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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

I offer a counterpoint: Taxation is theft, and cooperation with government tax collection authorities is unjust and immoral, even if a vast majority of those taxes collected weren't being spent on tools and research for more effective mass murder. Of course we know in the US that they are, so that's a double whammy of sorts.

How can that be "the good fight", if each nonviolent person recognizes their own personal obligation to hinder improving the effectiveness or efficiency of collection of taxes for the war machine in every possible manner?

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Generic ideological discussions (and "taxation is theft" is a poster child of those) are what we don't want on HN. Please don't post them here. They're predictable, which makes them boring, and they rile people up into a froth, which creates flamewars. Just look at the trainwreck we ended up with below.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402805 and marked it off-topic.

Generic ideological tangents (and "taxation is theft" is a poster child of those) are what we don't want on HN.

Should I flag any of those I see? Because I see it all the time here, but they are "generic ideological tangents" that are more popular and universally accepted, so they seem to create no controversy.

By all means, please flag them.

I think if this is your philosophy, Coinbase isn't your exchange, and they've been very forthright about their mission to popularize Bitcoin by complying with regulations rather than trying to skirt them basically since day one. And this strategy has made them effectively the first mover on Bitcoin in every sense that matters even though they were pretty far from first to market.

I think this note from Coinbase is exactly what I would hope they would do in such a situation: reject an overly-broad request while restating their willingness to comply with all regulations and legal requests, just like a traditional financial institution.

Many of us are not interested in turning every situation into a political or philosophical battle. I'm glad that there are options out there both for people who do and people who do not.

While it's easy to dismiss such a statement ("Taxation is theft") as rather vacuous reframing of an act in moralizing language, I actually do appreciate the point of view and believe it is an important one.

The question of how, that is by what process, can an act be considered intuitively vile when performed by an individual and yet good and indeed natural when performed by that particular corporation we call the government, nags incessantly at my mind.

Is it a function of group size? Where does the phase transition occur? Or is it a discontinuous process and possible only when we've sublimated from mere mortals into the holy categories of "sovereignty" and "legitimacy?" Oh sure, the replies to your comment are full of the old "argumentum ad pragmaticum" (excuse the poor latin), but their emotional volatility reveals it is anything but pragmatism driving their convictions. There's some deep, primal, psycho-spiritual shit going on here!

So yes, while I would not count myself amongst their ranks, I really do sympathize with the anarchists, but I've got to ask you: What did you hope to achieve with this comment? Do you really think you are going to change anyone's mind here?

P.S.

More questions for you!

Given the putative measures the government would levy against coinbase should they refuse to cooperate, do you _really_ think that they are acting immorally? Why should _they_ have the moral obligation to put themselves and their business at risk because of something being done to them against their wishes?

Taxation.. isn't.. theft, basically by definition, so that argument is a non-starter.

It's (in the US) constitutionally allowed, which is analogous to "we agree to be taxed to support our government". It's true that you may not have personally agreed to it, but that doesn't really scale anyway. The constitution 'stands for' our mutual agreement - which is why we're allowed to change it.

Even if you don't like that argument, you have to appreciate that it works for many people and so you won't get much of anywhere declaring "taxation is theft" like that's obvious and unquestionable; you just lose 98% of everyone right there. (okay, maybe 95 or 90. I don't know anymore.)

A different argument: In an anarchy, taxation would be theft. In our system of government (being US-centric again), it is not. You can argue that you'd rather live in an anarchy/minarchy/whatever, and that's fine, but it's silly to declare that taxation is theft universally because in the current system that's not really true.

The basic moral foundation of most anarchist philosophy is universal. States do nasty things such as wars, theft, murder, violence, torture, jailing, spying, destruction, etc. If you apply a universal moral standard these things are still considered wrong, even if an organization called a 'state' is doing it. Even if many people believe it's ok for this organization to do it. It doesn't matter when a moral standard is universal.

A good way to think of anarchists are pacifists. Pacifists think all violence is universally wrong. Most people are not pacifists although and feel like violence is OK in some instances. Many of these non-pacifists would also agree in an ideal world that pacifism is what humanity should follow. But they recognize they don't live in an ideal world and thus are not pacifists.

