Let’s recognize all the great Libertarian politicians who have served this country.

How do you define "participation"

and how does your given definition imply hypocrisy?

Keep in mind hypocrisy is acting in contradiction to stated principles, and one of Rand's stated principles is the golden rule.

In other words, she would not be a hypocrite to shoot back.

She was very clear about the moral error being in the "initiation" of force, not counter attacking.

we can apply your argument to a slave plantation

It won't work.

How do you define "participation"

Applying for and receiving "Social Security Benefits."

She was not defending herself against the initiation of force and she was not acting in a "countermeasure"

How can one take a position against stealing while enabling and participating in a system entirely based on stealing?

Well not if you define an abstract concept as a concrete example:

... but that's not really a fair test of your statements is it?

I see no reason to accept that exclusion as legitimate.

If a robber stole your car and said you could have a wheel back if you fill in a forum, and you have no other means of gaining any value back that is your only countermeasure. If anything up to driving a tank to the robber's house and blowing him away (or having a mediation company do it for you) is justified then anything lesser is also justified.

In what way does accepting government benefits enable the system?

If anything it brings it to its rightful collapse sooner by showing it can't even deliver what it promised.

It's like sending your kid to private school while being forced to pay taxes for public school.

but it could be said that the act of simultaneously submitting to taxes AND allowing government services to be focused on fewer people is enabling behavior.

The equivalent in the slave plantation would be refusing rations, but going out after a hard day of labor and fishing for your own food. Does that convince the master that slavery isn't worth it?

Hardly, he has to buy less grain for you now and it seems even more profitable.

It may serve some poetic purpose to stand like a statue in a field while they whip you, but there is no moral basis for calling someone a hypocrite if they don't do that.

They have the right and the duty (if they value their life) to do the best they can until escape or counterattack becomes feasible.

If working doesn't make you a hypocrite, why would accepting the fruits of your labor in whatever small quantity they are returned?

Hell, Social security has not even kept up with inflation in the last decade, meaning you are losing your wealth.

And President Roosevelt wanted to use Social Security’s funds to help pay for government deficits.

It's not a safety net, it's just another IOU from a government fantastically deep in debt. No legal recompense is possible either, if they actually need to pay out they'll just dilute the currency which is why it can't outpace inflation.

It's a portfolio with a 100% investment in T-bills. Which are worth nothing as inflation rises. Huge Ponzi scheme, investing in the government. Yet another involuntary tax.

When you buy a T bill there is no asset, just the promise that the US government will steal to pay you back.

Most of your jobs have been provided by the government.

Well not if you define an abstract concept as a concrete example:

[Athias] It won't work because slaves, at least to my knowledge, do not participate and have not participated absent of duress in a system which redistributes the products of their coerced labor, all while taking moral position against slavery.

I see no reason to accept that exclusion as legitimate.

If a robber stole your car and said you could have a wheel back if you fill in a forum, and you have no other means of gaining any value back that is your only countermeasure. If anything up to driving a tank to the robber's house and blowing him away (or having a mediation company do it for you) is justified then anything lesser is also justified.

But here's the thing: are they giving you your wheel back, or just a wheel?

By signing up, you are legitimizing/enabling the practice.

You creating a voluntary association trading that which was acquire through involuntary association.

In what way does accepting government benefits enable the system?

By providing demand to its supply.

It's like sending your kid to private school while being forced to pay taxes for public school.

No, it would be like sending your child to public school, while claiming to maintain a position against taxation (and by extension, products of taxation like public schooling) because you believe you are "redeeming some value" from that which was stolen from you.

but it could be said that the act of simultaneously submitting to taxes AND allowing government services to be focused on fewer people is enabling behavior.

Taxation is collected with the threat of (deadly) force; one signs up for social security benefits absent of duress; they are not the same.

It's not about what the master thinks.

It may serve some poetic purpose to stand like a statue in a field while they whip you, but there is no moral basis for calling someone a hypocrite if they don't do that.

Not the same. You've attempted several times to analogize "signing up"--and those are the operative terms--for social security to coercive practices like Slavery (I told you it wouldn't work.) No one places any obligation on the slave because the slave is under duress. The same is not true for those who collect social security.

“Most people know how great is defined -  of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above the normal or average”

Being elected to public office is a level of eminence considerably above the normal or average. 

It appears that you begin with the assumption that  NO libertarian can ever be great.

By your definition, because only a small minority ever gets elected, the mere fact of being elected makes them "great".

The unfairness is that you were asked for a definition of "participation" and gave a concrete example not a definition. I can infer from above that somehow "absent duress" is important.

The product of her labor was taken from her by force, thus her labor was partially coerced.

No one forced Rand to sign up

(I've never seen it proven that she did),

no one forces slaves to put above subsistence quality food in their mouth or beyond basic clothes on their back.

You imply that any action save for those specifically compelled that interacts with the system is somehow hypocrisy.

I say hypocrisy requires violation of a principle. There is no valid principle that states recovering some recompense is condoning the original or ongoing abuse.

