally relevant aspects of the individual. Doing so

Deeply ingrained in practically all theories of the rights tradition is the vision of a person as capable of forming and entitled to pursue some individual life plan. 91 Given this vision,

integrity, and the conception of an individual, of what defines and constitutes a person, as so limited is peculiarly impoverished. Individuals are capable of formulating and pursuing life plans, of forming bonds of love, commitment, and friendship on which they subsequently act, of conceiving images of self- and community-improvement. Some of these may directly advance interests in human survival, as when dedicated doctors and scientists pursue solutions to cancer or develop chemical pesticides with a view to assisting agricultural self-sufficiency in developing countries.

more widely available or when Henry Ford pioneered the mass production of the automobile. However, even individual initiatives of much less demonstrable impact on the lives of others constitute a vital element that makes human life distinctively human. A just Some may dramatically advance the "quality of life," rather than survival itself, as when Guttenberg's press made literature

society ought to understand and value this element both in the concrete results it sometimes produces and in the freedom and integrity that are acknowledged when individual liberty to conceive and act upon initiative is respected.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

26 Coercion K

Impact- Taxation- War Taxes remove all disincentives to Rulers, giving them potential to not only use money for parties, but to create the war to end all wars Rozeff, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 05 (Michael, Ludwig von Mises Institute, June 29, “How the Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy”, http://mises.org/story/1853, 7/7/08) Rulers, being human, have wants that they wish to fulfill, items like doing good (as they see it), power, glory, money, ego-satisfaction, pride, respect, adulation, security of office, aiding the poor or the rich, ending capitalism, spreading democracy, etc. However, what rulers want is not what subjects want. Individuals have widely varying ideas about what is desirable, as evidenced by the many ways they live. Obviously, rulers are unable to choose actions that satisfy every subject's individual preferences, even if they know them; but also no ruler knows what the subjects want now or ten minutes from now. Since rulers absorb taxpayer resources and spend them on projects that cannot satisfy their subjects' preferences, it follows that rulers destroy the happiness of those they tax. When constrained to employ their personal resources, rulers have a disincentive to spend. The power to tax removes that disincentive, that is, provides them an incentive to fulfill their aims. Consequently, they are encouraged to such things as wars to end all wars, wars to further democracy, great leaps forward, wars on poverty and drugs and terror, genocides, disruptive programs, territorial expansions, subsidies and guarantees, lavish parties, entertainments, airplanes and limousines, volumes of regulations that kill off markets, etc.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

27 Coercion K

Impact- Taxation- War Taxation is a manifestation of violence against a populace that is used as an instrument for war. Van Wambeke, Member Mises Youth Club 08 (Simon, Mises, “The Non-Initiation of Violence is a Core Principle of Libertarian Thought,” http://www.misesyouth.org/Core.pdf, 1/21, date accessed: 7/7/08) There is something odd about some libertarians’ take on war and libertarianism, like Chris Demeyere does in his latest article “In Defence of Humanitarian Interventions on Libertarian Grounds”. He states correctly that “nobody has the right to initiate violence to another person. This naturally means that once violence was initiated, that person is in the wrong and the victim or any other person has the right to stop the violence, even if that means they have to use violence themselves”, but nevertheless, when applying this rule of thumb of libertarianism, Demeyere makes one mistake and strangely neglects a lot of things. The common mistake Demeyere makes is to imply that robbery is not an initiation of violence: “war requires a government, and that government must have an army and train and equip it with taxpayer money.” It does not seem to occur to Demeyere that taxation is nothing more than robbery by the State and therefore an initiation of violence. So far Demeyere’s defence of war making on libertarian grounds. Demeyere would probably argue in his defence that he is a libertarian minarchist, not an anarchist, but the contradiction remains; one can not favour the non-aggression axiom in one sentence and taxation in the next.

Tyranny, elimination of civil rights, and the politics of fear are a direct result of the addiction to power created by taxation Rozeff, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 05 (Michael, Ludwig von Mises Institute, June 29, “How the Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy”, http://mises.org/story/1853, 7/7/08)\ Finally, the rulers have a ninth incentive, to maintain indefinitely the power to tax. At least three destructive activities result. One is continually to manufacture propaganda to justify taxes. Rulers are forever raising a hue and cry about imminent dangers and problems. They publicize desperate "needs" that are essential to survival: poverty programs to forestall disunity, riot or crime, drug prohibition to prevent threats to the nation's health, subsidies to prevent failure of the food supply or loss of the family farmers who are the nation's backbone, and central banking to prevent catastrophic banking failures. Basically, rulers appeal to their subjects' fears, insecurities and deep nationalistic, patriotic, religious and other desires in order to justify their actions. Second, rulers recruit a corps of propagandists, in government and out, who tout the party line, and in return receive money, favors, access, or other emoluments that they value, including power and feelings of importance. The perverse consequence is a corruption of society's information processes. A third means of keeping the power to tax is to diminish effective criticism of the rulers. Were rebellious anti-tax voices to gain influence, the rulers would be worse off. Hence, they try to halt and suppress such criticism.[11] Sadly, free speech and the power to tax are incompatible, and the rulers will curtail free speech wherever possible and under whatever clever guises they can manufacture.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

28 Coercion K

Reject Coercion- All Instances We must be fully committed toward to ending coercive measures of the state. It’s our moral imperative to never compromise our goals toward liberty Rothbard, former teacher at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, 78 (Murray, For A New Liberty, “A Strategy for Liberty,” www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty14.asp, date accessed: 7/9/08) There is another grave flaw in the very idea of a comprehensive planned program toward liberty. For the very care and studied pace, the very all-embracing nature of the program, implies that the State is not really the common enemy of mankind, that it is possible and desirable to use the State for engineering a planned and measured pace toward liberty. The insight that the State is the major enemy of mankind, on the other hand, leads to a very different strategic outlook: namely, that libertarians should push for and accept with alacrity any reduction of State power or activity on any front. Any such reduction at any time should be a welcome decrease of crime and aggression. Therefore, the libertarian's concern should not be to use the State to embark on a measured course of destatization, but rather to hack away at any and all manifestations of statism whenever and wherever he or she can. In keeping with this analysis, the National Committee of the Libertarian party in October 1977 adopted a declaration of strategy which included the following: We must hold high the banner of pure principle, and never compromise our goal?. The moral imperative of libertarian principle demands that tyranny, injustice, the absence of full liberty, and violation of rights continue no longer. Any intermediate demand must be treated, as it is in the Libertarian Party platform, as pending achievement of the pure goal and inferior to it. Therefore, any such demand should be presented as leading toward our ultimate goal, not as an end in itself. Holding high our principles means avoiding completely the quagmire of self-imposed, obligatory gradualism: We must avoid the view that, in the name of fairness, abating suffering, or fulfilling expectations, we must temporize and stall on the road to liberty. Achieving liberty must be our overriding goal. We must not commit ourselves to any particular order of destatization, for that would be construed as our endorsing the continuation of statism and the violation of rights. Since we must never be in the position of advocating the continuation of tyranny, we should accept any and all destatization measures wherever and whenever we can. Thus, the libertarian must never allow himself to be trapped into any sort of proposal for "positive" governmental action; in his perspective, the role of government should only be to remove itself from all spheres of society just as rapidly as it can be pressured to do so. Neither should there be any contradictions in rhetoric. The libertarian should not indulge in any rhetoric, let alone any policy recommendations, which would work against the eventual goal. Thus, suppose that a libertarian is asked to give his views on a specific tax cut. Even if he does not feel that he can at the moment call loudly for tax abolition, the one thing that he must not do is add to his support of a tax cut such unprincipled rhetoric as, "Well, of course, some taxation is essential?," etc. Only harm to the ultimate objective can be achieved by rhetorical flourishes which confuse the public and contradict and violate principle.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

29 Coercion K

Reject Coercion- All Instances All public forums spark change- your ballot does matter Rand, 82 (AYN. PHILOSOPHY: WHO NEEDS IT? P. 202) Do not wait for a national audience. Speak on any scale open to you, large or small - to you friends, you associates, you professional organizations, or any legitimate public forum. You can never tell when your words will reach the right mind at the right time. You will see no immediate results - but it is of such activities that public opinion is made. If your letters are brief and rational, they will have more influence than you suspect.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

30 Coercion K

Reject Coercion- Key to Ethics Government compulsion destroys individual morality and ethics Machan, scholar to the Cato Institute and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, 02, (Tibor R, Adjunct. “Laws vs. Morality.” Cato Daily Commentary, March 21, http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-21-02.html) Not only will this generate completely artificial practices and bans but it will also take our minds off what is really important, namely, figuring out on our own how we should conduct ourselves in our lives. We now will be inclined to focus not on morality or ethics but on public policy and law. That is quite understandable, since when law and public policy are not heeded, severe consequences can ensue. We can be found to be law-breakers, which brings about costly sanctions. You smoke in a pub now and this means going to court, paying fines, putting your life on hold. You offend some group and spend years in court! The American Red Cross officials may perhaps not be fully forgiven for losing their common sense but it is at least understandable why they worried so much about being politically correct. With religious songs at an event open to the public, they would risk bringing down upon them the wrath of the American Civil Liberties Union if not immediately the local police. A society where laws have become the answer to all human problems, laws get completely confusing and many people begin to be concerned with nothing other than avoiding violating the law. Such a society is very likely to see ethics and morality slowly but surely recede from its midst.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

31 Coercion K

Reject Taxation- Immoral Taxation must be rejected on-face as immoral Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 224) Nozick’s second argument (1974, 171–72) is essentially that each individual owns himself—his body and its parts—and his labor. He is entitled to do with them anything he wishes and (unless bound by contract) to refrain from doing with them anything anyone else wishes that he do with them. In G. A. Cohen’s words, he “possesses over himself, as a matter of moral right, all those rights that a slaveholder has over a complete chattel slave as a matter of legal right” (1995, 68). This declaration is the thesis of selfownership. But taxation of earnings from labor is inconsistent with the thesis, especially when that taxation is justified by moral principles requiring that a certain distribution of wealth obtain or that the state provide certain services to its citizens. In granting citizens an entitlement to certain services or to a certain share of “society’s” wealth, such principles in effect require that any time you labor, you must labor in part for the purposes of the state or for the purposes of those who benefit from the state’s largesse because the state must redistribute part of the product of your labor to meet those entitlements. In other words, such principles entail that the state and its beneficiaries have an entitlement or enforceable claim to and thus at least a partial property right in your labor and therefore in you. They are part owners of you. But no one can be even the partial owner of anyone else. We are self-owners, and, as such, we must reject taxation as deeply immoral.

There is a moral obligation to reject the slave mentality of taxation by the state Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 224) Typically, libertarians do not argue for the thesis of self-ownership to any great extent, for the obvious reason that it seems as plausible a moral first principle as one could hope for, something that seems just intuitively true. Most people would agree with the thesis on considering it, and the libertarian’s hope is to convince them that because they (at least implicitly) accept it, they ought to accept also the libertarianism that follows from it. Nevertheless, libertarians have attempted such arguments. They generally proceed by trying to show that the thesis of self-ownership is something we must accept if we are to justify other widely shared fundamental moral commitments. For instance, nearly everyone would accept that slavery is immoral, not just in cases where the slave is treated badly, but in every case. It is not just the maltreatment of other persons one owns that is morally offensive, but the fact of ownership itself. It seems obvious that no one has the right to own another person, and the most plausible explanation is that each person owns himself, has a right over himself that no one else can usurp. Another argument for self-ownership concerns the famous “eyeball lottery” scenario: even supposing it were possible to remove painlessly one eyeball from everyone who has two so that the extra eyeballs could be redistributed via lottery to those who by accident of birth have no eyeballs, we would still find such a practice abhorrent, for even though it might be kind for someone voluntarily to give up an eyeball for the sake of a blind person, it would be immoral to force him to do so. And the reason why is surely that they are his eyeballs to do with as he pleases; he owns them, along with his other body parts; indeed, he owns himself entirely. In rebutting such defenses of the thesis of self-ownership, Cohen’s strategy is to try to show that we can account for the immorality of slavery and of eyeball redistribution without committing ourselves to the thesis—that one can consistently be against them without being for selfownership. Cohen begins by trying to show that you can accept redistributive taxation without accepting either slavery or self-ownership. He suggests that it is possible that you may have obligations to others from which the state has no right to absolve you and indeed has the duty to enforce via taxation (1995, 234). In this case, you would not have a right, derived from self-ownership, to refrain from surrendering part of your income to the state; however, neither would the state have the rights of a slaveholder over you, because it could not do whatever it wanted with you, but only what is required to enforce the presumed moral obligation.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

32 Coercion K

Reject Taxation- Immoral The states taxation makes us all slaves: The thesis of self ownership rejects all taxation as immoral Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 224) An objection to this argument, which Cohen himself notes, is that whether or not the state has the powers of a slave owner over you, from your point of view your condition might nevertheless be little better than that of a slave, for you have, in the case Cohen describes, as little power over the labor that goes toward paying taxes as you would if the state were a slave owner (1995, 235). But if the thesis of selfownership is true, you do have power over this labor and thus the right not to pay the taxes. So it appears unavoidable that one can reject self-ownership only at the cost of accepting slavery.6 Cohen’s response to this difficulty seems little more than a counteraccusation. First, he argues (as does Nathanson 1998, 78–79) that Nozick himself, being a minimalstate libertarian rather than a libertarian anarchist, allows taxation for the purpose of funding police, courts, and the like, and that the condition of the taxpayer in this case is as slavelike as it is in the case of taxation for the purpose of helping the needy. One could press the quibble that the taxpayer’s condition is less slavelike from his own point of view in the first case insofar as he is at least being forced to fund services that directly benefit him. But the main problem with Cohen’s response is that it simply does not show that the taxation he wants to defend does not amount to slavery. At best, it shows only that even the taxation Nozick would allow also amounts to slavery. If Cohen is right in this regard—as Rothbard and other libertarian anarchists would say he is—then the selfownership advocate’s response would have to be not to accept Cohen’s favored forms of taxation, but to reject all taxation as immoral.

