None of these things you replied with have anything to do with the topic at hand, and I understand. It’s easy to come up with some fancy catch-phrase and just hold to it in the face of rational thought. It’s what governments do all the time.
You have not and will not convince me that a government will ever be more competent and efficient at solving these issues than alternatives
This is a topic change and gishgallop. I have opinions on that topic, but why would I pivot to it with how bent out of shape you’re getting over this one?
And, I repeat, it is not voluntary
It is “not voluntary” only the same way contracts are “not voluntary” or work is “not voluntary”. It’s hard to get by without those things because the entire world disagrees with you on them. But it’s possible.
If private property is not a right, what gives the government right to dictate my life because I happened to be born on this particular plot of land?
They don’t dictate your life. They dictate that a percent of the private property they amplify for you go back to them. If you choose not to take their protection on a piece of property, or use their infrastructure in any way, they can ask nothing of you. With very few exceptions, if you work any job or any land at all, you use government infrastructure in 100 different ways. It is perfectly legal in many countries (including the US) to live in the wilderness and sustain yourself on your own efforts. In such a case, you use no infrastructure and pay no taxes. Win/win. What you seem to want is all the entitlement you already have, but the government providing it to you free of charge. Good fucking luck.
But I think it is at this point where the core of our disagreement lies: you think it is a fair compromise to give up freedom and have a government solve these issues however it sees fit (as a part of a “social contract”), whereas I see it as a basic human right to be able to choose
But private property isn’t a human right. Are you trying to pretend otherwise? Hell, “work begets profits” isn’t a human right. It’s not even a right under capitalism. You could work your ass off and get nothing. You don’t have the right to the fruits of your work in the first place. If you work hard and get nothing, you don’t think you’re entitled to something. The government creates a framework that increases the odds you’re going to get something, and you ungratefully treat their commission as theft.
You being able to get anything at all from your work is a social contract. You say taxation is theft, but here’s something I bet you didn’t know. “Taxation is Theft” is a newer concept, perhaps even a response to the older, more defensible concept that “Property is Theft”.
And with due respect, you DO have a choice. You give consent to taxation every single day you stay in a country that charges taxes. You are consenting to a social contract. Anyone who has ever taken a loan to pay medical bills will agree that consent isn’t necessarily a happy thing, or an uncoerced thing. You could always emmigrate to a country that doesn’t have taxation, like Qatar. Countries that don’t tax have a pretty bad track record of treating people living in them, but at leaste you don’t have to pay taxes. Well, there are a few that are just havens for billionaires, but I don’t think you’re rich enough to go to one of those if you’re arguing with me on lemmy.
I don’t think taxation is theft, so I don’t have to deal with any of these logical contradictions that I’ve directed at you.
I gain work-protection from the government. It’s a social contract, and a fair one. They take my tax dollars as payment, but in return, will shoot you if you try to walk into my house. I have some ethical problems with the way some of that happens, but all-in-all it’s a reasonable exchange. The biggest thing that’s missing is that a critical part of the social contract is that if I can’t walk into your house to take your food, the government needs to guarantee I won’t starve otherwise. Guess what is necessary to close that loop? Tax money.
And no, I’m not being silly. I’m accurately calling you on defining “things I don’t like” as theft and “things I do like” as not theft. “Loss of value” is an unusable metric for that, and I provided a concrete example to that effect.
You are committing what is called a fallacy fallacy, and do not address how they are different
I actually did address the claim by showing how your logic doesn’t work with anarchism. But if you would like a direct rebuttal, I’d be happy to provide. Here are the reasons that “taxation is theft” is bullshit propaganda.
You do not have a right to your pre-tax income, or any income for that matter. Private Property is a social contract. The money you are being taxed has no real or implied value except the value created by a single cohesive system that involves the same threat of force to reinforce. If taxation is theft, then money is not property and you don’t own that house you bought with it. In fact, you trying to keep me from walking ont it and taking some food would quite literally be theft.
The only way taxation can be theft is if you reject the mercantile system. And if you reject the mercantile system, then the money being taxed cannot be seen as property (and therefore it is still also not theft).
