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Would you still think taxation is theft if the government was acting as a responsible steward of tax money, and spending it in ways that improve the lives of th

Would you still think taxation is theft if the government was acting as a responsible steward of tax money, and spending it in ways that improve the lives of the citizenry without running up a huge debt?

maccolgan 5y ago
Ideally it would be spending an amount of money that individuals can also afford to spend themselves, that'd be the fairest, but that hardly ever happens...
- JetSpiegel 5y ago
  How do you build a railroad as an individual? How do you pay for NASA as an individual?
zo1 5y ago
Like with a lot of things it's more of a spectrum than a binary. Yes it still would be "theft". But if they were responsible with it then I'd definitely be more okay with it(like a lot of libertarians) . It'd be more okay if we all paid proportionally to our earnings. It'd also be more okay if we had more and more granular controls over what it gets spent on (like the humble bundle where I'd pick which ratio of my share of gov spending goes to which department or social good). The thing that irritates me about it is that none of these intermediate steps seem to get any traction. My pet theory about that is they don't get implemented because they would inevitably lead to full public control over social spending. And when we get there we're essentially doing libertarianism anyways and realise we are responsible for our neighbours and society and have no need for a government that does stuff without our consent.