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Comment by vy8vWJlco | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of any rules that aren't enforced by threat. (The equivalent of patching Starcraft in the real world makes you rich or lands you in jail for tax evasion. The government's patch is only accepted because of the threat of force behind it.)

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Even if we all believe taxation is theft, we can still talk about which taxes and which expenditures are better than others. Given the choice between the state coercing you using the threat of violence and the state coercing you using the threat of violence in such a way that some public good is achieved, it seems natural to prefer the latter.

> The government's patch is only accepted because of the threat of force behind it.

Uh, some of us accept the government's patch because we agree with it, or because we want to play the same game that everyone else is and the government happens to be a conveniently centralized entity for deciding which patches go in and which do not. Like Blizzard. We also accept that hacking your own patch in either means you can't play on the ladder with everyone else or that it's an action worth of receiving a ban in response.

It's called "establishing a free market".

I'm sorry - I used "accepted" when I should have used "chosen," since self-determination was implicitly my end. With that in mind: eagerness does not mean you had a choice (though perhaps that's unimportant to you).

There is only a choice if the alternative was actually an option. When the government can force you to eat cake, it hardly matters if you may have enjoyed that first piece. What matters is that you will be eating it one way or another. (That is not what I would call "establishing a free market" - that's not even a free lunch.)

I agree that there was no choice.

So what? I don't have a problem with that.

I recognize that not having a choice is scary, but I find it foolish to base a worldview off fear.

Justify the need for choice, please.

"..., and the pursuit of happiness."

If not having choice is scary (your word), which I would say is a synonym for "undesirable", I cannot be said to have the right to pursue happiness without it (choice).

> "I find it foolish to base a worldview off fear."

The only sense in which I'm basing my worldview "off of" fear is by asserting the right not to live in it. (In that sense, I am also basing my worldview off of starvation - as I am eating breakfast.)

...is your claim really going to come down to, "Taxes make me unhappy"? Because that's what I'm seeing:

"Taxes are either an incentive or a threat." -> "Taxes are a threat because I did not choose them." -> "Taxes stymie my pursuit of happiness."

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