Topic: Is taxation theft? - page 12. (Read 75978 times)

Well, if we look up the word "theft," we'll notice it means 'dishonestly taking something that belongs to someone else and keeping it (or stealing, i.e. taking something without the permission or knowledge of the owner and keeping it).'
The key words here are without the permission or knowledge , which contradicts the process of taxation. I mean, you know that they are taking the money from you, but on the other hand, they never ask you for permission or whether or not you are willing to do so
So, it's a theft only by half and only providing you're not willing to do so. If you are, then it isn't a theft at all, IMHO.

Right! And the only one to make money off virtually everything is Government. Think of the postal system. UPS and FedEx have to jump through all kinds of legal hoops to get to deliver packages. And they are almost always required to use the postal system for part of their delivery. And they aren't allowed to deliver mail like the postal system does. So government has their monopoly hands in almost everything.

Collusion is almost the same as a monopoly, it's just an oligopoly. Again, it cannot exist without government. They require the government to ensure that nobody outside of their group comes in and takes all of their customers by providing a lower price. Governments tend to provide that service (the service of keeping competition out of the market).

Imagine the road running next to a long piece of farm land, through collusion, is making $100k per year just for that strip. The farmer knows that the same square meters of his land only brings in $20k per year. He is now incentivized to build a road on his property instead of food. He can then undercut the road company and take all of the customers. Same with every single property next to the road. Without the government there would be no way an oligopoly would stop people from competing.

If you look at old pictures of the future back when roads were first being developed you had airships, airplanes all over, walkways from building to building, etc. We only have a car dominated transportation system we have now because the roads are "free". There would be many different sorts of transportation if roads were not free.


Then again, you are certainly not the first person to ask about the roads when it comes to no taxes.

Here is the official "what about the roads?" thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-official-what-about-the-roads-thread-345749

Depends. If it is gobbled up corrupt politicians, definitely theft. If used for social welfare, maybe not.

The video is very persuasive, I'd say  , but what if everyone chooses not to "help George," even those who can afford to "help a thousand Georges?"
The society must then come with a new paradigm of providing funds to do public works, like road repairs, sanitation, etc., etc.
I'm not saying that forcing all people to "help George" is okay. I'm merely trying to understand what opitons we have in this respect...

Yeah, that would be a huuuge improvement 

Monopolies cannot exist without government force. It just doesn't work.

I can only site one case of a natural monopoly in the United States that did not use the force of government. That is the company that manufactures those little white pieces of cardboard for priests to wear around their collars. I'm thinking the only reason it was a monopoly was that there was not much motivation to disrupt that industry and the company likely kept prices low for ideological reasons.

Get out the law dictionaries and encyclopedias. Look up the word taxes/tax/taxation. The dictionaries and encyclopedias use other words to describe and define taxes/tax/taxation. Look those words up, as well, and then the definitions of those words, etc., on and on. What you will finally come to as the definition of taxes/tax/taxation is, fraud. What this means is that the the word theft isn't what taxation really is. Rather, taxation is robbery via fraud.

Personally I kinda feel taxation IS a theft, but it's one of the prehistoric conventions and I'm not sure we can actually change anything about it.

It's called competition.

Government is colluding with the companies to keep prices up much higher than they would be without the collusion. They do this to get more tax money.

Letting me keep my property (money) would be one of those improvements I would like to see.

Looks like that because you don't see the improvements you expect to see.

Nope. Unless a country's leaders do anything wrong with the tax money, in which case it's obviously a theft.

Wow, that's different from the 1000 other sheep in this thread. Thank you for the valuable insight.

You are all paying taxes on the few scraps you get from your signature campaigns...right?

Because the ends justifying the means and all.

this could be an interesting take, its not a theft as it is used for your own welfare by the government. We use those things in daily life and then debate if it is a theft?

Taxes were always.even 1,000 years ago.Only it was called differently-a tribute to.What taxes are needed for-to create conditions for a decent life.Are these requirements now being met?Of course not.Hence the question-why pay taxes at all?

There are some examples of private roads, and most people who are for privatizing would require some sort of easement to ensure that people are not locked in their homes. I imagine road systems would be local, regional and national. Where local roads are treated differently from national roads.

If you have ever been to Disney World you have driven on a private road. Disney wants people to be able to get to their park easily so they purchased all of the roads going into their park and have built them and maintained them on their own so that they don't have to worry about huge traffic jams or degrading roadways for their customers. Most believe that local roadways would be paid by businesses that want people to have easy access to drive to their stores. Ever turned off of the government road onto a large shopping center parking lot with roads? Those are all private.

There was a bridge between the US and Canada that was losing money for the governments of both sides even though they charged a large fee for everyone crossing. They ended up privatizing it and not only did the company that bought it lower prices but they made it profitable.

Phone companies could also raise prices on those cell towers as well. Make it so expensive so that only the world's richest can use cell phones. So why don't they do that? Could it be that companies that are in business to make money actually want to make money? Private roads would be the same. More customers equals more money. Why would they want to push people out of the system by making it harder for people to use their service?

I'm just one person on the Internet with an idea of how private roads could work. But if they were private there would be tens of thousands of people with entrepreneurial spirit trying to figure out a better solution to beat the current competition to offer better solutions. We would go from our current system in the same way that we used to have our home phone lines to an advancement system in roadways akin to our current smart phones in our pockets.

In a way, people who want taxes to pay for roads are getting in the way of the potential that transport could achieve. If it weren't for the government monopoly.

And if they raise the price on a certain group of people....



Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

Whether a theft or not, we can only judge on a case-by-case basis. Because it first emerged with a basic idea of keeping things in order. Unfortunately, some politicians seem to ruin that idea because they are corrupt, but this doesn't make it a "theft," does it?

Of course it's a necessity, but not a theft definitely. (Sometimes, depending on the government, it could look like the theft)

What does it matter what a thief does with the money once he has stolen it?

There are two separate issues here. How the money is obtained. And how the money is spent.

How the money is spent does not affect how the money is obtained.

That is what people do not understand.


If I kill a guy, then roast him up in a fine meal that I then give to some hungry people on the street, would you be trying to justify the murder because some people got fed? Would you not even care that someone was killed? Would people even have to ask the question "is killing people to feed people murder?". Would you be criticizing those that call it murder as being heartless? Not wanting hungry people to be fed. What about those poor starving children that just want a meal? How dare you call it murder?

If this has been done for millennia, nobody would consider it murder. If someone else chimed in and said "maybe we can feed people without killing people" then the majority would have no clue how it could be done. So they would say that the killing is justified. Oh, but only "if the meal is prepared correctly". Because they cannot fathom any other way.