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by IshKebab 1130 days ago
Taxes are not theft. They are a fee you have to pay for the privilege of living in modern society.

And the argument for it is that the alternatives are clearly far worse. What more do you need?

2 comments

Ah modern Society. You say not theft, but they force it from us and spend it on wars to extract whatever they can from the ones they can't tax without a fight. The alternative where we don't let the already too powerful take our property looks worse?

Anyone in favor of taxation is either afraid of challenging the status quo, or of the belief that they'll ultimately get more by stealing from others than doing anything productive themselves. That's quite sad. If it was really true that it was better for society it could simply be voluntary, and not coercive. You wouldn't pay nowhere near the same amount which is taken from you now, you'd very likely shop around for a less shitty option.

I'm genuinely curious what you think the alternative is. Please explain how your tax free society would work!
Others have done that very nicely for me, so if you really are genuinely curious I would suggest you read the following two books. Now you can start off with "Ethics of Liberty"[1] if you would like to begin with the Ethical Parts of the reasoning, but if you're more into how / why it would work (which it seems you are), I would suggest starting out with "For a New Liberty"[2]. Now these books are straight to the core, no sugar coating, so I hope you'll read them with an open mind.

Now since you're on this site you'll probably also find the related book "Against Intellectual Property" interesting.

If I'm going to spend the time telling my visions, I'd prefer a better platform since this thread is getting quite long. You can find a way to contact me in my profile.

[1] https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Ethics%20of%20Liberty%2020191108...

[2] https://cdn.mises.org/For%20a%20New%20Liberty%20The%20Libert...

[3] https://cdn.mises.org/Against%20Intellectual%20Property_2.pd...

I'm not going to read a whole book, sorry. If it genuinely could work it should be possible to explain in a sentence or two.

I did however start reading `THE PUBLIC SECTOR, II: STREETS AND ROADS` from your second link. It was as insane as I imagined.

I recommended those books because you clearly can't comprehend humans working together on a voluntary basis, so changing your world view in a couple of sentences didn't really seem likely.

What's really insane is that we allow so many people to die in public traffic every year. Talk about insane!

The same way that ransom is the fee you have to pay for the privilege for someone to stay alive?

What more do I need? I just need the world to get rid of extortion.

You're welcome to move to another country that doesn't have taxes.
I know I’m welcome to escape the plantation, thanks. Still doesn’t make slavery right though.