This is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. According to this logic, a doctor specializing in gunshot wounds only “deserves” his pay if he is the one who shot his patients?

Am I missing something here?

Not every Microsoft millionaire deserved their fortune. At most, a few hundred smart and ruthless people made Microsoft the giant it is now.

And not everyone at Enron was a crook. Again, at most there were maybe fifty incredibly greedy people who tubed what was then the seventh largest company in America. Yet over 10,000 people lost their jobs and their pensions.

All she said was, given that capitalism is at times unfair, and always uncetain, people should have insurance against financial misfortune. And she argues that those who are too poor to buy this insurance…should have it bought for them.

Same thing goes if I am running a business. If I have made fixed and working capital investment and the expected demand does not materialize then I will be the one who will be suffering the loss of capital. Therefore, if demand is much more than expected and I make a fortune, I completely deserve the outcome.

I think this is far from obvious. If I were a nuclear physicist and agreed to build several nuclear weapons for Osama bin Laden and sign a contract by which he promises to give me one city out of the several he would blackmail out of Iraq with those weapons, and then I build him the weapons, I think it would be wrong to say that I deserve that city. It might be right to say that he has a contractual obligation to give me the city, and perhaps even to use the coercion he promised in order to get the city for me, but that doesn’t seem to give me any moral desert. Unless I understand “deserve” in a much different way than you.

Of course, this isn’t the sort of situation Andersen is talking about, but I think it shows that the point you make isn’t a reductio.

And of course, as I recall, she also doesn’t make “the fundamental redistributivist error” - the point of her post is merely to show that saying “I deserve my income” isn’t a valid argument against taxation. She hasn’t yet gone on to make any positive arguments in favor of the justifications of taxation. She’s just (so far) writing a series of posts about arguments that don’t actually turn out to have force preventing it. If she’s established that I don’t deserve my income, I think she will still concede that she hasn’t yet established that anyone has the right to take that income away.

Who deserved the fortune more than the people who voluntarily contracted for it? Life is indeed unfair. But that alone doesn’t demonstrate that we could make life more fair by stealing lucky people’s money.

All she said was, given that capitalism is at times unfair, and always uncetain, people should have insurance against financial misfortune. And she argues that those who are too poor to buy this insurance…should have it bought for them.

What’s stopping you, Elizabeth and anyone else who thinks this is a worthy cause from acting on this perceived injustice by going out and buying insurance for poor people?

Of course, Will is talking about contracts with no externalities. Everyone agrees that externalities play an important part in the legitimacy of contracts.

I have not yet read Elizabeth Anderson’s post (and based on her previous two poorly reasoned apologies for taxation, I doubt I’m missing much), but if Will’s reformulation is an accurate description, it doesn’t seem like she is making any reference to externalities. This looks more like pure, unadulterated confiscation. (Or a prelude to unadulterated confiscation, pace your last paragraph)

I’m glad you are able to remind us that all taxes are theft using the government built internet from your government funded school.

As you say, of course Will is talking about contracts with no externalities. When you get out into the real world, you will discover that such a creature doesn’t exist.

The fact that the government decided to steal some taxpayers’ dollars and use it to fund basic research (which I did not ask it or want it to do, by the way) in no way precludes my use of technologies that take advantage of some of that research, but would undeniably exist in some similar form today regardless.

We aren’t talking about the “real world” here; we are talking about the logical veracity of the above mentioned left2right post, which, until someone corrects me otherwise, is not about externalities. Further, when you get out into the real world, you will discover that such a creature as a government which can solve more public goods problems (of which externalities are a type) than it creates does not exist. Rational ignorance of the electorate, of course, being the largest public goods problem of all.

Everyone starts out life thinking they are going to get rich, win the noble prize, be well respected for their sharp wit, etc. In reality, a very small percentage of people reach these goals. It’s easy to be a libertarian when you are young.

If the odds hold, even 2/3 of libertarians will be dependant on Social Security to live when they retire. Social Security is there to protect them from their irrational exuberence.

I know, I know, you and Will really are special…

Right, the argument is that you can’t object to taxes because you don’t deserve your income. I argue that one obviously can deserve one’s income, and that Anderson’s thoughts about labor prices fail to establish otherwise. How is that off the mark?

Still, markets ARE incomplete, you can’t foresee all the downside and cannot insure against all you would wish too. This is the universe we live in, which makes room for a government to provide the so-called social net. This is the point for taxation that is not being addressed. see?
(as I understand it, at least)

The claim “I deserve my income,” as applied to an individual’s pretax income in free market economies, has considerable intuitive force. If true, it suggests a powerful moral claim against taxation for redistributive purposes, on the intuitively plausible supposition that a just economic order ought to ensure that people get what they morally deserve.

And then she’s arguing: not true, right?

I’m not arguing that there “I deserve it” is a sufficient argument against taxation. I’m arguing that Anderson fails to undermine the “I deserve it” argument on the terms she sets for herself and thus fails with this argument to undermine the intuitive “powerful moral claim against taxation for redistributive purposes.”