khagler Wrote:Here you go:Ah, the old "taxation is theft" canard.
1. Taxation
2. Inflation
3. Asset forfeiture
4. Eminent domain
*ahem*
You agreed to live in society, via your implicit acceptance of the benefits of society; such as benefiting from law enforcement, military protection, disaster avoidance and response, infrastructure construction and maintenance, education and health care (and so on and so forth). Taxation is your payment for services rendered. Refusing to pay taxes is theft (such as, say, moving your business overseas to avoid them) because you are taking from society and providing nothing in return.
If you do not wish to pay taxes, you are perfectly free to go live somewhere there are no taxes. I hear caves in Somalia are going cheap this time of year.
Inflation is an economic condition which has little, if anything, to do with elected representatives. It is a natural condition of the economic system we use to regulate the flow of goods and services through society. It is impossible to have an arbitrary money system without experiencing inflation (or deflation) in some measure. Arbitrary money systems have proven to be much more effective in managing the economy than any form of barter system. And before you bring up the gold standard or any sort of ridiculous notion like that understand that gold standards are just another form of arbitrary money system as susceptible to inflationary pressures as any other, and a remarkably terrible one at that.
The dual systems of asset forfieture and emminent domain are much like taxation, in that their existence is a cost for living in society. Asset forfeiture is a punishment for engaging in a crime (ie, seizing the assets of drug dealers, tax evaders and so on) and emminent domain is a principle which prevents individuals from hoarding valuable resources to the deteriment of society as a whole (if you have the only source of potable water in a town and refuse to share it for a reasonable fee you can bet your ass the state will seize it, and well they should).
None of these acts, by the way, require murder to enforce. As evidenced by the fact that the US does not have the death penalty for tax evasion.
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Epsilon
Hey khagler, are you a Soveign Citizen?