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Is taxation theft?
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#21
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
Taking something that's mine against my will. Theft. What do you not understand!
Taking something that's mine against my will. Theft. What do you not understand!
Nah - you are right. It is all theft. Perhaps you should move to Somalia and live the dream? The government takes nothing from anyone there and it is everyone for themselves.
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#22
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
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#23
(Original post by SHallowvale)
Assuming it were theft, why should it matter?
Assuming it were theft, why should it matter?
Simply speaking.
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#24
(Original post by Tootles)
if you can posit irrefutable and totally watertight proof that such a system would work, I'll accept that all taxation is theft.
if you can posit irrefutable and totally watertight proof that such a system would work, I'll accept that all taxation is theft.
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#25
(Original post by OxFossil)
In doing this "labour", do you use water supplies that have been cleaned as a result of state intervention (for example, through legal control on pollution)? Do you breathe air that is clean as a result of state action? Do you benefit from education provided by the state - either as a pupil yourself or because you depend on state-educated doctors, or computer programmers, or street cleaners? Do you rely on their being a market to which to sell what you make? And do the people who constitute this market depend upon state-organised or provided systems and goods? Do you use money - which has currency solely because it is underwritten by state guarantees?
If so, then your existence is dependent upon the state. The goods that you benefit from are the result of collective effort, held in trust and turned into tangible, accessible benefits by the state. Although you have not contributed to it, the state allows you to benefit from this common stock, simply by virtue of your citizenship. Therefore, the state not only has the right to reclaim a portion of the money you are paid so as to be able to continue to underwrite and resupply the social commons, but your retaining personal cash is an act of private appropriation of what is, at root, social property. In short, you are the thief.
In doing this "labour", do you use water supplies that have been cleaned as a result of state intervention (for example, through legal control on pollution)? Do you breathe air that is clean as a result of state action? Do you benefit from education provided by the state - either as a pupil yourself or because you depend on state-educated doctors, or computer programmers, or street cleaners? Do you rely on their being a market to which to sell what you make? And do the people who constitute this market depend upon state-organised or provided systems and goods? Do you use money - which has currency solely because it is underwritten by state guarantees?
If so, then your existence is dependent upon the state. The goods that you benefit from are the result of collective effort, held in trust and turned into tangible, accessible benefits by the state. Although you have not contributed to it, the state allows you to benefit from this common stock, simply by virtue of your citizenship. Therefore, the state not only has the right to reclaim a portion of the money you are paid so as to be able to continue to underwrite and resupply the social commons, but your retaining personal cash is an act of private appropriation of what is, at root, social property. In short, you are the thief.
I can't see how you can say he's "not contributed to it". The whole point of the tax is TO contribute to it.
But this is all irrelevant. Stripped down, government taking something that is mine without consent is theft. Just because taxation is legal theft, doesn't make it justifiable.
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#26
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
if you want to see a society without tax then check out mad max fury.
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#27
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
Theft is a crime. Not an argument.
Theft is a crime. Not an argument.
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#28
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
Just by being in the UK, you are assenting to your possessions being monitored/taxed. By being a citizen to the USA, you plead your Allegiance to the US, giving them powers over you (some are useful, like protecting Americans abroad and at home while some are not, like worldwide Income Tax)
Entering a country, same principle. Just by entering a country, you are giving permission for them to shoot you (in effect, like a private person can shoot you if you trespass).
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#29
(Original post by HighOnGoofballs)
Well, tax money goes towards paying for all that stuff. Who pays taxes. The government? No. You, me, and everyone else. It's not theft to use resources you've helped pay for. It's simply getting something for very very cheap.
I can't see how you can say he's "not contributed to it". The whole point of the tax is TO contribute to it.
But this is all irrelevant. Stripped down, government taking something that is mine without consent is theft. Just because taxation is legal theft, doesn't make it justifiable.
Well, tax money goes towards paying for all that stuff. Who pays taxes. The government? No. You, me, and everyone else. It's not theft to use resources you've helped pay for. It's simply getting something for very very cheap.
I can't see how you can say he's "not contributed to it". The whole point of the tax is TO contribute to it.
But this is all irrelevant. Stripped down, government taking something that is mine without consent is theft. Just because taxation is legal theft, doesn't make it justifiable.
Of course, it is not a realistic scenario. Indeed, it is unrealistic in ways which make his central argument even less plausible. i.e. in the real world, he has, of course, already benefited from common goods, including his prior education (state provided or facilitated), peacekeeping (state provided or facilitated), the money system (state underwritten) and so on.