Anarchists are really the political equivalent of pacifists. No force or coercion is ever acceptable in any circumstance is the basic foundation of anarchism, everything must be voluntary.

So according to that political philosophy taxation is still theft or extortion, just like self defense is still violence and soldiers killing in war is still murder to a pacifist.

Well, that's fine, and it's totally cool if we have different moral frameworks that we make our moral judgments based on.

But if you walk into a room and make a statement about the just-ness of something, it's implied and assumed that you're talking about "in our state", not "according to the government system I wish we were using".

It really irks me when people have the opinion "I think a better government system would be X" but conceal it with playing-dumb arguments like "y is wrong!", where y is a thing allowed in our current government Y but not in X. Like, if you want anarchism, don't say "taxation is theft", say "anarchism is good because taxation is theft in anarchism". Taxation isn't theft right here, right now.

And if taxation is theft in your moral framework, fine, whatever, we can't really unify our positions unless you convince me that your moral framework is better than mine. But even still! start with "my moral framework is good", not "this thing we disagree on, I'm going to make blanket un-qualified statements about it and pretend they're obvious and universally agreed upon".

> Anarchists are really the political equivalent of pacifists. No force or coercion is ever acceptable in any circumstance is the basic foundation of anarchism, everything must be voluntary.

Most of the anarchist groups I used to know a couple of years back where full of force, coercion and exploitation. They just used psychological tricks and peer-pressure instead of physical force.

These things can happen. The victims within the anarchist groups just had the problem, that whenever they were trying to defend themselves, the (inofficial) leaders were able to use political rhetorics to declare them wrong and keep them in line.

It was always the power-hungry egoists shaping these groups. Some were ok, but some weren't better than sects. All-in-all I haven't seen less free people in my life.

I have no idea how anarchist groups work like, I have never encountered one. I'm not an anarchist myself, just like I'm not a pacifist. But I understand where they & their derivatives are coming from.

Many human organizations have similar problems, I'm not really surprised it happens in an anarchist group as well.

Me neither. Like I said the victim in anarchist groups just had it harder to defend themselves, because of rigid political rhetorics.

> The basic moral foundation of most anarchist philosophy is universal.

They claim their moral foundations are universal. I have yet to see a comprehensive proof that they are in fact universal and overcome the is-ought problem outlined by David Hume.

Taxation is only "theft"[1] in precisely the same way that any part of the constitution is enforced.

So I guess i'm not sure what the point is. In the US, the government derives its rights from the consent of the governed (see the declaration of independence, which, while not an binding source of law, explains this quite well:P).

Here, the governed chose to enact a constitution that allowed the government to take taxes. The government does so.

If the governed wish to not be taxed, they have a way to do that too! Pass a constitutional amendment.

"In the US, the government derives its rights from the consent of the governed"

Collective consent requires unanimity. If you don't have that to begin with, then you don't have consent to consitutional amendments or what have you.

If you want to argue for government, argue on pragmatic grounds, social contract theory or "the consent of the governed" is a joke.

"Collective consent requires unanimity."

Says who? There are many forms of collective consent and decision making.

Your parents parents parents parents parents (or whatever) consented either by exercising rights in the document (adoption/ratification), voting for it, or heck, choosing to remain knowing what the rules would be. You get your chance to not consent by choosing to not remain if you like.

Everything you said applies to gang rape. Consent is personal and is a moral gold standard. If there were any legitimacy to such decisions, social contract theorists wouldn't try to bend backwards to make them sound like they are consensuals.

>Consent is personal and is a moral gold standard.

A subjective and indefensible view point, as far as I'm concerned.

>If there were any legitimacy to such decisions, social contract theorists wouldn't try to bend backwards to make them sound like they are consensuals.

As far as "social contract theorists" are concerned their system is right/just within it's own bounds, just as yours is only right/just within it's own bounds.

There is no moral gold standard just as there is no universally just government.

