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Personally, I find it problematic philosophically that others can unilaterally take your property, but I understand it is practically necessary and justified by

Personally, I find it problematic philosophically that others can unilaterally take your property, but I understand it is practically necessary and justified by agreement to the social contract being implied by one's continued voluntary presence in such polity.

__loam 3y ago
I like your philosophy of "taxation is theft, but roads are pretty cool"
croes 3y ago
Your property? Depends on the country but normally your success benefitted from things like your and your employees's education, police, infrastructure etc. Taxes are a way to pay back. The amount is debatable not the existence as such.
- mminer237 3y ago
  Sure, but justifying such post facto violates the officious intermedler doctrine.
  - DrScientist 3y ago
    You might not have personally agreed - but society has ( as least in a democracy ). The whole point of centralised laws is it's much more efficient than negotiating with everyone you meet as to whether they will k!ll you and/or take or stuff or not. The scale of interactions in modern societies requires simplification of the management of those interactions - laws and enforcement of - what's allow or not is decided once, not every interaction.
    - mminer237 3y ago
      Yeah, like I originally said, even if you don't agree with your taxes specifically, you agree to them as part of society by continuing to exist inside in it. By my philosophy, taxes are justified as long as you have the theoretical legal right to emigrate.
  - croes 3y ago
    It was your parents decision which nationality you have, by accepting the nationality they accepted the rules and costs, so no officious intermedler. BTW without governments opayed through taxes things like officious intermedler doctrine wouldn't exist instead you get the good old nice-place-you-got-there-be-a-shame-if-anything-happened-to-it doctrine. Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it
  - fires10 3y ago
    I don't understand this comment. Can someone explain it like I'm five?
    - DrScientist 3y ago
      You can't give somebody something unrequested and then demand payment. Otherwise people could send you parcels you haven't ordered and then charge you. So he is saying he hasn't asked for the government services but is been forced to pay for them. The obvious answer is that by being a member of society you have implicitly agreed to it's rules - you can't pick and choose. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/officious_intermeddler https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/officious_intermeddler
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        The obvious answer is that by being a member of society you have implicitly agreed to it's rules That's such nonsense though, since as an individual you have virtually no impact on anything unless you were born into extreme wealth. No government that I'm aware of operates hypothecation (where you can specify what your taxes get used for), and voting for representatives based on policy commitments is crude, unreliable, and too slow to be adequately responsive. Nobody in the private sector has a job where they are only subject to performance review every 2/4/6 years. In the US, few people truly support the roughly $1 trillion annual cost of 'defense' and nobody thinks it's efficiently allocated, but any proposals to significantly cut that sum are political suicide so it's never going to happen. Much of our current political angst stems from people's intuitive awareness that their taxes are a real fact of life whereas their influence on the political process is largely notional.
        DrScientist 3y ago
        > In the US.... I'd argue that the democratic ties between the people and the actions of the government in the US are extremely fragile - money is more important than people now in the US electoral system. Another American disease is to then extrapolate that malaise and assume the rest of the world is in a similar position. The solution isn't to dissolve society - that removes the only mechanism ( government ) that the majority have to control the powerful, further entrenching the power of the rich. The solution is to take money out of US politics and get it working again for the majority,
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- orra 3y ago
  More directly, property is a social construct. A useful one, yes, and one we consider a right. But that doesn't make tax unfair. Good luck enforcing your property rights without a society, and preferably without violence. The real world tends not to be full of absolutes. It's unhelpfully reductive to go from "property is a right" to "taxation is theft".
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  If that were so, then people without any property would be exempt from tax. I'm not arguing against all taxation per se, but a lot of 'philosophical' arguments of tax proponents are as specious as those of tax opponents.
  - croes 3y ago
    Define property, is your income property?
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Define it yourself! I'm really over this inquisitorial style of argumentation, learn some manners.
DrScientist 3y ago
Well the state can also unilaterally take your life ( depending in the country ) and certainly your liberty. And the above is a trade-off, the state polices & punishes murder and theft etc, with an aim of reducing it overall - so you are less likely to be murdered or stolen from. Then this central mechanism needs paying for. Tax is simply a way of paying for it - and it's not voluntary to stop free-riders. The reality is you need government & laws when people start living in complex societies where people are no longer self-sufficient, but rely on a complex web of interactions. Laws are there to arbitrate between people - if you live on a homestead in the mountains they may seem unnecessary - if you live in a big city, where even essentials like food and water depend on a complex web of interactions - they are essential.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kimbernator 3y ago
"Property" only exists so far as there is law enforcing it and the infrastructure to support it. Taxation is not someone stealing your money, it is the buy-in to a system that allows you to reliably consider things you have to be your property.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  To add to this, how to we value property? in the state issued currency..
- johngladtj 3y ago
  Yeah, no that's not true. Property exists even in stateless societies
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    And you’d be spending resources on securing it and keeping it in your hands. Taxes are to buy in to a system that lets you sit at peace and not be constantly vigilant.
    - johngladtj 3y ago
      You're spending those resources regardless, at least you get to be the deciding how much to spend, and where, rather than having that decision taken from you
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Taxation of labour is not somebody stealing your property, it is somebody stealing your work – which is a thousand times worse, since it is a form of forced servitude. There is no "system" and has never been any system, there's only people exploiting other people. An income tax is just a fancy abstraction over ancient and base serfdom. Most labourers have no property to speak of, and never had. If it's a "buy-in" to a system people should have a way to "buy out" as well, which of course doesn't happen, because there never was any "buy-in", it was "pay us your wages or we'll hunt you down". Slaves could buy their own freedom in Rome and other places, so why can't "free" people under taxation? Property rights should rank far lower than human rights. So if you want to collect taxes, go after property instead of after people. But it is the property owning class who runs the two-sided coin of capitalism/socialism, so good luck on that.