Taxation is a violation of every principle, sacred and moral Sprading and Paine, pivotal figure in the Libertarian movement and American Revolutionary, 1913 (Charles T. and Thomas, Liberty and Great Libertarians, pg. 36) Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never fail to appear in their effect. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion; and, deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government, which injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved. Having thus endeavored to show, that the social and civilized state of man is capable of performing within itself, almost everything necessary to its protection and government, it will be proper, on the other hand, to take a review of the present old governments, and examine whether their principles and practice are correspondent thereto. It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world, could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every principle, sacred and moral. The obscurity, in which the origin of all the present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity and disgrace with which they began. The origin of the present governments of America and France will ever be remembered, because it is honorable to record it; but with respect to the rest, even flattery has consigned them to the tomb of time, without an inscription.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

33 Coercion K

Reject Taxation- Immoral We must at least TRY and deconstruct the immorality of taxation Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 233-34) Nozick’s and Rothbard’s arguments together show taxation as such to be fundamentally morally illegitimate. Because those arguments entail that the activities of the modern state to which libertarians object are themselves illegitimate insofar as they are funded via taxation, the arguments also constitute a powerful case for libertarianism and possibly (perhaps inevitably) a case for anarcho-capitalism. Whether they must entail anarcho-capitalism and whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be feasible are matters that cannot be settled here. In any case, the immorality of taxation implies that such a society is at the very least an ideal we should strive to approximate.

We must be fully committed toward to ending coercive measures of the state. It’s our moral imperative to never compromise our goals toward liberty Rothbard, former teacher at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, 78 (Murray, For A New Liberty, “A Strategy for Liberty,” www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty14.asp, date accessed: 7/9/08) There is another grave flaw in the very idea of a comprehensive planned program toward liberty. For the very care and studied pace, the very all-embracing nature of the program, implies that the State is not really the common enemy of mankind, that it is possible and desirable to use the State for engineering a planned and measured pace toward liberty. The insight that the State is the major enemy of mankind, on the other hand, leads to a very different strategic outlook: namely, that libertarians should push for and accept with alacrity any reduction of State power or activity on any front. Any such reduction at any time should be a welcome decrease of crime and aggression. Therefore, the libertarian's concern should not be to use the State to embark on a measured course of destatization, but rather to hack away at any and all manifestations of statism whenever and wherever he or she can. In keeping with this analysis, the National Committee of the Libertarian party in October 1977 adopted a declaration of strategy which included the following: We must hold high the banner of pure principle, and never compromise our goal?. The moral imperative of libertarian principle demands that tyranny, injustice, the absence of full liberty, and violation of rights continue no longer. Any intermediate demand must be treated, as it is in the Libertarian Party platform, as pending achievement of the pure goal and inferior to it. Therefore, any such demand should be presented as leading toward our ultimate goal, not as an end in itself. Holding high our principles means avoiding completely the quagmire of self-imposed, obligatory gradualism: We must avoid the view that, in the name of fairness, abating suffering, or fulfilling expectations, we must temporize and stall on the road to liberty. Achieving liberty must be our overriding goal. We must not commit ourselves to any particular order of destatization, for that would be construed as our endorsing the continuation of statism and the violation of rights. Since we must never be in the position of advocating the continuation of tyranny, we should accept any and all destatization measures wherever and whenever we can. Thus, the libertarian must never allow himself to be trapped into any sort of proposal for "positive" governmental action; in his perspective, the role of government should only be to remove itself from all spheres of society just as rapidly as it can be pressured to do so. Neither should there be any contradictions in rhetoric. The libertarian should not indulge in any rhetoric, let alone any policy recommendations, which would work against the eventual goal. Thus, suppose that a libertarian is asked to give his views on a specific tax cut. Even if he does not feel that he can at the moment call loudly for tax abolition, the one thing that he must not do is add to his support of a tax cut such unprincipled rhetoric as, "Well, of course, some taxation is essential?," etc. Only harm to the ultimate objective can be achieved by rhetorical flourishes which confuse the public and contradict and violate principle.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

34 Coercion K

Reject Taxation- Immoral Taxation must be rejected on-face as immoral Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 224) Nozick’s second argument (1974, 171–72) is essentially that each individual owns himself—his body and its parts—and his labor. He is entitled to do with them anything he wishes and (unless bound by contract) to refrain from doing with them anything anyone else wishes that he do with them. In G. A. Cohen’s words, he “possesses over himself, as a matter of moral right, all those rights that a slaveholder has over a complete chattel slave as a matter of legal right” (1995, 68). This declaration is the thesis of selfownership. But taxation of earnings from labor is inconsistent with the thesis, especially when that taxation is justified by moral principles requiring that a certain distribution of wealth obtain or that the state provide certain services to its citizens. In granting citizens an entitlement to certain services or to a certain share of “society’s” wealth, such principles in effect require that any time you labor, you must labor in part for the purposes of the state or for the purposes of those who benefit from the state’s largesse because the state must redistribute part of the product of your labor to meet those entitlements. In other words, such principles entail that the state and its beneficiaries have an entitlement or enforceable claim to and thus at least a partial property right in your labor and therefore in you. They are part owners of you. But no one can be even the partial owner of anyone else. We are self-owners, and, as such, we must reject taxation as deeply immoral.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

35 Coercion K

Ethics First We must not reject the ethical consideration of taxation. Feser, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, 2000 (Edward, “Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” The Independent Review, Volume: 5, Fall, 224) Although this argument is related to the forced-labor argument, it is clearly set off from the latter in Nozick’s text, and the charge that taxation amounts to the partial ownership of taxpayers is clearly stronger than the charge that it amounts to forced labor. Even someone willing to allow a little forced labor must surely find uncomfortable the notion of partial ownership of other people— even a Haworthian penny’s worth of ownership. Forced labor can come in degrees of severity and duration, and therefore the defender of taxation can convince himself that he need not essentially be committed to stripping people of their right to self-determination, but only to inconveniencing them. But it is difficult to make ownership of other people, even partial ownership, sound palatable. Nonetheless, the sort of forced labor involved in taxation, given the absoluteness of the state’s claim over a portion of one’s earnings from labor, amounts precisely to the partial ownership of other people. Those who dismiss Nozick’s views of taxation on the grounds that a little forced labor may be a good thing thus fail to deal with the heart of his case. Oddly, the writer who seems most impressed by this argument not only is not a libertarian, but a Marxist of sorts: G. A. Cohen, who finds it a daunting challenge to his project of rescuing socialism from the ash heap to which history has apparently consigned it. Cohen is convinced that it is futile to attempt to show that taxation, despite appearances, does not amount to forced labor and therefore does not really conflict with self-ownership: Suppose that whenever I scratch my back I am required by the state to scratch someone else’s. It surely follows that I lack full ownership of my hand. And the implication of non-(full) ownership survives when we suppose that if I scratch your back in return for scratching mine, then some further scratching of the backs of third parties can be exacted by the state from each of us, after the manner of redistributive income taxation. (1995, 220–21) To avoid Nozick’s conclusion that such taxation is immoral, only one option remains open to Nozick’s critics: they must, Cohen asserts, try to undermine the thesis of selfownership itself (1995, 229). Of course, that thesis has a tremendous prima facie plausibility, as Cohen himself recognizes. His aim is in fact not to refute it—he denies that it can be refuted—but only the more limited task of showing that we need not accept it.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

36 Coercion K

Turns Case- Regulations Governmental regulation is in direct opposition with the principles of freedom; as coercion increases, dissent against and non-compliance with all governmental regulations increases, turning case Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Auburn University, January 30, 2004, Lewrockwell.com, “Some Further Thoughts on Government Regulation,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/machan/machan28.html government regulation is unjust, a unbecoming of a free society. Government regulation is a form of prior restraint, meaning, the legal authorities take aggressive action against citizens before they have done anything that deserves such action. In several forums, including one long book, Private Rights and Public Illusions (The Independent Institute, 1995), I have argued that policy

A principle of justice is that unless one has acted aggressively toward others, or there is extremely good evidence that one is about to do so, no one may restrain one from doing what one wants.

No one is authorized to rule another unless this other has taken actions that are themselves an attempt to rule others. Or, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent." (Indeed, as far back as ancient Greece, some have recognized this point – see, for example, Alcibiades’ debate with Pericles in Xenophan’s Memorabilia where Alcibiades shows that legal measures that involve coercion are not in fact laws at all.)

There are those who would reply that government regulation is, in fact, consented to by way of the electoral process, but this is sophistry. The electoral process must conform to due process, not override it, since none of us is authorized to vote other people into servitude. We may vote on who should administer the laws but not on what laws we must live by; that’s a matter of argument and must evolve through the common law, not via the vote. That is why a lynch mob is immoral and unjust – it aims to trump justice, of which due process is a crucial element.

Since many people realize that others really have no moral authority to govern them without their consent, as well as that government regulations amount to just such "governance," there are massive efforts to evade or circumvent such regulations. Arguably the huge legal departments in major corporations are part of such efforts. The motivation for this is very much akin to what underlies the existence of black markets or smuggling operations – people do not believe that bans on the production and sale of various goods and services is morally justified, so they work diligently and cleverly to dodge such bans. This is so even if what’s banned is itself unsavory, shameful – for example, prostitution or mindless gambling. What they do know, at least tacitly, is that there is something radically wrong about governmental efforts to suppress such trade. It is a bit like when we know that police brutality is wrong even if we disapprove of the person who is its target, or when we know that beating someone up for having insulted another is going way beyond any kind of permissible response.

in business it is quite possible that a reason why folks so often run afoul of "the law" – à la Martha Stewart, for instance – is that much of the law bearing on them is understood by them as harassment, nothing to do with crime or civil order. All those government So,

regulations in banking, manufacture, marketing, sales, and so forth impose burdens on professionals, what with all the rules, fines, and even prison sentences administered not for having violated someone’s rights but merely for having the capacity to do so – they might hurt someone, they might injure someone, they might defraud someone, although they haven’t done so at all.