The Social Contract works because it defines that a majority of people can give consent for others to participate in it. This is purely subjective and is only an operating principle if the Social Contract exists.

Once you step out of the Social Contract, it no longer applies and nobody can give consent you into participating.

Now let's step back for a minute.

What you're attempting here is saying that under the moral framework A, the actions taken with justification moral framework B are unjust.

This is not correct. It's similar to taking a mathematical system that lacks addition and then complain that another system with addition does not work correctly because it has addition. (Reverse lack/has if you want, it's irrelevant)

The "social contract theorists" justify their actions under the social contract which allows them to give consent via majority instead of unanimity, while you want a system that defines the consent to said contract via unanimity.

Both options are fine but you cannot simply say the other side is wrong.

edit:

I might also add that even you continue to utilize a social contract; the contract of consent via unanimity.

Which means that everyone agrees to respect the consent of everyone else. This is not a objective right that you somehow magically have, it's something you say you have.

That only works as long as everyone agrees but if one person says "I don't want everyone to respect my consent" your social contract violates itself.

Consent doesn't 51% of people get to decide for 100% of people what to do. Majority-rule does not make state action consensual. Your politics is shallow and inhuman.

That's a sub form of democracy called Majoritarianism.

lots of decision making needs higher standards, often watered down later

Conviction for Murder 12 unanimous peers - watered down to 11 of 12 in some places

Constitutional changes - 2/3 majority required in many jurisdictions

As a side note this is why the Brexit result was so devastating, the brexit side won by only a little however the support for being governed by the EU was only 48% .... this needed to be 66% or more for EU rule to be truly accepted

Consent doesn't happen at anything but unanimous consent in a group. If you decide to vote, the decision to vote must be unanimous. There needs to be a consent on every individual level in order for consent to occur in the collective level. Otherwise a room of wolves can eat the sheep.

Play that out a little bit and tell us how you get a functioning government [or collective society over 100K people] as a result.

"I didn't agree to that parking fine; I park where I damn well please."

"I didn't agree to not put rat poison on the food I sold."

"I didn't agree that John and Jane Doe owned that house."

"I didn't agree that we have a medical licensing board to determine qualifications for doctors/surgeons."

"I initially agreed to pay for that, but I now revoke my consent and don't wish to be bound by that earlier consent. I did not agree to recognize your courts as valid and able to enforce that civil agreement."

That's not a rebuttal against the argument. If you have a chicken and call it a bull, and I say "that's not a bull, those have horns, tails, etc", saying "well, try getting eggs from that" doesn't prove that chickens are actually bulls.

I'm claiming that a unanimous consent ideal is utterly unworkable at the scale that even a city government needs to work at, let alone state or federal government.

If the argument against a mostly functional existing government is that "not everyone consented unanimously and willingly", I think the claim that to require such makes things less functional is an in-bounds claim. You can argue that I'm wrong, but you will have a hard time convincing me that my claim was non-responsive.

Not all things need consent. You don't need the consent of someone violating other people's rights to punish them. You don't need the consent of 100% of the citizenry to make a decision on how to expend public funds. You do need someone's consent to take private income from them. Income taxation is wrong for that reason.

Parents can't consent for their children. And claiming that you can leave is not a valid argument because it's not always true, and there's nowhere to go.

In practical terms and matters, parents make binding choices for their minor children every day. Where are my kids going to sleep tonight? Where I [and my wife] decide. What are my kids going to eat tonight? ...

You're right that it's not consent exactly, but I made a binding choice to have children and to raise them in America (and Massachusetts and Cambridge and in this house). I made that choice recognizing that that would subject them to the good and ill of those choices, including taxation, the federal and state laws, local ordinances, and whatever drafts, roof leaks, and other dangers this house might have.

That they were not personally consulted and did not personally consent that we drive on the right side of the road, that we use the USD as our currency, that we use center-tapped 240VAC, 60 Hz single-phase as the residential electrical standard is irrelevant in practical terms.

> "Here, the governed chose to enact a constitution that allowed the government to take taxes"

No. A bunch of politicians composed of lawyers and privileged elites from the various states chose to enact a constitution did.

