[thallium205]

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.

[marvin]

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.

[brokenmusic]

Surely no private company can ever come up with such technological marvel as taps and tubes and water in them.

[GabrielF00]

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.

[brokenmusic]

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.

[CamperBob2]

I'm sure glad I don't get all the police I pay for.

[marvin]

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.

[brokenmusic]

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.

[CamperBob2]

I don't have to do that, because even though I'm usually the conservative in the crowd around here, my worldview isn't that Manichaean.

There is a middle ground between Somalia and Sacramento, believe it or not. It's where most people prefer to live.

[millstone]

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.

[brokenmusic]

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.