Is taxation theft?

[deevo78]

Tax thieves are people who have no responsibility to pay their obligations to the state.

[BADecker]

Taxes, themselves, are not theft or robbery. Why not? Because government gets folks to admit that they should pay.

The government crime is that government uses trickery and brainwashing to get people to seem to admit that they should pay taxes, when all along, nobody owes any taxes if they don't admit to owing them.

[Elwar]

Tax thieves are people who have no responsibility to pay their obligations to the state.

The state is obligated to serve the people. The people have no obligations to the state.




Taxes only work if society accepts the morality that the government can use force to extract money from people.

For millenia people have found this to be morally acceptable and have not questioned it.

They also felt that slavery was perfectly moral because slaves were not humans.

We overcame that morally accepted practice. We can overcome taxation as it is currently enforced.

[Kpark]

No taxation is not theft. I am sure you benefit from your taxes going towards your country (do you drive? roads. do you walk? sidewalks. city transit? etc.). However, if you don't like being taxed then you have full liberty to move to Panama, Monaco, etc to not be taxed on your income.

[Elwar]

I suspect that with the large amount of 2nd world citizens on this forum, most have been convinced by their governments that the state knows best.

That is also why those countries are 2nd and 3rd world countries.

[CanineDanny]

If taxation is done as intended, it definitely is not theft. However, it's only human to want to use taxpayers' money for personal financial gain and, probably, very few people can resist it

[megasynk]

Job taxation is definately a theft.

[robbietobby]

Well, being a theft explains in many reasons: bribery, graft and corruption or etc... The only thing that some country cannot build their own good reputation but thinking of themselves [the government officials]. Why do some other country surpasses this existence without income taxations? And why do other countries needed these 12& VAT, eVAT or whatever taxes they intended to pay? I guess each and everyone must be discipline and by that discipline that all started within ourselves will make a better community, peaceful beings, without any allegations to the law, all are in proper and in order, thus, attaining which is required and everybody deserves a good life. Above all, it is the government itself that dictates us and decides for their own safeness.

[Elwar]

Tax thieves are people who have no responsibility to pay their obligations to the state.

The state is obligated to serve the people. The people have no obligations to the state.




Taxes only work if society accepts the morality that the government can use force to extract money from people.

For millenia people have found this to be morally acceptable and have not questioned it.

They also felt that slavery was perfectly moral because slaves were not humans.

We overcame that morally accepted practice. We can overcome taxation as it is currently enforced.

I like that comparison with slavery. It's true that for so many decades slavery was generally accepted. Most people didn't even think about it being something bad or unnatural. That's exactly what's happening with taxation now. It's just generally accepted that the government forcefully takes our money and spends it how it pleases. How do you think things would world if taxes were eliminated? How would the roads work? Should they all be privatized?

My ideal method for raising funds has always been a "membership" type of up front payment that is voluntary. You pay up front a certain amount which allows you to buy a bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc. package. Bronze might get you just the basic necessities that a government provides such as military protection but not a whole lot. The country may even decide to subsidize the bronze members through the fees for the more expensive packages. The more expensive package might include things like health care, education (all through college), etc.  These packages could even be private offerings to lump together a large amount of private services. And there could be competing industries (or blockchains) trying to get the most customers. So people are competing to give you the best government possible.

As for roads. Consider that I once mentioned ending taxes online and someone from Britain could not fathom how people would be able to pay for their dental work without taxes. I used to live in a city with private fire department and private ambulance services. Most places I have lived in the garbage company was private. These actually exist yet people cannot comprehend how they can be done without the government. If you are too mentally lazy to consider things that already exist being private then you likely cannot imagine the roads being private. What I suspect would happen would be similar to how our cell phones work. Right now there are towers owned by various companies that rent out their frequencies to cell phone companies who then sell plans to consumers. When you pick up your phone and use data, you don't care that your data is going over some third party that is a contract with another company that is paying the company of the cell tower which then transfers data to another cell tower owned by another company, and on and on, changing hands through many many different private companies. In your mind, if you had to plan it all you would just have one entity "the government" run it all and it's all simple with no need to use your brain.

Personally, I look forward to smart roads that charge your electric car as you drive while your car drives you at the optimal speed with no more car crashes all paid per meter on the lightning network. But none of that is possible if governments still hold a monopoly on the roads.

[Elwar]

If taxation is done as intended, it definitely is not theft. However, it's only human to want to use taxpayers' money for personal financial gain and, probably, very few people can resist it

What does it matter what a thief does with the money once he has stolen it?

