[TheCoelacanth]

> The state of nature is no tax

The state of nature is no property. Billionaires can't exist without a government enforcing their property rights. Why shouldn't they pay the entity that made it possible for them to accumulate their vast wealth?

[bluGill]

The state of nature is it is your property so long as you can protect it. There are lots of different ways to do that. Many animals have concepts of owned territory which they protect in various ways.

[jncfhnb]

And you principally protect your property by… wait for it… paying taxes to the state to uphold law and order

[mmcdermott]

While I'm sure that someone somewhere objects to paying for law and order, I think most tax grumbling comes from taxes rising (and, arguably, still not rising enough) to pay for bigger and bigger programs with an increasingly tenuous relationship to law or order. Not everyone objects to every line item, of course, but the bigger the budget gets the more certain it becomes that those rising taxes are not just to keep up with inflation on basic essentials.

[arrosenberg]

> I think most tax grumbling comes from taxes rising (and, arguably, still not rising enough) to pay for bigger and bigger programs with an increasingly tenuous relationship to law or order.

The Constitution addresses this confusion in its' preamble. The role of the government includes law and maintaining order, but it extends further -

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

[AnthonyMouse]

A perfectly valid way of reading "promote the general welfare" is as a constraint on the government, i.e. it shouldn't do anything not consistent with that premise, not that it's empowered to do anything that is. The latter would be inconsistent with the overall architecture of the constitution as setting out a government of enumerated powers.

But the preamble to the constitution isn't legally binding anyway.

[arrosenberg]

Even if you read it that way, it's not really a constraint. If I believe socialized healthcare improves the general welfare, then even your reading implies that it's something the government should be allowed to do. Maybe you don't think that should be it's overriding purpose, but I don't see how it constrains. If they wanted to be more specific, they could have been.

> But the preamble to the constitution isn't legally binding anyway.

No one said it was, but the intent of the framers, at least, is very clear - the government should do things that promote the general welfare, not merely establishing rule of law and enforcing civil order.

[jncfhnb]

Yes that is the nature of compromise

[mmcdermott]

Agreed, but the post above draws a direct line between a taxes and basic law and order, but one could support scaling back any number of taxes and spending programs without opposing or endangering law and order.

[jncfhnb]

You don’t get the law and order unless the government is able to derive power from an accepting populace.

[bluGill]

That is not the state of nature though. There are "primitive" societies that don't organize their village that way. Social pressures and you working alone are enough to protect your property when the total population to worry about is around 100 people.

We use taxes because nature doesn't scale to towns of 1000, much less nations of millions. But that is not the state of nature.

[Wytwwww]

The concept of property (the way we understand it i.e. all the stuff besides of a handful of personal items) is not something that generally exists or existed in "primitive" societies.

i.e. you can't really "own" more land than you and your family can personally farm and extract rent on it without a state to protect your claim.

[TheCoelacanth]

And even much later under feudalism, property as we know it didn't really exist. Land (essentially the only productive asset that existed) was owned by the government, but the government was a loose network of aristocrats instead of a faceless state.

[fluoridation]

You can if you can convince others to protect it for you.

[lazide]

Eh, the oldest form of government is a Kingdom.

If a government won’t enforce others rights to property, eventually someone is going to form a government where everyone’s things are theirs eh? Since what other option do they have if they want to own something.

[jacobolus]

That's fine. Such people can renounce their citizenship and pay the required exit tax, convert all their assets to gold bars or whatever, and go move somewhere in the world without a functioning state, where they can hire a private militia, build their own basic infrastructure, etc.

[lazide]

why would they do that when they can take over the gov’t and steal everyone else’s stuff? (see Russia, Venezula, China, and many others)

Notably, the biggest thefts seem to happen when they can convince people that the gov’t is doing it for ‘the good of the people’, and they’re ‘going after the rich people’, and then they can pocket it when no one is looking.

[jacobolus]

In the USA it's mostly "the rich people" and extremely profitable corporations who have captured parts of the government and figured out ways to corruptly siphon money out of the rest of the economy into their own pockets.

This is a reason why we need better anti-corruption legislation, an end of the "super PAC", much higher inheritance taxes with fewer loopholes, and structural reforms to fix a profoundly corrupt Supreme Court.

[lazide]

Sure, but that isn’t what the comment I was replying to was saying, was it?

Also, a lot of what you’re describing seems like regulatory capture.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Given that most billionaires have their billions as imaginary ownership of gigantic corporations, how exactly would someone steal their shares from them such that government needs to enforce their property rights? Can I just walk up to the bank and say "hey, I have $100 billion worth of Facebook stock, gibs me da money"? You know, but for the feds swooping in (or possibly the Delaware state troopers) and shutting that down?