Government regulation is nearly all precautionary, preventive, yet in the criminal law that’s banned, deemed a violation of due process. Only if someone has violated – or is very likely to violate – another’s rights, may law enforcement go into action against that individual.

one result of this precautionary nature of government regulation is that those covered by it work very hard to evade them. That’s so, arguably, because many people do not really believe the regulations are just and thus consider them an imposition they should not suffer. No, they probably haven’t some coherent, fully worked out idea about this; but in their guts, as it were, they sense confidently enough that there is something amiss here. And this leads to their treating not just government regulations but nearly all laws as suspect, perhaps not really deserving of compliance. So,

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

37 Coercion K

A2- Case Outweighs Infusing the government with coercive power guarantees brutal authoritarian regimes reminiscent of history’s most evil empires; whatever advantages accrued are quickly overwhelmed Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Auburn University, January 28, 2004, Lewrockwell.com, “Freedom and Its Supposed Liabilities,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/machan/machan25.html The second thing is that any effort to repair the ill doings of people by giving some other people power to step in cannot but have very bad consequences. From the time of Aristotle it has been evident that the dream of a great paternal leader must be moderated by the undeniable temptation such a position produces for despotism. Benevolent dictators are nearly non-existent and the few monarchs or chiefs who did behave well did so for just a little while before they, too, fell prey to the lure of running roughshod over others. So, whatever gains one might make by prohibiting men and women to act badly will be lost when those who have the power to order others about do their own bad deeds. Just look at the Hitlers, Stalins, Saddam Husseins and all the other more or less draconian tyrants in history and our own times – including the Islamic leaders of Iran today and the corrupt authoritarian rulers, secular and religious, of the past. They offer indisputable cases of how the effort to make people good backfires and makes the good-makers so bad that the gambit routinely turns out to be a very bad one. So does the plethora of reports of political and police corruption among those entrusted with making others good! It is not for nothing that Lord Acton’s remark that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," has become a cliché, which is to say an obvious and oft-repeated truth. trying to ban, by coercive force, the bad choices men and women may make we invite far worse consequences than what these bad choices produce, perhaps those clamoring for limitations on liberty for the sake of goodness and virtue will see the error of their proposals. When it is remembered that bad conduct that’s contained has the best chance of being abandoned, and that in

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

38 Coercion K

A2- Warming Outweighs No possible impact of global warming justifies any governmental coercion; protecting the economic freedom of capitalist society from governmental regulations is the best hope to cope with warming George Reisman, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, 2001, Excerpt of a speech delivered at the Austrian Scholars Conference, http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=661&id=71 And so too should it be in the case of any alleged environmental damage. If an individual, or an individual business enterprise, is incapable by [her or] himself of causing global warming or ozone depletion, or whatever, on a scale sufficient to cause harm to any other specific individual or individuals, then there is absolutely no proper basis on the individualistic philosophy of von Mises for prohibiting his [or her] action. As I say in Capitalism, "To prohibit the action of an individual in such a case is to hold him [or her] responsible for something for which he [or she] is simply not in fact responsible. It is exactly the same in principle as punishing him [or her] for something he [or she] did not do (p. 91)." The individual should not be punished for consequences that can occur only as the result of the actions of the broader category or group of which he is a member, but do not occur as the result of

even if it is true that the combined effect of the actions of several billion people really is to cause global warming or ozone depletion (neither of these claims has actually been proven—the claims of global warming have all the certainty of a weather forecast, extended out to the next 100 years!), but even if, as I say, the claims were true, it still would not follow that any proper basis existed for prohibiting any specific individual or individuals from acting in ways that only when aggregated across billions of individuals resulted in global warming or ozone depletion or whatever. his own actions. Thus,

If global warming or ozone depletion or whatever, really are consequences of the actions of the human race considered collectively, but not of the actions of any given individual, including any given individual private business firm, then the proper way to regard them is as the equivalent of acts of nature. Not being caused by the actions of individual human beings, they are equivalent to actions not morally caused by human beings at all, that is to say, to acts of nature. Once we see matters in this light, it becomes clear what the appropriate response is to such environmental change, whether global warming and ozone depletion, or global cooling and ozone

individual human beings must be free to deal with nature to their own maximum individual advantage, subject only to the limitation of not initiating the use of physical force against the person or property of other individual human beings. By following this principle, man [and women] will deal with the any negative forces of nature resulting as byproducts of his [or her] own activity taken in the aggregate in precisely the same successful way that he [or she] regularly deals with the primary forces of nature. enrichment, or anything else nature may bring. It is the same as the appropriate response of man to nature in general. Namely,

Allow me to elaborate on this. Here we are. We enjoy an incredibly marvelous industrial civilization, whose nature is indicated by the fact that because of it vast numbers of human beings can travel at breathtaking speeds for hundreds of miles at a stretch in their own personal automobiles, listening to symphony orchestras as they go—indeed, can fly over whole continents in a matter of hours in jet planes, while watching movies and drinking martinis; can walk into darkened rooms and flood them with light by the flick of a switch; can open a refrigerator door and enjoy delicious, healthful food brought from all over the world; can do all this and so much more. This is what we have. This, and much, much more, is what people everywhere could have if they were intelligent enough to establish economic freedom and capitalism. But all this counts for virtually nothing as far as the environmentalists are concerned. They are ready to throw it all away because, they allege, it causes global warming and ozone depletion, i.e., bad weather. And the best way, they say, for us to avoid such bad weather, and thus to control nature more to our advantage, is to abandon modern, industrial civilization and capitalism.

The appropriate answer to the environmentalists is that we will not sacrifice a hair of industrial civilization, and that if global warming and ozone depletion really are among its consequences, we will accept them and deal with them—by such reasonable means as employing more and better air conditioners and sun block, not by giving up our air conditioners, refrigerators, and automobiles.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

39 Coercion K

A2- Warming Outweighs The rhetoric of fear that surrounds global warming is redeployed to coerce individuals into resigning their liberty to authoritarian government Eric Englund, MBA from Boise State University, Surety Bond Underwriter, February 22, 2002, Global Warming: Socialism’s Trojan Horse, LewRockwell.com, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund5.html Let’s get back to the alleged threat global warming is posing to humanity. Paragons of virtue like Qadhafi and Gorbachev are sounding the alarm. Alas, this alarm is being sounded in order to form a united front against "capitalist exploitation of Mother Earth" while the truth about global warming is being ignored (scientific evidence does not support the assertion of global warming).

Environmentalists are terrorizing people with ghastly misinformation portraying our impending doom. Ultimately, it is the goal of environmentalists to terrify people (particularly those living in industrialized nations) into believing that their conduct has universal implications relevant to humanity as a whole. If the psychological terror campaign succeeds, then people (especially in the West) will be browbeaten into trading liberty and private property rights for the "safety" of our planet. At this point, Green Socialism will have won using global warming as its Trojan horse.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

40 Coercion K

Solves Warming Individual freedom is critical to solve global warming George Reisman, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, 2001, The Toxicity of Environmentalism, http://www.capitalism.net/Environmentalism's%20Toxicity.htm Whether global warming comes or not, it is certain that nature itself will sooner or later produce major changes in the climate. To deal with those changes and virtually all other changes arising from whatever cause, man [or woman] absolutely requires individual freedom, science, and technology. In a word, he [or she] requires the industrial civilization constituted by capitalism.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

41 Coercion K

A2- Permutation Compromising liberty for the sake of political expediency threatens the very foundation of our freedom; unadulterated adherence to the principles of liberty is essential Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Auburn University, January 27, 2004, LewRockwell.com, “Logic, Liberty, and Reality,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/machan/machan27.html There is a principle in logic that goes like this: Once a contradiction has infected an argument, anything can follow. Another way of putting it is that once a viewpoint has contradictions in it, nothing reasonable can be expected from it except accidentally. When one discusses politics, a charge frequently leveled is that one’s views aren’t realistic but too purist, too idealistic. Champions of all kinds of political ideas hear this but in America it is put

libertarians undeniably advocate public policies that are very close to what the basic principles of the American political system would imply. to libertarians especially often. This is because

If one takes a look at the Declaration of Independence and just considers the ordinary meaning of its central claims, no other political system apart from libertarianism could reasonably come to mind. Unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – precisely what libertarianism affirms. For laws to be established so as to secure our rights – that’s another libertarian thesis. None of us may justly be deprived of life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, period. Libertarians do tweak this a bit when they make explicit something that is clearly implicit in this claim, namely, that we all have the right to private property. That’s because without that right, there can be no effective right to life and liberty, let alone the pursuit of happiness. And the founders, especially the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, were quite aware of this.

those who complain that libertarians are not being realistic basically have in mind that unless one compromises on the basic principles of the Declaration one is simply not in touch with political reality. Yet if those principles are actually sound, if we do have the rights Jefferson identified as ours by our very nature, then to compromise them would pretty much amount to breaching the application of logic to politics. If it is true that any human being (not crucially incapacitated) has an unalienable right to his or her life or liberty or pursuit of happiness, then reasoning logically from this would imply that you, I, our neighbors and millions of others have these rights. And that means that violating them, even for wonderful and widely demanded purposes such as providing others with health care or education or art museums, is illogical. And by the rules of logical inference, once such a move is accepted, tolerated, and made part of public policy, what follows is a humongous mess in public affairs, that’s what. Now

And that is just what we are witnessing now in the United States of America, as well as many other places. There is no consistent public policy anywhere, none to which political leaders swear any allegiance and none they bother to follow loyally. That’s the thrust of the beef about the absence of a coherent vision in political campaigning. And the courts, too, are all over the map, one day affirming individual rights, the next denying them in the myriad of cases on which they rule. Furthermore, taxation violates our right to liberty and property and government regulation is a blatant attack on due process, which requires that only those who have violated someone’s rights may be burdened with fines or jail.

So when libertarians are told they are being unrealistic, not pragmatic enough – which means not practical, not in line with reality – what they are really being told is that they refuse to accept the mess that today amounts to practical politics. They are being told that they are aiming too high by insisting that politics, like personal life itself, ought to have integrity and not embrace contradictory ideas and policies. No libertarian in his right mind believes that full consistency is easy or even very likely, just as none believes that full personal integrity is easy or very likely for people to achieve. But to accept that one ought to just cave in to the demands of deliberate compromise, that this is what the norm should be, is to promote meaninglessness and arbitrariness in public affairs. the sole hope for justice and decency in public life is to insist on practicing only what is consistent with fundamental principles based on human nature and the requirements of social existence. The mere fact that this isn’t likely to be around the corner anytime soon, anywhere on the globe, or that it is very difficult to secure, does not change anything. By acquiescing to compromise, being "realistic," one simply throws in the towel and gives up on seeking any rhyme or reason in political matters. The simple truth is that

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

42 Coercion K

A2- Permutation Any combination of free market capitalism and central planning is impossible – the two economic regimes are mutually exclusive Ludwig von Mises, 1918-1920. Director, League of Nation's Austrian Abrechnungs Amt [Reparations Commission], 1945-1969. Visiting Professor, New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration, April 18, 1950, Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism, http://www.mises.org/midroad/mr2.asp A second group seems to be less radical. They reject socialism no less than capitalism. They recommend a third system, which, as they say, is as far from capitalism as it is from socialism, which as

a third system of society's economic organization, stands midway between the two other systems, and while retaining the This third system is known as the system of interventionism

advantages of both, avoids the disadvantages inherent in each. . In the terminology of American politics it is often referred to as the middle-of-the-road policy. What makes this third system popular with many people is the particular way they choose to look upon the problems involved. As they see it, two classes, the capitalists and entrepreneurs on the one hand and the wage earners on the other hand, are arguing about the distribution of the yield of capital and entrepreneurial activities. Both parties are claiming the whole cake for themselves. Now, suggest these mediators, let us make peace by splitting the disputed value equally between the two

. The State as an impartial arbiter should interfere, and should curb the greed of the capitalists and assign a part of the profits to the working classes. Thus it will be possible to dethrone the moloch capitalism without enthroning the moloch of totalitarian socialism. classes

this mode of judging the issue is entirely fallacious.

Yet The antagonism between capitalism and socialism is not a dispute about the distribution of booty. It is a controversy about which two schemes for society's economic organization, capitalism or socialism, is conducive to the better attainment of those ends which all people consider as the ultimate aim of activities commonly called economic, viz., the best possible supply of useful commodities and services. Capitalism wants to attain these ends by private enterprise and initiative, subject to the supremacy of the public's buying and abstention from buying on the market. The socialists want to substitute the unique plan of a central authority for the plans of the various individuals. They want to put in place of what Marx called the "anarchy of production" the exclusive monopoly of the government. The antagonism does not refer to the mode of distributing a fixed amount of amenities. It refers to the mode of producing all those goods which people want to enjoy.

