Reddit reviews The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice

Wow Mom, you said I would never have any use for this university degree in Socialist Economics and Political Economy, now here is my chance to shine :)

OK, given that mainstream economics is primarily a neoclassical game these days (with some liberals since the recession trying to revive Keynesian ideas) lets take a look at some good critical view points. The following is a list of books that come from a perspective of socialists living in the modern west. These are not commies from the USSR, but mostly anticapitalist thinkers and academics who think the system we have is unfair and ought to entail more economic democracy.

Robin Hahnel's ABCs of Political Economy is a nice primer to introduce fundamental economic concepts. Although the book goes over the basics it definitely covers the ideas from a critical leftist perspective. The guy also developed his own system for a post capitalist democratic economy, so he is an intellectual heavy weight.

If you would like to look more at international issues, Michael Yates's Naming the System is another great book. It takes a look at the economics of so-called globalization and explains some of the ways that richer countries use the idea of "free trade" as a mechanism of control through institutions such as the IMF, and World Bank, and also treaties like NAFTA.

Another great book, better than either of the previous, is Michael Perelman's Railroading Economics: The Creation of the Free Market Mythology. Perelman, a econ professor and lifelong economist, makes the case that economics is definitely not a science and uses real world economic systems (notably the railroad business) to argue that most capitalist economic theory is useless in practice. Of all the books on this list, this would be my highest recommendation to an average joe/jane who knows a little about econ and wants to check out a heterodox point of view.

One last one that I will mention is Murphy and Nagle's The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice. To so many friends I have recommended this book, but no one ever wants to read a modern philosophical piece on public finance and taxation. I may be a nerd but I was not the guy in college who read every assigned book cover to cover, but this one I couldn't stop. Murphy and Nagel examine theories of how we ought to tax people and how people view taxes. Then they take it a step further by questioning the idea of taxes in a modern state and take a particularly critical view to the idea of a "pre-tax income."

Again, these are all Left sided, outside the mainstream, books. If you'd like something quicker read Albert Einstein's Why Socialism? Full Text included! Also Paul Sweezy's essay Why Stagnation? does a great job explaining why capitalism tends toward stagnating, why it has had such periods of growth in spite of this tenancy, and how the economy and capitalists have tried to overcome this. I reread each of these essays every year on my birthday.

If you are still reading this thank you. I really loved studying economics from a critical perspective and feel that, in-spite of my ability to change the system, my life has been enriched by learning.

/u/Vanens

One to add to your reading list. A PDF can be found online relatively easily.

I would highly recommend The Myth of Ownership by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagle

www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Ownership-Taxes-Justice/dp/0195176561


edit: formatting

So the OP was not the author of this post, I was. But stating property rights just wasn't necessary for the point I was trying to get across here.

In formulating those three dimensions, I was trying to generalize as broadly as possible to encompass the views that liberal Democrats have. The key term there is "however they may be interpreted." As you point out, some liberals, especially libertarians and neoclassical liberals like John Thomasi, view property rights as a basic requirement of justice which pre-exists the formation of the political community. If that's your view, then respect for property rights would be viewed as required by the ethical dimension.

However, that's not the unanimous view. Most contemporary liberals, like Thomas Nagel, take a more Rawlsian view that property rights are not required by any principles of justice (are not "basic liberties), and are only created by the state's legal procedures out of practical necessity. If one takes this view, then respect for property rights would be required under the proceduralist dimension.

I agree with you in taking libertarian view that property rights are required by liberal ethics, but for the purposes of this article I did not need to take a stand on this issue and doing so just would've invited tangential criticisms from Rawlsian liberals. All I was trying to show is that it's not possible to hold attain three dimensions at the same time. Regardless of whether you view property rights as required by liberal principles of justice or required by respect for legal procedure, this point still stands.

If you take the libertarian view that property rights are ethically necessary, respect for proceduralism threatens them when the state's laws run afoul of your conception of property rights, such as with civil asset forfeiture or eminent domain. If you view respect for property rights as required by procedure, some other ethical demands of liberalism might require you to violate the procedure of property rights. For an example, a Rawlsian belief in the difference principle might require the state to violate legally guaranteed property rights to redistribute wealth. And however you justify property rights, majoritarianism obviously still threatens property rights when populist movements demand the state take action against some group.

I also think you're mostly correct here:
>Maybe what is successful about Western "Democracies" is not Majoritarianism at all. Maybe the liberalism (i.e. respect for property) combined with Legal proceduralism (if there ever was any) that limits the state is what has made Western "Democracies" successful. Now that Majoritarianism is more valued than in the founding of the US and Legal proceduralism is potentially more lax, and liberalism no longer refers to respect for property there is less appreciation for what likely made the US succesful.

But I would add one thing to be said for majoritarianism: it acts as a release valve against populist revolutions and allows for more stability. If the majority of people believe, rightly or wrongly, that their opinions matter for the formulation of policy, they're less likely to want to overthrow the state. If people begin to believe that the state is largely unaccountable, they might revolt. This is all that is usually meant when people refer to "release valves of democracy." At the very least, paying lipservice to majority opinion in the way most democracies do helped ensure stability, even if doing so has the danger of leading to crises of populism.