Charity vs. Taxation - What is the Difference? 

It’s chilling to see the high percentage of authoritarian personalities among us. Though it explains the driving habits..

Avoid at all costs the two persons who put their tacks in the YES column on the left sign!

The social contract has got to be one of the most destructive ideas to human freedom that has ever arisen.

It is moral for a morally credible government body to use force when necessary.

I use this mind set and logic whenever my friends start talking about taxes or regulations.

This is why the government should be as small as possible.

The guy with the sports jacket and sunglasses needs a refund on his education.

equivocation: the word "force" conveys a different sense between the two questions.. but the answer to both questions must necessarily be no by virtue of the word "your" in both questions.. if "your" is meant to denote "just one single person" and if that one single person wants to use the power of a government to take money away to do what that single person wants to do.. without consideration of anyone else.. then clearly.. that would be wrong.. but that's besides the point.. that doesn't address the fundamental issue.. the issue seems to be how a group of people can build roads and schools and other things used by the public.. obligatory spending vs voluntary spending? is it possible to raise enough capital voluntarily to, for instance, maintain a strong infrastructure? is it always possible? or is there at least one real instance in which a charity system simply will not generate sufficient capital? if even one instance exists.. then that shows a certain necessity for taxation.. that or simply abandon any projects that cannot be funded.. regardless of the greater consequences for the public at large.. all in the name of libertarian principles.. the other thing to note is there seems to be a general feeling of mistrust of government.. the 2nd question could be seen as a leading question.. particularly in a society that has a high trust in the government and its citizens in general trust one another.. they may respond "well.. we don't think of government as working in that way at all.. we all collectively come together to think and solve issues.. no one is forcing us to do anything.. we're all generally happy to provide money to maintain our parks and police services and etc" it feels like the devote fervent libertarian would make for the worst roommate.. "NO! I pay for only the electricity I use! By using an arduino.. I have designed an algorithm that monitors our electricity usage.. it couldn't track of the number of minutes I use the fridge.. so I bought my own fridge.. a great place to keep my liberty lemons fresh!" but of course trusting a roommate is one thing.. and trusting a government is another.. and throughout many years unfortunately.. governments can abuse their power and begin to lose the trust of the people.. and there are far too many examples of abuses and waste in taxation.. it's a shame too.. once trust is broken.. it's hard to repair that trust.. which is why usually any form of government without the people's trust (or worse have lost the people's trust) will simply erode and lead to more chaos.. lastly.. it feels like this channels suffers from cognitive dissonance.. it desperately wants libertarian ideas to be taken seriously that it overlooks any problems it may come across (any form of government will have pros and cons).. and this leads to several of its videos to make far too many fallacies.. and as a result.. such ideas can't really be taken too seriously.. which is a shame.. the idea of donating to charities over funding wasteful programs via taxation is an attractive idea.. but it all goes back to trust and belief.. one cannot believe in its ideas and trust in that form of government when the ideas don't really seem fully fleshed out..

Great stuff

How many of these students asked Northridge to refund their tuition after going through this? I'm sure a couple learned more from Prof. Gressis than they did from their classes.

I've used this logic in so many arguments. It really is eye opening for some people. I think the problem is, most people don't think about government as force. Because it's so indirect. It's very well camouflaged force, so people can swallow that pill. But pointing out to people how it is the same as stealing from someone yourself fundamentally, is like exposing them to the Matrix for the first time. Overwhelming, and they wonder if they should have taken the blue pill.

"But I trust the government." Famous last words. Great job. Keep getting the kids to think...go anarchy!

If only there was a few million of you on every school campus doing this; you've clearly caused a lot of people to think of something they never bothered to before. Very well done sir.

Until about two years ago, I blindly trusted governments. I now have become sceptical about governments controlling too much.

Think of the government as a vampire. Government doesn't really create wealth, it just takes taxes to survive, laws to rule, and an army/police to enforce.

Much less government = Good

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” - James Madison

Love that guy at 4:45. He realized he was holding two contradictory thoughts.

"It's ok for the government to use force, when it's ok for you to use force. But when it's not ok for you to use force, then maybe it's also not ok for the government to use force." The most logical statement I've ever heard.

