Bertram Gilfoyle's anarcho-capitalism
Silicon Valley is one of my favorite shows of all time. On that show, Bertram Gilfoyle is my favorite character. Brilliant, narcissistic, and salty. Plus, his taste in beer is impeccable. Combine that with a love-hate relationship with the needy and lovable Dinesh and the jokes just write themselves.
Plus he apparently is an anarcho-capitalist! Well, at least he is profiled as such by the new HR director of Pied Piper. He was also shown in previous seasons to be a big supporter of block chain currencies and had passing comments against authoritarianism, so it wasn't a surprise or anything. Libertarians are also statistically (or maybe stereotypically) intelligent but lacking in empathy, which seems to fit Gilfoye to a T.
The HR director, after speaking to Gilfoyle, psycho-analyzes him and remarks:
You claim to be an anarcho-capitalist, but you work here and pay taxes.
She said anarcho-capitalist? She said anarcho-capitalist! The phrase made it onto a television show! I'm not one myself but holy hell, is this the first time that phrase has been uttered on television? Even Ron Swanson, the most libertarian television libertarian that libertarians love never uttered the phrase!
Wait. But? She said "but"?
Is this the writers' way of flipping the script on libertarians criticizing the left on demanding people pay more taxes, but never willing to voluntarily contribute more taxes themselves?
Maybe not, but I have read this argument elsewhere on places like Reddit, though sparingly.
People have claimed to want the government taxing them more like Google executive Michael Sayman and Warren Buffet. The libertarian argument is: What's stopping you?
Sayman's own comments infer that he takes advantage of tax breaks. Buffet itemizes his taxes and writes off millions. They're smart people. They do know that they can simply not itemize deductions to pay more in taxes, right? They do know they can donate to reducing the federal debt so a lesser amount of the tax receipts go toward interest payments, right?
Likewise, they do know that a good portion of taxes go to things like bombing other countries and corporate welfare, right? It's not like 100% of their taxes go toward helping poor people like they love to pontificate about with their higher taxes rhetoric. In fact, less than 50% of the discretionary budget goes toward the things they want, using a generous assumption of what they like. The rest goes to the military. And for a list of idiotic expenditures by the government, take a look at Rand Paul's annual Festivus report. The Tax Me More crowd would get much more bang for their buck by donating it to charities than paying more in taxes. Buffet, to his credit, already does, but if he wants to achieve increased welfare, he should just simply donate more to charities. More of his money would end up assisting people in need than paying more in taxes.
Every person that clamors to tax themselves more can already freely and voluntarily choose that option.
Okay, so what is the inverse argument here?
Anarcho-capitalists want there to be no government dictating the rules while libertarians in general want there to be at least significantly reduced government. So the reciprocal argument goes: you libertarians want smaller government and thereby lower taxes (in the case of ancaps, zero taxes), therefore why don't you just stop paying taxes?
The fallacious nature of this argument should be rather obvious, but I suppose it's not, given that people are making this argument.
We are forced to pay taxes, otherwise we get thrown in jail! Was that really not apparent? We can't even opt to not pay taxes, as withholding deducts the taxes from your paycheck before it even arrives. We are not free to just pay less in taxes. But they are free to pay more if they wish.
As for the "but you work here" part, I'm not exactly sure what that refers to. Libertarians tend to push entrepreneurship more than others, but it's not like we think nobody should work for someone else. Maybe the writers mistook anarcho capitalism with anarcho communism.
Interestingly, Gilfoyle is not the only libertarian on the show. In season 1, Peter Gregory, while the writers did not intend to characterize him as such, somewhat resembles Peter Thiel, the libertarian founder of Paypal. Gregory had a scene at a TED Talk where he argues for getting real world experience as opposed to going to college. The scene is fully complete when an audience member calls him a fascist without understanding the word. He also was in the process of building his own artificial island and planning to engage in seasteading, a libertarian concept to achieve free societies. And in season 4, it was revealed he was into creating a decentralized internet where nobody can manipulate and censor other people. He was just ticking off boxes of libertarian fantasies.
Who can hate a show that has not just one, but two libertarians in it?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue rewatching the series. Again.
Every person that clamors to tax themselves more can already freely and voluntarily choose that option.
Okay, so what is the inverse argument here?
Anarcho-capitalists want there to be no government dictating the rules while libertarians in general want there to be at least significantly reduced government. So the reciprocal argument goes: you libertarians want smaller government and thereby lower taxes (in the case of ancaps, zero taxes), therefore why don't you just stop paying taxes?
The fallacious nature of this argument should be rather obvious, but I suppose it's not, given that people are making this argument.
We are forced to pay taxes, otherwise we get thrown in jail! Was that really not apparent? We can't even opt to not pay taxes, as withholding deducts the taxes from your paycheck before it even arrives. We are not free to just pay less in taxes. But they are free to pay more if they wish.
As for the "but you work here" part, I'm not exactly sure what that refers to. Libertarians tend to push entrepreneurship more than others, but it's not like we think nobody should work for someone else. Maybe the writers mistook anarcho capitalism with anarcho communism.
Interestingly, Gilfoyle is not the only libertarian on the show. In season 1, Peter Gregory, while the writers did not intend to characterize him as such, somewhat resembles Peter Thiel, the libertarian founder of Paypal. Gregory had a scene at a TED Talk where he argues for getting real world experience as opposed to going to college. The scene is fully complete when an audience member calls him a fascist without understanding the word. He also was in the process of building his own artificial island and planning to engage in seasteading, a libertarian concept to achieve free societies. And in season 4, it was revealed he was into creating a decentralized internet where nobody can manipulate and censor other people. He was just ticking off boxes of libertarian fantasies.
Who can hate a show that has not just one, but two libertarians in it?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue rewatching the series. Again.
