3 ms·
He's not trolling, it's just a kneejerk libertarian comment. There's a strong thread among the more vehement economic libertarians of taxation being theft enfo
by redthrowaway 13y ago
He's not trolling, it's just a kneejerk libertarian comment. There's a strong thread among the more vehement economic libertarians of taxation being theft enforced by the government's monopoly on force. It's a bit silly, but it's also a sincerely held belief.
- cinquemb 13y agoI would say it is a bit silly to throw that argument around as a blanket statement, but there are plenty of cases where people have been sent to jail for not paying up (who probably wouldn't associate with what people refer to as "libertarian").
- mjn 13y agoIf not deliberate trolling, that kind of comment is at the very least low-information. It could be replaced by a shell script that looks for the word "taxes" and randomly replies with a short but strongly worded comment that taxation is theft. Compare: whenever a commenter mentions property, user proudhon99 shows up to write a one-line comment that property is theft. Yes, he legitimately believes it, and his position is actually less absurd than the libertarian's, but comments that could be replicated by parody bots are not that useful.