Opinion of the phrase "Taxation is theft"?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Hasn't he ever heard of the social contract?

He might counter by asking to see the terms of this primeval document and wonder how he came to be bound by it.

I can't help but think that taxation is in some sense theft, at least as soon as there is any disagreement and one man claims that another man must pay something more than he thinks is right.  Perhaps it is a theft which people should generally put up with for the good of society, but taking property under the threat of force would generally be considered theft unless it is to return something already stolen.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Hasn't he ever heard of the social contract?

He might counter by asking to see the terms of this primeval document and wonder how he came to be bound by it.

Yeah, because the Enlightenment is certainly way back in the furthest reaches of human history.

The social contract of the Enlightenment philosophers was a hypothesized transition in some distant past from a theorized "state of nature."

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

But if you want a argument, you can use in your mission as a modern Sisyphus, there's a very simple one. He can stop paying tax if he moves out of USA or if he decides to live completely of the grid. He choose to pay tax by using the services the state deliver like roads, internet, electricity grid. If you stopped using all these things, the state would no longer be able to find him.

The ability to hide from a thief hardly legitimates his thievery.

Well that's not hiding, it's not eating at the buffet.

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A better analogy would be a buffet that you would charged for regardless of how much you ate, or whether you ate at all. In that case, you might as well eat from it, but that wouldn't mean you voluntarily agreed to pay for the buffet.

Well I don't pay tax to the American state, because I don't and haven't used the services it delivers. You on the other hand have used from it for years until you became adult. Yes you didn't have any choise, but your guardians did.

So you have already eaten from the buffet, and now you're calling it theft because you have to pay.

But even if I'd never eaten...I'd still have to pay. If I wanted to stop eating now, I'd still have to pay in the future.

I have never eaten at that buffet and I don't pay, you have eaten at it from the day you were born, and so have every native born American who pay tax.

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Except you're free to leave the restaurant anytime you want, and stop paying. But you insist on keep eating at the restaurant, while saying you have no choice to keep eating.

Right now you use a pierce a infrastructure, which the American government have given you, and I don't talk the internet, but the grids which it use and the protection against theft (of the copper as example) the American state provide, while you complain that paying for both is theft.



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In this example, even if you manage - perhaps through a lot of struggle - to get out of the restaurant you are in, you have to go to another restaurant.  You are actively prevented by the restaurants from just setting off on your own or with a group of others to start up your own buffet or pot luck.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

States generally don't say to anyone who wants to that if they want to be left alone by them, not pay any tax and not receive any services that's ok.  The state lays a claim over all activity within its territory, and wherever on earth there are vacuums in state authority, a state and/or an aspirational state will try to take over through force.  If someone takes your money without permission and says it is the price to pay for being protected by them, is that not theft?  All societies require some pooling of resources, but taxation is something more than that.  It is the arbitrary nature of the taxation and the imbalance of power which gives taxation a character of theft. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

States generally don't say to anyone who wants to that if they want to be left alone by them, not pay any tax and not receive any services that's ok.  The state lays a claim over all activity within its territory, and wherever on earth there are vacuums in state authority, a state and/or an aspirational state will try to take over through force.

Yes, I fail to see the problem, we all control property through force, the state are just better at it, because it's able to pool resources. But I promise you if you decides to dwell far from and without contact with other people the state will ignore you (like USSR ignored the old believers in the link above, until they interacted with other people). But if you interact with other people, who do have fealty to a state, the state will protect its citizens/subjects against external actors, which in this case will be you.

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No taxation are nothing more than the pooling of resources, there's nothing arbitary about it. It's a effient way to get rid of the free rider problem. It's no more arbitary than the state punish rapist, thieves and murderers, it's the state extending force to ensure that all people pay the price it cost to live in a modern society, whether it's follow a code or conduct (like not raping or murdering people) or paying the money the state need to run the system.

Just because a individual are too weak to force the state to back down, doesn't make the state arbitary or wrong, it just make the state better at push it will through with force. Of course you can say that's unfair, but I also think it's unfair that Paris Hilton have a lot of money and I don't, but few libertarians support my right to take her money from her.

The Soviets only ignored these people because they didn't know they existed, because they were in hiding. They were in hiding because the state was not leaving them alone.  In an era when the state has so much information in its reach, it would be a remarkable feat.  Being in contact with someone should not in itself make the state treat you as an aggressor giving them authority to act against you.

Taxation is arbitrary because it is a decision about how much someone else will pay. The decision to spend a certain amount is arbitrary, the decision to tax people or activities at a certain rate are arbitrary. They are not objective measures of what is, in anything close to an absolute sense, necessary.  And it is far different from a pooling of resources which may be freely entered into, or left.  If taxation were based always on a true consensus of all individuals, it would be something very different.  But states enforce the ability to make people pay not just against their will, but often beyond their ability to pay.
However unfair you may find it that Paris Hilton has more money than you, it is different from Paris Hilton coming and taking something you own - and that is not merely a difference about the math involved.