The fantasy that a single person exists, or could exist, in some kind of isolation from the goods and services developed collectively through human history is absurd. By all means debate the role and type of state that you wish to live under, but there is a reason why no state has ever existed that does not tax its citizens in some way. It is the price it is necessary to pay for being able to benefit from the collective goods (and ills!) of society.
Your point about the state not paying taxes is just a rhetorical one, as far as I can see. What argument are you making here?
To claim that taking something that belongs to me without my consent is theft by definition only begs the question of what constitutes the legal basis of "ownership". This is historically and socially determined and always open to challenge and change. It cannot be divorced from its historical context. For example, you might claim to legally "own" a house a piece of your "private" property. You might argue that the only "theft" involved is if the state taxes it (say, through council tax). However, the land on which is stands was almost certainly at one time the common property of the local community, land on which they might have allowed stock to forage, collect firewood and so on. It was probably enclosed and turned into the private property of a single person as a result of a legal land-grab (as I type, I look out on a hill that in 1800 was common land, home to about a dozen families. A year later, a local peer of the realm drew up an act of parliament which granted him the right to turn all these families off the land, and made the whole hillside his personal property). So in your terms, "your" land was stolen from the common stock. Presumably, as a "libertarian", who wishes to reduce "theft" to a minimum, you would support calls to reappropriate the land for the commons....
This is not to mention the common goods and services, provide by the state, which make your property valuable (eg maintaining the peace and order of the neighbourhood, removing waste, maintaining the viability of mortgage lenders etc etc).
Far from being some kind of unique, intrinsic evil, taxation helps establish and maintain the underpinnings of civilisation. Opposing it on principle is naive.
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#30
It's crazy how in the US, less than the percentage that the UK gives to foreign aid, is spent on NASA!
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#31
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
Theft is a crime. Not an argument.
Theft is a crime. Not an argument.
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#32
Technically it isn't against the law, however morally it's very hard to argue that it isn't wrong but without an example of a tax free society working it become more of a impossible utopia than a plausible alternative
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#33
(Original post by SHallowvale)
Theft is inherently an illegal act. There's no "loophole" here. Taxation is taking something legally so it cannot be considered theft.
Theft is inherently an illegal act. There's no "loophole" here. Taxation is taking something legally so it cannot be considered theft.
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#34
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
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#35
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
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#37
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
Please read the thread, it has my arguments. Stop relying on other websites to do the talking for you!
Please read the thread, it has my arguments. Stop relying on other websites to do the talking for you!
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#38
(Original post by Rinsed)
I think the argument generally runs that in all practical and moral respects taxation is indistinguishable from theft.
Can the swish of a lawyer's pen make the immoral moral? It's a good question.
I think the argument generally runs that in all practical and moral respects taxation is indistinguishable from theft.
Can the swish of a lawyer's pen make the immoral moral? It's a good question.
Tax is theft because it extracts value from a person by force and that is bad. However extracting force by way of employment in order to make a profit for your spec, that is a good thing.
Complaining about the government stealing your economic output is a nonsense when, for most, your employer will take a much, much bigger proportion of that output without question.
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
I'm an advocate of an anarcho-capitalist country, and I've never heard an argument to prove that taxation ISN'T theft. Please provide your responses below
Proof, if you needed anymore, that AnCaps are not to be taken seriously.
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#39
(Original post by Mefan Stolyneux)
Theft is a crime. Not an argument.
Theft is a crime. Not an argument.
Taxation is legal, theft is not. There’s nothing else that can be said about it.
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#40
(Original post by mojojojo101)
The right is very confusing on this issue.
Tax is theft because it extracts value from a person by force and that is bad. However extracting force by way of employment in order to make a profit for your spec, that is a good thing.
Complaining about the government stealing your economic output is a nonsense when, for most, your employer will take a much, much bigger proportion of that output without question.
'Anarcho-capitalist country'.
Proof, if you needed anymore, that AnCaps are not to be taken seriously.
The right is very confusing on this issue.
Tax is theft because it extracts value from a person by force and that is bad. However extracting force by way of employment in order to make a profit for your spec, that is a good thing.
Complaining about the government stealing your economic output is a nonsense when, for most, your employer will take a much, much bigger proportion of that output without question.
'Anarcho-capitalist country'.
Proof, if you needed anymore, that AnCaps are not to be taken seriously.
Every day of our lives we experience the results of public service spending. It’s impossible not to.
We are paying for a service which is provided.
OP, if you don’t pay taxes and still reap the benefits of public spending, you are reaping the benefits of tax payers money without contributing yourself. How is that not a form of theft? Especially when you consider that that is illegal, whilst paying taxes is not.
It’s impossible not to benefit from public spending, in terms of using our road systems with traffic control measures, using our surfaced roads and pavements, using waste bins etc. You can’t avoid it and still be a member of society.
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