There are two separate issues here. How the money is obtained. And how the money is spent.

How the money is spent does not affect how the money is obtained.

That is what people do not understand.


If I kill a guy, then roast him up in a fine meal that I then give to some hungry people on the street, would you be trying to justify the murder because some people got fed? Would you not even care that someone was killed? Would people even have to ask the question "is killing people to feed people murder?". Would you be criticizing those that call it murder as being heartless? Not wanting hungry people to be fed. What about those poor starving children that just want a meal? How dare you call it murder?

If this has been done for millennia, nobody would consider it murder. If someone else chimed in and said "maybe we can feed people without killing people" then the majority would have no clue how it could be done. So they would say that the killing is justified. Oh, but only "if the meal is prepared correctly". Because they cannot fathom any other way.

[Doctor4You]

Of course it's a necessity, but not a theft definitely. (Sometimes, depending on the government, it could look like the theft)

[Hammer45head]

Whether a theft or not, we can only judge on a case-by-case basis. Because it first emerged with a basic idea of keeping things in order. Unfortunately, some politicians seem to ruin that idea because they are corrupt, but this doesn't make it a "theft," does it?

[Elwar]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond. This really is an interesting subject. You do a good job of explaining it. In terms of the roads, the way I understand it, private companies would own different parts of the roads? I guess one company could run the roads in one region and another could own the roads in the next region over. Each company would sell memberships to people. They would make contracts with each other to allow their "members" to use to other company's roads. Does that sound about right? Shouldn't we be concerned at all that the roads are private? Couldn't they jack the prices up unreasonably or discriminate again certain groups of people, for example?

There are some examples of private roads, and most people who are for privatizing would require some sort of easement to ensure that people are not locked in their homes. I imagine road systems would be local, regional and national. Where local roads are treated differently from national roads.

If you have ever been to Disney World you have driven on a private road. Disney wants people to be able to get to their park easily so they purchased all of the roads going into their park and have built them and maintained them on their own so that they don't have to worry about huge traffic jams or degrading roadways for their customers. Most believe that local roadways would be paid by businesses that want people to have easy access to drive to their stores. Ever turned off of the government road onto a large shopping center parking lot with roads? Those are all private.

There was a bridge between the US and Canada that was losing money for the governments of both sides even though they charged a large fee for everyone crossing. They ended up privatizing it and not only did the company that bought it lower prices but they made it profitable.

Phone companies could also raise prices on those cell towers as well. Make it so expensive so that only the world's richest can use cell phones. So why don't they do that? Could it be that companies that are in business to make money actually want to make money? Private roads would be the same. More customers equals more money. Why would they want to push people out of the system by making it harder for people to use their service?

I'm just one person on the Internet with an idea of how private roads could work. But if they were private there would be tens of thousands of people with entrepreneurial spirit trying to figure out a better solution to beat the current competition to offer better solutions. We would go from our current system in the same way that we used to have our home phone lines to an advancement system in roadways akin to our current smart phones in our pockets.

In a way, people who want taxes to pay for roads are getting in the way of the potential that transport could achieve. If it weren't for the government monopoly.

And if they raise the price on a certain group of people....



Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

[kolsernik]

Taxes were always.even 1,000 years ago.Only it was called differently-a tribute to.What taxes are needed for-to create conditions for a decent life.Are these requirements now being met?Of course not.Hence the question-why pay taxes at all?

[varun1022]

this could be an interesting take, its not a theft as it is used for your own welfare by the government. We use those things in daily life and then debate if it is a theft?

[Elwar]

this could be an interesting take, its not a theft as it is used for your own welfare by the government. We use those things in daily life and then debate if it is a theft?

Wow, that's different from the 1000 other sheep in this thread. Thank you for the valuable insight.

You are all paying taxes on the few scraps you get from your signature campaigns...right?

Because the ends justifying the means and all.

[MrPresidentIM]

Nope. Unless a country's leaders do anything wrong with the tax money, in which case it's obviously a theft.

[Renegadegate]

Looks like that because you don't see the improvements you expect to see.

[BADecker]

Letting me keep my property (money) would be one of those improvements I would like to see.

[BADecker]

Aren't there some government policies that prevent cell phone companies from endlessly raising their prices? I think it's called collusion, right? Without government regulation, are there some natural tendencies that would prevent collusion?

It's called competition.

Government is colluding with the companies to keep prices up much higher than they would be without the collusion. They do this to get more tax money.