Why do you not feel pain upon experiencing taxation?

[Indium Flappers]

I ask this question here because I feel like it falls more under psychology than politics or religion, but if the mods feel otherwise I don't mind them letting me know and moving it to a more appropriate area.

[David Franks]

A far better question is, why would you feel pain upon experiencing (whatever that means) taxation?

Is this going to turn into a touchy-feely proposal that hopes to show that libertarians aren't sociopaths?

[Indium Flappers]

A far better question is, why would you feel pain upon experiencing (whatever that means) taxation?

I'm a little surprised that you say "whatever that means" like I said it in a confusing way. I said it that way because I feel pain regardless of who it is being taxed, whether it's myself, or another, or a hypothetical individual. The thought of someone being taxed is itself painful, the way I expect you would find the thought of someone being tortured or killed painful.

I haven't followed out the thought experiments in my own mind to identify exactly under what conditions the idea of one using coercion against another causes me pain. I feel it in some cases and not in others. Other people seem to feel it under different circumstances. I'm trying to identify the specific differences between the way I react emotionally and the way they react emotionally.

Some simple, initial thought experiments are run through in the first and third videos of the George Ought to Help series on youtube. Walter Block goes a little farther in an article here. The exchange goes something along the lines of:

• anti-taxers pointing out that taxation involves threats of violence, and that they don't like threats of violence
• taxers defending the threats by claiming that the victims of these threats consent to pay taxes by living within a given area or by using services provided through the use of tax-money
• anti-taxers pointing out that the government, (or the entity levying taxes), may begin claiming that land falls under it's jurisdiction, and thus that those living on it consent to be taxed, without needed the consent of everyone living in that area, and may begin charging for new services without needing the prior consent of all those who may pay for them.

and so on.

Is this going to turn into a touchy-feely proposal that hopes to show that libertarians aren't sociopaths?

Funny.

I don't believe in objective morality. Technically, if you press me far enough, I don't believe in "morality" at all. You can call me a sociopath for that if you like.

I don't know of a way to breach the is-ought gap, so I have no way to empirically defend any moral system I have ever heard of, so I don't attempt to. If I find a belief I can't empirically demonstrate, I stop believing it. Belief in morality falls into such a category, for me the pain of others calling me a sociopath for this falls short of the pain of trying to believe something which I don't feel I can demonstrate as probably so.

I do accept that emotions exist, pain and pleasure, misery and happiness, and I like forming models of causation around these, trying to figure out what makes certain people happy or miserable. But we already have words for all these emotions, I don't think we need to put our explorations of them in terms of "moral principles". I talk about morality sometimes with people because most people think in terms of moral principles, but here, since this is such an "empirically based" group, I was hoping I could use language that actually meant something more precise to me empirically without folks ending the discussion out of anger or some such.

The point being, I don't feel like I have anything to show. What does "libertarians aren't sociopaths" mean? I suppose I could say I subjectively think that people who defend the use of violence against innocent people are sociopaths, and I could say I subjectively think defense of taxation entails this, but why? I don't know of a reliable method by which one person can successfully manipulate the emotional reactions of another person to match their own. I can sit down with you and we can go over all the empirical evidence in the world with perfectly rational thought processes, and we would still not necessarily have the ability to make our behaviors match. Because behavior is caused by more than beliefs, it's caused by how we react emotionally to things.

Emotions aren't beliefs. They aren't true or false, one can't "prove" them or have a burden to prove them the way one has a burden of proving a claim. I currently think that I differ from you in my emotional reactions to things, I think we could sit down and come to an agreement on all the facts involved in our discussion, and I would still dislike taxation and you would still love it. I know of no method of making you dislike it, and I have little desire to try because: a) it would not lead to anyone no longer being taxed, b) it would cause you pain, because now you would feel pain from experiencing taxation the same way I experience it, and I don't like causing people pain, and c) I dislike manipulating people.

