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I feel like I'm in crazytown when I express distress about taxation - literally people forcibly taking away your property - and ppl act like I'm the crazy one. Sure, you could argue that this forcible theft is worth it, and I'll respect that, but it's still not crazy to be upset.

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I'm confused why you don't just see it as a cost of living in the US. Like, every place / situation has it's costs and opportunities, regardless of whether they're fair or capricious. But like, you have a ton of freedom compared to nearly everyone on earth and across time

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Do I? I have way more freedom given by tech, but I'm uncertain about negative rights encroachment; a lot of people were living outside of effective reach of government throughout history, and when they were taxed I think it was much, much lower in general.

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though "getting roped up for war" does seem like a nice problem we don't have to deal with

7:02 PM · Apr 24, 2021

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But also you could say "it's a cost of living here" about a lot of other terrible things the government does; would you be like "why are you upset, it's a cost of living here" about stuff like when gay marriage was illegal, or drug laws?

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I think I just disagree that most people in history were less constrained by the government. Less by a national government probably. But they were super constrained by the local power, whether that was a lord, estate holder, local warlord, patriarch, etc.