> "If the governed wish to not be taxed, they have a way to do that too! Pass a constitutional amendment."

If someone rejects the government's claim on their self and rejects the government's legitimacy, then no, they have no obligation to utilize the government's system of law making.

The thing is, if taxation isn't theft then why shouldn't the government do as much of it as it wants? Why not just tax the people at 100%?

I think we actually get to a proper statist view by seeing taxation as theft, thus an inherent badness, which is only justified when the people are represented properly and the government respects their needs.

So I hear this language as a perfectly reasonable call to examine the balance and see if we're being heard and getting our needs met in exchange for the sacrifices in question.

Taxation is not theft.

If you must, think of it as how you're paying for access to this society.

Taxation is not theft.

Can you explain to me how it's not theft? It's money taken from you whether you consent or not under threat of force. I suppose more technically that's extortion, but there mere fact you get some services in return doesn't change the fact it's not voluntary and done under threat of force.

I've wondered about this, and the other topic of "Why should a human recognise and heed borders?".

My conclusions: a. Humans have evolved into socially needing to exist with each other.

b. In general, the various societies across the world have different styles - democracy, dictatorship, kingdoms, capitalism, socialism,etc.

c. In general, most of us have the choice of leaving a particular social group and then moving away to another social group. Somewhat easy to do within a country if you are a citizen or are authorised to do so. Somewhat difficult in some cases (e.g., you are not permitted to leave the country).

d. If an individual doesn't agree with social norms and "laws", they may most likely still have the option to leave. They will need to relocate to some other place where they are permitted to do (or can get away with doing) what they want to do.

If I live in a country, then my predecessors decided together to create a tax system whereby all residents contribute tax, and in exchange receive certain benefits. To prevent free-loading, tax is made mandatory. To ensure some form of proportionate taxation, there are tax slabs.

If they are not receiving these benefits, then they need correct the situation. If they feel they are being over-taxed, then they need to present the reasons, and hopefully have sufficient auditing and electoral process in place to correct the over-taxation.

If they don't like this and are not effective enough, they (mostly) have the options of reconciling to the situation, or of leaving.

Just to be clear - this is an argument of tax being beneficial, but is not in fact an argument of tax not being theft/extortion. Am I reading you right here?

So because predecessors decided something, the current state has the right to steal from me just because I was born here and haven't moved to another location where there is another state that does the same thing?

Yes, you might as well complain that you never asked to be born.

Correct, your parents consented to your citizenship here, and all its attendant obligations, when you were a child.

They were your legal guardians and were permitted to do so.

See my comment above. It's not theft because it is part of the constitution. The constitution was enacted by the people, not by a random force-bearing entity that is beating you up.

Yes, it happened in the past. But the consent doesn't expire until people change the constitution (anything else is insane, as you could never form a government of any sort).

Until then, those are the rules of the country, and living here means abiding by them.

The argument that "i didn't vote on this personally and therefore i did not consent" is not sane. It may be a sane argument before say, age of majority. Even then you could be emancipated and leave. But once you hit age of majority, you are consenting by staying. Note that in basically every legal system that has ever existed, you are also consenting by exercising any other rights. Like any contract, you don't get to pick and choose what parts you consent too, you can either ratify the document as a whole and adopt the contract or not.

But note: If you don't, this is the same document that enables folks to have the power to make it illegal for people to murder you, and enforce that, so ...

You can't just claim my consent. I don't consent by inaction, I don't consent because I was born here. I don't consent because my parents consented for me.

No. There is no consent.

Now you are just asserting things randomly that are false becuase you can't come up with a good argument Sorry! This is just "i don't agree with the collective's decision making process, and don't want to have to abide by it, or have to remove myself from it".

Again, the document you refuse to consent to is literally the only thing granting you the benefit of being here.

No. The document doesn't grant me the right to life. It doesn't grant me the right to own property. Everyone has natural rights. These are described in the declaration of independence and other documents.

You don't have the right to take anything from me just because there's another person in the room. The state doesn't get special moral or justice exemptions just because it's a special type of group.