True hypocrisy for Rand would be voting to expand or maintain a tax.

True hypocrisy for a slave (who claimed all humans deserved to be free) would be owning a slave.

There is no way to tell.

I disagree. If you extend that logic then voting is legitimizing/enabling the practice.

So if you pretend that you have no needs or desires they will stop stealing? Now that's wishful thinking.

I wasn't clear about "it's" this is analogous to claiming welfare and a slave accepting sugar and butter.

No they are not the same,

but the choice between Taxes and Taxes + Benefits is the question. If there is a moral preference it must be for Taxes + Benefits as that is more just in returning stolen goods and more likely to destroy the system of taxation (however slight the effect).

Then how does "providing demand for their supply" have any meaning?

The only possible benefit of not taking benefits would be to convince someone that you don't need those benefits and thus the taxation wasn't necessary in the first place. If the opinion of the oppressor (the one with the power to end the theft) is irrelevant then so is providing demand.

You are claiming that if a slave makes a pancake he or she is condoning slavery. I continue to find that absurd.

You were asking for a literal definition? Okay.

...

I'm suggesting that the hypocrisy is in condemning welfare and then participating and enabling the welfare system.

No one forced Rand to sign up

Good. We can abandon this "partially coerced" platitude.

True hypocrisy for a slave (who claimed all humans deserved to be free) would be owning a slave.

Exactly; hence the reason your analogy doesn't suffice.

I disagree. If you extend that logic then voting is legitimizing/enabling the practice.

Yes, it very much is. What is voting if not enabling the majority to coerce the labor and resources of dissenters through taxation?

they're going to have to continue to tax--namely the members of the labor force whose generations follow yours.

It's a pyramid scheme.

Boycotting social security payments would eliminate the pretext for a social security (payroll) tax.

Of course it's absurd. Because the analogy itself is absurd. Nowhere in that analogy have you created a sufficient equivalence with that which was stolen from you (taxes) and that which you allege is supposedly returned to you (social security benefits.)

The reason slavery as an analogy doesn't work is that when we consider what's being stolen, there's no equivalence or return for "self-ownership."

What if the slave master decides to provide the emancipated slave, not with slaves, but with money he/she got from selling off other slaves? Would that make it "less hypocritical"? Or what if the slave is still a slave, and the master decides to provide said slave with the aforementioned? Is that not hypocritical?

Without a more specific definition I have only the one I understand as standard.

Under that definition "partipating" and "enabling" have some relevent differences.

No, it was her labor which was partially coerced.

It is my position that there is very little a slave can do to be a hypocrite even if he has a principle of emancipation. Working doesn't make him a hypocrite, nor does receiving benefits. Even loyalty doesn't make him a hypocrite. Helping to prolong or begin the enslavement of others is about it.

Well at least you're consistent in your error.

Accepting welfare doesn't support the system, and neither does voting for liberty.

The only question you need to ask to know this is: What would happen if I didn't participate?

Welfare: The exact same thing except you would suffer and someone else would get your stolen value, stabilizing the government by increasing support from those who benefited from what was stolen from you.

Voting: The exact same thing, except there would not even be the awareness of a counter-force in the population making it all the easier to ridicule and isolate true liberals as "fringe" and "crazy".

They're going to do that anyway.

Also they don't "have" to do that in order to repay the value they stole.

They could just give back exactly the value they stole.

In a pyramid scheme the money stolen from newer victims is used to pay the dividends of the older victims. In the end there is a deficit because the scammers "profit" is that which they steal for themselves. For the government it's a combination of corrupt enrichment, pure waste, and wealth redistribution.

You are admitting that paying the "investment" money to the pyramid scheme is coerced and unavoidable, but that somehow if one can refuse to be paid dividends then one has a moral duty to do so.

This is false in this example too. If you didn't accept dividends would that weaken the pyramid scheme by one iota?

Any value what so ever that can be recovered from the conmen should be recovered. If you recover more than you originally invested then you have a moral duty to distribute it to other victims.

It's that simple, and I continue to see no reason to doubt this analysis.

Yet we know millions upon millions of families "boycott" public school. Do the collectivist care one bit? Do they ever say something like "Well people who aren't using the public school system shouldn't have to pay"

No, they don't think like that. Therefore if we can get school vouchers, we are morally entitled to use them.

If the plantation farms cotton, then butter and sugar aren't what were produced. It doesn't matter if it's the same value. Even if it did money is fungible so it is for all intents and purposes the same thing.

More than one thing can be stolen at a time. If labor producing cotton is stolen and bartered (through any number of intermediaries) for butter and sugar then receiving butter and sugar qualifies as recovering a part of that which was stolen.

It would only be hypocritical if refusing the benefit would prevent the further abuse.

So if the master offers a deal where the slave could choose between receiving the revenue of selling off other slaves or setting them free; then choosing the money is hypocrisy (assuming emaciation principle).

For welfare that would be the realistic expectation that not signing up would prevent further theft.