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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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@SarahTheHaider

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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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@SarahTheHaider

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

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@SarahTheHaider

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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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@SarahTheHaider

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@SarahTheHaider

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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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@SarahTheHaider

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@SarahTheHaider

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Again, if you wanted to define that as force that’s fine, but the level of freedom you desire is not possible for you unless you are willing and able to deploy enormous violence against anyone who threatens you. 3/2

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Dmitriy Kolesnikov

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@SarahTheHaider

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100%. This is the pattern for thousands of years of human history.

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@SarahTheHaider

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Right. Anarchic libertarians are *extremely naive* in this department. Tax-free states actually do exist throughout history and frequently form.... in countries ravaged by war. “I want to keep my money”, sure, but without govt protection, how will you do that? 1

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I don't think a tax free state is feasible. I think taxes are force and harmful, and to some extent a necessary harm, and should be minimized as much as we can.

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The problem is people view taxes not as a necessary evil and force, but rather as good and consensual. No, they're not. It's like a society which can only operate by executing it's criminals; it might be necessary but let's not view it as good.

5:56 PM · Apr 25, 2021

@SarahTheHaider

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I tend to agree with you (in that minimalist govt is *often* the best govt), but I wonder if it make sense to even view it in those terms? Consent (even in the case of sexuality) isn’t really black and white, and so stark moral terminology doesn’t seem to fit the bill, imo.

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Consent feels incredibly salient to me, and everything is pinned on top of it, and dear tradeoffs made with it. It feels like one of the fundamental building blocks of a complex and functional system, like almost a law of physics.

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@SarahTheHaider

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“I'm hungry, there's apple, I'll eat it. — You can't, it's not yours.” Do you consider this good, or a necessary evil? It's an important question, because taxes are the other side of that very coin.

@AlbertLEtranger

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@SarahTheHaider

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I don’t think consent is warranted as a moral standard in this situation bc of the consequences of allowing it to be one, and also bc most of what we call our property isn’t derived purely from our merits but involves making use of public resources (understood broadly).

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@Whateverdude77

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And the ultimate issue is the amount of tax that is needed to operate an inefficient government full of wasteful spending that never seems to be accounted for. If government doesn't feel like they can get a tax increase passed, they simply add another fee.

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@SarahTheHaider

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courses.aynrand.org

The Nature of Government

This essay was originally published in the December 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter and later anthologized in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966 and...

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