The government may indeed enforce property rights in a meaningful way, but it doesn't seem like it's doing this for billionaires.

> Why shouldn't they pay the entity that made it possible for them to accumulate their vast wealth?

If this were indeed a true description of how that process occurs, why are you so comfortable with letting the government "make that possible"? Where in the Constitution (or even common law) does it grant the government this power?

[Wytwwww]

> Can I just walk up to the bank and say "hey, I have $100 billion worth of Facebook stock, gibs me da money"?

No, but assuming you are on Facebook's board / in upper management you can conspire with the rest of the board to get rid of Zuckerberg (possibly permanently) and share the company amongst yourself.

ARM China seems like somewhat close example of what can happen when there is no government willing to protect property rights. e.g. as long as he has enough local support a CEO of your subsidiary could just take over the entity and there would be nothing you can do about it.

IMHO we'd end up with some dystopian form of Cyberpunk style techno feudalism without strong governments regulating everything. Which in theory might be a good thing for the corporations themselves, just not for most of the people who are currently running them.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> No, but assuming you are on Facebook's board / in upper management you can conspire with the rest of the board to get rid of Zuckerberg (possibly permanently) and share the company amongst yourself.

Yes, if you want to oust him and take over as CEO, then boards of directors have that power. But that's more about his job security. When he leaves, he leaves with just as much stock as he ever had, and in the case of some termination clauses in contracts for that stuff, he walks away with more than he walked in with.

With the government out of the picture, this doesn't much change. If the board of directors tries to confiscate shares or some equivalent (I dunno, withholding dividends? Does Facebook even pay dividends?), then their stock price tanks immediately. Somewhere down near $0. Their financing falls apart shortly after that, and pretty soon the company goes under. The punishment for some group stealing Facebook isn't government goons stepping in and bashing skulls, it's in the complicated structures that make it worthless just about as soon as it's stolen.

I think your Chinese example is quite the opposite of this. The government of China basically has to step in and allow ARM China to pull such a stunt, or it's impossible.

[Wytwwww]

> Somewhere down near $0.

> complicated structures

I guess. But I just don't see how could the stock market (in its current form) or most of those complicated structures exist without governments. Of course it's a silly discussion since Facebook in its current form (including corporate and ownership structure) wouldn't be a thing without all of that.

> in the complicated structures that make it worthless just about as soon as it's stolen.

Facebook is still highly profitable, arguably without any government regulation it could be even more profitable. Why share any of that value with the shareholders who can't really sue you or do anything else? Sure if you did that nobody would trust you if you started a new company and were looking for investors (which is why Facebook wouldn't exist in the first place in a system that allows that) but that doesn't really matter if the government suddenly disappeared.

Not saying that Facebook's upper management would immediately try pulling off something like that it's just seems like the natural long-term outcome. Political/social instability is usually already priced in, so FBs valuation would collapse just because something like that became an option regardless of Meta's/FB's intentions. At that point the cost of "confiscating" shares or similar shenanigans wouldn't really be that high since being in direct control of the company would be worth a whole lot more than owning some theoretical share of it.

> allow ARM China to pull such a stunt, or it's impossible.

Why? What could ARM/Softbank do if their Chinese subsidiary decided to just ignore them while continuing to use their IP. Of course their whole business model couldn't exist in the first without any way to enforce contracts since the companies actually manufacturing the chips would just steal that IP themselves.

[ForHackernews]

> ...most billionaires have their billions as imaginary ownership of gigantic corporations

Exactly. The entire notion of their wealth is predicated on an elaborate system of law and governance! Otherwise, it's all just freaking numbers on a computer.

[nemothekid]

>Given that most billionaires have their billions as imaginary ownership of gigantic corporations, how exactly would someone steal their shares from them such that government needs to enforce their property rights?

You have it backwards. "imaginary ownership of gigantic corporations" doesn't exist without government. The government doesn't "protect" Zuckerbergs shares, the government is the vehicle that gives Zuckerbergs shares value. Without the government Zuckerberg's billions is worthless.

In this fairytale world where Zuckerberg is somehow made a persona non grata, then all his shares would become worthless as he wouldn't be able to sell them, nor would he be able to enforce Facebook (the entity) to do anything on his behalf.

[tsimionescu]

Imagine the government went away tomorrow. Would Mark Zuckerberg's employees keep giving him any kind of money for the work they are doing? Would they even give Facebook money, or would they just emit invoices with their own bank accounts as the destination?

Billionaires absolutely depend on a very robust system of laws to maintain control of the giant corporations that they own. Zuckerberg couldn't even enter a Facebook building if his employees rebelled against him and the law wasn't protecting him.

Note, I'm not trying to single out Zuck in any way, just wanted to pick some billionaire tied to a well known corporation to make the examples simpler.