Your right to own property is a textbook example of the social contract at play, because without that contract your "right" extends exactly as far as your personal ability to prevent me from taking it.

I have no contract with everyone. I cant recruit someone from other side of the country to prevent you from taking it.

I have to use my social/economic power. And yes I am happy to "pay taxes" to them. Because I need them but not to a welfare/UBI-addict who just takes.

And whats up with assumption that everyone will steal from everyone all the time if it were not for Govt ?

The history of the world, from feudalism to chattel slavery to honor societies to colonialism.

Whether or not you personally agree to the social contract, so long as you own property or have personal integrity protected in any way by the functions of a state, you are a beneficiary of the social contract. In its absence, you have rights solely to the extent that the strength of your own limbs can ensure them.

As I said, I am dependent on others. But the others != citizens of a nation. Its a very small subset. And for the service I am happy to pay as humans have been paying since invention of society.

I'm not seeing where it is we disagree.

We disagree on size of state. The flexibility/unhappiness of the social contract increases with size of state. The consent/absense-of-it is easier to indicate as size decreases.

I wasn't making an argument about the size of the state.

Usually people support taxes/megastates/state-as-a-solution-for-everything in bundle. My bad if thats not the case here.

You're lucky that the Declaration of Independence is not part of the Constitution, otherwise you'd have to consent to the idea that those rights are endowed by the Creator :)

Why do you have the right to ownership of things? I personally don't see the difference between the right of taxation, and the right of ownership. Both are constructs created by our laws, I believe.

There are societies with neither taxation, or the idea of individual ownership of belongings.

>The document doesn't grant me the right to life.

Nothing does. You don't have an objective right to life.

>Everyone has natural rights.

There is no such thing as a natural right.

Natural right implies that it is a objective right, something that can be reasoned to be always true no matter the mindset of those who reason.

Human rights or just about all rights we have are subjective, we made them up.

And yes, that includes all basic human rights. Your right not to be violently murdered is at it's essence a subjective notion that you don't want to be murdered above all.

It's true that some documents have documented these rights, notably the declaration of independence and some other similar. But that doesn't change the subjectivity of these documents either.

>You don't have the right to take anything from me just because there's another person in the room.

Again, this is entirely subjective. The other two people in the room might massively disagree and argue that since their are in the majority, they have every right to do what they want with you and your property.

It entirely depends on the moral and ethical framework used by those in the room.

For some, it might be fully ethical to murder you and practice their cannibalism a bit.

>The state doesn't get special moral or justice exemptions just because it's a special type of group.

Which is just as subjective.

Most people in the US seem to agree that the moral framework they have constructed is beneficial to them and that a majority rule is sufficiently moral and ethical to ignore the complaints of the few.

You can whine about it all day but it doesn't change that the majority believes that a majority can rule (which is an entirely subjective notion).

Your parents consented for you. They were your legal guardians until your age of majority (or emancipation) and had the right to consent on your behalf. You don't need to like that fact for it to be true.

You are free, now, presumably as an adult, to revoke your consent and citizenship. We won't stop you.

I think this is a particularly terrifying view. Following this logic all number of terrible things that we would normally consider crimes could be written into a constitution - and your line of thinking is we should then stop considering them crimes.

Until then, those are the rules of the country, and living here means abiding by them.

Again this isn't a compelling argument, or even a point. You might say that about any state - totalitarian or not. I'm struggling not to invoke Godwins law here.

Again, this logic leads to some terrifying conclusions. Your argument is that by living in an area under jurisdiction by a given state, you consent to everything the state does to you because you haven't fled. Again - think of all the things states potentially have the power to do, still do to this day, and have done in the past. It follows that everyone on the globe consents to these things unless they bcome refugees.

I've yet to see anyone make a coherent argument for "taxation isn't extortion" which doesn't immediately lead to the authoritarian conclusion that nothing a state does is a crime, and that anyone living in an area controlled by a state consents to whatever the state chooses to do. An argument I can at least respect "taxation is essentially extortion, but I believe the end justifies the means".