The constitution gives the government the right to tax individuals and spend that on certain things, specifically defined within the constitution. As citizens we all agree to live by the constitution. All government officers swear an oath to uphold the constitution. The problem is that the government has gone far beyond what the constitution allows it to do, and we have allowed it for the obscure reasons these students gave. Government officials have violated their oath by doing this, and citizens have been negligent in allowing it to happen.

And there is no accountability that the government will use the money wisely, and of course, they don't.

I think you would get a different response from working adults

6:11 she's shielding her eyes with her hand rather than putting the sunglasses on? A true anarchist.

"But I trust the government" I wish I could be this naïve...

INVESTING CRYPTO NOW IS VERY COOL EXPECIALLY WITH THE CURRENT RISE IN THE MARKET NOW.

Great video Learn Liberty!

some of these people are fools. Our earned income was never meant to be taxed! guess what!? before taxes, we still had roads and schools! Shocker!!!!!!!!

Well done. My props to the prof. I have similar discussions with folks. It is incredible the metal gymnastics people will go through to make it moral for government to destroy liberty, life and wealth.

Great job professor ! Its such a shame that schools do such a horrible job of teaching kids about logic and reason.

Watching that guy become a libertarian in real time was the most beautiful moment I have seen in a long time.

I think taxation is a form of slavery. Yes. I'm an anarchist.

Democracy is 3 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

This phenomenon is best described by Kahneman and Tversky's nobel prize winning work on how humans actually think (check out the book "Thinking fast and slow"). People rarely put great effort into thought. They put in only as much effort as is required to solve the problems they are facing. Thinking is hard work, so we do it only when we anticipate benefits from doing so. When it comes to thinking about government, a big, complex system over which we have very little individual control, people don't see an obvious reason why they should think deeply about it. At a glance, things seem to be working. On the other hand, people do think about the social arrangements they have with friends. They know they have power to change them. They can see the problems, and they are empowered to address them. So, they think about them. Philosophy provides the well-reasoned arguments, but it's psychology that explains why people are not naturally inclined to discover these arguments for themselves.

Taxation is theft. You don't give it, they take it, whether you agree or not. People need to start asking some very basic questions regarding the nature of government, and what it is supposed to represent. If government is the collective will of the people, and the collective exercise of our individual rights, how is it possible for the government to exercise a right or power which we the people do not have? How can we delegate a power which is not innately our own, individually? For example, I have the natural right to self defense. Because I have this right, I can authorize the government to defend me if I need help. I DO NOT have the right to beat up my neighbors, so I CAN NOT authorize the government to do that on my behalf. Similarly, I have the right to give to any cause I feel is worthy of my dollars. I do NOT have the right to force my neighbor to give to my cause if he doesn't want to, NOR can I authorize the government to do so on my behalf.

Morality is a really bad way to base political choices. My morals aren't yours, and they aren't any of the people's that were interviewed in this video. I believe that it is very moral to tax people to provide for services, as your greed is not an excuse to not help everyone. About the first question, my morals say I would not want to force you to do it, simply because I don't want to. Having morals apply differently to two different things but with the same situation is what morals are about. Morals are individual, not collective.

A past co-worker in the Navy used to argue the point that he never had any kids and he gets no benefit from paying towards the schools and teacher's union, yet the families with kids get tax breaks essentially making it twice as hard on him.

In a truly free society the Government cannot force it's citizens, at least those who abide the law, to do anything, it is through mutual consent that we agree to be taxed under the auspice that that tax revenue will be used to the benefit of all, anything beyond that is immoral. Today, we do not have that freedom.

And what's wrong with admitting that the only reason I clicked on this was to see that girl?

In people's mind, government = God, that's perhaps why? God is the one deciding on laws, rights, benefits and privileges... In society, that's seems to be the role of government... Therefore, one fears and trust in government religiously... The proper role of government isn't being taught in school growing up...