The conflict of the two principles is irreconcilable and does not allow for any compromise. Control is indivisible. Either the consumers' demand as manifested on the market decides for what purposes and how the factors of production should be employed, or the government takes care of these matters. There is nothing that could mitigate the opposition between these two contradictory principles. They preclude each other. Interventionism is not a golden mean between capitalism and socialism. It is the design of a third system of society's economic organization and must be appreciated as such.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

***Aff Answers***

43 Coercion K

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

44 Coercion K

Perm Solvency Perm solves best – Blasting away ideological impulses releases a freedom of inquiry where political disengagement can produce genuine insight Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 459-460) The remedy for this persistent fear is the same as that for the low intellectual standards of libertarian scholarship: blast away the ideology~ strip off even the ideological impulse, by withdrawing one’s emotional commitment to political conclusions that have not yet been justified. Even while this makes room for intellectual seriousness, it promotes a joyous freedom of inquiry: one need no longer fear where one is headed. The moment a libertarian leaves libertarianism behind, reality loses its threatening aspect; his intellectual marginality becomes a precious source of fresh insight into every aspect of politics and culture. It seems paradoxical but true that high seriousness can be enjoyable, and that political disengagement can produce genuine insights into politics. The paradoxes may be dispelled, however, by realizing that disengagement is equivalent to alienation. Alienation plants the seeds of doubt, doubt nourishes serious thinking, and serious thought is the only alternative to an intellectual complacency that must always be shadowed by fear of its own simplification.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

45 Coercion K

Environmental Coercion Key (1/3) Guarding against climate change is fundamental to the preservation of human dignity, freedom from hunger, and cultural and religious rights; upholding right to a healthy environment is crucial to preserve every other right Mark Allan Gray, First Secretary, Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York. Former Head of the Environmental Law Unit, Legal Office, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, Spring 1996, “The International Crime of Ecocide,” California Western International Law Journal, 26 Cal. W. Int'l L.J. 215 Ecocide can be established on the basis of the two most fundamental human rights alone: the right to life and the right to health. By diminishing, for example, earth's vital and stressed capacities to produce oxygen, food and medicines, to block harmful radiation and to maintain stable climates and the [*223] often-fragile social, political and economic orders that depend upon them, culprits contribute directly and substantially to causing individual deaths in LDCs, impairing human health globally and even threatening the survival of the species. The destruction and its effects, however, contribute to the violation of other rights throughout the developing world: security of the person; protection of the family and property; freedom from hunger; social security; an adequate standard of living; and a safe work environment; as well as human dignity, infringed along with cultural and religious rights in the case of aboriginal people by the destruction of their societies, institutions, livelihoods and identities, and in the case of people everywhere by the severing of spiritual and aesthetic links to wilderness and the diminution of humanity as a part of nature. It can be argued that equality rights are violated, both as between peoples within an affected country, viz., disenfranchised indigenous people and rural poor as compared to unaffected or benefiting urban elites, and as between those in LDCs who gain no benefit from the exploitation of their resources but suffer the effects of impoverishment and those in DCs who grow correspondingly rich without making sacrifices. It may also be that two collective rights are threatened: aboriginal self-determination, and everyone's right to a social and international order in which all other rights and freedoms can be fully realized. Two so-called "third generation" or "solidarity" rights are to a healthy environment and to development. 15 Neither is fully accepted under international law; but both are emerging as recognized interests which could eventually gain human rights status as, it is here predicted, Eastern concepts of duty and community rights seize a larger role in the development of international human rights law. 16 A right to enjoy and use a healthy environment, one that is clean, ecologically balanced and protected, and whose physical, social and cultural elements are adequate for both individual well-being and dignity and collective development, can be seen as necessarily [*224] underlying all other rights. 17 A right to development, entailing a sustainable and constantly improving livelihood for a particular population, would be both a basis for realization, and the evolutionary outcome, of all other rights. 18 In the process of violating the rights listed above, culprits trample on the victims' procedural rights: access to information; environmental assessment as an integral part of planning; participation in judicial and administrative proceedings; and effective domestic remedies and compensation. It is important to note, however, that while these rights are crucial tools in the battle against it, their denial does not constitute ecocide. 19

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

46 Coercion K

Environmental Coercion Key (2/3) Governmental intervention is necessary to preserve the liberty of the polluted; it outweighs and outnumbers that of the polluter Michael Blumm, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Spring 1992, The fallacies of free market environmentalism, Vol. 15, Issue 2, p371, p19 The liberty of those who emit air pollutants, discharge water contaminants, or dispose of hazardous waste materials may well be increased. But those exposed to environmental degradation lose liberty. And the numbers of libertylosers typically outnumber considerably the liberty-gainers. Whether aggregate liberty is gained from market transactions is difficult to ascertain, but it is clear that some of the liberty-losers pay enormous health costs…. Unfortunately, it is a fantastic myth. Markets persistently fail to produce the ecological and health information necessary to allocate efficiently environmental resources. By focusing exclusively on "willingness to pay," markets assume the wisdom of current preferences and the fairness of existing wealth distribution. They also carve out a significant role for the judiciary, the least representative branch of government, to allocate environmental resources. For these reasons, markets cannot supplant government intervention to correct environmental market failure.

Coercion is necessary to protect the rights of those affected by pollution Christopher H. Schroeder, Professor of Law, Duke University; Visiting Professor of Law, UCLA 1985-86, 1986, Columbia Law Review, Rights Against Risks, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495 Congress has also often rejected cost-benefit balancing in enacting environmental laws. 43 In substantial measure, the legislation that provides much of this country's risk regulation refutes the view that environmental lawmaking is grounded in utilitarian theory. Instead, the legislation seems to vindicate "rights." 44 The statutes reflect a view of "social harms," including environmental harms, "as violations of moral rights." 45 Environmentalists have sought to act against such harms because [*507] of "values [they hold] to be transcendent and absolute," 46 not because of some cost-benefit ratio. Thus, worker protection laws were enacted to affirm the "inalienable rights" of workers to a safe work-place, 47 and air pollution statutes embody the right of citizens to breathe clean air. 48 The public often views cancer as a proxy for all modern technological risks, 49 and some have claimed that "[e]very person has a basic human right not to have cancer inflicted on him by the action of other persons." 50 This right, furthermore, "is perhaps too obvious to need any justificatory argument." 51 In general, just as the government cannot order every thousandth citizen to be placed before a firing squad, it cannot stand by as citizens are exposed to environmental hazards. It must enforce a citizen's "right to be protected against the hazards to health and life from technology and pollution." 52 The result of this rights-consciousness is a package of single-mindedly protectionist 53 legislation, that treats "each practice that creates a risk of violating a right [as] an unqualified wrong."

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

47 Coercion K

Environmental Coercion Key (3/3) Governmental coercion is key to solving the tragedy of the commons David B. Spence, J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business, University of Texas Graduate School of Business, July 2001, California Law Review, The Shadow of the Rational Polluter: Rethinking the Role of Rational Actor Models in Environmental Law, 89 Calif. L. Rev. 917 If there is a foundation on which the traditional American environmental regulatory structure sits, it is the idea of the firm as a rational polluter. The rational polluter as economic actor seeks to maximize its own pecuniary self-interest, and understands the payoffs associated with different courses of action. In order to maximize profit, the rational polluter will [*920] shift as many costs as possible to society; one way it does so is by discharging its wastes into the environment. 5 Even though the rational polluter may prefer a clean environment to a dirty one, it is individually rational for each polluter to continue to pollute. Of course, this is the central lesson of Garrett Hardin's "tragedy of the commons," 6 the prisoner's dilemma from game theory, 7 Paul Samuelson's analysis of public goods, 8 Pigou's analysis of externalities, 9 and countless other rational actor models of firm behavior. These analyses form the backbone of our environmental regulatory system because they provide a logical justification for government regulation by warning us that rational polluters will pollute unless deterred by some sort of "coercion." 10

Federal involvement is essential to the protection of the environment J.B. Ruhl, Assistant Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University, Summer 1995 Colorado Law Review, Biodiversity conservation and the ever expanding web of Federal Laws regulating nonfederal lands: Time for something completely different? 66 U. Colo. L. Rev. 555 Indeed, there is by no means unanimous support that the federal government should have any meaningful role in shaping national biodiversity policy. For example, the Cato Institute advocates a federal biodiversity policy relying on maximum use of "noncoercive market processes." 15 That policy proposal, [*564] which has appeared to galvanize those who lean against an active federal role, is premised on a trio of assertions: that "the ecosystem concept . . . is inappropriate for use as a geographic guide for public policies," that "federal management of ecosystems would significantly expand federal control of the use of privately owned land," and that "greater reliance on market forces, rather than further movement toward coercive federal regulations . . . should guide federal actions." 16 Although the second of those propositions accurately defines the central defect of federal policy at present, this article demonstrates that the first and last of those premises are, at best, half true, and thus do not lead us in the direction of a passive federal policy role. Hence, as much as this article demonstrates that federal biodiversity policy thus far has been excessively coercive, it also demonstrates that a "no action" policy at the federal level is not a viable policy alternative. The question is what the federal government's proper role should be.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

48 Coercion K

Environmental Regulations Ethical (1/1) Regulation is ethically justified if it promotes social interests and security better than people can individually John Earl Duke, J.D. Candidate, Boston University, February 2003 Boston University Law Review, Giving Species the Benefit of the Doubt, 83 B.U.L. Rev. 209 The notion of exclusionary reasons and the connection between interests, rights and duties help us assess whether any particular rule is legitimate and help us understand how rules create binding obligations. Recall that Mill's harm principle requires as a condition of legitimate government action that the action prevent harm to its subjects' interests in autonomy or security. Thus, the only laws that are legitimate exercises of authority (the only laws that are based on interests sufficient to raise a legitimate duty) are those that ground rights and duties on our interests in security or autonomy. In other words, legitimate exercises of authority protect the intrinsic value of our physical (interest in security) and biographical (interest in autonomy) lives. However, not all legitimate rules create binding obligations. Rather, rules create binding obligations only if the exclusionary reasons they provide help us do what is in our interest better than we otherwise could if we each tried directly to do what [*237] is in our interest based solely on first-order reasons. 160 This is a necessary condition for preserving autonomy. 161 Thus, a rule is legitimate and creates binding obligations if it helps us protect and promote our interests in either security or autonomy better than we could if we were each to decide for ourselves.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

49 Coercion K

Environmental Regulations Solve Coercion (1/1) Current pullutants are coercive. Plan is a net decrease of coercion. Block, economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher, 98 (Walter, “Environmentalism and Economic Freedom: The Case for Private Property Rights,” Journal of Business Ethics, p. 1887) According to the mainstream economic analysis, libertarianism is wrong. The problem of airborne pollutants is not due to a failure of government to protect private property rights. Instead, this comes about because of “market failure,” a basic flaw in free enterprise. Pigou (1912, p. 159) gives the classic statement of this view: Smoke in large towns which inflicts a heavy loss on the community . . . comes about because there is no way to force private polluters to bear the social cost of their operations. Samuelson (1956, 1970) conveys the same sentiment in terms of the divergence between private and social costs. Lange and Taylor (1938, p. 103) are yet additional socialists who make a complementary point: A feature which distinguishes a socialist economy from one based on private enterprise is the comprehensiveness of the items entering into the socialist price system. In other words, for some strange dark mysterious reason, capitalists, under laissez faire, are excused from even considering the physical harm they do to the property of others through the emissions of their smoke particles. Under socialism, in contrast, the central planner of course takes this into account, nipping the problem of pollution in the bud.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

50 Coercion K

Environmental Destruction Undermines Rights Environmental destruction undermines the rights of the yet-unborn Mark Allan Gray, First Secretary, Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York. Former Head of the Environmental Law Unit, Legal Office, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, Spring 1996, “The International Crime of Ecocide,” California Western International Law Journal, 26 Cal. W. Int'l L.J. 215 Human rights not yet, but arguably destined to be, generally accepted, which are violated by environmental destruction on the ecocide scale, are those of future generations. The concept of intergenerational equity, discussed below, means that as-yet unborn humans could eventually, and others on their behalf could now, complain that they too suffer ecocide's violations of human rights. Furthermore, humanity is now failing any duty it might have to balance its present gains from and sacrifices for earth's resources with those of future generations. For the purposes of this Article and in view of the theoretical problems posed by recognition of intergenerational equity and rights of future generations, it is sufficient to note that living persons, particularly in LDCs, are affected: their rights to survival at the family, community and species levels and to the satisfaction of handing over the earth in a healthy condition to their and others' descendants are infringed by ecocide.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

