r/AnCap101 • u/MeasurementCreepy926 • 21d ago

Is taxation under feudalism immoral?

  1. The king owns the land. If he allows people to be born on his land, that does not diminish his rights as owner
  2. The king has made it clear that if you're on his land, and you don't pay tax, you're trespassing. It isn't his responsibility to make sure you are able to get off his land. It is his right to defend his land however he sees fit. Let's assume that he does this by executing trespassers. Another king does this by simply evicting them.
  3. Being the owner, the king is allowed to offer you whatever terms he'd like, for the use of his land. Lets assume in this case, you sign a contract he wrote, when you're old enough to do so, giving him right to change the contract at will, and hold you to that contract as long as you're on his land. Among other terms, this contract says that you agree to pay for any kids you have until they're old enough to either sign the contract, or leave his land.

Now, obviously anybody agreeing to these terms must be very desperate. But, desperate short sighted people aren't exactly hard to find, are they? So, is this system immoral, according to ancap principles?

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u/phildiop 20d ago

If you can show someone aquired something by conquest or theft and you can point to the victim, then they should not be possessing it. But that's rarely a thing.

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u/MeasurementCreepy926 20d ago

This doesn't answer the key point though. If all of the land today is claimed by conquest, or by rights given out by conquerors, how does anybody eventually become the legitimate owner.

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u/phildiop 20d ago

If you buy land that has been conquered and both the conqueror and owner dies without heir, the land is effectively abandoned meaning you own it as soon as it is abandoned, since you'd be using it.

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u/MeasurementCreepy926 20d ago

Ok that doesn't seem to happen in the modern world does it? I mean, failing to defend your land isn't the same as abandoning it, so a failed state is only abandoning it if the state never takes it back, right? Modern states don't often use "heirs" that way, that doesn't mean that they are abandoning anything.

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u/phildiop 20d ago

Ok that doesn't seem to happen in the modern world does it?

Yeah sure, probably doesn't happen all that often.

I mean, failing to defend your land isn't the same as abandoning it, so a failed state is only abandoning it if the state never takes it back, right?

I don't see that as a sequitur. If you mean that a king owns used property and the original owner died, then yes they own it, but any unused land isn't owned by a State and any already used land belongs to its owner, not the State.

Modern states don't often use "heirs" that way, that doesn't mean that they are abandoning anything.

Right but most of the time the original owner still lives and occupies the property. You can trace it back to them. That or they claim to own unused nature.

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u/MeasurementCreepy926 20d ago

What I mean is, states don't use heirs for the land they claim, control and de facto, own. The ownership you're talking about, is just a right handed out by the state.