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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Because tax, in general is absurd. You're literally taking people's money under the threat of force. Just because it is done quite universally does not justify the practice.

More specifically, taxes are abused near universally. From the sugar taxes in Seattle (unless you are Starbucks), or forced Union dues that fund political campaigns, the practice is abused. Meanwhile necessary services like police, firefighters, and rescue workers are always under underfunded, even though that's why we think we're paying them.

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> Because tax, in general is absurd. You're literally taking people's money under the threat of force. Just because it is done quite universally does not justify the practice.

They buy you civilization, which is great because it means you're not just immediately enslaved by your local warlord.

A Warlord prefers his subjects unarmed. What better way than to tax said items.

Don't worry, in the absence of an advanced economy the supply chains needed to manufacture firearms won't exist, so you'll be subjugated using clubs and spears.

You just proved my point. Thank you.

Oh, was your point that the things you take for granted, like the existence of firearms, are only possible because of a civilization that runs on taxes? You're welcome :)

> You're literally taking people's money under the threat of force

Money that would have no meaning, earned for work which would largely be impossible, without said threat of force.

>earned for work which would largely be impossible, without said threat of force.

You're confusing threat of force to enforce property rights and personal freedoms with the threat of force to collect taxes.

They're the same thing. You can't have courts and police without paying them, and you can't pay them without taxes.

> You're confusing threat of force to enforce property rights and personal freedoms with the threat of force to collect taxes

How do you plan on paying your police?

That doesn't sound any better. So if I have an asset that I'm not using, it's morally just to take it from me because I'm not using it?

The devil's in the details. Depending on the asset and the situation, it may be morally correct to take it, yes.

To give an absurd, extreme example: if you lived in a nation going through a famine and your hobby was watching bread mold, it might be morally just to take away your warehouse of stockpiled bread to let the starving people eat, even if it meant you couldn't continue your thrilling bread-mold-watching hobby.

> it's morally just

Morally? Definitely. Incentivizing trade promotes human survival. Is it "just" is a different question, because justice requires a set of idealogical social principles to start from. Natural rights, divine will, reparative, or some other. YMMV

Please keep generic ideological tangents such as taxation-is-theft off Hacker News. They only ever lead to repeats of the same discussions for the millionth time, and usually flamewars. Repetition and flamewar are two of the most off-topic things here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I’m curious if you have any suggestions for keeping assorted necessary services funded without the “absurdity” of taxes.

I will gladly pay 'taxes' for needed services. I hope the last bit of my comment implies that. When I examine the budget of my local and Federal government, said things are a monitory unfortunately.

There are much greater absurdities within the capitalist economic system which mostly go unquestioned; I'd actually start there rather than attacking something much higher up the chain and less fundamental. Taxes also help alleviate the burden of a capitalist economy on people, by providing for social institutions.

So it's fine to attack taxes (even with this naive-libertarian "stealing my money under threat of force" line) but it's a very small problem in the big scheme of economic organisation.

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