This looks like fear of the long arm of the law to me. It is understandable for an individual, but not for a citizen.
I pay taxes because I want children to be educated, hospital to work, road to be in working state, science to progress (and the fact that individual corporations can achieve it concurrently is not enough of an argument for me).
I pay taxes because I want children to be educated, hospital to work, road to be in working state, science to progress (and the fact that individual corporations can achieve it concurrently is not enough of an argument for me).
You are not a citizen by choice. Citizenship is a form of slavery that says we own your body for being born in a certain geographical area.
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I believe in society, even if I agree that inefficiency and outright corruption plague the world.
What do you mean.. you believe? Like in a god that you want others to be forced to sacrifice to?
EVERYONE wants a social situation where they can function as human being. Taxation is not a necessity for this Quite the contrary. To introduce violence and coercion to system ruins it for every honest player.
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One shall not pay taxes because he is afraid of getting caught. One shall pay taxes because he believes in the project called society. To make a conceit, I'd say the fundamentals are strong, even if the implementation leaves an awful lot to be desired. I really believe that a nation could use a cryptocurrency as its main tool, even an anonymous one like Monero.
Then it's not taxes. Paying for services you use or want others to use with your money is just normal commerce. No need for adding guns to the equaiton.
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People are complaining about greedy bastards and selfish miners, but what is paying taxes lest being caught? Not that different. Now, I agree that one shall have the right to refuse (and thus leave society) and this is hard to the point of being practically impossible at the moment (international waters or outer space, anyone?).
The differnce is that taxpayers support the system where "greedy" miners are kidnapped and/or killed if they resist forcefully giving away their profit.
- Life is full of things that you did not decide (like being born human). Better to light up a candle than to curse the darkness. Although this is not perfect (perfect would be close to international water or better yet outer space), you can move to another legislation and change your citizenship.
- A contract should require two things: that you understand it and that you accept it (which in turns implies that you can refuse it). I accept the social contract for the most part and you seem not to. This doesn't make it less legible (even though the fact that you cannot practically refuse it is annoying, to say the least). I consider you are confusing "I refuse" and "Everyone shall refuse" (Russel's teapot here). When you say that "taxation is not a necessity", you are expressing your own belief, not an immutable truth (immutable truth are the province of hypothetico-deductive systems like maths and chess).
- I'm not a fan on using big words for the sake of it. Look at real slavery and the true horror it generates. Same goes for "kidnapping" and "guns".
- Let's talk business. Offer and demand: there is a demand for taxation. Economy of scale: good luck making large structure work without spreading the cost and the maintenance - consider fixing just the part of the road you are actually walking on. Before the advent of state-owned schools, which part of the population was litterate (reminder: freedom starts when you can question what you are being told, and litteracy is a great way to do it)?
A bit off-topic but since you are pursuing a non sequitur fallacy regarding belief: the Catholic Church (despite all the atrocities it perpetrated) did a fine job (till year 1000) in perpetuating a semblance of civilisation in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. And I'm saying this as an agnostic.
I have a pretty consequentialist vision of things. If mankind constantly balances between individualism and collectivism, between liberalism and interventionnism, betwee, private interest and public interest), I believe (yes, believe, please let me sacrifice someone on an altar) this is because it is the best reflection of his aspirations as a species. Human is social animal at heart. It is a monkey (living in tribe-sized community in the jungle), not a lion (strong enough to live by its own) and not an ant neither (completely devoid of individuality).
Both ardent individualists and ardent collectivists are extremists in my book. It's all about the balance. Of course, where to place the balance is a hard question, probably without definitive answer as long as the human brain will be what it is.