So I've been seeing the whole "Taxation is Theft" meme everywhere online

There's a Marxists thread on now

I believe that taxation is theft, but it's necessary to maintain a real government.
Such is life.

Property is theft, taxation is in the worst case stealing from illegitimate ownership and in the best case redistribution towards the dispossessed.

Except that you failed to realize there can be no steady stream of revenue without taxation. And you fail to realize that taxation is simply payment for all the government services you passively and actively benefit from, so it isn't theft. So when that user called you a retard, he was 100% justified in doing so.

>there's an off-topic thread on page 3
>this means I should make another one!

Taxation is theft, but by the same principle property is theft.

This is what I don't understand about libertarians. Why is taxation bad but rent good?

> double standard

What part of

> MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE

you don't understand

politics are part of history you fucking degenerate

Good luck keeping national parks open without taxes my lolbertarian friend.

Off to /pol/ with you.

There is no reason parks cant be privately owned. Its not like theres going to be any fucking walmarts in the rocky mountains anyway.

Concepts like theft only work if you have a concept of ownership. This concept is simply not universial. It's something we made up.

If you go into a jungle none of the animals are going to respect your "property". If they can steal your bananas they will. All sorts of parasites and germs even as you read this are taking parts of your body without your permission. And in some animals in the jungle will even kill you.

Something is only "yours" so long as you have the power to hold onto it.

However in the interest of increasing their collective power humans made up a bunch of laws. It was the lawmakers that decided what is and is not property. Taxation is only theft if they define it as theft. What I said before about how power is the only real way to enforce anything applies here. Property rights work because cops and courts have power. If you can overpower or thwart them the laws are meaningless.

Try this experiment: go to the nearest convenient store and find some petty item like a candy bar. Grab it, make sure the cameras are not on you and put it in your pocket. Leave the store. Than eat your candy. Than tell me what that says about ownership.

Property is what you have either obtained through voluntary exchange (ie the opposite of theft) or what you have worked to produce.

An acre of land cant really be said to be anyones property but if you cultivate it or build a house on it then of course you at minimum have a claim to what you have worked to put there.

>An acre of land cant really be said to be anyones property but if you cultivate it or build a house on it then of course you at minimum have a claim to what you have worked to put there.
This takes place on that land though, taking up space which others could use. If the land itself can't be said to have an owner, would it thus be a rightful demand of another for you to take your belongings and move somewhere else so he could cultivate the land in your place?

No, there is no natural right to anything. Possessions are yours as long as you possess the power to keep them.

>There is no reason parks cant be privately owned.
There's no reason even one would exist that would be free to visit. More likely than anything, if parks were privatised:
- Rich fucks would instantly build houses all over them; or
- Rich fucks would buy them up and try making money off of em.

No it's not.

By running a private fire fighting brigade.

He would show up to buildings that had caught fire with his boys then offer to put out the fire. On one condition; you had to sell him the land.

if you didn't, he and his boys would go home. With this method he acquired so much fucking land that all paid tribute to him.

It's not known, but I highly suspect he'd start the fires himself.

So I don't have as much time to make this post as I would like. But, I would like to use a parable that Michael Huemer gives in his book, "Problems of Political Authority". Now he doesn't specifically say this, but for the sake of argument let's say this happens somewhere with no state, or at least no effective government:
You live in a small village with a crime problem. Vandals roam the village, stealing and destroying people’s property. For whatever reason, no one seems to be doing anything about the problem. So one day, you and your family convene and decide to put a stop to it. You
take your guns and go out looking for the vandals. Periodically, you catch one
of them, take him back to your house at gunpoint, and proceed to lock him in
the basement. You provide the vandals with food so they don’t starve, but you
plan to keep them locked in the basement for a few years to teach them a
lesson.
After you’ve been operating in this way for a few weeks, you decide to
make the rounds of the neighborhood. Starting with your next door neighbor,
you knock on the door and explain your anti-crime program. “You’ve noticed
the reduction in crime in the last few weeks, haven’t you?” you ask. Your
neighbor nods. “Well, that is thanks to me. I’ve been locking vandals in my
basement.” Noting the wary look on your neighbor’s face, you continue.
“Anyway, the reason I’m here is that it’s come time to collect your
contribution to the crime prevention fund. Naturally, I can’t provide my
services for free. Your bill for the month is $100.” You extend your hand
expectantly.