51 Coercion K

Environmental Destruction Undermines Rights Environmental degradation threatens the rights and dignity of the human species; our ethical obligation to guard against it supercedes the liberty of those who would destroy it Mark Allan Gray, First Secretary, Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York. Former Head of the Environmental Law Unit, Legal Office, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, Spring 1996, “The International Crime of Ecocide,” California Western International Law Journal, 26 Cal. W. Int'l L.J. 215 The natural world's beauty, complexity and fragility suggest that it and its components in their own right have interests worthy of protection, or at least that our liberty to exploit nature is not limited solely by the claims of other people. Radical theorists argue for recognition of legal rights of nature or the "environment," 23 which includes non-living elements. Others limit their claim to living things 24 or specifically to animals. 25 A convincing argument, for instance, is made that whales have an emerging right to life, which right will gain recognition as statist and positivist conceptions of international law give way to humanist and natural law conceptions. 26 Such rights do not currently enjoy recognition under international law. 27 Nevertheless, every element of nature is unique and has inherent dignity, and therefore warrants respect regardless of its value to man. Being different from humans does not mean being less worthy of respect. All living things are vulnerable and, in the case of fauna, sentient, and therefore deserving of protection. These interests, it is here predicted, will go beyond the moral and take on legal characteristics as human understanding of our world improves and as the Eastern concept of duty influences the elaboration of international human rights law. Ecocide can be envisioned as not just the breach of a legal duty of care, but the violation of a duty to protect. This construct would serve to protect the environment better than the human rights basis because it would not depend upon acceptance of non-human rights and its identification would focus on the culprit rather than the victim. These interests are also relevant to our human-rights based model of [*226] ecocide, as their impairment affects man. The degradation of nature offends human dignity and distresses many, including the author, at a spiritual level because nature is a part of humanity. More fundamentally, the cohesion and interdependence of all living things mean that we are harmed as a part of nature (much as a state's right to complain about transboundary pollution is really the collective right of its citizens). As one publicist put it, "the integrity of nature is also the integrity of the human species as part and product of nature." 28 To destroy nature is to destroy ourselves.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

52 Coercion K

A2: Taxes Are Theft Taxes are not theft in the case of public services and goods that benefit everyone, even the Libertarians contributing. Kangas, Graduate student in Political Science, 99 (Steve, “Myth: Taxes are theft,” 3/19, http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-taxestheft.htm, date accessed: 7/11/08) Many conservatives and libertarians make the following populist argument: "If you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will come to your house, arrest you, and seize your property." The implication here is that you are being extorted to pay taxes, and this theft amounts to a violation of your rights. Although the events described are technically correct -- you should expect such a response from any crime you commit -- the implication that the government is aggressing against you is false, and not a little demagogic. Taxes are part of a social contract, an agreement between voters and government to exchange money for the government's goods and services. Even libertarians agree that breach of contract legitimates a police response. So the real question is not whether a crime should be met with "men with guns," but whether or not the social contract is valid, especially to those who don't agree with it or devote their allegiance to it. Liberals have two lines of argument against those who reject the idea of the social contract. The first is that if they reject it, they should not consume the government's goods and services. How they can avoid this when the very dollar bills that the economy runs on are printed by the government is a good question. Try to imagine participating in the economy without using public roads, publicly funded communication infrastructure, publicly educated employees, publicly funded electricity, water, gas, and other utilities, publicly funded information, technology, research and development -- it's absolutely impossible. The only way to avoid public goods and services is to move out of the country entirely, or at least become such a hermit, living off the fruits of your own labor, that you reduce your consumption of public goods and services to as little as possible. Although these alternatives may seem unpalatable, they are the only consistent ones in a person who truly wishes to reject the social contract. Any consumption of public goods, no matter how begrudgingly, is implicit agreement of the social contract, just as any consumption of food in a restaurant is implicit agreement to pay the bill. Many conservatives and libertarians concede the logic of this argument, but point out that taxes do not go exclusively to public goods and services. They also go for welfare payments to the poor who are allegedly doing nothing and getting a free ride from the system. That, they claim, is theft. But this argument fails too. Welfare is a form of social insurance. In the private sector we freely accept the validity of life and property insurance. Obviously, the same validity goes for social insurance like unemployment and welfare. The tax money that goes to social insurance buys each one of us a private good: namely, the comfort of being protected in times of adversity. And it buys us a public good as well (although tax critics are loathe to admit this). If workers were allowed to unnecessarily starve or die in otherwise temporary setbacks, then our economy would be frequently disrupted. Social insurance allows workers to tide over the rough times, and this establishes a smooth-running economy that benefits us all.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

53 Coercion K

Taxes Key to the Right to Private Property The right to private property is unimportant if there’s no way to ensure protection- tax dollars key Holmes and Sunstein, 99 (Stephen and Cass, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES, 1999, p. 19. (MHDRG/E592)) Liberty has little value if those who ostensibly possess it lack the resources to make their rights effective. Freedom to hire a lawyer means little if all lawyers charge fees, if the state will not help, and if you have no money. The right to private property, an important part of liberty, means little if you lack the resources to protect what you own and the police are unavailable. Only liberties that are valuable in practice lend legitimacy to a liberal political order. This book does not focus exclusively on the budgetary costs of rights that are enforceable in courts of law, but also on the budgetary costs of making those rights exercisable or useful in daily life. The public costs of police and fire departments contribute essentially to the "protective perimeter" that makes it possible to enjoy and exercise our basic constitutional and other rights.

Without tax funding, the right to private property wouldn’t exist Holmes and Sunstein, 99 (Stephen and Cass, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES, 1999, p. 19. (MHDRG/E592)) To the obvious truth that rights depend on government must be added a corollary, one rife with implications: rights cost money. Rights cannot be protected or enforced without public funding and support. This is just as true of old rights as of new rights, of the rights of Americans before as well as after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Both the right to welfare and the right to private property have public costs. The right to freedom of contract has public cost no less than the right to health care, the right to freedom of speech no less than the right to decent housing. All rights make claims upon the public treasury.

Agencies payed by tax dollars ensure rights and safety throughout the nation Holmes and Sunstein, 99 (Stephen and Cass, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES, 1999, p. 19. (MHDRG/E592)) Opposition to government has been a defining there of American populism in the late twentieth century. Its slogan is, Don't tread on me! Or as Ronald Reagan put it, "Government isn't the solution; it's the problem." More recently, critics of all things governmental, such as Charles Murray and David Boaz, have claimed that an "adult making an honest living and minding his own business deserves to be left alone," and the "real problems in the United States is th same one being recognized all over the world: too much government." Everyday, every hour, private catastrophes are averted or mitigated by public expenditures that are sometimes large, even massive, but that go unrecognized. Americans simply assume that our public officials - national, state, and local - will routinely lay hold of public resources and expend them to salvage, or boost the value of, private rights. Despite the undesirably high incidence of crime in the United States, for instance, a majority of citizens feel relatively secure most of the time, in good measure due to the effort of the police, publicly salaried protectors of one of our most basic liberties: personal or physical security.

Without the persistent availability of government funding, liberties would be abolished Holmes and Sunstein, 99 (Stephen and Cass, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES, 1999, p. 19. (MHDRG/E592)) Finally, the simple insight that rights have costs points the way toward an appreciation of the inevitability of government and of various good things that government does, many of which are take so much for granted that, to the casual observer, they do not appear to involve government at all. Attention to the public costs of individual rights can shed new light upon old questions such as the appropriate dimensions of the regulatory-welfare state and the relationship between modern government and classical liberal rights. Public policy decisions should not be made on the basis of some imaginary hostility between freedom and the tax collector, for if these two are genuinely at odds, all of out basic liberties would be candidates for abolition.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

54 Coercion K

A2: Private Property is Key to Individual Awareness TURN: If private property is necessary for awareness, taxation is the only probable venue to allow identity for each individual Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) It could be argued that while private property is not strictly necessary for people to be aware of their effects on the world, it either guarantees or enhances the likelihood that people will have that awareness.Yet even if we grant this, and conclude from Fichte’s argument that people have a right to private property, a mandate for libertarian property rights is still lacking. It does not follow from the developmental thesis that property rights are absolutely inviolate. In fact, redistribution would not abridge people’s rights as long as they retained some property. A concern for people’s access to property cannot justify the rule that no one can be taxed to care for the poor. On the contrary, if people have a right to lead a fully human life— or, in Hegel’s jargon, to develop personality—and if property ownership is indispensable to that end, then the property system should guarantee a minimum amount of property to each individual.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

55 Coercion K

State Action Key to Freedom Individual rights are dependent on state action, the private sector was created by public government action Holmes and Sunstein, 99 (Stephen and Cass, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES, 1999, p. 19. (MHDRG/E592)) Public support for the kind of "safety net" that benefited the home owners of Westhampton is broad and deep, but at the same time, Americans seem easily to forget that individual rights and freedoms depend fundamentally on vigorous state action. Without effective government, American citizens would not be able to enjoy private property in the way they do. Indeed, they would enjoy few or none of their constitutionally guaranteed individual rights. Personal liberty, as Americans values and experience it, presupposes social cooperation managed by government officials. The private realm we rightly prize is sustained, indeed created, by public action. Not even the most self-reliant citizen is asked to look after his or her material welfare autonomously, without any support from fellow citizens or public officials.

Government coercion necessary to all rights Holmes and Sunstein, 99 (Stephen and Cass, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES, 1999, p. 19. (MHDRG/E592)) When they are not back by legal force, by contrast, moral rights are toothless by definition. Unenforced moral rights are aspirations binding on conscience, not powers binding on officials. They impose moral duties in all mankind, not legal obligations on the inhabitants of a territorially bounded nation-state. Because legally unrecognized moral rights are untainted by power, they can be advocated freely without much worry about malicious misuse, perverse incentives, and unintended side effects. Rights under law invariably raise much misgivings and concerns.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

56 Coercion K

A2: State Intervention Bad Libertarianism critiques of the state are unwarranted and lack logic Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 414-15) First, no accumulation of trend-line tests alone can reveal the reasons for government inefficacy. Murray claims that there are three reasons: (a) state action merely displaces the action of private individuals; (b) “so much in a modern society has the inertia of a ponderous freight train, running on rails that government cannot shift and moving with such momentum that an outside force such as government cannot speed it up or slow it down more than fractionally” (s~);and (c) the old functions of government were straightforward . . . with bythe- book techniques that worked. A bureaucracy could do them. In contrast, healing an abused child is not a known task. Instilling racial understanding is not a known cask. Teaching self-restraint to teenagers is not a known task. (145) While plausible, reason (c) cannot (and is not intended to) justify anything approaching Murray’s repudiation of almost all regulation and government service provision. It applies only to the type of problem with which social workers must deal, leaving most modern government functions untouched. Reason (b)—society as unstoppable freight train—is either no reason at all, in that it simply restates the alleged inefficacy of government action; or it is, in reality; an argument for a much bigger government, since it attributes government failure to a sheer lack of power. That leaves reason (a), government displacement of civil society. This reason is assumed, not demonstrated, by Murray’s interpretation of the trend lines; it amounts to little more than an ungrounded assertion—something more (a plausible hunch), but not much. In the late 1990s, all the trends may seem to tell against the efficacy of state action. But in the early 1930s they all seemed to tell against the efficacy of the market. Murray’s hunch, like that of our socialist grandparents, may be nothing more than an artifact of the times: it could be that a predominantly libertarian society, like that of the early 193 OS, will produce a characteristic set of problems that show up in negative trends, while a predominantly interventionist society, like ours, will produce a different set., Extrapolating from these trends, either to the conclusion that “capitalism can’t do anything right” (as it appeared in, say, 1932) or that “government can’t do anything right” (as it may appear today) is simply unwarranted. The truth could lie somewhere in the ‘middle; that is what makes the social—democratic order so difficult for simplistic forms of libertarianism to challenge effectively.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

57 Coercion K

Libertarianism Increases Suffering Alt fails: The libertarian alternative would not produce more happiness but rather more suffering Locke, Writer for The American Conservative, 05 (Robert, The American Conservative, “Marxism of the Right,” 3/14, http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html, date accessed: 6/7/08) Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile. Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means libertarianism is an all-ornothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred. And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