So no, I'm not trying to show you that I'm not a sociopath. Empirically, I think by calling me one you would mean that you don't like the way I feel, you're claiming that you feel a particular emotion towards me. I don't mind taking your word for that. So I can agree with you that, in the sense that you don't like the emotions I feel towards things, I'm a sociopath. I'm not sure why that would matter to me.

What I do want to do is try to figure out exactly under what conditions you like and/or dislike coercion, compared to the conditions under which I like or dislike it. This could help me in lots of ways. For one, I enjoy feeling like I have more rather than less of an understanding of people around me. For two, it might help me find others who feel similarly to the way I do, and if I find enough such folks we could create an enclave or start mutual aid projects to help each other opt out of using government services. For three, I feel like it might help me feel less like the people on this board are sociopaths in their defense of things I perceive as extremely harmful, and help me have more respect for you and empathize more with your position, which might help me feel less like those around me are horrible entities I need to escape from. For four, in the future, if I am ever discussing this sort of thing with someone who wants to understand the difference(s) between how I feel and how they or others feel, I might have an easier time logically laying out the differences, and helping them understand.

I'm sorry for the characteristic long post, and sorry for not proofreading it much or trying to shorten it or make it more succinct before posting. I'm pretty tired. Did I answer your questions?

[Doug]

Why don't I feel pain upon experiencing taxation?

Because I'm not a greedy, self-centered bastard like the libertarians and the anarchists.

Governments need money to run on. So give them their due and get on with your life.

[David Franks]

I'm a little surprised that you say "whatever that means" like I said it in a confusing way.

Experience is a very vague word.

I said it that way because I feel pain regardless of who it is being taxed, whether it's myself, or another, or a hypothetical individual.

Is it mild, sharp, severe or dull? Shooting, throbbing, burning, tingling? Are there secondary symptoms such as sweating or writhing?

The thought of someone being taxed is itself painful, the way I expect you would find the thought of someone being tortured or killed painful.

That's just silly. There is no similarity between torture and killing, and levying taxes. If the idea of taxation causes you such pain, then you are too frail to live.

I haven't followed out the thought experiments in my own mind to identify exactly under what conditions the idea of one using coercion against another causes me pain.

Apparently not. If you went so far as to think about it, you'd realize that your pain is irrational. As for coercion, nobody requires a citizen to stay here. If you find taxation painful, go somewhere else. Until you leave, assuming your frail self isn't carried off by the next breeze, feel free to use our infrastructure and civic/social amenities. After all, you're helping to pay for them. Of course, you derive benefits from them beyond what you pay for even if you feel you don't "get your money's worth" from them. And you're not going to have any success at living without them.

I'm trying to identify the specific differences between the way I react emotionally and the way they react emotionally.

Why? It's a silly pursuit of the silly.

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the attitudes which they choose to take about things." --Epictetus

I don't believe in objective morality. Technically, if you press me far enough, I don't believe in "morality" at all.

What is your substitute, if you have one?

You can call me a sociopath for that if you like.

Since I don't know you and I am not familiar with the way you act, I'll refrain from calling you anything. As "sociopath" is a diagnostic term, my calling you a sociopath would be a euphemism. I'm not trained to tell the difference between a sociopath and an asshole.

What does "libertarians aren't sociopaths" mean?

That's not what I said.

I suppose I could say I subjectively think that people who defend the use of violence against innocent people are sociopaths, and I could say I subjectively think defense of taxation entails this, but why?

Why, indeed? The "threat of violence", "at the point of a gun" aspect of your argument is just more silliness when you apply it to the government. (It does hold up, though, when you apply it to militias and assorted other right-wing "patriots" who employ guns and bombs in their objections to taxation.)

Emotions aren't beliefs. They aren't true or false

But, like beliefs, they are rational or irrational.

Empirically, I think by calling me one you would mean that you don't like the way I feel, you're claiming that you feel a particular emotion towards me.

