Is Taxation Theft?

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Nope. Taxation is you buying your citizenship. Don't like it, leave the country.

Thanks for your responses!

On a phone at work, so a more in-depth response will come later. But I'd like to raise the following question before my battery drains:

Several people have said that the definition of theft is predicated on the act in question being deemed unlawful by a body of arbitration, and that that factor alone is the difference between the legitimate "taking of stuff" and the illigitimate. Did I get this right?

Would it follow, therefore, that theft is impossible in the absence of lawmakers? If a man in an ungoverned region (a desert island, say) took another man's apple while that guy was sleeping, is that act any more or less a transgression against the sleeping man than if the same occurred in a new york marketplace?

Do you like having comprehensive education, libraries, ambulances, fire engines, police, street sanitation, rubbish disposal and street lighting?

Yes?

That's why not.

Did you make that up yourself just then?

That's adorable.

I don't see how there's any difference between income tax and sales tax. You can view the income tax as a sales tax on the employer buying your labor. The difference is purely legalistic. Structurally they are identical. If an income tax is theft, then so is a sales tax.

Another argument is that by using official green paper as income you are submitting to the collective that decides money has value and can't be counterfeited. The collective therefore has the right to regulate trade using such currency. Don't want to pay taxes? Don't have an income then. Anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard say we should get around that by claiming the existence of official fiat currency is somehow fraudulent, even if people voluntarily accept it, and that we should all trade in gold instead.

Taxation is a necessarily evil.
How those taxes are collected and how much determines whether or not it's theft.

I simply stated a fact. Why have governments if not to keep the peace or to defend the land?

ruveyn

A government is a source of law. Law is the only absolute role of governance.

Law is the basis of keeping the peace.

There are no ungoverned regions.

But to answer the question, common law would consider this to be theft, but with no enforcement agency it doesn't matter what you call it.

Alright, working backwards. I may ignore some comments if they are not relevant to the topic at hand.

How do you figure? Who governs the depths of space? Who governed the wind-swept steppes of Pleistocene-era Siberia? There will always be places and times where an event could hypothetically take place in the absence of government.

I agree that what the act is called is irrelevant. Sorry if I misunderstood, but I don't think we're on the same page. Let me see if I can rephrase.

Two people commit the exact same act (stealing an apple from a sleeping dude).

In Person A's case, the act he committed was not ever defined to be a crime by any ruling body. Perhaps he lives centuries before the first laws of man are pressed into clay.
In Person B's case, the act he committed was defined as the crime of theft by a court of law.

Is Person A's act any more or any less morally defensible than Person B's act?

In other words, does the presence or absence of state endorsement change the moral nature of the act itself? Is the victim any more, or any less, transgressed against if that transgression happens to be deemed a crime by a body of arbitration?

^^^ This is the main line or reasoning I've been trying to pursue with this topic, so the question is open to any and all.



Interesting that you bring up counterfieting. That's exactly what causes inflation: the printing of fiat currency (not backed up by anything) that devalues everyone's existing currency. The state makes counterfieting illegal, then does it itself.

And it's not like the free market can't handle its own currency production. It's already happening.


I like anything the free market can provide voluntarily, without the need for state violence.

So yes, I do like those things.


That's great! Everyone should be like you, willing to give a little to help those in need.

However, let me ask: Do you have a problem with another person's money being taken, at gunpoint, to support a cause that person absolutely does not agree with? Should a person be locked up because he doesn't want to fund a war, or see his money spent putting nonviolent drug users in jail?


That was a pointless post. (And this is a pointless comment, nyuk nyuk)


Thank you all for your earnest responses. (To clarify, the thanks I extend to each of you is weighted proportionally to the earnestness of your response.) This information is all valuable to me. I'm not here to try and change anyone's mind; rather I want to test the consistency of my own beliefs against the tightest scrutiny. So keep the discussion flowing! Prove me wrong!