Supposing you take this tack with all of your neighbors, what sort of
reception could you generally expect? Would most of your neighbors
cheerfully give over their assigned share of the costs of crime prevention? Or
would they, perhaps, give over the money after grudgingly admitting their
obligation to you?
Neither of these reactions is likely. In all probability, you would observe
the following. First, almost none of your neighbors would take themselves to
owe you anything. While some might pay up for fear of being locked in your
basement, and a few might pay up out of hostility toward the vandals, almost
none would consider themselves duty bound to do so, and those who refused
to pay would more likely be praised than condemned for standing up to you.
Second, most would consider your actions outrageous. Your demands for
payment would be seen as naked extortion, and your confinement of those
who refused to pay you would be condemned as kidnaping. The very
outrageousness of your conduct, combined with your deluded presumption
that the rest of the village would recognize an obligation to support you, would
doubtless cause many to question your sanity.

-End

Now Huemer also gives examples where you could create laws and create kangaroo courts to convict those who you begin to lock up in your basement. Still few would agree with the vigilante's actions. The vigilante is doing two things that the government: punishing those who violate the rights of others and collecting non-voluntary compensation for their actions. When governments do this they are called the criminal justice system and the taxation system respectively, but when the vigilante does this they are called kinapping and extortion. This illustrates a general feature of our attitudes toward government. Governmetns are considered ethically permitted to do things that no non-governmental person or organization may do. At the same time, individuals are considered to have obligations to their own governments reaching beyond the obligations they have towards non-governmental persons, even when non-governmental organizations act as governments. We call this special ethical status afforded to governments "political authority". But can anyone explain to me, why we should not also afford the vigilante in our example the same privileges of government?

And sorry for the formatting.

>Greed is good, friend
>But peolpe can be trusted to not try and make money off of any land they own

Don't think so. Private national parks would be bought by those looking to take their natural resources.

The exact same fucks Teddy decided to protect the land from. It was true then and its true now.

Where are all the beautiful privately owned parks competing with the national parks? Every privately owned one I've been to has been balls and tacky as hell compared to government-funded ones.

Pic related is an attraction at the privately owned Natural Bridge in Virginia.

The law that currently is upheld by the people and government doesn't write it as theft and except you live in a totalitarian shithole, you can protest that shit and try to change the law.

If the government was managing its own central bank, the artificially imposed interest and inflation would not be bankrupting the country.

So a real government in your estimation is necessarily a power hungry crime syndicate?

Tariffs are just more taxes added to goods from abroad
You don't have to rent if you don't want to. If you don't pay taxes, you get thrown in prison.
Fiat currencies do not magically become sustainable if the government owns it, see: every socialist country every, Venezuala with no toiler paper right now.

It just means they wouldn't have to tax directly as they could profit off of loans and control of the money supply instead.

You can get thrown in prison and have all your property taken away and auction off if you skip out on your rent, too.

Ownership is a spook.

People don't understand this. Ownership only exists because of social contract. Part of that social contract is taxes.

Your name on a deed only means you own it because the law says that's what it means. The law also says you owe taxes.

Fines.
You didn't do X. X is the law. Pay a fine or go to jail. Sometimes both.

NotBut there is legitemately no other option. A main tenent of a government is to retain order. Even if it could support itself without taxation, its left with dealing with criminals or raising an army, all in an effort to keep the status quo and preventing us from destroying ourselves. Whether you think that's stepping on personal freedoms or not, there still remains a lack of an alternative.

Call it the worst gang in history, but i'd much rather there be one than loads of others fighting for control.

All of you have made the mistake in thinking that because property rights are a social construction that means government can make taxation not theft, when it doesn't work that way. For one, governments do not represent the society, they are simply powerful organizations that tries somehow to legitimize its power, either through "divine right" or supposed "democracy. Secondly, even if governments did represent the people, you cannot logically make the argument that everyone else isn't allowed to steal no matter how many people there are that wish to steal from you, but governments are allowed to steal; people cannot give a power or right they do not possess to someone or something else.
No different than taxation. Especially since a fine could be as arbitrary as living in a certain location, and that location is the entire country.
>I consider myself a right wing libertarian and I like the idea of no taxes but I'm not an anarchist
Why do taxes bother you by the idea of government doesn't? They're both based upon force and coercion.

