Taxation Is Theft — An Analysis Of Ethics

Subject: Taxation Is Theft — An Analysis Of Ethics Wed May 18, 2016 7:27 pm

What is the moral justification for taxation? What gives the government the right to collect taxes by force, whether force of law or force of arms — which in the end amount to the same thing?

Taxation Is Theft — An Analysis Of Ethics CFL5ISRVAAAcsj1

Taxation Is Theft — An Analysis Of Ethics CFL5ISRVAAAcsj1

The coerced collection of taxes is allegedly justified by four arguments — all of which are demonstrably false:

1. The “majority rules” argument: The majority in a society has the right to impose its will on the minority, either absolutely, or within the limits prescribed by a Constitution.

The refutation: It’s been said that a democracy is where two wolves and a sheep vote on what (or who) is for dinner. The moral to be understood from this is that a vote by the wolfish majority to have the sheepish minority for dinner does not justify violating the rights of the sheep to life, liberty and property. By the same reasoning, just because a majority votes to put those who don’t “voluntarily” pay taxes in jail does not make it morally right.

The “majority rules” argument is based on the false premise that what just one of your neighbors would not have the right to do — appropriate your property using unjustified coercive force — society as a whole (who are just the aggregation of all your neighbors) somehow magically is morally justified in doing. Were this so, what principle would limit it just to taxes, or to just those things allowed by a Constitution? Where did society get the authority to use a Constitution to give its agent, the government, powers that none of the individuals in the society possess by themselves as single individuals?

If your neighbor does not have the right to force you to be his slave, could it be that two of your neighbors have this right? If not two, then what about 1000 of your neighbors? 10,000 neighbors? 100,000 neighbors? 250,000,000 neighbors? Everyone living on the same continent? What gives a group (or a society, or its agent, a government) any right to act that any individual member of the group would not have? Rights are not additive: two people who form a group have no more rights than either one has separately. The rights of any group, even society as whole, are simply the union of the rights of all the individuals in the group. It therefore necessarily follows that a group cannot have any rights that any individual member of the group does not also have. So if your neighbor has no just right to simply take from you whatever he or she wants, then neither do any group of neighbors — not even the entire society.

The conclusion is inescapable: you don’t owe taxes merely because one or more of your neighbors say you do. I don’t have the right to take your property without your consent. Therefore, no group of people has the right to take your property without your consent — no matter how many people are in the group, nor how many of them vote in favor.

http://www.timetofree.us/2016/05/16/taxationistheft/

Taxation Is Theft — An Analysis Of Ethics

Taxation Is Theft — An Analysis Of Ethics

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