StatistFallacies / TheStateIsUs

Fallacy:

It's not "the state" that is taxing you and coercing you; in a democracy "the state is us", so we're doing it to ourselves.

Response:

A good reductio ad absurdum for the false premise that "the state is us" is that since Hitler was elected, and Jewish people were part of the population that elected him, they weren't murdered in the concentration camps, but rather committed suicide, since they were the state.

More fundamentally, however, the fallacy rests on the false premise that ../VotingIsConsent and that infringement of individual rights (to life, liberty, and property) is justified if a majority wills it. But individual rights do not come from states or majorities, but are a property of individual self-ownership (see Voluntaryism).

last edited 2015-01-25 00:55:00 by DavidRobins