>people cannot give a power or right they do not possess to someone or something else.
and who are you to say that in the absence of a government people do not have the right to steal?

You don't understand what spooks are.

>people are dangerous and will harm each other if left alone
>let's give those same people power over everyone else and say that if you resist you're a bad person
The idea that government is better than the alternative is absurd. Even if the alternative was constant robbery and warlords, which wouldn't be the case, how is that any different from constant taxation and government wars?
Rights are spooks, and people can believe in them if that's helpful, but you cannot have a inconsistent, illogical belief and say that it still makes sense.

This, if people can't give a right to something they don't have, how can they acknowledge that someone else owns something, or that they own something. That's not their right.

If your social contract establishes no taxes, then there's no taxes, but most social contacts establish theft as a separate category from taxes.

>Rights are spooks, and people can believe in them if that's helpful
Spooks are only real insomuch as they can be enforced.

>but you cannot have a inconsistent, illogical belief and say that it still makes sense.
Taxes are when a government takes your stuff. Theft is when a private individual takes your stuff. Taking is the general verb that applies to both, not theft.

If the society believes that people:
1: have a legitimate right to exclusively possess the things they have created or peacefully exchanged for
2: No one has a right to possess something they did not get by those terms
Then one cannot make an exception for government. It is logically inconsistent.
One can use semantics all they want, that doesn't mean taxation can be logically justified according to the rights that society has already agreed upon. If one wanted to say that governments have a right to your stuff because they're agents of God and everything belongs to God, but that normal people are not agents of God, then at least would be a consistent argument.

>people cannot give a right they do not possess to someone or something else.
That is exactly the point of the law to allow groups of people to collectively agree on the powers and rights acceptable by society.

Except the law doesn't allow that. The law, and societal norms, says that you cannot steal from someone else, even if you out number them 10:1 or 10,000:1. Only the state can legitimately take from people, but not because it's a democratic state, just because it is the state. In the US for instance, the Founding Fathers designed a system so that there would be no tyranny of the majority.

It's a necessary evil, I think.

> An anarchist society doesn't work.
> People must be compensated for their work.
> Rules must be enforced.
> No decent substitute for taxes.
> Taxes are bad, but necessary.

I think what kills libertarianism is the movement's frequently childlike attack of government. I did it too, not gonna deny, but we suffer from the same thing Marxists do: we're not willing to look at things like engineers, and make solutions that work from an infrastructural standpoint. Libertarian infrastructure is all about freedom, openness. It's Python, Android. There are base rules everyone follows (syntax, or taxes), they are enforced, and we get a more functioning ecosystem out of it.

We dislike Marxism because it requires the community to really do anything, because one individual can't really gain the necessary capital on her own. We dislike anarchy because it doesn't work. So if you're committed to a working society, you must sacrifice SOME personal freedom to have everything, but the payout is that everything is easier, and you still get maximum freedom for minimum hassle.

Why doesn't anarchism work? What makes you think that a government fixes the problems of a stateless society? The state is only as recent as agriculture, for the vast majority of human history there was no state, and even now there are plenty of stateless societies that function just fine.

Besides taxes and Civil Assets Forfeiture, Eminent Domain appropriation has been applied on behalf of private entities as well.

>Are there any substitutes for taxation for the government to get revenue from?

Why don't they get a goddamned job?

One quadrillion percent not fucking joking.

Besides taxes, these are seen as illegitimate by most people and is only allowed because of the power and pseudo religious legitimacy of the state. It is obviously very difficult to practically resist the government, but it is also seen as immoral by most people, which gives the state most of its power.

Because humans have a hard cap on how many interpersonal relationships they can form. Hunter-gatherer societies needed no state, but you're not going to get to hundred-million conglomerate societies when any one person only cares for his immediate 10-200 surrounding persons.

Donations(voluntary taxes) and tariffs. Also most services should be privatized.

This board is about humanities too.

>Property is theft
How?

