It is not legal where I live, and I assure you that the tax agency where I live will hunt me to the edge of the world if I refuse to pay exactly what they demand.

We are just looping around the same arguments here, and do not move anywhere.

Let’s try not talking about the binary situation of refusing a government or taxes altogether. I can agree that certain things can be handled by a state (although not in the most efficient way imo). There are still a shit ton of things that governements spend money on that I might not want. For example, where I live a significant portion of my obligatory tax goes to state run “public service”, i.e. state run entertainment. And our process for public procurement is a mess, where things cost insane amounts of money, and most of the time don’t even lead to any actual executed projects.
How are such things defensible with an obligatory tax design?

What I’m trying to say is that yes in a perfect world taxes are fine and dandy, and we get nice roads and healthcare, but in the reality that at least I live in it is just an expensive mess of things that I mostly don’t want, but am forced to pay for.

Edit: a word

It is called exchange of goods and services. Damn you guys really put the “ML” in lemmy.ml

Damn you just won’t let it go. I will still not agree with you however more you ramble on. You have not and will not convince me that a government will ever be more competent and efficient at solving these issues than alternatives. And, I repeat, it is not voluntary. 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? And that is rhetorical, I would like to repeat:

I don’t think we will move past it tbh, so we should perhaps leave it at that.

Sure, whatever works for you.

My issue is still with the fact that my work is used against my will, to pay for things I have not chosen.

If I wish to pay for protection, healthcare, food for the poor etc, that should still be my own choice.

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. I don’t think we will move past it tbh, so we should perhaps leave it at that.

Ok so you believe that your work input is not worth anything then? I.e. it is ok for a government to make you work a number of hours equivalent to the taxed part of your income? My work is a contract between me and my employer. If I wish to use a part of that work to build roads (muh roads), pay for schools etc, that should be by my own will. Not because I am part of a social contract by default. That is not voluntary. And like I said earlier, yes I can vote, but the minority is ruled by the majority in a democracy.

Private property, and by extension currency, does not need to be a social contract tied to a state to get value. There are other types of money than fiat (and no I am not saying we should all become crypto bros). It is quite bizarre to claim that we need a massive bulky and expensive state with a monopoly on violence to be able to exchange goods and services.

So is it theft for me to install a lock on someone’s door because I’m stealing another thief’s potential income?

Now you are just being silly. I guess your point with that statement is that private property does not exist, otherwise it makes no sense. My point about piracy was that it is difficult to define intellectual property. And therefore theft is a difficult concept to apply to piracy. But you do you.

“words don’t have definitions, they have usages”.

Indeed. And the way I use the word theft applies to taxation for the reasons stated above. But it apparently doesn’t for you, which is fine.

You are committing what is called a fallacy fallacy, and do not address how they are different — you simply say that it is an oversimplification and call it a day. But arguing about definitions aside, taxation is not voluntary, at least not by default. And my opinion is that transactions should be voluntary.

I take it you refer to online piracy? It is in some ways a grey area. 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. As you are stealing potential income. But it is virtually impossible to measure that “theft” in currency, since you don’t know if you would buy the good if you didn’t pirate it. A tax slip, on the other hand, is defined in dollars and cents.

How are they very distinct? If I am forced to pay someone money against my will, with threat of violence if I don’t, how is that not theft? Just because a state does it, does that make it different somehow?

If I didn’t vote for it, it is by definition against my will.

I would argue that voting doesn’t make it voluntary. Even if I don’t vote for a particular taxation, it might go through anyway if the majority wants it. Majority rule goes against the will of the minority.

https://kbin.social/m/privacy@lemmy.ml/t/283970/Cops-still-take-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-do#entry-comment-1326204

Sure, but that wasn’t my point. My point is that you have no say, and therefore it isn’t voluntary, making it theft technically.

What do you call taking someone’s money without their consent, using force/threat of violence?

Yeah I’ve been a little interested in trying Kagi, but it is quite expensive… Are the results that much better?

Google has already been a worthless pos for years. Impossible to get relevant results, even with operators. You just get ads and irrelevant SEO sites. And adding “reddit” at the end of the query will probably not work so well in the future either, seeing how that site has also gone to shit.

And they have already tried monopolising the entire internet with their amp bullshit.

So this is just in line with their vision of making the whole internet into a pile of burning shit under their total control.