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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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Taxes are consented to by “we” as a collective, but probably not you or I as individuals. I think the nature of the distress is understandable, but if this is “force” then so is literally every act of government.

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

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@SarahTheHaider

I do think most things government does are in fact force and should not be done

5:05 PM · Apr 25, 2021

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To play devils advocate here: Isn’t almost anything anyone does that has any effect on others ‘force’? Why is government a particularly bad form of this force in your view as compared with other ways in which outside force affects individuals?

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and

I generally like this concept; force would be anything that violates negative rights en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_

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and

With all due respect, you seem willfully delusional on this issue. The sort of freedom you wish is simply not possible outside of hunter/gatherer societies or sparsely populated, entirely self contained small communities. Gotta concur w/

's analysis here.

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and

Do you know what sort of freedom I wish? Like, could you describe to me how I think the ideal government would work?

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Is it force if it is (to some degree) consented to? You consent by living/working in the US and retaining citizenship. The alternative to, let’s call it, democratic “soft-force” that is consented to indirectly is far, far worse. 1

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and

Either you have a democracy, in which there is a degree of collective consent, or 1) authoritarian govt in which there is virtually none or 2) an anarchic state in which you are in extreme danger (which, inevitably, leads to #1 when a bigger guy decides he wants your shit) 2/2

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and

are you a utilitarian?

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and

Everything government does is backed by the threat of its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Luckily, there are accountability mechanisms when your government is democratic. Less so when it's not.

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Like supplying you with the infrastructure you use?

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The alternatives are far worse! Besides couldn't we say that the absence of a government is also forced into the individual? Anarchy is consented either