Charging a fee for appropriating natural resources can be fully justified, but whether a fee is charged comes down to practicality. Example: it's not practical

Charging a fee for appropriating natural resources can be fully justified, but whether a fee is charged comes down to practicality. Example: it's not practical to charge every individual camper a fee for every piece of obsidian they find. While scarce, the amount of obsidian they stand to find and take is so small, that the cost of enforcing the tax would far exceed the cost to society of them depriving us of the natural resource. Moreover, the amount they're taking is so small that the actual fee they would have to pay society to compensate it for the appropriation of this natural resource would be close to zero. >What resources are not scarce in your view? If a forest is unclaimed and then I should be allowed to claim and cut it to produce valuable furniture and keep all the profit to me. Noting available on this earth is unlimited or free. You should have to pay society for the value of the trees you're cutting down, and the cost you're incurring upon society through the harm the tree-cutting does to the rest of the forest. Society is also fully within its rights to reserve some areas of the forest to maintain the ecosystem. >Universal Principal is progressive taxation, and tax rate is determined by scale of operation. There is no universal principle behind an income tax. You yourself said it doesn't apply to petty transactions involving me trading a clay figurine for sea shells. It's not universal. It's arbitrary gouging of those with the most to tax. >An individual making furniture out of unclaimed wood cannot be compared to an industrial scale operation resulting in deforestation and they cannot be taxed on the same rate. Morally there's no qualitative difference. 1 billion individual furniture makers cutting down 1 tree each does exactly the same amount of damage as one company cutting down 1 billion trees. It's the natural resources that should be taxed, not the people. >Ok what this hypothetical machine is going to produce? This hypothetical machine produces information. It's a computer. It sells computations. It is powered by solar panels that are on land that I'm renting from the government. I've paid for the cost of the natural resources I'm using (iron ore and sunlight I'm using up). The iron ore and energy is legitimately mine. You have no right to the value I generate using these inputs.