Do you think da ebil guvment has no role in protecting consumers/environment, too?

Private safaris in Africa are keeping the species and fauna alive,while places like Zimbabwue are selling all the animals to a bunch of Chinese and destroying the biodiversity. I dont really see how private national parks would be bad per say,when there are lots of examples of them preserving nature better than state funded parks.

>Ownership is a spook.
So are morals. Should we make murder legal? And if we go to Stirner's own logic,there should be alternatives to the state,egoist unions, which could respect property. The whole point is,that you cant choose or not to pay taxes

We're not talking about some upside down third world dictator led shithole, though.

In the west, privatization only leads to two things. [further] Monetization (look at ANY city that sold its parking rights to private companies), and restricted access. When rich people buy up forests, lakes and parks, they build shit for themselves and fence it.

A society of hundreds of millions of people isn't a true society, it would not exist if there wasn't a power holding it together and fooling the people into thinking there was actual homogeneity. Even in large societies a state is still not useful, it serves no purpose other than ensuring that no one else takes its monopoly on force and robbery. Anyone or thing that did take its place would be on a massively smaller scale, anyway. Modern states only function because of compliance, not even necessarily out of fear, but out of a sense of duty. A sense of duty on the part of the oppressed and the oppressors, when in a stateless society both groups would rarely act the way they do.

>Do you think da ebil guvment has no role in protecting consumers/environment, too?
They currently dont do it. The regulatory agencues are just bought by big corporations that put the caps as they wish,so they can kill new competition,and still keep a profit.

How does anything you've said respond to my post? Humans are limited socially. Centralization is necessary if you want to build civilization. Now we can have a discussion on what form "the state" would take, but it's pretty much impossible to not live and shit innawoods and have cities.

>restricted access. When rich people buy up forests, lakes and parks, they build shit for themselves and fence it.
Nothing wrong with this. Most museums have restricted access too. And privatly owned or privatize doesnt mean that they are sold to the first rich dude. In the Czech republic,the goverment made its citizens shareholders of public companies,and allowed them to choose to sell their share,or keep them,and paying for the lose/ or getting their benefits.

>They currently dont do it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_United_States

They sure don't do it nearly enough, but giving the reins over to the corporate swine is not the way to go.

>The regulatory agencues are just bought by big corporations
That's true. IMO we should introduce the "behead sources of corruption" act.

>so they can kill new competition,and still keep a profit.
Walmart for example doesn't kill local shops with government help, they do it because they have the capital to choke them out.

>Centralization is necessary
Kind off,but citi states or merchant leagues have performed wonderfully through out history and they weren't as massively centralized as current nation states.

National parks only exist so the government can lease or sell the land to cover its obligations

>Walmart for example doesn't kill local shops with government help, they do it because they have the capital to choke them out.
But also forcing regulatory laws laws like higher minimum wages,or not allowing to buy cheap food from abroad,kills smaller companies to grow and having a better chance at compiting. Regulations are a double edge sword, that can benefit greatly big companies

It's true humans cannot have more than 100 to 200 interpersonal relationships, but it's not necessary in a modern society for everyone to know everyone else. Your point was that for modern society to exist you need a state because modern societies are modern than 200 people, my point is that a state is unnecessary and more detrimental than the alternative.

Centralization isn't needed. Things that need to be done will be done, any people will either do it themselves or get someone else to do it. Where I live almost all living utilities are done privately, for instance.

>And privatly owned or privatize doesnt mean that they are sold to the first rich dude.
The vast majority of the time that's exactly what it means.

>loot
not longer viable, war costs more than earn, bad PR

>private donations
not viable in modern democracies, problems with corruption

>state owned business
>state monopolies
isn't this the worst nightmare of rightwingers? >muh communism

Also taxes aren't theft but fair fee for using of infrastructure and protection.
tl;dr lolbertarians are stupid

>Things that need to be done will be done,
but are things that "need to be done" the only things that "ought to be done"?

Private companies are also centralized, I'm sorry to disappoint you. They are not anarchistic.

Because cronyism. Libertarians usually want to make the citizens shareholders of the privatized companies,and let them choose to sell,keep the profit of loses of said company

What ought to be done is subjective and should be left up to the community and individual to decide.

