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Comment by contrarian1234 | Hacker News Reader

The libertarian notion that taxes are extortion is frankly childish in how overly simplistic it is.

You get all sorts of benefits in return for your taxes. You can't realistically opt out of them. You can't live without using roads or being defended by the military. You can't tell society at large that when you get hit by lightning that you want they to leave you to die and not call an ambulance

Since you can't opt out, a nontaxpayer ends up being a freeloader and social parasite. The only just option is to have to contribute to the imperfect system

The whole idea of extortion is premises that people can exist somehow outside of society which is disconnected from reality.. No man is an island

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I agree libertarianism is a tad silly, but really are those "benefits" you list not paid for by inflation rather than taxes.

> paid for by inflation rather than taxes

How does inflation pay for services and infrastructure?

Modern Monetary Theory, with the way it works it feels dishonest to claim taxes are paying for those things.

The alternative to the current model is not to have no services at all, as that makes no sense, agreed.

> The libertarian notion that taxes are extortion is frankly childish in how overly simplistic it is.

The argument is weak because you constructed a straw man. The libertarian notion is not to live without any of the services provided by a state, but to have different providers which are in competition. The issue is that the state / gov has a monopoly but is exempt from antitrust laws.

The implementation is tricky though because in reality, when functions of the state are privatized there is often a huge amount of lobbying and corruption involved and these functions are given to a small group of big companies which effectively form a cartel once again. Then they extract all the economic value left in the infrastructure, the privatization is declared failed and undone, effectively another channel of syphoning tax money into the hands of big companies.

> but to have different providers which are in competition

it never worked in practice though.

> has a monopoly but is exempt from antitrust laws

because it does a mediocre job at many things, making it quite easy to compete against it when and if it's worth it, but provides those things no private entity would, because it's anti-economical.

like, for example, the proverbial roads to nowhere.

> nontaxpayer ends up being a freeloader and social parasite

And you say the libertarians are childish and simplistic

You just replied childish and simplistic comeback.

> The whole idea of extortion is premises that people can exist somehow outside of society which is disconnected from reality.

Or people can agree to collaborate (like a church or workers union) without extortion of citizens. There’s plenty of examples where extortion isn’t necessary.

I’m also not suggesting taxes shouldn’t be levied at all, I’m saying land and income taxes are particularly gross, as they misalign incentives. Like I said, the more civilized a civilization is, presumably the less protection people need, so we should pay less taxes. Similarly, the more civilized a civilization the more services can be provided by the private sector. The reverse trend is true for taxes, they charge more for less.

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