It's not theft because it is a legally established process for funding the government.

You have a say in how taxation works, through the political process. You're part of this system and are fully free to work to end all taxation.

And, you don't need to think that taxation is just, or fair, but it is in fact legal and applies to you until you either work to end it or move somewhere where it doesn't apply.

Theft is the unlawful, extrajudicial taking of something without permission.

Put simply: we all agreed to be taxed (for most of us, our parents agreed on our behalf when we were born), but theft happens without our agreeing to anything.

Again, the terrifying conclusion that being born in a huge geographic area means you consent to anything the state in charges of it does. Consider the implications of this...

When you were a child, your parents consented on your behalf.

When you reach the age of majority, you are free to revoke your consent by leaving the area and renouncing your citizenship.

You really don't have to stay if you don't like the laws. You don't even have to move, if you can get enough people on board to changing them.

You have a lot of options, but very few of them make "taxation is theft" into a meaningful sentence.

If I stole your wallet and gave you a car, it would still be stealing.

The social contract is not a contract, it's an invalid excuse. If I made a contract which (1) I could change at any time without your consent, (2) I was in charge of enforcing, (3) I forced on you just because you were in a certain area which I deemed under my control, and (4) never let you opt out, no court in the world would support me.

Taxation is theft. The question is whether the moral violation is worth it.

You're arguing as though the phrase 'social contract' refers to a literal contract, which isn't even slightly true.

Of course it doesn't refer to a literal contract. But a non-literal contract has no binding, so under what crazy-land definition of justice can the state use it to deem its actions of taxation, conscription, etc as just?

It really sounds like you have a mental model of the 'social contract' concept that isn't aligned with what it means for everyone else. To be clear, it says that we (possibly tacitly/implicitly) agree to give up some freedoms to the government in exchange for their governance/defense/etc. It has nothing to do with the enforceable contracts and things you sign. It just frames the relationship between government and constituents in terms of an agreement.

So if we give up certain freedoms in this agreement (such as the 'right to not be taxed'), then it's not unjust - we have (tacitly, implicitly) consented to this. It's true that you the individual might not have consented, and might not have the means to leave if you don't like it. But the collective is consenting, and can change the constitution if they change their mind.

So taxation is not inherently unjust if the state's constitution says it can tax you by definition. You might think the social contract that we're using is bad, or that the constitution is bad, and that's fine, and you can change it democratically if enough people agree with you. But 'unjust' doesn't really work.

> if the state's constitution says it can tax you by definition

I wasn't aware that the state defines what is just and what is not. Does that mean that there are no unjust laws?

The constitution defines what it just. Laws can be unjust.

The constitution is a law. It is the supreme law, by its own definition.

Just as an exercise, do you think you can write down my counterargument? It's not hard to see what I'll probably say.

edit: here, I'll help you. For part (a) of this question, list four different meanings of the word 'law', and give an example of each. For part (b), describe what the word 'just' means when applied to each definition from part (a). (Hint: they are all different.)

You first.

It's not a contract at all - in much the same way that the Democratic Republic of Korea is not a Democratic Republic. It's a weasel word used to give the appearance of consent when in-fact no consent has taken place.

Taxation is not theft because taxation is a legally established process for funding a society, and theft is the unlawful taking of something without permission.

You do not need to personally consent to or agree with all laws for them to apply to you.

You are also free to make taxation a point of civil disobedience, if you feel that strongly that it is immoral.

You are free to start a movement to eliminate all taxation, and if you succeed in having it become the law of the land, then taxation will no longer exist, of course, but it would still not be theft under any circumstances.

It's more than that:

* You continue to be taxed even if you're not in the US. Additionally, the US uses its diplomatic advantages to strongarm foreign banks that serve US customers, even if those US customers are never present in the US.

* You have to pay a expatriation tax, and a $2,350 fee to renounce citizenship to avoid the above.

* Central banking gives the government much more control over the monetary system than is needed to pay for simple services. Look at China to see how bad this can be; the article is about Bitcoin, which is currently mostly used to evade oppressive currency controls in China. I consider our central banking system to be an indirect form of taxation.