No, not at all. Again, I'm not trained to recognize the difference between a sociopath and an asshole. However, I tend to think of libertarians (well, and anarchists) as sociopaths because as a group, they have made a philosophy and mania of their inability to live (voluntarily, remember) within the structure of a society that shares goals, concerns, and efforts. Come to think of it, I know a couple of anarchists who are both sociopathic and assholes. They just plain lack the charm that a sociopath can adopt as part of his condition.

What I do want to do is try to figure out exactly under what conditions you like and/or dislike coercion

There's that silly exaggeration again. I am not coerced to pay taxes. I take the responsibility of paying taxes because I derive benefits from the efforts government, and, while I don't approve of everything the government does, I also understand that we don't all like the same things. We historically have a general agreement as to what the country should be, and a large part of that agreement is an accommodation of diversity.

Taxation is not theft; not paying taxes is theft.

[Indium Flappers]

Why don't I feel pain upon experiencing taxation?

Because I'm not a greedy, self-centered bastard like the libertarians and the anarchists.

Governments need money to run on. So give them their due and get on with your life.

That's kind of weird. I don't feel like they're due anything. Just because they do things which benefit me doesn't make me feel like I owe them money. The fact that they threaten me with violence if I don't pay them when I never agreed to pay them in the first place is painful.

I don't know what it has to do with greed or self-centeredness, that makes no sense. The thing that causes me pain is the coercion involved, it has nothing to do with whether or not the money is being used to help people or not. I guess since our particular government uses a lot of the money to kill innocent people in drone strikes and such, that's another painful thing, but that's a separate issue.

I'm a little surprised that you say "whatever that means" like I said it in a confusing way.

Experience is a very vague word.

What about "observe" then?

I said it that way because I feel pain regardless of who it is being taxed, whether it's myself, or another, or a hypothetical individual.

Is it mild, sharp, severe or dull? Shooting, throbbing, burning, tingling? Are there secondary symptoms such as sweating or writhing?

I don't know. All of the above at different points in time I guess?

The thought of someone being taxed is itself painful, the way I expect you would find the thought of someone being tortured or killed painful.

That's just silly. There is no similarity between torture and killing, and levying taxes. If the idea of taxation causes you such pain, then you are too frail to live.

Both involve the use of violence. I find it weird that you think there's no similarity.

I haven't followed out the thought experiments in my own mind to identify exactly under what conditions the idea of one using coercion against another causes me pain.

Apparently not. If you went so far as to think about it, you'd realize that your pain is irrational.

How do you judge whether particular pains and/or pleasures are rational or irrational? If you don't answer the rest I'll ask you to still answer this.

As for coercion, nobody requires a citizen to stay here. If you find taxation painful, go somewhere else. Until you leave, assuming your frail self isn't carried off by the next breeze, feel free to use our infrastructure and civic/social amenities. After all, you're helping to pay for them. Of course, you derive benefits from them beyond what you pay for even if you feel you don't "get your money's worth" from them. And you're not going to have any success at living without them.

This is just the same canard statists always use. It's like looking at a world with lots of crime, and saying that you consent to be robbed by random people on the street because you know you will be unless you leave for a place without any robbers, even though there are street robbers everywhere. See the second and third links above.

I'm trying to identify the specific differences between the way I react emotionally and the way they react emotionally.

Why? It's a silly pursuit of the silly.

I provided several reasons in my post.

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the attitudes which they choose to take about things." --Epictetus

Hmm. I guess I'll think about that.

To be honest I think you would probably reject the quote if applied to things which disturb you, like the example of torture above. You wouldn't tell me it's the attitude you take towards torture which makes it disturbing to you, would you? Or would you?

I don't believe in objective morality. Technically, if you press me far enough, I don't believe in "morality" at all.

What is your substitute, if you have one?

Well, I can observe the emotions that I feel through introspection, and I can observe my own behavior, and I can make predictions about how I will behave based on what I feel. I don't like feeling pain, I like feeling pleasure, and I have the ability to empathize with others, so that in many cases thinking someone else is feeling pain or pleasure leads me to feel it as well, meaning, in others words, I don't like other people feeling pain, and I don't like causing others pain, but I do like other people being happy and I enjoy trying to make them happy.

