Taxation = robbery: an exploration

1. The Irrelevant. These answer entirely different questions and do not have relevance to the particular question being asked. For example, people mention, as if it answered the question in the negative:
   1. How the proceeds of taxation are used differs from other robbery and can sometimes help the victim. But this occurs after the act of taking and is not relevant to it. (A question to encourage discussion of this might be “Are you happy with how your taxes are used?” or similar.) And charity should be voluntary.
   2. Their own or even a few others’ happiness with their tax level. A few people’s happiness with the system does not change the act.
   3. The ability to vote to change it. Again, this is outside of the scope of the question (and it is not moral to infringe on the rights of an individual because you outnumber them). A slight variant which also relies on majorities is the purported ability to revolt to change it.
   4. How will the roads be maintained (the poor be educated, society not collapse into chaos) without taxes? Entirely irrelevant to the act of taking (and the answer is: privately, the same way shoes are sold and skyscrapers are built and maintained without taxes).
   5. If you don’t like taxation, move elsewhere. Also irrelevant to the issue of the extortion being offered; the story of a woman being raped in her own house, told “If you don’t like it, leave” and responding “But this is my house!” is a good parallel.
   6. Any questions about a society without a government that can tax (e.g., Objectivist minarchist government funded by contributions, or stateless society). These are interesting things to think about but not directly relevant to the Question. If anyone wants to create such questions I’d be happy to continue discussion there.
   
   
2. The bizarre.
   1. Magic contracts that, without signatories, acceptance, or terms, somehow bind people living on their own (or rented) property and trading voluntarily with others; “social contract”, “you consent by not leaving”, and so on.
   2. The government owns everything. Ridiculous indeed: private property owners own their property, everything else is really unowned under the fiction of “public” property, and can be homesteaded (practically, only if you have enough military power to fight off the state; but still, might is not right).
   3. A variant of the “magic contract” idea is the “payment for services” idea. But no other entity can force you to pay at arbitrary rates for services you don’t want, or could get much cheaper in a competitive market; the force part makes it robbery.
   4. Since you know you will be made to pay on entering a particular region, you have consented by entering. The problem is of course that only consent is consent – knowing harm will be done to you does not make the harm moral, just known. This is similar but not identical to (a).
   
   
3. The technical.
   1. Robbery is defined as “illegal” theft. Some definitions include that; some don’t; but this is effectively a special pleading fallacy (the entity doing the taking also defines “legal”). I’m happy to modify my question to say “without special pleading or treatment for the state” (i.e., judge the act, not who does it).
   2. Robbery requires the taking to be in the immediate presence of the victim. Some definitions do, indeed; I’d be happy to expand the question to any sort of wrongful taking of property: extortion, theft, and so on.

Books finished: Defending the Undefendable, Wizard's First Rule, Dragonflight, The End of Religion, For a New Liberty.