I take it you refer to online piracy?
Yeah. Record labels started taking to call it “theft” when they wanted to ban it. They started teaching people it was theft. They got this big FBI banner on the opening of all VHS tapes.
On one hand you are not taking anything away, you are just copying. But on the other hand, to cite yourself, that is of course an oversimplification.
Thank you for explaining to the audience the exact reason I brought up piracy :)
As you are stealing potential income
So is it theft for me to install a lock on someone’s door because I’m stealing another thief’s potential income? I’m objecting to this ever-widening definition of theft to “whatever I think of as theft”. I recently heard an interesting lie: “words don’t have definitions, they have usages”. The idea was to counter all these semantic-seeming battles. The problem is that words most certainly do have definitions, and if you oppose what a word means (like theft) that doesn’t mean you get to oppose others’ meanings of that word automatically.
Taxation is NOT theft. If you think it’s wrong, find better reasons to think it’s wrong than to use a word with a very clear definition that doesn’t include taxation.
Here’s some citations for you on the topic:
https://taxjustice.net/faq/is-taxation-theft/
https://www.fastcompany.com/90636996/taxation-isnt-theft-but-avoiding-taxes-is
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/01/why-taxation-is-neither-theft-nor-slavery
You are committing what is called an oversimplification fallacy. I’m assuming you’re an anarchist? If not, how is it very different, as you are opposing government’s right to run themselves just like an anarchist (do you see what an example of an oversimplification fallacy is?). If so, please understand that arguing definitions is not how you will convince the 99% of the world who think anarchism is nothing but puerile stupidity that it isn’t.
That said, you seem to have ignored half my point, that piracy isn’t theft. Or are you saying you think it is, as well? Was it theft before it was illegal?
Better than trying to pretend taxation is theft, you should probably just affirmatively attack taxation with real reasons.
If you’re using definitions of a word that can not effectively differentiate between two very distinct things, you’re using the wrong definition or the wrong word.
Taxation is not theft. Piracy is not theft. Using definitions of theft that include them triggers George Orwell alarms in anyone who knows better.
The possession of the money is treated as probable cause. The police are not tasked with finding the ultimate truth of things, just acting on probable cause.
So you’re on the road with $10,000 in cash. The police find out. You tell them the true reason. They write it down, then seize the money because it was suspicious to you to carry $10,000 in cash.
Then, of course, you can go petition to get the money back. At which time, you have to prove by a preponderance of evidence (the same bar as if you were suing them for damages) to get the money back.
The point is, that’s not enough. You have to prove it in a court of law. Which, for $100,000, might cost most of that $100,000 and years of time.
There have been some clear-cut seizure cases where the legitimacy of the money was obvious and it was either not worth the legal fees to clear up or simply insane to clear up. We are a “reasonable doubt” country for a reason, and if you can’t prove someone came about their money illegally, you shouldn’t be stealing it from them.
Does where you live also restrict emmigration? If so, you’re not in a free country in the first place. It’s 100% legal where I live.
So? Independent will is not the be-all end-all. If you want to kill people, you don’t get to do that. Not paying taxes is not a victimless act, either. That’s part of the societal agreement. You don’t always get what you want. But you do get to do things that many people think you shouldn’t get to do. As I mentioned “property is theft” to many people. And I reject their opinion the same as yours.
Are you a democracy? If you’re a free country, at least some percent of society wants to use tax dollars to that. If you’re not a in free country, well, taxes is a weird hill to die on.
Private sector inefficiency is pretty horrible in most of the world… and most of the world thinks it’s ok to have private sector inefficiency (aka, profit margins). I tend to fight FOR regulated efficiency in both the private and public sectors… so you have my sympathy, just disagreement that it means taxation is actual theft.
I don’t know where you live or the details, but it seems you agree taxation isn’t theft :). But more importantly, I’m sorry to hear your government is wasteful (or that you think it is. Though I can’t really guess where you’re from, I find the most effective governments often have the most complaints of government waste).