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.
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
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.
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.