So, as basic rules of thumb, I try to act in such a way as to make myself and other people happy, and not to make myself or others miserable, because I'm human and human beings act in that kind of a way.

There's a Kurt Vonnegut quote that I'm thinking of in relation to this, but I can't find it now.

You can call me a sociopath for that if you like.

Since I don't know you and I am not familiar with the way you act, I'll refrain from calling you anything. As "sociopath" is a diagnostic term, my calling you a sociopath would be a euphemism. I'm not trained to tell the difference between a sociopath and an asshole.

What does "libertarians aren't sociopaths" mean?

That's not what I said.

Um... What?

A far better question is, why would you feel pain upon experiencing (whatever that means) taxation?

Is this going to turn into a touchy-feely proposal that hopes to show that libertarians aren't sociopaths?

Please do me the favor of explaining how my quote misrepresented what you said, if you would be so kind.

I suppose I could say I subjectively think that people who defend the use of violence against innocent people are sociopaths, and I could say I subjectively think defense of taxation entails this, but why?

Why, indeed? The "threat of violence", "at the point of a gun" aspect of your argument is just more silliness when you apply it to the government. (It does hold up, though, when you apply it to militias and assorted other right-wing "patriots" who employ guns and bombs in their objections to taxation.)

This is breathtakingly bizarre. It's an observation that governments make threats of violence against those they tax, and that they enforce taxation with guns. They don't keep it a secret. Is it the act of making the observation that you find silly, or my expression of how I feel about it, (also an expression of something I've observed, since I observe my emotions introspectively)?

Emotions aren't beliefs. They aren't true or false

But, like beliefs, they are rational or irrational.

In what way? Be specific. Explain how emotions can be rational or irrational, and the objective criteria by which you discern into which category they fall.

Empirically, I think by calling me one you would mean that you don't like the way I feel, you're claiming that you feel a particular emotion towards me.

No, not at all. Again, I'm not trained to recognize the difference between a sociopath and an asshole. However, I tend to think of libertarians (well, and anarchists) as sociopaths because as a group, they have made a philosophy and mania of their inability to live (voluntarily, remember) within the structure of a society that shares goals, concerns, and efforts. Come to think of it, I know a couple of anarchists who are both sociopathic and assholes. They just plain lack the charm that a sociopath can adopt as part of his condition.

Ok. Sharing goals, concerns and efforts doesn't require threats of violence, or, more to the point, violations of consent. If I share goals and concerns with someone, then we can share our effort to meet those goals and concerns, and if I don't, we can go our own ways. If I want to help the poor, I can work with another person who has the same desire to do so. We don't need to threaten some third person with violence in order to get his property and use it to farther our project. I like having people organize to help each other, and I dislike making people join organizations they don't want to join. There's no contradiction in that. I like cooperation, I dislike submission and the making of others to submit.

What I do want to do is try to figure out exactly under what conditions you like and/or dislike coercion

There's that silly exaggeration again. I am not coerced to pay taxes. I take the responsibility of paying taxes because I derive benefits from the efforts government, and, while I don't approve of everything the government does, I also understand that we don't all like the same things. We historically have a general agreement as to what the country should be, and a large part of that agreement is an accommodation of diversity.

Taxation is not theft; not paying taxes is theft.

Ok, let me see.

• "I am not coerced to pay taxes."
• "I take the responsibility of paying taxes because I derive benefits from the efforts government, and..."
• "while I don't approve of everything the government does..."
• "I also understand that we don't all like the same things."
• "We historically have a general agreement as to what the country should be, and a large part of that agreement is an accommodation of diversity."
• "Taxation is not theft; not paying taxes is theft."

I agree with your claims that:

• you gain benefits from things the government does
• you don't agree with everything the government does
• we don't all like the same things
• you understand that we don't all like the same things

I can also agree that you pay taxes because you perceive the above four claims as being true. That seems to me like a sensible explanation of your own behavior.