__loam 3y ago

I like your philosophy of "taxation is theft, but roads are pretty cool"

croes 3y ago

Your property? Depends on the country but normally your success benefitted from things like your and your employees's education, police, infrastructure etc. Taxes are a way to pay back. The amount is debatable not the existence as such.

mminer237 3y ago
Sure, but justifying such post facto violates the officious intermedler doctrine.
- DrScientist 3y ago
  You might not have personally agreed - but society has ( as least in a democracy ). The whole point of centralised laws is it's much more efficient than negotiating with everyone you meet as to whether they will k!ll you and/or take or stuff or not. The scale of interactions in modern societies requires simplification of the management of those interactions - laws and enforcement of - what's allow or not is decided once, not every interaction.
  - mminer237 3y ago
    Yeah, like I originally said, even if you don't agree with your taxes specifically, you agree to them as part of society by continuing to exist inside in it. By my philosophy, taxes are justified as long as you have the theoretical legal right to emigrate.
- croes 3y ago
  It was your parents decision which nationality you have, by accepting the nationality they accepted the rules and costs, so no officious intermedler. BTW without governments opayed through taxes things like officious intermedler doctrine wouldn't exist instead you get the good old nice-place-you-got-there-be-a-shame-if-anything-happened-to-it doctrine. Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it
- fires10 3y ago
  I don't understand this comment. Can someone explain it like I'm five?
  - DrScientist 3y ago
    You can't give somebody something unrequested and then demand payment. Otherwise people could send you parcels you haven't ordered and then charge you. So he is saying he hasn't asked for the government services but is been forced to pay for them. The obvious answer is that by being a member of society you have implicitly agreed to it's rules - you can't pick and choose. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/officious_intermeddler https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/officious_intermeddler
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      The obvious answer is that by being a member of society you have implicitly agreed to it's rules That's such nonsense though, since as an individual you have virtually no impact on anything unless you were born into extreme wealth. No government that I'm aware of operates hypothecation (where you can specify what your taxes get used for), and voting for representatives based on policy commitments is crude, unreliable, and too slow to be adequately responsive. Nobody in the private sector has a job where they are only subject to performance review every 2/4/6 years. In the US, few people truly support the roughly $1 trillion annual cost of 'defense' and nobody thinks it's efficiently allocated, but any proposals to significantly cut that sum are political suicide so it's never going to happen. Much of our current political angst stems from people's intuitive awareness that their taxes are a real fact of life whereas their influence on the political process is largely notional.
      - DrScientist 3y ago
        > In the US.... I'd argue that the democratic ties between the people and the actions of the government in the US are extremely fragile - money is more important than people now in the US electoral system. Another American disease is to then extrapolate that malaise and assume the rest of the world is in a similar position. The solution isn't to dissolve society - that removes the only mechanism ( government ) that the majority have to control the powerful, further entrenching the power of the rich. The solution is to take money out of US politics and get it working again for the majority,
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
orra 3y ago
More directly, property is a social construct. A useful one, yes, and one we consider a right. But that doesn't make tax unfair. Good luck enforcing your property rights without a society, and preferably without violence. The real world tends not to be full of absolutes. It's unhelpfully reductive to go from "property is a right" to "taxation is theft".
anigbrowl 3y ago
If that were so, then people without any property would be exempt from tax. I'm not arguing against all taxation per se, but a lot of 'philosophical' arguments of tax proponents are as specious as those of tax opponents.
- croes 3y ago
  Define property, is your income property?
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Define it yourself! I'm really over this inquisitorial style of argumentation, learn some manners.

DrScientist 3y ago

Well the state can also unilaterally take your life ( depending in the country ) and certainly your liberty. And the above is a trade-off, the state polices & punishes murder and theft etc, with an aim of reducing it overall - so you are less likely to be murdered or stolen from. Then this central mechanism needs paying for. Tax is simply a way of paying for it - and it's not voluntary to stop free-riders. The reality is you need government & laws when people start living in complex societies where people are no longer self-sufficient, but rely on a complex web of interactions. Laws are there to arbitrate between people - if you live on a homestead in the mountains they may seem unnecessary - if you live in a big city, where even essentials like food and water depend on a complex web of interactions - they are essential.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kimbernator 3y ago

"Property" only exists so far as there is law enforcing it and the infrastructure to support it. Taxation is not someone stealing your money, it is the buy-in to a system that allows you to reliably consider things you have to be your property.

lawlessone 3y ago
To add to this, how to we value property? in the state issued currency..
johngladtj 3y ago
Yeah, no that's not true. Property exists even in stateless societies
- ramraj07 3y ago
  And you’d be spending resources on securing it and keeping it in your hands. Taxes are to buy in to a system that lets you sit at peace and not be constantly vigilant.
  - johngladtj 3y ago
    You're spending those resources regardless, at least you get to be the deciding how much to spend, and where, rather than having that decision taken from you
carlosjobim 3y ago
Taxation of labour is not somebody stealing your property, it is somebody stealing your work – which is a thousand times worse, since it is a form of forced servitude. There is no "system" and has never been any system, there's only people exploiting other people. An income tax is just a fancy abstraction over ancient and base serfdom. Most labourers have no property to speak of, and never had. If it's a "buy-in" to a system people should have a way to "buy out" as well, which of course doesn't happen, because there never was any "buy-in", it was "pay us your wages or we'll hunt you down". Slaves could buy their own freedom in Rome and other places, so why can't "free" people under taxation? Property rights should rank far lower than human rights. So if you want to collect taxes, go after property instead of after people. But it is the property owning class who runs the two-sided coin of capitalism/socialism, so good luck on that.