58 Coercion K

Libertarianism Causes Genocide Libertarian philosophy spawns absolutism which sparks a genocidal intolerance which will lead to violence Kienitz, 06 (Paul, Gning, “I'm Still Not a Libertarian,” http://world.std.com/~mhuben/pk-is-against-liberty.html, date accessed: 7/10/08) At least with what we've got we get to adjust it and change our minds, we get to incorporate a variety of differing philosophies, and make compromises back and forth. A society built on true Libertarian principle allows little or no compromise on any matters of law, and settles all such questions by simple absolute principles decided in advance by a small group of ideological leaders. We are then expected to live with the consequences as best we can, and if we happen to end up worse off than before, that doesn't matter; the important thing is not that we do what we feel works best for ourselves, but that we stick by the principles. I am not going to support putting some random goober's opinion of moral principle ahead of the consequences for live flesh and blood people. That's a form of "liberty" that, from one angle, looks suspiciously like theocracy. Absolutism creates intolerance, of the sort that leads to violence. Once you convince yourself that any other agenda is morally wrong and violates your rights, it's not that big a step to the conclusion that you have a right to use force on those trying to advance the opposing cause. If you listen to some hardcore Libertarians talking about rights to self-defense and defense of property, and the incompatibility of those rights with such things as taxation for government actions outside the limited role they envision, you almost start wondering what reason they'd give for not having taken up arms. Certainly the odious Objectivist branch of the Libertarian movement (the people who some Libertarians say are the ones making the rest of them look bad) are capable of embracing such arguments for violence, since similar ones are endorsed in their guru's novels. True political absolutism, if it gains power, is dangerous in another way, because no system of dogma is ever going to handle everything that comes up. The real world is bigger than the conception of it in our heads that we invent our rules from, and it always has ways to step outside of the pint-sized boxes we build for it. This means that sooner or later every absolutist will be confronted with some piece of reality that fails to fit his beliefs. When this happens, he can either deny reality, or alter his beliefs. But the latter means ceasing to be absolutist, so to remain a True Believer will inevitably require, sooner or later, pretending that certain facts are not real. Such instances of denial are not difficult for anyone to find in Libertarian discussion today.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

59 Coercion K

Libertarianism Decreases Freedom Turn: Libertarianism actually leads to less freedom Locke, Writer for The American Conservative, 05 (Robert, The American Conservative, “Marxism of the Right,” 3/14, http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html, date accessed: 6/7/08) Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny. Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more. This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

60 Coercion K

Libertarianism Ignores Consequences Libertarianism rejects the consequences of not paying taxes and relies on a deontological mode of thought Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 409-10) To put my thesis in more technical language, libertarian doctrine tries to unite consequentialist arguments about the harmful empirical effects of the modern state with nonconsequentialist arguments about the allegedly intrinsic evil of state regulation and redistribution. A purely consequentialist, “empirical” libertarianism could, on its own, largely accept as valid the meliorist aims listed by Cor— nude, challenging mainly whether the state is capable of achieving them without causing even worse problems. A purely nonconsequentialist, “philosophical” libertarianism,2 in contrast, views the modern state as intrinsically unjust, regardless of whether or not it actually rectifles the “abuses” of capitalism. This form of libertarianism cannot accept the notion that any end justifies the coercive means used by the redistributive, regulatory state. Such ends are therefore seen as illegitimate political goals, although they may be laudable objects of private, nonpolitical action. Why empirical and philosophical forms of argument should conflict with each other, and why libertarians nonetheless try to yoke them together, will be my chief concern,

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

61 Coercion K

Libertarianism Wrong – Positive Rights Non-consequentalist libertarianism rejects the idea of a positive right, allowing for atrocities to occur without moral backlash Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) Non-consequentialist libertarianism usually revolves around the claim that there are only “negative,” not “positive,” rights. Libertarian negative- rights theories are so patently problematic, though, that it seems that there is a more fundamental notion at work. Some libertarians think this basic idea is freedom or liberty; others, that it is self-ownership. Neither approach is satisfactory. The distinction between negative and positive rights is crucial to libertarian variants of rights theory. Sometimes this distinction is characterized in terms of the duties that correlate with rights. Jan Narveson (1988, 58), for example, distinguishes between negative and positive rights as follows:“‘A has the negative right against B to do X’ means ‘B has the duty to refrain from preventing A’s doing of X.’” In contrast, “‘A has the positive right against B to do X’ means ‘B has the duty to assist A to do X.’” While there is room for discussion about what it means to prevent somebody from doing something (e.g., do threats constitute prevention or not?), the concept of a negative right is nonetheless reasonably clear if the contrast with “positive rights” is kept in mind. Restraining someone in order to prevent her from eating is an infringement of her negative right to eat when she wants to (if that is indeed a right), while refusing to feed someone who wishes to eat but is unable to does not violate that same right, because negative rights create no positive duty to assist.

Libertarians ignore positive rights Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) Such a stringent distinction between the good—the content of which is what everyone has a right to decide for herself—and the right—which consists solely of the right not to be interfered with— may seem strangely artificial to those who have not been initiated into libertarian philosophy. One of the problems that libertarians face in defending their theory is that human intuitions do not uniformly support a system consisting of only negative and no positive rights. Neither do our intuitive values support a system of property rights that does not allow taxing the fortunate to provide, for example, for those who suffer from undeserved disadvantages.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

62 Coercion K

A2: Libertarianism Creates Social Equality Freedom is not created by a libertarian economy- it only has a risk of decreasing Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 410-11) That said, it must also be admitted that Conway’s argument for libertarianism fails. Conway does just about everything a philosopher could do for the utilitarian—libertarian cause, but it is in the nature of this cause that it must inevitably appeal to empirical claims, and the vindication of such claims requires more than philosophical expertise. The concern about capital formation just quoted is one example. It is true that if government redistribution of in come brought all saving to a halt, it would be disastrous, as Conway claims. But he adduces no evidence that the particular amount of redistributive taxation necessary to bring about income equality; or greater income equality, in a particular society would bring about such severe consequences. Only extremely high (“confiscatory”) levels of taxation would stop all saving. Short of that point—wherever it lies—Conway gives us no reason to believe that the addition to well-being that might be produced by shifting income from the most to the least advantaged would be outweighed by the depressing effect this might have on capital formation in a given time and place.

Alt fails: alternative causality outweighs their alternative, too many outside factors Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 414-15) First, it is facile to assume, as Murray does, that even if personal responsibility is essential to happiness, market and nonprofit activity are its essential manifestations. The ability to “make a good living” depends overwhelmingly on good luck—on dispositions, habits, and skills that an individual cannot acquire on her own, but is sometimes fortunate enough to acquire from others. Is it to the upper middleclass child’s credit that he enters an Ivy League university savvy in the ways of modern institutions, relatively welleducated, and organized enough to accomplish tasks and make short—term sacrifices? Is it the ghetto child’s fault that she emerges unskilled and illiterate from public school, bereft of self-discipline from a disintegrated family, or listless and afraid from 18 years in a housing project? Do people never lose their jobs because of a recession or a shift in market conditions for which they are not the cause; and do they never gain them because the talents and experiences they happen to have—or that they were able to acquire because of dispositions they were lucky enough to inherit or learn from others—position them well to take advantage of whatever the market now happens to value? F. A. Hayek (1976, 74) wisely realized that market outcomes cannot legitimately—or successfully— be defended on the basis of desert. Murray, by contrast, advocates, in effect, a return to Victorian psychology. His libertarianism is just as vulnerable as Victorianism was to the discovery that people are not, in fact, solely or even largely responsible for their good or ill fortune.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

63 Coercion K

Libertarianism Results in No Government Libertarianism concludes that anarchy is the only solution Kienitz, 06 (Paul, Gning, “I'm Still Not a Libertarian,” http://world.std.com/~mhuben/pk-is-against-liberty.html, date accessed: 7/10/08) There are psychological reasons outside the scope of this discussion why our culture has often promoted an attitude of "blaming the victim", of finding reasons why anyone who suffers misfortune must have somehow brought it on themselves. This attitude manifests in extreme cases as a magical belief that whatever happens to you is something that you "chose" unconsciously. Politics aside, I find this behavior repugnant and consider it a symptom of emotional unhealth, a defense mechanism that soothes fears at the expense of other people. When any political philosophy incorporates this attitude, that philosophy and I part company. This is especially true when, as has often been the case with Republicanstyle conservatism, this blaming attitude is put in the service of class interests and racial and sexist biases. The argument implies that the advantaged must have earned and created their advantage through merit, whereas the disadvantaged are in a worse position strictly because of their own inadequacy. The hypocrisy of this self-serving sanctimoniosity is obvious enough, I hope, to require no elaboration here. For anyone who believes in the principle I call the Libertarian Fallacy, it is difficult not to progress from there to some form of the it's-all-your-own-fault argument, and from there to a disregard for issues of unearned advantages held by a privileged class, race, or gender. Indeed, most Libertarians regard issues of discrimination as too intangible to support in their envisioned court system, which is usually described as being based on very clear and concrete rights focused on property. Since what I want for society is the best spread of opportunity as measured by the combination of F1 and F2, rather than by just one of them, and privilege issues greatly undercut F2 in ways that, despite smooth lies to the contrary, have nothing to do with what people have brought upon themselves, I conclude that the Libertarian agenda is not the one I want to support in this area. When taken to an extreme, this fallacy would lead to the conclusion that the ideal system is no laws at all. Libertarians do recognize that in order for people to be free in practice, there has to be some law to define and protect their individual rights. This is an implicit recognition that less law does not always mean more freedom. By granting a minimal recognition of this and giving it no further consideration, Libertarians have, in essence, tried to declare that the problem is solved simply because it is boxed in with no wiggle room. This gives a very definite answer to such questions, but that doesn't mean it's the most realistic answer. It's just the answer that is most satisfying to a mind that wants one simple set of rules to answer every question.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

64 Coercion K

Top-Down Libertarian Revolution Fails Alt fails: Libertarianism fails at the point of top to bottom revolution making Kienitz, 06 (Paul, Gning, “I'm Still Not a Libertarian,” http://world.std.com/~mhuben/pk-is-against-liberty.html, date accessed: 7/10/08) The first fallacy is one I call the Fallacy of Revolution. It can be found in any movement that seeks to radically revise the underpinnings of society, whether by abolishing money, imposing a theocracy, eliminating undesirable ethnic groups, repealing all law, organizing everyone's diet according to principles of macrobiotics, or whatever other secret of a perfect society any group comes up with. In particular, it comes up in exactly equal form among communists seeking to eliminate private property and anarcho-libertarians trying to do the opposite. The fallacy can be expressed more or less as follows: By making these radical changes, we are removing the root cause of all the failures and evils of society as it presently stands. This will eliminate all of the existing problems, and since we have no knowledge of what new problems might arise, we can assume there will be none. Everything will work right, because there are no foreseeable things that can go wrong. In other words, since we are removing the basis by which any problems already known to us can be predicted, there is no shortcoming of the new system that can be anticipated in advance. Therefore it is within the margin of error that there might not be any at all -- that we will achieve the perfect society. Once the possibility is apparent, someone who wants to believe in the system will find every argument to show that this is not just possible but inevitable. Every counterargument that occurs to nonbelievers is met by either a tortuous chain of logic showing how people, once "freed" of money or godlessness or mongrelization or law enforcement or nonmacrobiotic misbalance of yin and yang, would spontaneously take care of the problem in the best way, or an assertion that the difficulty the nonbeliever raises is not really a problem and it's morally right that it should not be solved. The advocate of the new system simply refuses to believe in anything going wrong with it. The more radical the change from the old way, and the less we know from experience about how things would really work under the new rules, the more unshakable this belief is. He can deal with any objections by dreaming up a simple answer that's plausible enough to satisfy himself, and then just promising everyone that it's sure to work. Nobody can prove it won't. (I have heard a Libertarian answer objections from a doubting friend with nothing more than "Trust me, it will all work out.") This is why top-to-bottom revolutions can have a special appeal that evolutionary change does not: because it's easy to think that maybe all problems might be solved.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

