The Free Rider Fallacy

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:41:43 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Silverblog - one of the excuses statists use for the validity of coercive taxation is that without it, those who choose not to pay could use services paid for by others for free. Sure they could, says Silver, but those who paid have already made the decision that what they're getting is worth what they're paying, and they'll likely penalize the free rider later, by refusing to do business with him. No guns need be pointed. No taxes collected.

The free rider “problem” is a trivial fallacy. It only appears complex because there are so many cowardly thugs among us, willing to use violence but unwilling to do the dirty deeds themselves. They invent this free rider nonsense, they teach it to defenseless children in state indoctrination camps, and they quote it whenever they sense the opportunity to steal something. These people deserve contempt and disgust, nothing more. The charitable might try to educate the victims of this delusion, but tolerance of this pernicious nonsense is not a virtue.

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