The problem with this video is that it doesn't differentiate between the legitimate and illegitimate use of government force with regard to taxation. Namely, we as the taxpayers have hired politicians to organize and pay the suppliers of public goods and services, i.e. those that build and maintain public infrastructure, then firefighters, police officers, soldiers, doctors, nurses, judges, etc. Meaning, using taxation, i.e. government force, to collect money for salaries and revenue of these people is legit since they invested their labor and material resources into goods and services that we as taxpayers use. Basically, we as citizens are in debt to these people and using force to collect a debt is legitimate. But, bit by bit, the politicians started to abuse taxation system by imposing high taxes on citizens and seizing their property well above the debt citizens owe to the above mentioned people. Money collected with this abuse, the politicians use like it is their own, by sending it to the pockets of people that belong to the specific social groups related to ideological interests of politicians, be it: immigrants, single moms, poor people, crony capitalists, farmers, civil rights activists, etc. Now, since citizens owe no debt to these people, there is no rational bases for the politicians to use force and seize property of citizens to fund them. Instead, politicians and those who support their ideologies, must use their private money to fund people in these social groups. Since politicians don't do that, but instead, they fund these groups with money they seized from the citizens via taxation, this represents the illegitimate use of government force. Besides tax money, the politicians also abuse social security funds, whose legitimate purpose is payment on the bases of disability or old-age insurance, by extending payments to young and healthy individuals who are capable of working (so-called poor people). Since participation in social security is mandatory, funding mentioned individuals with social security funds also represents the illegitimate use of government force.

Sounds great. Should we have unilateral peace on a personal level? Sure. Then why not declare unilateral peace and disarm on a national level. Sure. Go ahead and enact unilateral peace and see how long it takes before you are conquered. Will the conqueror allow you to ask thought provoking philosophical questions? NO.

Great process for getting people thinking! I personally believe it’s OK to let the government force us to give to group causes (taxes) but it also OK for the people to constrain through legislation which causes and which amounts are acceptable.

This is a great video. One way to make government agencies more efficient and responsive to the voter is to have every agency compete for the tax dollar. Suppose you keep the tax system the same as it is now but allow each tax payer to allocate his or her tax dollars in whatever proportion they wish. That way, every government department headed by a member of the cabinet has to reach out to the tax payer and improve their service or product offering in order to get a bigger share of the tax pie. Competition between government departments will improve efficiency and cut waste. For example, if the department of education had to compete for tax dollars wouldn't they do more to improve test scores for high school graduates? If HUD had to compete for tax dollars wouldn't they be able to offer more housing units to the poor more efficiently?

3:01 "muh roads"

Show me my signature on this "social contract" you speak of.

The government is no different then the mafia end of story

Overly simplified. Government is supposed (if you don't know, look it up, Ostrom's design principles) to handle tasks which otherwise would left imporperly handled due to free loader problem (or tragedy of the commons) - or on the other end of spectrum, particular people having too much influence (corruption) in how things are done (due to wealth inequality). The task of the government (politicians etc.) is to govern the rules how public funds are collected and spent. If you want to opt out from it, you can simply renounce yours and opt-in into another nationality (each nationality comes with its own costs and burdens). If you don't like any countries, maybe choose Liberland. Nevertheless, the issue of corruption remains.

Good video. I liked backward hat guy's logic, identifying himself as government (by the people, etc.). A valuable lesson in the power of juxtaposition.

Jesus: From each according to her/his generosity to each according to his/her needs. Marx: From each according to his/her ability (as determined by high-handed government folks) to each according to her/his needs. ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. as they said to Ananias and Saphira: "Was it not yours to give?" Jesus a million percent NOT a Communist. Only an idiot, a sophist or a propagandist would say so.

Is there a society working on complete volunteerism? Nope.

Adulthood is the collective effort of the family. Money is now spent on people who disagree with this concept. Government is the family funded by taxpayers.Single teenage moms, drug clinics , fast food junkies requiring treatment who can't sit in a airplane etc.

This is still false equivalency. This is the old "taxes are theft" argument that libertarians break out while defining things in absurd terms.

I understand the idea behind why these guys made this video and for the most part agree with the premise. And while I'm for minimal government, I think the guy asking questions kinda overstepped in the sense that there are basic responsibilities that the government has. Those basic responsibilities must be paid for in tax dollars. Although I have a similar if not the exact same belief of Milton Friedman who believed it was fine that we pay taxes as long as we got something that held equal value back. So for basic things like Military and Foreign affairs, we should pay for those things because we're kept safe because of them. Any promises that are made by politicians should include an approximate price for the project itself, that way the people can keep them in check, and pay the taxes that are only equal to anything needed for the budget of such things. Perhaps it would be difficult to keep track of, but it would be a much more effective and cost efficient way of making physical things happen on the government's part. And such a thing would also apply to politicians and bueracrats as well. They should get a much lower pay and implemented in the tax collected. If these things wouldn't work, then perhaps charging a fixed tax percentage and using that as a baseline federal budget would work instead. But sadly politicians seem to make being a politician the only thing that they do. When in fact, most of the original founding fathers either owned land, businesses, were massive intellectuals, or had massive influence, aka, things that contributed to the overall bettering or worsening of the people. They had stakes in matter because if they screwed laws and policies up, they screwed themselves up. Now it just seemed all of them are just passing laws just to pass laws, not for any real moral reason, but just to say that they did because they have no other goals or ventures. So we wind up with retarded and stupid laws, causing people to become angry and/or confused. Idk. Maybe I'm just a stupid kid with stupid ideas. But I thought they sounded alright.