I'm not sure who the "we" refers to in "We historically have a general agreement as to what the country should be, and a large part of that agreement is an accommodation of diversity.", but I don't consider myself a part of it, and I kind of doubt that you consider me a part of it.

As for the first claim, "I am not coerced to pay taxes.", I think this is misleading. If a parent tells their children to go to bed, and the parent normally makes their children go to bed through force when they decide not to, and the children know this, then there's a threat of coercion involved in the parent's command. Let's say one child wants to go to bed, and the other does not. The one who wants to go to bed would agree to go to bed even without the threat of coercion, but the one who doesn't only goes to bed because of the threat of coercion.

Obviously the second child, who only goes to bed because of the threat of coercion, is being coerced. I'm not sure whether most people would say the first child is being coerced or not. The threat of coercion is still present, which implies that they are. But since they want to go and would agree to go anyway, in a way they do consent to go to bed voluntarily, which implies that they aren't.

To be honest, I think it makes more sense to me to say that both are being coerced, that the threat alone is enough to make it coercive, regardless of the actions of the children.

Anyways, since you would pay taxes even without the threat of violence should you not, it doesn't seem to cause you much pain to pay them, so I think I can feel less pain over you in particular. But I don't like it that the government has the ability to threaten anyone, generally.

Now, the last two claims:

"Taxation is not theft."
[N]ot paying taxes is theft."

Theft means taking justly owned property from its just owner without their consent. It may involve violence, (mugging someone), or it may not, (stealing someone's car when they're on the other side of the planet, so that they aren't even aware you've done it at the time.) Taxation does involve threats of violence against those who decide not to pay taxes. So this leaves us with the question of whether the person being taxed is the just owner of the tax-money, (or whatever property the tax-collector demands,) or not. You seem to think the tax-collector is the just owner of the property.

In the Rothbardian property order, everything starts out as unowned, and use of unowned property makes the user the just owner. Property is sticky, so that the just owner remains the just owner even if they aren't using their property continuously. Just owners can abandon their property, making it unowned again, and decide to make another individual the just owner of their property, transferring the property title.

Rothbard didn't mind the use of violence by just property owners to keep others from using their property, he did mind the use of violence against just property owners to force the owners to allow the use of their property. If the owner allowed others to use their property as a result of such an act of force, Rothbard considered the owner to still be the just owner of the property in question, and the others to be thieves.

Defense of taxation from within this property order seems to usually come down to arguing that by living within the domain of a government, and using the services the government provides, property owners voluntarily transfer the title of some of their property to the government. If we start with a world with a few individuals living without a government, and one individual decides to set themselves up as governor and start levying taxes, and then they go to someone living within the area they claim as being within their domain, and assert that some of the property of that individual belongs rightly to them, then this assertion seems so far to have no basis. If the individual agrees, (under conditions not involving threats of coercion,) to pay the governor a certain amount in exchange for a service, (a business relationship,) and the governor follows through, then the governor is the just owner of whatever property the customer agreed to pay in exchange for the service, because they voluntarily transferred their property title to the governor. But if someone decides they don't want to enter such a contract, the governor can't threaten them with violence within Rothbard's property order. In such a case, the taxation would be theft, in the other case of the person who agreed to the service contract, the taxation isn't taxation at all, it's just a customer purchasing a service from someone. Very few people call it taxation when we pay someone to wash our car.

Whether the individual continues to live in the area the governor declares as within his domain is irrelevant. Unless you think the governor owns all of that land. At which point, one has to ask, how did they become the just owner of all that land? (They didn't.)

In the case of the government which now exists, I'm not sure what I've done which you would consider as giving my consent to be taxed. If it's living in the area in which I live, the government isn't the just owner of the land on which I live, so that doesn't work. If it's saying the pledge of allegiance or something as a child, or having my parents consent on my behalf, then I simply reject the idea that that's valid.

