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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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You would not be able to make any money without the society around you. Most of your property is probably the work of other people directly or indirectly.

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Yeah, this is true! And somehow, most of society seems to function super well and help each other without using force.

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Most taxation also doesn't use force, only the threat of it. But this is true of lots of things in society: stores work very well because you will be met with force if you just grab stuff you want and walk out, banks work because you will be met with force if you rob them, etc.

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Taxation does seem to differ in an act/omission kind of way - you don't have to do anything to be met with the threat of force except earn money - but this doesn't seem all that important to me, given that I have no choice but to e.g. use grocery stores (and thus face threats).

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It feels *incredibly* important to me. You can choose what grocery store to go to, if a grocery store is a dick you can boycott, you can set up your own grocery store, you can dumpster dive (which is great btw), you can grow your own food.

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And furthermore, you run into issues with the grocery store if you try to take their property, which they worked for/invested in, without their consent. The government is nothing like any of this. The government didn't work for your money, and you can't boycott them.

1:28 AM · Apr 25, 2021

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Fair. It feels like a core intuition behind this argument is something like "if you want to live in a cabin in the woods with no reliance on other people, you should thereby be freed of obligations to said people"? (Although I'm not sure which taxes apply in that scenario.)