Until people realize that all taxes are theft, they're doomed to have new taxes imposed on the most productive of them. It's really a simple test to see whether taxes are theft or not: if there was no way for IRS to find out how much money anyone made, would people still be paying taxes? My guess is that 90% of people who preach about the social contract and helping the poor would keep the money.
If taxes are theft, then your use of roads, police, courts, eating at restaurants approved by health inspectors, and much more -- that's all theft of your own.
Sorry, but taxes are not theft in any general way, by any stretch of the imagination.
It takes some seriously deep-seeded, institutionalized indoctrination assaulting your mind through most of your life to believe taxation is not theft.
If you do not pay your tax, violence is threatened and will be brought upon you if you do not comply. This is theft. It does not matter if the thief uses it for altruism. It does not matter if the thief forces roads and other services upon you by outlawing competition.
The fact remains that the initiation or even the threat of violence against an otherwise peaceful person is wrong, and trying to argue otherwise is an indefensible position.
You are free to go off-grid and live in the woods, free from the shackles of taxed services like roads, police protection and tap water. If you still make enough money to pay tax, you'll still technically be breaking the law - but I doubt anyone is going to come into the forest to put you in jail. So in practice you'll be free and clear.
You could also go to a nation in sub-Saharan Africa where there is in effect no government. No taxes! Except for the armed bandits which will take away all your stuff. But surely you can pay out of pocket for a professional defense force to take care of that problem.
Private companies are beholden to private interests. Government is beholden to the public at large. Sure, a private company could design the infrastructure behind the municipal water system, but are they going to design it and price it and service it in a way that serves everyone or are they going to design it so that they maximize profit even at the cost of, say, making it really hard for poor people to get running water? If Comcast ran the water system they'd make basic service very expensive for poor people, they'd constantly try to upcharge you (you'd pay the same price for hot and cold water taps as you would for the triple-play bundle of hot water, cold water, and carbonated water) and they'd return the profits back to the shareholders rather than investing them in improving their infrastructure.
You can only vote once in 4 years. I, on the other hand, can stop paying any private company at any point in time if I believe a company hurts me or other members of the society. I don't see how that situation makes a company less accountable.
In practice, private companies don't need to maximize profits at the expense of poor. In Russia, for example, ISPs are competing hard against each other and internet is dirt cheap, you could have a 30mbps connection for around $7/mo. No regulation.
But suppose you're right. Suppose companies would maximize profit and the way to do it would be by not providing service to poor people. It doesn't make it okay to steal money (in the form of taxes) from me. Ask me nicely and give me a REAL option to not pay, and I may as well pay even more than required. But IRS are not nice people. They make people's lives difficult at the slightest hint of tax evasion.
If you're dissatisfied with the level of service you get from the police, imagine how things would look if there were no courts, no prison system, no laws and no police.
You must understand, that the absence of a state is not equal to the absence of those organizations. The state simply taught you that only it can build and operate them. But the truth is, the demand for those things doesn't vanish with the absence of a state.
The usual rebuttal to this line of argument is that property is theft. If I attempted to peacefully enter your house against your will, you would physically prevent me, or worse. By what right? I never agreed that you should have exclusive use of that land or structure. And yet you deprive me of its use through threats of violence.
If I didn't take this land my house is on from someone else by force or coercion, then you have no such right. Land is no one's product of labor. What's on it - my house - is. It was built on my money and I have all the right in the world to protect it. Communists go against nature when they declare there's no property. It simply doesn't work this way.
If only I was paid 1 satoshi every time someone brings up roads, police and all that stuff when I say taxes are theft, I'd have more than Satoshi has.
Just try to imagine how a society without a government could function and still have all the things we currently have. Try to come up with solutions. Think about the demand side of the equation. Just for once, try to imagine how to organize things in a world where it's, for some reason, impossible to create a government. You'd be surprised of your own ingenuity.
What an absurd argument. Of course no one enjoys paying taxes but that doesn't make them theft. My guess is that 90% of children would rather be outside playing than sitting in the classroom, yet still we objectively know that they're better served by learning.
Likewise, people who gripe about taxation fail to recognize that it's an important, though often annoying process. The number of essential government services that you use everyday, even without leaving your house is surprisingly high.
What's more, this concept that we should leave everyone to fend for themselves and should simply ignore those who are less fortunate borders on sociopathy. I, for one, take comfort in knowing that even if everything in my life falls apart, there are some basic social safety nets in place to keep me from starving to death of the streets.
> this concept that we should leave everyone to fend for themselves and should simply ignore those who are less fortunate borders on sociopathy.
Actually, it borders on something we call "nature." Whatever position we take about nature, what we can't do is ignore it.
The antipode of nature would be a society in which there really is a social safety net that isn't temporary and discretionary, absolutely reliable, and not means-tested. Such a thing would collide with reality, the collision would be spectacular, and reality would prevail.
> I, for one, take comfort in knowing that even if everything in my life falls apart, there are some basic social safety nets in place to keep me from starving to death of the streets.
But there is no such thing, not in the way you seem to think. If such a net existed as more than a limited approximation, it would be destroyed by overexploitation.
Human societies live in nature, and nature is in charge. Nature doesn't waste anything. The human reproductive capacity is limited only by available resources and premature death.
> The number of essential government services that you use everyday, even without leaving your house is surprisingly high.
Yes -- and the number of ways that government can misuse or waste tax revenues is surprisingly high.
I recommend a skeptical attitude toward government and hypothetically perfect social safety nets.
You're young -- you'll figure it out. “Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” ― Winston Churchill
The fact that taxes are operational theft is why taxes that affect everyone are seldom passed. Specific industries or products are targeted because there's less resistance.
For example, many people will sneer at this tax yet cheer on other taxes they don't have to pay.
> It's really a simple test to see whether taxes are theft or not: if there was no way for IRS to find out how much money anyone made, would people still be paying taxes?
This "test" is hilarious!
If stores could not determine how much merchandise you had in your cart, more people would shoplift. So prices in stores are theft! If you could not determine if someone else drove your car, then your neighbor might sneak a joyride. Your owning a car is theft!
> My guess is that 90% of people who preach about the social contract and helping the poor would keep the money.
And if we replaced the social contract with private contracts, nobody would ever cheat on those, right?
An unenforceable law is a bad law. Good laws are designed to solve problems like free riders or production of public goods in a way compatible with rational self-interest. It is not hypocritical to act in your self-interest while simultaneously supporting the rule of law.
If there was no way to detect the contents of the cart, shoplifting rates would increase, but not to a dramatic number. It's because stores don't force people to visit them and buy things. They offer.