Walter Block's article talks about how governments start claiming "ownership" over land without getting the current owners to cede the title, and deals with a few other similar arguments.

I guess it seems obvious enough to me that taxation is theft that I have trouble understanding how someone could believe it's not. Without understanding this I find it harder to refute. It's like trying to refute someone who claims the sky is made of cheese, I can't get over my astonishment to identify the cause of their belief.

Oh well.

Edit: In thinking about it, I have decided the statement I made above, "Rothbard didn't mind the use of violence by just property owners to keep others from using their property", is inaccurate, and I wish to retract it. I perceive it as inaccurate in the following ways.

1) Rothbard repeatedly made clear that he did not consider his property order to supply what he would have called a full moral code. Acting within his property order was not sufficient to escape his condemnation or earn his approval, he thought people had obligations above and beyond it. It is unclear to me whether he regarded acting within his property order as necessary to escape his condemnation/earn his approval, or whether he regarded it as a general principle to which certain exceptions applied. Most Rothbardians seem to take the second approach, allowing for exceptions.

2) Rothbard combined the system I roughly described with a principle of reciprocity, he thought someone was acting within his property order if they responded to theft in kind, for instance using coercion to retrieve stolen property, but not if coercion was used beyond a certain point. Killing a child for shoplifting a candy bar would have been aggression within his system, because the act of killing was not a reciprocal act compared to the act of shoplifting a candy bar. He discussed where the line would be drawn in a libertarian society, but I don't remember him coming to a firm conclusion, it's a matter of debate among nonaggressionists.

3) I personally have a lot of sympathy for pacifism, and I think I implied otherwise in stating it as I did. If not pacifism, I guess I'd prefer to minimize the amount of violence I experience, or only use violence and coercion to the degree required to stop it, in cases when I think I can reasonably predict its use will indeed lead to it stopping. (In some cases, self-defense may fail to defuse a situation, the most effective way to stop a conflict may be to respond to aggressors by treating them as friends rather than enemies, and leaving them a path to begin acting like a friend instead of an enemy.)

In any case, I don't think these corrections change the discussion over taxation.

[David Franks]

I don't know. All of the above at different points in time I guess?

So you allege that you suffer actual pain upon paying or even thinking about paying taxes, but you can't describe it accurately? You're either a hypochondriac or a drama queen.

Both involve the use of violence. I find it weird that you think there's no similarity.

Torture and killing always involve actual violence. When have you or anyone you've ever known ever suffered violence in taxation? Is the expectation that one will pay his maintenance fees an act of violence on the part of a homeowners' association?

How do you judge whether particular pains and/or pleasures are rational or irrational?

In this case, by the fact that your pain is not real enough for you to be able to describe it accurately, even though you presumably suffer it almost constantly; and even if it were real, it would not be based on a rational cause. Many shades of pale blue, such as in a room, cause me actual physical pain (in this case, a general achy twinge and slight nausea). It isn't rational, even though it is very real.

This is just the same canard statists always use.

Funny. I resisted the urge to call your sociopathic libertarian/anarchist claptrap a canard.

It's like looking at a world with lots of crime, and saying that you consent to be robbed by random people on the street because you know you will be unless you leave for a place without any robbers, even though there are street robbers everywhere. See the second and third links above.

No, it isn't. Robbers are not duly authorized collectors. They don't offer services you've already used in return for robbing you. I used to live in downtown Little Rock and downtown Wichita. I was never robbed. Further, our society is not based on an acceptance of robbery; it is based on an acceptance of paying for services rendered, including abatement of robbery.

I provided several reasons in my post.

All of your reasoning is based on the silly premise that taxation is theft. Silly in, silly out.

To be honest I think you would probably reject the quote if applied to things which disturb you, like the example of torture above.

If I had grown up in a society in which torture was a founding, accepted and vital part of its establishment and maintenance, then I would probably find the quote applicable in regard to torture.