As far as the swiping the apple from the sleeping guy is concerned - even in primitive societies, the guy was still victimized as his apple was taken against his will. Theft didn't become a crime because of the law; rather, laws against theft were formulated to protect people.
As for the free market taking over from the government to run things - the free market is not some all seeing, all knowing deity that can do no wrong. The one thing that motivates the market is essentially greed; and if business people can't get something for their efforts, they're not going to do it. That leaves plenty of people left on the street corner to die, minorities discriminated against, and even plenty of inventions and medical breakthroughs left undiscovered, because short sighted capitalists usually don't see the benefit for themselves in such things.
As for paying taxes for causes you don't believe in - well, plenty of people paid taxes that had gone for the Iraq War when they hadn't believed in it. Sorry, but tax payers don't get to decide where their taxes go, otherwise nothing is going to get paid for..

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Why should they?

If one comunity creates a set of rules that sets different functions for their gouvernement, how are you to impose your decision to them?

Its seems weird for me, that you have so negative emotions against taxes.

I pay oiltaxes, that are used to built the streets, that I use myself. If I dont use the streets with a vehicle that needs oil, I dont have to pay taxes for them.

I pay social taxes to receive as exchange social help, when I loose my job, or if I cant work anymore because of an accident or whatever. Additional I pay social taxes in exchange for living peacefully, because other people that looses their jobs or cant work anymore, dont need to kill or rob me to survive. I am not forced to pay them, so I can refuse to work with traditional contracts and can work on my own terms without this shelter, but I wouldnt know, why I wanted to do that.

I pay healthtaxes and in exchange I receive medical aid, when I need. As long as I agree with the standard stuff, I dont even have to know how much it cost. So my appendix was removed in a good hospital without my parents getting poor because of it. Because of it I have better medical treatment, because I am free to visit my doctors for free, even if I only suggest of being ill or if I want to do a standard check on me (So as example I have one free standar check in the year for the normal doctor, one for the eye doctor, one for the dentist, one for my "woman"-doctor, ... may sound weird, but they are offering this service, because this way they prevent you from getting much worser diseases, that costs the health insurance more. So as example to delete a beginning skin cancer you dont even need an operation in an hospital. Once you ignore it for years, and let it spread through your body, the health insurance has horrible costs for treating it and you need hospital, lots of medicaments, doctors, chemotherapy, ....

I pay loantaxes, because the old ones before us paid loantaxes as well. So their taxes were given to their old ones, when they were done with working or to pay their homes if they needed to move into an center for old people. And now they are old and are done with working, so someone has to give them money to buy food, cloths and afford their home, and the ones that are working are the only ones, that can pay it. In exchange the same will go for me. So there will be less money for me, because there will be less working people accorded to every old people that needs support, so there will be less money paid and I will receive less money. But the ones that are now old, cant be blamed for that, so why should I let them suffer, and the ones that are following me, also cant clone theirselfes, so no need to talk about things that are simply as they are.

I pay water taxes, because I want to get my water simply out of the pipe. I can drill for my own well on my land, buy me my own pump and to the complete water system on my own. Or I pay water taxes and are allowed to use an existing system, that needs to be taken care of and that needs work to be done. Same goes for garbage ... I am not forced to pay the garbage taxes...but I am no messie, so I dont like my house full of garbage and free companies that take your garbage dont cost less.

Is there nothing that you get in exchange for your taxes? Streets, Water, garbage system, police, social safety, a good neighborhood, good schools leading to well educated children leading to them having acceptable jobs leading to less criminality, ... at least your taxes must have some sense, so what do you pay taxes for?

But the free market can't provide those things at an affordable rate for the poorest. Just look at countries where these things aren't provided by the state, where generations of children aren't educated and live in squalor.

If a poor person is trapped in a fire, should the fire brigade just shrug their shoulders?

Don't be too sure. Suppose the wealthy and the middle class decided to finance an armed force (which they ARE doing. All the money for our military comes from somewhere). An army that can protect the property and lives of the wealthy and the middle class would in effect protect everyone. So the poor, as is often the case, get a free ride.

ruveyn