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0 pointsmindcrime10y ago0 comments

I don't think it's robbery unless you don't participate in the state.

That's irrelevant. It's robbery because your agency, your ability to choose is being taken from you. As a thought experiment, ask yourself this:

What if you were on your way to a local orphanage to give your last $100 to the orphanage, and halfway there, a robber with a gun steps from an alleyway, puts a gun in your face, and demands your money... then, after he gives it to you, he proceeds to the same orphanage and hands the money to them.

Would you still say you were robbed? The same end was achieved, so you really weren't, right? But yet, almost everybody will intuitively find something wrong about this scenario. That "wrongness" is the issue.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

task_queue10y ago· 2 in thread

You are free to leave society and stop paying taxes.

In this analogy, you are the roommate who stopped paying rent, won't leave and keeps ranting about Hayek. There is no man with a gun.

mindcrimeOP10y ago

You are free to leave society and stop paying taxes.

No I'm not. No matter what I do, the government will try to tax any income I earn. By and large, they don't recognize any attempt to simply "drop out". And that's especially true if one remains within the "lines drawn on a map and labeled as the United States". But why should lines drawn on a map by dead men affect my rights? By what standard can we say that the dead have the right to bind the living, or the not-even-born-yet?

No, this "leave society" thing is a complete red-herring and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

In this analogy, you are the roommate who stopped paying rent, won't leave and keeps ranting about Hayek. There is no man with a gun.

You can't "stop paying rent" because of the "man with the gun"! Or do you not think that if you stop paying "your" taxes the IRS won't eventually send "men with guns" (police) to arrest you?

task_queue10y ago

>No I'm not. No matter what I do, the government will try to tax any income I earn.

Almost any opportunity for an income in the US exists because of the society its tax dollars prop up. To reap the benefits of society and not pay into it despite the available avenues of contribution would be leeching.

> By and large, they don't recognize any attempt to simply "drop out". And that's especially true if one remains within the "lines drawn on a map and labeled as the United States".

Look harder. People drop out all the time. There are communities of people like that, not paying taxes, living "off the land" (squatting, growing some food and relying on society for everything else) all over the US.

The government can't tax what isn't earned, recorded or under your name.

>You can't "stop paying rent" because of the "man with the gun"! Or do you not think that if you stop paying "your" taxes the IRS won't eventually send "men with guns" (police) to arrest you?

They'll eventually garnish your wages, freeze your funds, file a tax lien and slew of other inconvenient things after giving you fair warning and opportunity to pay back taxes. It takes deliberate fraud or willful evasion to end up behind bars. The only men with guns you will encounter will be the bailiffs in tax court.

Please leave the hyperbole where it belongs. There is no man with a gun forcing you to pay taxes.

hga10y ago

Interesting analogy, but don't forget the vig he keeps for his efforts.

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