More and More of What We Do Depends on Government Permission | Hacker News Reader

More and More of What We Do Depends on Government Permission

reason.com

36 pointseplanit7 comments

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More from The Economist:

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/03/02/too-much-...

And many previous HN discussions of Civil Asset Forfeiture (aka highway robbery):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17395675

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17210880

It seems the CBP border force does not have to respect constitutional rights and can detain you indefinitely without charge (e.g. for not providing a password for your phone).

Of course, the IRS extorts from all Americans, wherever they are on the planet (and beyond - warning to Elon: renounce before blast-off).

Add capture of the financial system by banks, corporations and elites; plus militarization of law enforcement with surplus hardware returning from many overseas interventions, and you have creeping boiling-the-frog fascism.

While you make some valid points, I think you're taking it a bit far with your statement that your tax authority performs extortion. Taxes are a part of citizenship. If you do not like that, that is your right. You cannot just stop paying them just because you are selfish, that is not how social contracts work. While on some levels you can call that extortion (it is after all backed by violence to some degree), you'd have to be pretty willfully blind to not recognize that most people wouldn't use the term like that. Unless you have a point you are making that I'm missing?

> Taxes are a part of citizenship.

Only for the US (and Eritrea). Your country should not own you and make extra-territorial claims on your income or wealth due to an accident of birth. Recently, the US has also made it harder and more expensive to renounce citizenship. Even if you have paid all back-taxes owing (and paid a large fee), it will not agree to release you from bondage, if it thinks your motivation (thought crime) is to avoid excessive future extra-territorial taxes!

There are other countries where this is the case. There are of course varying amounts of tax modulation, but you are generally expected to pay some amount of money even if you work overseas. You are a part of keeping your country running smoothly, and you pay taxes for that. If you want to be part of another country running smoothly, you can do so (some have very low taxes but are generally not super great to live in for varying reasons). I have no idea about the process for relinquishing US citizenship.

Need permission to fish. Need permission to play music. Don't need permission to have a baby.

Seems like the biggest loophole ever in a democratic world.

Does anyone know if there has been a case between the IRS and a person in tax debt trying to travel? Be great to see where that goes and how it's challenged.

The problem is the law not the government. We should remove laws instead of creating new ones.

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