Negative anti-accounting fallacy

The anti-accounting fallacy consists in denying government actions had to cost something. The negative anti-accounting fallacy consists in denying that government actions produce something, which might be either negative, neutral, or positive. (In addition: governments are made of people, with discrete, individual actions, which can be either negative, neutral or positive. See: hypostatization.)

It is a form of denialism [1] and pigheadedness[2].

Whereas the accounting fallacy wrongly derives a moral conclusion from an accounting statement, the negative anti-acounting fallacy denies an accounting statement on the basis of a moral premise. Worse, it denies the underlying reality. It denies both the history of governments having done anything positive, the present of them doing so, and the future of them having the possibility to do so.

Examples

“ You do realize that stupid arguments such as you make are why people laugh at libertarians for hating roads? Opposing the government takings and opposing the things the government funds are and should be completely separate arguments.

— François-René Rideau [3]

• The classic example of an accounting fallacy is to claim that one should be thankful to national-socialism for the construction of German highways [4]. The negative anti-acounting fallacy version of this would be to deny that the German government actually built highways, or to deny the usefulness of highways, or the very existence of any highways, rather than admit the accounting statement that the nazis did build them (implied: because admitting they did would justify an accounting fallacy of having to be thankful to them for having done so).

• Conversely, Holocaust denial and World War II revisionism, rather than admit that the US government could, should, or did prevent nazi genocide.

• Covid denial

• “We don’t need the fire department, fire doesn’t burn all that much!”

• “Stop arresting rapists and murderers! Government has no business securing our cities!”

• “let the hungry starve and the sick bleed to death! our tax money can’t be used to save people’s lives!”

• denial of the evils of regimes worse than the US government, lest one would risk justifying the US government

• denial of universal rights, lest one would risk justifying “US empire” [5]

• [6]

• "I'm a libertarian, so I'm against robbing people to pay for anything." [7]

Contrarianism and Kremlintarianism

Murray N. Rothbard and his followers commit this fallacy with their “a priori” (Murray N. Rothbard#The category error of an a priori foreign policy) foreign policy stance (present and future actions of government) and related historical revisionism (past actions of government): Rothbardian contrarianism.