[ElevenLathe]

We can talk about how violent taxing the rich is once we have the first instance ever in history of the police locking up a rich guy for refusing to pay their taxes. Even then, sure, I'm fine with that level of violence. We would live in a utopia if that were the worst kind of state violence we had to deal with.

Go ahead and twist my normal, non-radical politics into whatever shape you want. You're the wing nut, not me. Normal people want normal stuff out of politics: functioning infrastructure, upward mobility, a future. Only the most warped, unreachable paint huffers are willing to throw away all possibility of a normal country for the "freedom" of a few dozen rapacious sociopaths. This means that we will ultimately win. Unfortunately normal people have been asleep at the switch for at least a generation, so you're probably going to be able to drag us through several hellish decades, maybe centuries, until we can right the ship.

I'm sure I'll see you in the camps, so at least we'll have that in common. Have a nice day.

[mike_hearn]

Rich people get jailed for not paying their taxes all the time:

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/23-celebrities-convicted-of-...

[ElevenLathe]

Falsifying your tax return statements is not the same as a simple refusal to pay. By doing that, you are indicating that you agree to the legitimacy of the taxes in general, but would prefer to lie about whether you should personally pay them or not. These people were also all given their day in court, and convicted of actual crimes in fair trials where they had adequate representation. If this is your idea of "violence", then I don't know what to say.

[mike_hearn]

People who just refuse to pay on principle do exist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

Sovereign citizens also don't agree that the US courts are legitimate, and you'll never guess what happens next:

https://www.cpr.org/2018/05/22/sovereign-citizen-bruce-douce...

He was "was sentenced to 38 years in prison". That's why most tax evaders try falsification rather than refusal.

> At the sentencing hearing in Denver District Court, Doucette fidgeted in his spinnable chair, while chained up in a green jumpsuit. He sat alone because he has insisted on representing himself in this case. Before the hearing, the judge asked him if it was OK to proceed and he said, “I do not consent and never have.”

Note the photo of him wearing handcuffs, surrounded by police.

All law is implemented through using violence or the threat of using it. You can't resolve that conundrum by claiming that holding a vote to tax rich people is somehow apart from using violence. It's just an abstraction over it.

These are basic facts, but a lot of people struggle to understand them because our society likes to pretend that there's nothing underneath the abstraction - that courts and rules is all there is. It helps them believe that if they vote to take other people's stuff, it's white and pure, that nobody is getting hurt. It's a "might makes right" argument pushed at every level of society, because it enables what you're doing here: claiming that "we" should be able to choose what is done with the fruits of other people's labour.

[ElevenLathe]

Good news, glad they're safely locked away!