If these 3 issues were changed, I'd put taxation closer to the 'not theft' than the 'theft' category. Until then, you have to pay the tax even if you don't want access to the US' society.

You're welcome to move to a non taxation government, or just to one where it is barely enforced

Many people are actually working towards the goal of a non-taxation (or "private") government to reach an "Anarcho-Capitalist" society. Many of the original proponents of bitcoin are following a path called "Agorism", which is a method to reach this goal by engaging in "grey" market activities such as buying and selling goods through a non-state-managed currency without paying taxes, to achieve a peaceful revolution, without having to physically move.

You perhaps should google out the meaning of the world utopia... and wishful thinking.

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

You could say that in response to literally anything a government does. You're welcome to move to a non spying government, you're welcome to move to a non prohibitionist government, you're welcome to move to a non police brutality government, etc etc.

Are you are arguing that staying in a geographical area constitutes consent for whatever the state in control of it does?

> Are you are arguing that staying in a geographical area constitutes consent for whatever the state in control of it does?

No I'm saying that without the government you wouldn't be making this comment on the internet, in English, or even have had a roof over your head.

I don't understand. Human beings are capable of performing many tasks without the state. Including building roads and infrastructure. The government is just an entity made up of people. This idea that because the government does something now, it can't possibly be done any other way shows a limited line of thinking. People historically used this argument to justify many other forms of coercion once considered acceptable. It doesn't make sense then, and it doesn't make sense now.

The humans that comprise the current US government had no part in any of those things.

Nations are a way of making people proud of things that they did not do, and making people hate other people that they have never met.

Are you really denying that you're relying on the courts and police to – for example – protect your property?

Yes I am. Police/Courts works because people are non-aggressive. And when you do get in trouble, Police/Courts should be last in your list of things that will help.

Have you lived in an area with high rates of theft before? I have (parts of New Zealand) and IME the police really don't care.

I 100% do not rely on police or courts to protect my property - because they don't.

Using raverbashing's logic, it sounds like he is saying every American resident "consents" to everything that Bush/Obama has done and everything that Trump will do...

> You're welcome to move to a non taxation government, or just to one where it is barely enforced

Even if you do that, the US will still tax you unless you also renounce your US citizenship. Which, incidentally, is not easy to do, and also requires paying a hefty fee (ie, "the tax you have to pay to get out of paying your tax").

You're welcome to move to North Korea if you love the state so much.

Yeah, it's not really a valid argument, is it.

Actually, it is. You choose to live in a country that has a constitution. You abide by that constitution. Like any sane government, you can change that constitution. That's "consent of the governed".

But saying "things that people have consented to in the past, that i have not, are not binding upon me, and therefore taxation is theft" makes no sense. The world existed before you were born. You can leave the country at any time.

I didn't choose to be born in this country. I never gave my consent.

> You can leave the country at any time.

You seem pretty confident. But you're wrong. There are countless barriers to exit, especially if you are poor. Even if I could leave, there is no viable stateless territory on which I can live.

"I didn't choose to be born in this country. I never gave my consent. "

Talk to your parents, and their parents, and their parents, who did. Like i said, this is pretty much only a valid argument until age of majority. But note: even before then, you are taking advantage of the contract, which is the essence of implied consent in every legal system.

". There are countless barriers to exit, especially if you are poor."

There literally are not. You may walk, all the way to a border, and exit, as many people have.

You may not be accepted elsewhere, nor may you have a good time, but that is different, and changes nothing about consent.

(remember that document you didn't consent to, that's the thing that tries to make it so you might have a good time here)

"Even if I could leave, there is no viable stateless territory on which I can live. " Nor does this change anything about consent either.

The fact that you want something does not mean that your inability to get it easily changes anything.

Nothing has ever been easy. You want a viable stateless territory, go make one, by force if necessary. Heck, you are complaining about lack of consent, go get people to consent to one. Suck it up.

Nothing in the above is a valid argument about you consenting or not, just an argument that "if i don't consent, life is tough."