Cudos to the guy that brought up the social contract

It is always more valuable to give in person. Show interest in a person or a problem. Don't force others to give when you display no interest in solving it beyond giving money or having it forcibly extracted. The old way of the left was kind of like the song that said, "Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another..." Nowadays, it's, "I will pay the government to hire someone to care." Pretty awful. I think most people would agree.

A reason that people changed answers at the second question is because the government represents the people, however whether they actually do a good job doing it is another story.

this guy lol; i dont think doing a "survey" yet if someone's answer don't favor to your "supposedly right answer", you'll start to convince the person of changing an answer can be called a survey

Edit: Responding to the question "Why does government get bigger?". The government provides a powerful narrative. Of protecting people against all kinds of harms. People ask the government to grow all the time. They believe in the promise of government that it can prevent negative outcomes.

There is something called authority. You learn that at home with your parents, who take care of you and make decisions for you before you were born and in exchange you obey, at Church where you learn a transcendent superior being has taken decisions that affect your life way before you ever existed and you have the choice to follow suit or not (although not without consequences in the future), at school where you learn to obey your elder strangers called teachers and professors. They all have held authority without your consent. Likewise government, in whichever form, also holds authority and does not need your consent, unless you are capable of contesting that authority.

What is missing from this discussion is: (1) the intrinsic cost vs benefit of living in a society (2) human nature The benefits of society are obvious. We enjoy having roads, sewage systems, police, power, postal service etc. But this comes at a cost that must be divided up and paid for by the individuals in that society. This brings me to human nature. If you get the benefits of living in a society, but you are not forced to pay for these benefits, then you probably won’t. Especially if your neighbour doesn’t. Why should you pay for all these good things when he pays nothing and still enjoys all the benefits. That’s why government must assume the role of enforcement. Moreover, government must assume this role for the sake of justice. If it was left up to the individual we end up with vigilantism. To keep the government in check we appeal to democracy in deciding how we want the government to act. Yes, you will have to pay for things that the majority want but you don’t. That’s a necessary compromise you trade for societal benefits. Perfection is elusive. However, the overall result is the best result you can expect since everyone must endure such compromise. Your argument fails because you can’t extrapolate everything out and neglect the economy of scale. New considerations enter into the model and you must factor these as I have described above.

People are individuals but they are also members of a collective called society. The government is just an agent of society. The professor has not established that just because it is immoral for an individual to take a particular action it then follows that it is immoral if society takes that same action. The professor appears to be operating under the assumption that the set of morally permissible actions a society can take and the set of morally permissible actions an individual can take are one in the same. If this assumption was true, it would follow that if it is morally permissible for society to judge and execute a criminal then it is morally permissible for an individual to judge and execute a criminal. How do Libertarians feel about vigilantism?

Government should only have the right to do collectively what I can do individually.

There are services that the government provides for public benefit, and it is proper to pay taxes to pay for that. However, giving tax dollars to special interest which benefits only a few is wrong. Yet we see this all the time.

To me this is more a sad statement of how poor our colleges are at training students to think, and when these kids are presented with any structured argument, their spoon-fed knowledge leaves them unarmed. The difference between one person using force to give another person's money away and the Government is that ideally the Government is acting on behalf of the majority's wishes. According to the utilitarianism philosophy, moral action is that which maximizes utility to the whole, and thus it could be moral for a Government to force others to give, but not an individual. This is not to say I agree with utilitarianism, but being aware of other perspectives and schools of thought arms me with being able to think on these "difficult questions."

"Government" is an entity, not a person. That makes any comparison to one person compelling someone to give to charity a non sequitur.