65 Coercion K

A2: Freedom Based Rights- Free Will is Never Lost Grounding rights in human freedom is flawed- free will is never lost Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) There are at least two closely related problems with grounding human rights in human freedom. The first problem is how psychological freedom, even if it is valuable, is related to the freedom that is the subject of practical philosophy. Or, to put it differently, why does interference with freedom of action count as interference with psychological freedom? The second problem is how freedom of action can be delimited in a way that does not presuppose the theory of rights one is trying to prove. To begin with the first problem: the link between freedom of the will and practical freedom is by no means an obvious one. A radical way of questioning the relationship between practical and psychological freedom would be to notice that the latter is not affected in many instances where the former is. Often when people’s freedom of action is abridged, their ability to “will freely” is not. Take as an example somebody who is physically prevented from taking certain actions: a prisoner. While her inability to leave her cell seems a straightforward case of unfreedom, there is no reason to think that this impinges on her capacity to will. So how, we may ask, could her right to freedom of action be grounded in a capacity to will that is not lost even if her freedom of action is? An obvious reply would be that the human will characteristically expresses itself in action, and consequently that the freedom that is relevant here is freedom to put one’s will into practice—freedom from interference. One difficulty about this reply, however, is that people are often made less free even while they are free to decide what to do. Consider the case of a treasure-bearing ship attacked by pirates, who say they will sink the ship unless its captain hands over the treasure. The captain obviously has a choice between handing over the treasure and letting the ship be sunk, and in this sense he is free to decide what to do. Nevertheless, it would seem to most of us that the pirate’s threat reduces the freedom of the captain. The captain may be free to choose between different options, but at least one option that was previously open to him—that of sailing further with the ship and the gold—is closed off by the pirates, and in this sense he is less free than he was before the pirates issued their threat. If so, then perhaps freedom should be construed in terms of the options open to somebody. As such, any state of affairs that I dislike and am unable to control could be considered unfree. Thus, I am unfree to run 60 miles per hour or to turn myself into a frog. Many libertarian philosophers would hold that natural causes may make one unable to do something, but not unfree to do it. But why should this be so? There is no difference—in terms of interference with acting upon one’s free will—between those instances when the options available are reduced by other people, and those when they are reduced by natural events (see, e.g.,Williams 1995, 4). Suppose that our ship were assaulted not by pirates but by a storm, and that to stay afloat, the captain had to throw the treasure overboard. In both this case and the last, the captain is forced to abandon the treasure in order to save the ship, but in the second case the source of the coercion is natural. This, according to libertarian authors, precludes counting the second case as truly coercive.Yet in neither case is there a loss of free will. In both examples, the effect of the situation is a decline in the range of actions open to the captain to act upon, regardless of what he wills. A libertarian could object that the extent to which freedom is affected by natural phenomena is irrelevant to the issue of rights, even if one allows that freedom of action is sometimes diminished by natural phenomena—if for no other reason than that it is senseless to speak of rights against inanimate objects or forces to which a duty of noninterference cannot be applied. Thus, it is only where one’s ability to act on the basis of one’s free will can be curtailed or enlarged by other persons that it is proper to speak of a right to freedom.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

66 Coercion K

A2: Freedom Outweighs All Libertarianism denies emotional satisfaction outside that of freedom. Locke, Writer for The American Conservative, 05 (Robert, The American Conservative, “Marxism of the Right,” 3/14, http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html, date accessed: 6/7/08) The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill. Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

67 Coercion K

A2: Negative Freedom Based Rights- Circular Logic Fails Libertarianism based in rights is circular- freedom as the basis of rights constitutes a necessity for a previously existing conception of freedom Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) A second problem is that since libertarianism doesn’t say that anyone can do whatever she wants—it does not allow one person to murder another—there must be a way to discriminate between those acts that are a legitimate exercise of freedom and those acts that are not. The question is again whether the notion of “freedom” can provide us with a criterion to make such a distinction (LaFolette 1979). Traditionally, libertarians have answered this question by saying that people are entitled to the most extensive freedom compatible with a similar freedom for all. So libertarianism doesn’t allow me to murder my neighbor because doing so would destroy her freedom. (One might well ask whether that is really the problem with killing somebody!) We already have reason to doubt the merit of this response, however, since some acts that do limit other people’s freedom, like enclosing a forest, are nevertheless considered legitimate by libertarians. The libertarian might respond that in prohibiting others from using his forest, the owner is not interfering with other people’s freedom at all, since these other people do not have a right to enter the forest in the first place (Cohen 1991, 167–72). It is easy to see the circularity in this response. If freedom is the basis of rights (or is the reason that people have rights), our conception of freedom must circumscribe the exercise of legitimate freedom in terms other than those of pre-existing rights.We cannot rely on a prior theory of property rights to decide whether some act encroaches on other people’s freedom—since according to the libertarian, freedom just is freedom to use one’s property, as defined by one’s property rights. Another, more plausible, defense of a right to exclude others from walking in the forest would start by invoking a purposive conception of freedom. Not all acts that we could possibly perform are equally important. The residents of London are far more often hindered by traffic lights when going to work than the average Chinese peasant is hindered in practicing his preferred religion. Still, we would not consider England less free than China, because the freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice is considered more important than the freedom not to be hindered by traffic lights when going to work.10 However, once one relies on a purposive conception of freedom to defend property rights, the argument ceases to be liberty-based in the sense necessary to produce a compelling account of libertarian property rights. The problem is once again that something other than liberty— in this case, the importance of religion—is taken to be basic; freedom is not (Kymlicka 1990, 141–45). The importance of some purpose for which freedom might be used should presumably be balanced against other purposes, and the result will not be a system of absolute property rights meant to preserve indifferently the freedom to pursue any purpose. These difficulties suggest that it is not freedom as non-constraint of options, or freedom to do what one wants, or anything similar, that libertarians have in mind when they say either that they are in favor of the most extensive equal freedom for all, or that their doctrine requires people to respect other people’s freedom. I would like to suggest that the conception of freedom underlying libertarianism is instead the longstanding idea, fundamental to much of the natural-rights tradition, that people—because they are endowed with free will—have a kind of normative authority.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

68 Coercion K

A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Rothbard Flawed Rothbard’s analysis is flawed- empirical reality proves Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) The tendency to ground natural rights in a human need (e.g., the need to control one’s body) has been well expressed by Murray Rothbard. He begins his proof of the necessity of natural rights by distinguishing between human nature and the nature of other living beings: While the behavior of plants and at least the lower animals is determined by their biological nature or perhaps by their “instincts,” the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. Violent interference with a person’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly “antihuman”; it violates the natural law of human needs (Rothbard 1978, 27). From the natural law thus derived, it follows that each person has the absolute right “by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to ‘own’ his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference.” It further follows that each person must be able to acquire control over externalities (ibid., 28, 30–37). As with the contractarian version of libertarianism, a bit of reflection about empirical realities is enough to reveal the defects in Rothbard’s claim about human nature. Many people do survive without ever acquiring private property.Moreover, it remains a mystery why some amount of “coercive interference” (such as the imposition of an income tax) is incompatible with people’s “learning about cause and effect,” with purposive action, or with being “free to act upon his knowledge and values” with the remainder of one’s property.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

69 Coercion K

A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Hegel Flawed Hegel’s philosophy is flawed- only proves importance, not necessity of private property Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) The best-developed theory I know that builds a justification of private property on a specifically human need—proposed by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right—is often thought to be profoundly antiliberal, and certainly does not sustain inviolate property rights.9 Hegel defends what has been called a “developmental thesis” about the connection between individual freedom and private property (Patten 1999, 140; see also Stillman 1980). According to this approach, the rationale behind private property is that it provides the property holder with a concrete perception of his agency, and in this way helps to constitute her as a free person. One problem with this defense, as Allen Patten (1999, 149) has suggested, is that the argument—even if it succeeds—would demonstrate only that private property is a sufficient condition for developing and sustaining one’s personality. But, as with Rothbard’s argument, Hegel’s is hardly sufficient to demonstrate the superiority of private property over other kinds of property arrangements that might accomplish the same objective.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

70 Coercion K

A2: Negative Freedom based rights- Fichte Flawed Fichte’s argument is inconclusive- efficacy can be determined despite lack of ownership Van Duffel, 04 (Siegfried "Libertarian Natural Rights.", Critical Review Vol. 16, Issue 4 (December 2004) pp. 353-375) Fichte’s argument for private property might seem to remedy that problem. He contends that “original [or natural] right is the absolute right of the person to be only a cause in the sensible world” (Fichte 2000, 103). He maintains that in order to become self-conscious, one has to distinguish oneself from other human beings “through opposition,” and that this can be done only if one can distinguish one’s own efficacy from that of others. This, in turn, requires that one have a sphere in which she alone exercises efficacy. “Only in this way can the subject posit itself as an absolute free being, as the sole ground of something; only in this way can it separate itself completely from the free being outside it and ascribe efficacy to itself alone” (ibid., 39–40). There are several difficulties with Fichte’s argument. Most importantly, it is not self-evident that private property is essential for developing awareness of one’s efficacy.While repairing shoes, a cobbler has a sense of the effect of his actions; it does not matter whether he owns the shoe or not.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

71 Coercion K

Negative Freedom Bad – Reduces Freedom/Equality Turn: Libertarian’s own moral constraints limit personal freedom without consent LaFollette, Cole Chair in Ethics University of South Florida, 79 (Hugh, Justice and Economic Distribution, "Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken,” http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/Libertar.htm, date accessed: 7/10/08) The problem with libertarianism can be seen once we recognize the limitations that negative rights (libertarian constraints) themselves place on individual liberty. Suppose, for example, that I am the biggest and strongest guy on the block. My size is a natural asset, a physical trait I inherited and then developed. But can I use my strength and size any way I please? No! At least not morally. Though I am physically capable of pummeling the peasants, pillaging property, and ravishing women, I am not morally justified in doing so. My freedom is restricted without my consent. I didn't make a contract with the property owners or the women; I didn't promise not to rap, rob, or rape. Just the same, morally I cannot perform these actions and others can justifiably prohibit me from performing them. Consequently, everyone's life is not, given the presence of negative general rights and negative general duties, free from the interference of others. The "mere" presence of others imposes duties on each of us, it limits everyone's freedom. In fact, these restrictions are frequently extensive. For example, in the previously described case I could have all of the goods I wanted; I could take what I wanted, when I wanted. To say that such actions are morally or legally impermissible significantly limits my freedom, and my "happiness," without my consent. Of course I am not saying these restrictions are bad. Obviously they aren't. But it does show that the libertarian fails to achieve his major objective, namely, to insure that an individual's freedom cannot be limited without his consent. The libertarian's own moral constraints limit each person's freedom without consent.7 This is even more vividly seen when we look at an actual historical occurrence. In the nineteenth century American slaveholders were finally legally coerced into doing what they were already morally required to do: free their slaves. In many cases this led to the slave owners' financial and social ruin: they lost their farms, their money, and their power. Of course they didn't agree to their personal ruin; they didn't agree to this restriction on their freedom. Morally they didn't have to consent; it was a remedy long overdue. Even the libertarian would agree. The slave holders' freedom was justifiably restricted by the presence of other people; the fact that there were other persons limited their acceptable alter natives. But that is exactly what the libertarian denies. Freedom, he claims, cannot be justifiably restricted without consent. In short, the difficulty in this: the libertarian talks as if there can be no legitimate non-consensual limitations on freedom, yet his very theory involves just such limitations. Not only does this appear to be blatantly inconsistent, but even if he could avoid this inconsistency, there appears to be no principled way in which he can justify only his theory's non-consensual limitations on freedom.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

