I suppose it is unreasonable for me to ask you what someone you disagree with would say. But the problem is that if you take for granted that the government should meet its contractual obligations, why wouldn’t that include accrued obligations under Social Security? Bush’s plan might arguably be consistent with this, although it is hard to say because we haven’t seen it.

It’s not clear to me what problem a libertarian who thinks the government must meet its contractual obligations needs to address. By definition, this person opposes the federal government repudiating its obligations.

As I understand it, not all libertarians think that government is illegitimate, and therefore that taxes are theft. The libertarian whose views I am most familiar with — Richard Epstein — definitely thinks the government must perform its contractual obligations.

Even an anarcho-capitalist might wonder about the transitional costs invovled in having the government default on all its obligations (except to the extent they could be fulfilled by selling Yellowstone and a few aircraft carriers).

So, I concede that my argument that government must meet its obligations to the SS trust fund does not work from your premises, since you don’t think the government must meet its obligations, to the extent these would be paid out of taxes. However, I would still be interested in how a libertarian who thinks the government must meet its contractual obligations addresses this problem.

Would I be happier if I were inconsistent?

Earlier in this thread, you asked why it is a libertarian position to support the federal government repudiating its obligations. I demonstrated that this follows directly from the libertarian view of taxation is tantamount to theft. Why did you bother asking if you were not interested in the answer?

It isn’t hard to prove that the premise that taxes are theft leads to anarchist conclusions. One of these anarchist conclusions is that owners of US Government bonds would have to make do with a part ownership of the Lincoln memorial and the Yellowstone National Park.

If you are happy to be this consisent, good on ya. However, you will have to excuse me if I don’t take your intervention in contemporary policy debates seriously.

In its thousands of years of existence, China has frequently opened its borders to foreign businessmen, and then slammed them shut. That the next time they do it they will collect hundreds of billions of dollars is…almost comical.

So the best way to make hundreds of billions of dollars…is to restrict free trade? Free money! Every country should move towards autarky if they want to be rich, right?

In its thousands of years of existence, China has frequently opened its borders to foreign businessmen, and then slammed them shut. That the next time they do it they will collect hundreds of billions of dollars is…almost comical.

“My political views seem natural and obvious—to me. Others find them peculiar. Their peculiarity consists largely of carrying certain statements, familiar enough in political oratory, to their natural conclusions”

- David Friedman, Machinery of Freedom

We recognize the moral error when high school upperclass men try to justify the tormenting of their younger peers with the excuse that they themselves were tormented. Yet we refuse to follow this same logic and apply it to senior citizens.