It's not that it's moral for government to force people to give to charity of _my_ choice, but it is moral for government to force people to give money to fund the _collective_ choice as decided by our representatives in congress. Aside from the necessary services it provides (law & order, defense, etc.) it can legitimately fund infrastructure/education that provide benefits to all and social services that help the poor (which reduces crime and is a moral end of itself).

if its wrong for one person to do, its wrong for ten or a hundred or 320 million people to do. Might (numbers) makes able, not right.

You hit the nail right on the head. However, one must ask, what is government but a monopoly on the legal initiation of force? All of our interactions with society need to be voluntary to be logically consistent.

I see stupid comments of people wanting to end the government but people can even get along driving road raging trying to kill each other so who's supposed to control that. There has to be some kind of law and rule that is governed to control people from hurting each other and then someone has to pay those people who control those people hence government

Excellent video. The belief in government/statism IS the most dangerous superstition.

For the love of god, stop pouring fluoride in the water! It's turning people stupid.

awesome video! very thought-provoking! or basically to make you think.

All human associations should be voluntary. This is the ideal to strive to.

Bah - I usually like Learn Liberty, but I feel like this argument doesn't hold water. 1. This argument would denigrate ALL government spending. Military, infrastructure, police, you name it. 2. This ignores the basic idea of social contract. The reason why the government has the right to use force to collect taxes from its populace is because the populous has power over the government. 3. This argument ignores the type of spending, which is important when speaking about government (this is why even if the majority voted to take away the rights of the minority, it would be illegal/immoral for the government to do so).

“I trust our government” What a fool believes.

Great stuff.

I never signed the social contract. I want out.

Bingo. Violence by proxy is still violence.

Charity isn't charitable if coerced.

I usually like the content of this channel, and actually think this was a fun video. But its really not a smart video content-wise.

only thing the gov can get from me is protection money.

Governments, whether they derive a mandate from the people or not, need to justify their existance with a mandate. People who live under its sovereignty must agree to support that mandate, or be seen as enemies of the state. Revolutions are justified by people who do not agree with this arrangement. Democracies are stable because the mandates are derived from pluralities of the people and are changable on a reliable basis.

Well I'll be, there is real education going on here.

Another problem with this video is that the all-too-common inflation of government 'force'. Despite what pure libertarians say, fining isn't the same as 'holding at gunpoint', and neither is imprisonment. When my city gives me a ticket for parking my car in the wrong place, this isn't quite the same as saying that the government is forcing me, at gunpoint, to change where I park my car.

You got sunglasses on your head!!

Representation -- that's the difference

The government cant help anyone without harming someone else.

I wish to applaud the editing of this video. Too many of these "man on the street" videos are edited to mock people or focus on some ignorance revealed through the interview. This one actually dwelled on the interviewees for a significant amount of time and showed people working through a process...one that really does not present a clear "yes" or "no" answer. I was impressed to see these young people recognize and work with the dilemma presented. The hope is that they never stop thinking critically about these issues.

stupid question in the first place. he only asked young college students and they in their level would not know the right answer not to mention knowing the question itself is stupid. or they edited out some smart students who told him that.

ok, so I think everyone that said no then yes simply would use force personally if they were strong enough to not have repercussions.

It is so eye opening that most of the answers comes down to "That's just the way society is". This is an excellent video. Truly one of the best I've ever seen.

Taxation is theft by fiat.

Since when did the government ever do this for charities? The question is skewed.

Give that young man in the blue shirt and reversed hat an award (at 4.44). He actually showed some critical thinking, and appeared to learn from this experience.

is there any case of knees got shot because of not paying taxes though?

The liberal and conservative dream has been smashed by a 13 min video! xD

Wouldn't voluntary taxes be really hard to count on, hard to rely on (not sure how to say in english), in order to have some level of financial accountability for the government? Isn't the tax system, even though it is basically monopolized theft, kind of a necessary evil when you have societies with so large numbers? This is not entirely meant in a rhetorical way, I'd like to know if there are any realistic alternatives to this, maybe if we all lived in much smaller communities, voluntary taxes could maybe work, who knows.

I like this a whole bunch. But, it's too long, and more pro-anarchy than I would like, but I thought it really started out well and has many great parts. If it was edited down to 2-3 minutes, I bet it would be very powerful and get a much bigger audience.

“An agreement, a social contract” I didn't sign any contract with the government to carry out any civic duty. What duty I have offered to the government was of my own free will. The rest, the government has stolen from me.

So no government?