72 Coercion K

Negative Rights Flawed Turn: The concept of negative rights revolves around constrictions on liberty John Arthur and William Shaw 1979 “Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken" by Hugh LaFollette In John Arthur and William Shaw (eds) Justice and Economic Distribution, 194-206. The problem with libertarianism can be seen once we recognize the limitations that negative rights (libertarian constraints) themselves place on individual liberty. Suppose, for example, that I am the biggest and strongest guy on the block. My size is a natural asset, a physical trait I inherited and then developed. But can I use my strength and size any way I please? No! At least not morally. Though I am physically capable of pummeling the peasants, pillaging property, and ravishing women, I am not morally justified in doing so. My freedom is restricted without my consent. I didn't make a contract with the property owners or the women; I didn't promise not to rap, rob, or rape. Just the same, morally I cannot perform these actions and others can justifiably prohibit me from performing them. Consequently, everyone's life is not, given the presence of negative general rights and negative general duties, free from the interference of others. The "mere" presence of others imposes duties on each of us, it limits everyone's freedom. In fact, these restrictions are frequently extensive. For example, in the previously described case I could have all of the goods I wanted; I could take what I wanted, when I wanted. To say that such actions are morally or legally impermissible significantly limits my freedom, and my "happiness," without my consent. Of course I am not saying these restrictions are bad. Obviously they aren't. But it does show that the libertarian fails to achieve his major objective, namely, to insure that an individual's freedom cannot be limited without his consent. The libertarian's own moral constraints limit each person's freedom without consent.7 This is even more vividly seen when we look at an actual historical occurrence. In the nineteenth century American slaveholders were finally legally coerced into doing what they were already morally required to do: free their slaves. In many cases this led to the slave owners' financial and social ruin: they lost their farms, their money, and their power. Of course they didn't agree to their personal ruin; they didn't agree to this restriction on their freedom. Morally they didn't have to consent; it was a remedy long overdue. Even the libertarian would agree. The slave holders' freedom was justifiably restricted by the presence of other people; the fact that there were other persons limited their acceptable alter natives. But that is exactly what the libertarian denies. Freedom, he claims, cannot be justifiably restricted without consent. In short, the difficulty in this: the libertarian talks as if there can be no legitimate non-consensual limitations on freedom, yet his very theory involves just such limitations. Not only does this appear to be blatantly inconsistent, but even if he could avoid this inconsistency, there appears to be no principled way in which he can justify only his theory's nonconsensual limitations on freedom. This theoretical difficulty is extremely important. First, the libertarian objections against redistribution programs (like those practiced in the welfare state) are weakened, if not totally disarmed. His ever-present objection to these programs has always been that they are unjust because they are non-consensual limitations on freedom. However, as I have shown, libertarian constraints themselves demand such limitations. Therefore, that cannot be a compelling reason for rejecting welfare statism unless it is also a compelling reason for rejecting libertarianism. Secondly, once we see that justice demands certain non-consensual limitations on someone (X's) freedom, there seems to be no good reason for concluding (and good reason not to conclude) that X's freedom can be limited only by negative general duties. There seems to be no reason, for example, for concluding that X's freedom to make $l million should not be restricted to aid other people, e.g., to give some workers enough funds to help them escape the de facto slavery in which they find themselves. Think of it this way. Liberty, for the libertarian, is negative in nature. An individual's liberty is restricted whenever (and only if) his potential actions are restricted. This is essentially a Hobbesian view of liberty. So imagine with Hobbes and some libertarians that individuals are seen as initially being in a state of perfect freedom. In such a state, Hobbes claims, "nothing can be just. Right and wrong have there no place."8 To introduce right and wrong of any sort is to put moral limitations on individual freedom. To that extent, everyone's freedom is restricted. Each person has an external impediment--a moral rule which can be coercively enforced--against doing some action A (and actions relevantly like A). Therefore, to introduce negative general rights and duties, as the libertarian does, is to admit that there are non-consensual limitations on freedom.

↓ Continued ↓

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

73 Coercion K

Negative Rights Flawed ↑ Arthur and Shaw Continued ↑ And these limits--as I argued--are sometimes significant and far-reaching. They arise--and this is crucial-without consent; each person has them simply because he is a person. Now if one's freedom can be limited without consent by negative rights, then it is unreasonable to hold that these are the only limitations on freedom which can legitimately arise without consent. This is particularly apparent when we realize that in a number of cases the limitations on freedom imposed by negative duties are more--even much more--than limitations which would be imposed if some claims of positive rights or duties were recognized. For example, forcing a slaveholder to free his slaves would limit his freedom more than would a law forcing him to pay ten percent of his salary to educate and provide health care for his slaves. Or forcing Hitler to not take over the world (in other words, forcing him to recognize others' negative rights) would limit his freedom more extensively than would forcing him to support, by his taxes, some governmental welfare program. Yet the libertarian concludes that redistribution of income is unjust since it limits the taxed person's liberty without his consent. If redistribution is unjust for that reason, then so are libertarian constraints. Libertarian constraints also limit personal liberty without consent. The libertarian might attempt to immediately avoid my conclusion by claiming that there is a principled difference between redistribution of income and libertarian constraints such that the former is never a justified restriction of liberty while the latter is always justified. For although both do limit personal liberty without consent, he might argue, libertarian constraints only restrict liberty in order to protect individual rights. And it is the protection of personal rights which justifies these, and only these, non-consensual restrictions on liberty. However, this reply won't do. For as I have stated, any libertarian conception of rights is itself grounded in--justified by reference to--personal liberty. Or, as Eric Mack puts it, they are grounded in the right not to be coerced.9 Hence, given my preceding argument, there is no principled way that concerns for personal liberty could generate only libertarian rights and duties, since negative rights restrict liberty as much as, or more than, would some positive rights or duties. Consequently, appeals to personal rights cannot provide the libertarian with a principled basis for distinguishing between types of non-consensual limitations on liberty. We have uncovered a very telling incoherence. We have taken the main libertarian weapon against welfare statism and turned it on itself. The once so-sharp sword is seen to have two sides. Instead of menacing the enemy, the sword only frustrates its wielder. As everyone knows, two edged swords cut both ways. The libertarian is unable to support his conception of the minimal state. At least some redistribution of tax monies is justified.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

74 Coercion K

A2: Moral Imperative Comes First Their moral imperatives revolve around a flawed libertarian method- consequences must be evaluated first to escape the cycle Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 435-436) The effect of libertarian straddling on libertarian scholarship is suggested by a passage in the scholarly appendix to Boaz’s collection of libertarian essays, The Libertarian Reader. There, Tom G. Palmer (also of the Cato Institute) writes that in libertarian scholarship, “the moral imperatives of peace and voluntary cooperation are brought together with a rich understanding of the spontaneous order made possible by such voluntary cooperation, and of the ways in which coercive intervention can disorder the world and set in motion complex trains of unintended consequences” (Boaz r997b, 416, emphasis added). Palmer’s ambiguous “brought together” suggests (without coming right out and saying) that even if there were no rich understanding of spontaneous order, libertarianism would be sustained by “moral imperatives?’ But in that case, why develop the rich understanding of spontaneous order in the first place, and why emphasize its importance now that it has been developed? Spontaneous order is, on Palmer’s own terms, irrelevant, since even if a rich understanding of it yielded the conclusion that markets are less orderly or less spontaneous than states, or that the quality of the order they produce is inferior to that produced by states, we would still be compelled to be libertarians by moral imperatives. The premise of the philosophical approach is that nothing can possibly trump freedom-cum-private property. But if libertarian freedom is an end in itself and is the greatest of all values, one’s endorsement of it should not be affected in the slightest by such empirical questions as whether libertarianism would spell starvation or warfare. The premise of the empirical approach is, conversely, that such consequences do matter. Why investigate the effects of libertarianism if they could not conceivably outweigh the putative intrinsic value of private property? If a priori reasoning tells us that laissez—faire capitalism is just, come what may, then why should we care to find out what may, in fact, come?

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

75 Coercion K

A2: Must Reject Coercion in Every Instance Libertarian economists cannot prove why every instance of taxation is bad- consequences must be evaluated to make the distinction Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 449-450) Kelley’s book serves this purpose by placing the two mainstays of contemporary libertarian consequentialism—spontaneous order theory and public choice theory—into, the context of a general ferment of free-market ideas that bubbled up in the middle of the century. Kelley shows that, at the same moment when the left was also beginning to repudiate bureaucratic statism (in principle, at least), Hayek, Buchanan, and Tullock were only a few of those who challenged the burgeoning postwar megastate from the right. Among the others were Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase, George Stigler, Harold Demsetz, Yale Brozen, G. Warren Nutter, Gary Becker, and Sam Peltzman, all of the University of Chicago. The first thing to notice about this list is that every one of its members was an economist by training (Tullock receiving economics training as part of the Chicago law program). The roots of libertarianism were fundamentally economic— hence consequentialist. Hayek was an economist who cut his teeth in the debate between Ludwig von Mises and the socialist economists of the 1920S; Nozick became a libertarian only after being convinced that the Mises-Hayek critique of socialism was lethal. But the second thing to notice is that the resurgence of freemarket economics was insufficient to create libertarianism, even though it was absolutely necessary. All of the painstaking research of Chicago- and Austrian-school economists could not explain why every government regulation, let alone every government redistribution of wealth, would necessarily do more harm than good. This is the aspiration, in effect, of universalist public choice theory and of the exaggerated claims now made for spontaneous order. But neither these nor any other consequentialist arguments convincingly closed the gap between a general predisposition for free markets and the rigid libertarian refusal to deviate from them under any circumstances.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

76 Coercion K

A2: Weigh Coercion First- Consequentialist Framework Key Policy must be viewed through a consequentialist framework- slipping into the libertarian mindset only recreates the root cause of the affirmative harms Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 458-459) On the one hand, the reclamation of the Enlightenment legacy can lead in far more directions than the political—science path I have suggested. It is surely important to launch anthropological, economic, historical, sociological, and psychological investigations of the preconditions of human happiness. And postlibertarian cultural historians and critics are uniquely positioned to analyze the unstated assumptions that take the place of the requisite knowledge in determining democratic attitudes. A prime candidate would seem to be the overwhelming focus on intentions as markers for the desirability of a policy. If a policy is well intended, this is usually taken to be a decisive consideration in its favor. This heuristic might explain the moralism that observers since Tocqueville have noticed afflicts democratic cultures. To date, this phenomenon is relatively unexplored. Analogous opportunities for insightful postlibertarian research can be found across the spectrum of political behavior. What is nationalism, for example, if not a device that helps an ignorant public navigate the murky waters of politics by applying a simple “us-versus-them” test to any proposed policy? Pursuit of these possibilities, however, must be accompanied by awareness of the degeneration of postwar skepticism into libertarian ideology. If the post-libertarian social scientist yields to the hope of re-establishing through consequentialist research the antigovernment politics that has until now been sustained by libertarian ideology; she will only recreate the conditions that have served to retard serious empirical inquiry. It is fashionable to call for political engagement by scholars and to deny the possibility that one can easily isolate one’s work from one’s political sympathies. But difficulty is no excuse for failing to try. Libertarians have even less of an excuse than most, since, having for so long accused the intellectual mainstream of bias and insulation from refutation, they should understand better than anyone the importance of subverting one’s own natural intellectual complacency with the constant reminder that one might be wrong. The only remedy for the sloppiness that has plagued libertarian scholarship is to become one’s own harshest critic. This means thinking deeply and skeptically about one’s politics and its premises and, if one has libertarian sympathies, directing one’s scholarship not at vindicating them, but at finding out if they are mistaken.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

77 Coercion K

A2: We Are “Libertarian Consequentialists” Libertarian consequentialism does not exist- the arguments are contradictory Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 435-436) There is a deeper problem with the consequentialist approach, however, than the fact that there seems to be, at the present moment, no adequate consequentialist reason for favoring libertarianism. This is that consequentialism is inherently an “at the present moment” proposition. Even if there were some reason to think that all government action has bad consequences, an empirical claim of this sort is, by nature, open to falsification in the future. So libertarian consequentialists could never rest easy. They would always have to keep an open mind; for them, the task of studying the changing world would never end. They could never be sure that new observations would not demand new political conclusions. They would, accordingly, have to maintain much more psychological distance between themselves and their politics than libertarians are accustomed to. Consequentialism is conducive to scholarship and to scholarly habits of mind, not to ideology and political crusading.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2008 Lacy/Symonds/Bowen

78 Coercion K

A2: Libertarianism is Consistent With Consequentialism The attempt to harmonize consequentialism and libertarianism is impossible Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University 97 (Jefferey, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pg 447-448) Of the “explosion of libertarian scholarship” symbolized by those 900-plus publications, then, probably at least half consists of “tenure articles”—sophisticated careerist exercises in mathematical modeling by young economists, or brilliant additions to liberal (not classical liberal) theory by young political philosophers: not libertarian scholarship, but “cutting-edge” ephemera that is valuable as another line on one’s vita, not because it makes important breakthroughs or is widely influential. Even the scholarship that is libertarian in content is often inconsequential, the better to serve the careerist imperative to publish trendy trivia or perish. This helps explain why there has been no increase in the quality or impact of libertarian ideas that would correspond to the growing quality and quantity of libertarian scholars. Or at least, so it seems to an attentive observer of libertarian scholarship and scholarship by libertarians. Libertarian scholars may dispute this judgment, but I would ask them: What have libertarian scholars of the last 2o years produced that is both relevant to libertarianism and of lasting value? 10 It is one thing to list various topics that libertarian scholars have written about; it is quite another to tell us how these writings have fundamentally changed our understanding of the issues in question. When we put the consequentialist-nonconsequentialist symbiosis in historical perspective we can, I think, get a clearer picture of why libertarian scholarship is (arguably) so disappointing. At the same time, we might be able to explain the curious codependence of libertarian philosophers on inadequate libertarian economics, and of libertarian economists on inadequate libertarian philosophy. Kel— Icy’s Bringing the Market Back In, while long on description and short on analysis, gives us the raw materials we need to sketch the historical roots of the libertarian dilemma.