>>private donations
>not viable in modern democracies, problems with corruption
Dont get this. There is corruption with current taxation.

so the consensus of a community is the deciding factor in what ought to be done? as in the 51% should be able to decide what is worth pursuing?

>But can anyone explain to me, why we should not also afford the vigilante in our example the same privileges of government?
Except we kinda did?
That's how feudal lords happened.
"I keep your ass secure, and some other services, and you give me stuff"

>Even if the alternative was constant robbery and warlords, which wouldn't be the case, how is that any different from constant taxation and government wars?
I can a stable framework and some other stuff which i can peacefully develop in, which can't happen when Genghis is raiding my ass and burning everything.

Taxation is theft if the proceeds aren't being spent in accordance with the will of the taxpayer.

I'm not saying there is no corruption, I'm saying corruption would way worse if the only source of government income were sanctified donations of wealthy oligarchs and corporations.

>Taxation is theft if the proceeds aren't being spent in accordance with the will of the taxpayer.
This doesnt make any sense.
Every tax payer has a different will.

No, the individuals in a community freely decides what ought to be done. The community decides as a whole what action to take. If half of the community disagrees then half of the community doesn't participate.
Except the money and lives that is stolen by the state could be used instead to actually protect yourself; it would be even more effective because without the monopolies of the state any private defense or policing force wouldn't be allowed to get away with waste, fraud, or abuse.

>I'm not saying there is no corruption, I'm saying corruption would way worse if the only source of government income were sanctified donations of wealthy oligarchs and corporations.
Giving some sorts of priviledges to the people that pay everything would make kind of sense. And if the goverment has few powers delegated to it,corruptiom couldnt skyrrocket as it happens in some places

The whole 'taxation is theft' argument is so absolutist. It always argues that taxation is the exact same thing as someone coming into your house and taking your TV but they are not the same. It's like how feminists use 'rape' to denote drunk fucking and getting fucked by knife point in some ally.Even if you consider both to be under the catagory of 'rape', they are not equivilent.

I'll actually answer OP. You could do state lotteries or raffles to raise money.

They enact those things because so many people do demand expanding roads, highways, and infrastructure that it is worth the cost of disenfranchising one or two property owners so the entire city can have a functional transit system.

>it would be even more effective because without the monopolies of the state any private defense or policing force wouldn't be allowed to get away with waste, fraud, or abuse.
Then how come nomadic raiders didn't get stopped by the lost colonies of Rome and other stateless entities, which got chomped or enslaved to no end, but by actual armies?
And how come anarchist entities in Spain or Ukraine couldn't defend themselves from the evil statist assholes from next door that came to their lands?

>And if the goverment has few powers delegated to it,corruptiom couldnt skyrrocket as it happens in some places
Corruption wouldn't "skyrocket" under your scenario because there would be little to corrupt, leaving all power in the hands of private interests, WHICH ARE THE AGENTS OF CORRUPTION.

>Anarchist
>Spain or Ukraine

Pick one and only one senpai.

Anarchist were a very small and fragmented minority in Spain.
I think that his point was that private entities would be way more efficient internally. As for foreing defence,there are things like alliances or defensive leagues. Something like the crusaders could happen. There are also mercenaries

Any society has a collective will, a set of wishes, beliefs and values that are generally expressed through the democratic process. If government does not spend tax revenues in accordance with that will, it is theft. If senate votes to appropriate tax revenues for the purpose of buying private yachts and the like, that is theft. If the Senate votes to spend taxpayer funds on a massive redistribution project which does not have sustained popular backing, that too is theft.

Corruption can also happen in the private sector,but it is usually punished way harder than in the public one. Entities like unions also contribute greatly to corruption.

>Corruption can also happen in the private sector
What are you calling corruption in the private sector?

>collective will
That is mostly the law. The democratic process is just there to impose the will of a group over another. Which is not a reflection of society at all

>unions
Sure they do. The way forward is to weed out corruption, not set everything on fire.

Unions are the reason you have the concept of a weekend and a 40-hour work week.

Stealing shareholders money for example,or violating a contract with another entity. When things like this happen, companies usually go bankrupt.

And that's a good thing because....