Okay I guess. I read your posts as pretty defensive though. You accept that people aren’t crazy for thinking of it as theft and you don’t really care if it’s theoretically theft or not?
I think that’s just the nature of discussing something over the internet or maybe my writing style, IDK. There’s nothing for me to get defensive about, the occasion retarded comment from certain posters not withstanding.
Yes, I don’t think you are crazy for thinking that it’s theft (even though I disagree) because the reality is that there will never be a time when taxation isn’t necessary. Yes, I don’t really care if it’s theoretically theft or not because there’s no way to prove that it is or is not theft theoretically. I cite Locke you cite whomever and we end up at an impasse as we have.
Taxation is theft, blablabla
Nevermind ownership is also a product of society.
No, it isn’t - the infringement is what you have the problem with, and it is the only thing that matters. You have absolute freedom, until you don’t - and the question is whether the infringement is justified ir not, i.e., did you consent to it or not?
That’s true of any democratically enacted law, taxation or otherwise. There is no meaningful distinction.
Taxation isn’t theft. Theft occurs when you haven’t consented to the taking.
To think taxation is theft, philosophically or in the real world, is silliness. And also why Libertarianism will remain a laughingstock (though not necessarily libertarianism).
Wow. You are going to tell me what I have an issue with and what I don’t? Especially after I’ve previously stated my beliefs are the opposite of what you are attributing to me. You are one arrogant piece of work. Consent is not the only thing that can justify interference. You do not need consent to defend yourself or others for example.
What is laughing nonsense is this “taxes are voluntary” idiocy. You sound just like Harry Ried.
When did I ever say taxes were voluntary? Far from it, taxes are obligatory.
I am just explaining back what you said - the problem with theft is that it is an unjustified infringement on your freedom. Isn’t that what you’ve been complaining about? Isn’t that what theft is?
Perhaps you should re-read. I’ve actually stated several times I wasn’t arguing against the theft of taxation. And again there are a number of different things that can justify infringement. Where on earth did you get the idea that consent is the only possible justification?
We must have different ideas of what consent means. Your’s would most certainly land you in prison if you applied it to sex or pretty much any other interaction with people. Consent requires a choice be voluntary. If taxes aren’t voluntary, they cannot be consented to. Again, this doesn’t make taxes necessarily unjustifiable, but they are coerced (obligatory). They are taken irrespective of your will, by violence or threat of violence. The idea of consent when there is no method of choosing differently and you are under threat of violence is total nonsense. Anyone trying to spout about consent so they can make themselves feel better about not really technically supporting theft is in denial. It’s like telling a woman you are going to have sex with her regardless of what she does, that she will also get beaten and imprisoned if she resists, then giving her the “option” of “consent”. Even if she lies back and takes it, or even actively participates, her “consent” becomes totally meaningless.
False, and see my example of the delegation to you re: choosing the color of my house. If I authorize you to pick the color, I consent to that color. That’s easy logic. It’s a principal-agent consent.
Same with a legislature and taxation. We (you) delegate to a legislature to tax. Legislature passes a tax and the tax is enforced…with your consent. The people are the principal, the legislature (and executive that enforces) is the agent.
Nobody can steal from you if you give that person permission to take the property. As long as the law was properly passed in accordance with predetermined rules, the taxing authority has that permission.
This is basic stuff. Why Libertarians can’t get it is beyond explanation.
The taxation is theft construct rests on the assumption that pre-tax income is the sole property of the person being paid. As I pointed out above, a strong (or at least defensible) argument can be made that this is not the case. For a number of reasons, property rights cannot be construed as absolute; rather, they are conditional, and determined by a web of social conventions. Part-and-parcel of that web is the notion of the income tax.
Thus, the same ownership rights that apply to after-tax income do not apply to pre-tax earnings. Therefore, arguments that are germane with respect to the coerced confiscation of after-tax income (ie, that it constitutes theft) do not apply to the lawful taking of pre-tax income (ie, taxation).
tl;dr You are the sole owner your post-tax income; you are not the sole owner of your pre-tax income.
The assumption is that each person owns themselves. From that the rest flows. You can certainly claim people don’t own themselves, but that is what you have to do.
This is expressly not a parallel.
Even excepting that erroneous assumption and assuming your comparison were accurate, you are still wrong. What you are talking about is a natural right, not the privilege of having your house a color you like. Natural rights cannot be contracted away. This is even confirmed, ironically, by the SCOTUS. I cannot sign to give you permission to kill me for example. Even if in a situation where you are under duress and threat of violence, there is no possibility of choosing any other course, and it were, unreasonably as it is, able to give consent you cannot sign a contract to do something like make yourself a permanent slave because of the nature of what a natural right is.
I fail to see how that impacts my comment.
If you own yourself, you own the products of your body. If you don’t own the products of your body, you don’t own yourself.
The two are not the same.
If you want your house painted and choose someone else to pick the color, then you certainly consent to the color picked by that person. We’ll overlook the fact that the state is more similar to a situation in which a majority of your neighbors decide that your house needs to be painted, so they then allow you a vote in choosing the chooser of your new house color.
If your chosen chooser picks a color for your house and then starts making landscaping decisions for you(because he obviously couldn’t be expected to ONLY choose the color of your house-certain colors may not look quite right to him without other changes, so you certainly consent to THOSE changes when you pick him to choose the color of your house), he would be similar to the state. If he then tells you that your kid can’t throw his baseball against the back of the house, because that may damage the paint he has chosen for your home(AND there’s a decent chance that your kid will break your window…you probably didn’t consider that, so you’re welcome)-well, that would make him a bit more like the state. If he later decides that your presence on your property is getting in the way of his making the best use of your property(that was a power that you gave him when you let him choose the color of your house) and decides to evict you from your property, then he is a bit more like the state.
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That is an unwarranted leap. For starters, there are no “products of your body” that are not intrinsically tied to some aspect of the world at large. Your body does not produce in a vacuum.
All your arguments lead down the path that no one owns anything and therefore there are no countries and everything is one world collective
…and that is one of the truly crazy things about our government(don’t know how others view assisted suicide)…it(yes, I know IT is actually the majority-basically-of the citizenry) asserts a claim to even your life.
To understand what taxation is, you need to understand what money is.
“Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for”
Money is a representation of the life, we willingly sell, in order to trade for the things we need or desire. Money is our lives, our time. It is time gone never to be seen again. Time not used doing what we desire to do with our lives.
Taxation is a piece of our lives taken from us. If we work half of our waking lives and half of that is taxed. We are 25% slaves. What percentage of our lives do we allow to be taken by the government, and call ourselves a free people?
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