To which the answer is: Yes, yes it is. That's why we created governments in the first place.

So no one can complain about their government violating their human rights, because they are capable of moving?

You can complain of course, for anything you think is a violation of whatever. You can vote to change it. As long as the consensus decision making process exists, is being followed, and you are still taking advantage of the benefits of the contract, you don't have a complaint that you didn't consent to the contract. You even have a way out.

You seem to have a very very very strange view of what collective consent is. You seem to think it is "individual consent of literally every member of the collective", instead it is "output of collective decision making process". You may want that decision making process to be "every member of collective says yes", but that's just one form of collective consent, and at least here, not the one agreed to.

and again, you have your chance to ratify or not ratify the agreements your forebearers have made. If you choose to ratify and adopt, you've consented. If you choose to leave, great, you haven't. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim "i don't subscribe to the agreed collective decision making process but i want the benefits the collective have agreed to".

> You seem to have a very very very strange view of what collective consent is

Collective consent is not a form of true consent. 51% of people in a room cannot decide what the other 49% have to do. That is tyranny, and it's ridiculous to think that the government even has the consent of the majority for half of the shit they do.

>you don't have a complaint that you didn't consent to the contract.

But you didn't consent to the contract. Choosing to stay in a country is not contenting to following any human-rights violating law the majority happens to pass. By your logic, any law implemented through the democratic process cannot be a human rights violation, as long as the citizens had an option to leave the country, since all citizens "consented to the contract" by choosing to stay in the country.

>You seem to have a very very very strange view of what collective consent is.

Terms like "collective consent" are double-speak, and mean exactly the opposite of what they imply. Other terms that fall in this category include "social justice", which blatantly violates justice, and "social contract", which is in no way a contract.

Parents can't consent for their children.

No human society in the history of human society has claimed this, because it's ridiculously stupid. If you want to claim this, okay. Great, parents can't consent for their children. Since the document you don't consent to is the only thing that makes it illegal for me to murder you, ..., it's now okay to go out and murder every child, because they haven't explicitly consented.

Instead, of course, we discover that parents in fact, sanely consent for children until those children are capable of consenting or not consenting for themselves.

We also discover the concept of implied consent, whereby people using the benefits of a contract have also consented to the burdens.

No. It's not okay, because the children did not consent to be murdered.

Can a parent consent for the child to have sex? Of course not. A parent can't sign their child's life into debt.

Parents can not consent for their children, especially when that consent entails being conscripted into military service, taxed, and being put in prison for possessing a plant.

You should re-read Hobbes. Outside the social contract we live in the natural state of man, where our rights are to do whatever we think necessary to ensure our well-being, no matter the consequences to anyone else. Without a state, from where do you derive the right not to be murdered? The strength of your own limbs, and little else.

> A parent can't sign their child's life into debt.

Student loans aren't actually very far away from that. (Not everyone taking out a student loan is over 18 or the local age of majority, which I realize that you haven't personally consented to what that age of majority should be.)

What are you talking about? I consent to things for my children all the time. My son had elective surgery at ~18 months imposed on him without his consent, that would have been potentially criminal to do to an adult.

I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this point.

Public schools and roads are nice.

the fact that the government provides us with sub-par "services" does not refute the statement that taxation is a form of theft.

Public schools are not nice, in general. That's why anyone with any money at all sends their kids to private school.

In the US, maybe. In other countries (that rank better [1] on science and math at 15), they seem to be ok.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32608772

think the commenter meant "nice"= "nice to have" not a statement on quality.

I didn't realize UC Berkeley was a private school.

See, I added, "in general", because I knew somebody was going to come behind me and give one anecdotal reference to a good public school. Yes, there are some good public colleges, and a whole lot of crappy public colleges. Yes, there are a few good public secondary schools and a whole lot of really awful ones.

same on what jeremy said. he specifically meant in general. not only did you pick a top ranked school as an example, but chose the #1 ranked public school as a representation of public schools in general.

i went to 8 schools before graduating high school. ranging qualities really depends on neighborhoods' wealth, unless there's a magnet/charter type school.

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