You wouldn't tell me it's the attitude you take towards torture which makes it disturbing to you, would you? Or would you?

Probably not. I suppose I could inure myself to it. I haven't claimed to be a full-fledged stoic, though.

So, as basic rules of thumb, I try to act in such a way as to make myself and other people happy, and not to make myself or others miserable, because I'm human and human beings act in that kind of a way.

Ah-- the Golden Rule. A lot of people will tell you that that is moral-- even objectively so. Of course even more will tell you that it is religious, because they don't think that morality is good enough. (Many of those would rather be religious than moral, because it's easier.)

There's a Kurt Vonnegut quote that I'm thinking of in relation to this, but I can't find it now.

"....There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.” ―Kurt Vonnegut

Um... What?

....Please do me the favor of explaining how my quote misrepresented what you said, if you would be so kind.

"libertarians aren't sociopaths" is out of context. You trimmed the quote too much. I would probably never say, "Libertarians aren't sociopaths." Except perhaps as a safe-word or posthypnotic suggestion.

This is breathtakingly bizarre.

Says the anarchist who lives in the United States of America. This is a nation of laws. Taxation is one of them.

It's an observation that governments make threats of violence against those they tax

Not me. I don't know anybody who has been threatened. (Do you?) Apparently the carrots work so well that the stick isn't often needed.

they enforce taxation with guns.

No, but they go after tax grifters with guns, though. And a lot of those tax grifters go after law-abiding citizens with guns and bombs, as I pointed out earlier. By the time guns come into the picture, there is at least the appearance of a crime having been committed. Do you oppose vaccinations because the school district and local government enforce the requirement "at the point of a gun"?

They don't keep it a secret.

What an inept way to run an evil plot. By the way: one element of theft/stealing, though not a requirement, is that it is done without the victim's knowledge.

Is it the act of making the observation that you find silly, or my expression of how I feel about it...?

A little of both. The underlying observation is silly, and your argument is silly.

Explain how emotions can be rational or irrational, and the objective criteria by which you discern into which category they fall.

The distress caused me by certain pale blues is a physiological reaction caused by an irrational emotion. Your emotional response to torture is rational, since you claim to be an empathetic person.

If I share goals and concerns with someone, then we can share our effort to meet those goals and concerns, and if I don't, we can go our own ways. If I want to help the poor, I can work with another person who has the same desire to do so.

This is true even with taxation.

We don't need to threaten some third person with violence in order to get his property and use it to farther our project.

You're right. But that's not what we do anyway.

I like having people organize to help each other

Then government programs should thrill you.

and I dislike making people join organizations they don't want to join.

That's too bad. You're a part of this organization as long as you're a citizen.

There's no contradiction in that. I like cooperation, I dislike submission and the making of others to submit.

Part of your problem appears to be that you assume that your tax dollars pay for things you don't want to pay for. I seriously doubt that you can show that to be true, but you're welcome to try.

I'm not sure who the "we" refers to...

American citizens-- particularly the ones who brag about American Exceptionalism.

but I don't consider myself a part of it, and I kind of doubt that you consider me a part of it

Wrong on both counts.

As for the first claim, "I am not coerced to pay taxes.", I think this is misleading. If a parent tells their children to go to bed, and the parent normally makes their children go to bed through force when they decide not to, and the children know this, then there's a threat of coercion involved in the parent's command.

Bad analogy. The government/citizen relationship is nothing like the parent/child relationship (any more than running the government is like running a household or a business). Try again.

To be honest,...

In order to be honest, you'll first need to come up with an applicable, honest analogy.

Theft means taking justly owned property from its just owner without their consent.

Theft means unlawfully taking. Taxation is lawful. And when you take societal benefits without paying taxes or being a good citizen in at least partial compensation (as a lot of people make significant contributions to society without making enough money to pay income taxes-- though their other tax burdens are relatively high), you are a thief. You stay here, using the services. (Oh, I suppose you could argue that you didn't give consent for the government to provide you services, but that would be as silly as anything else you might come up with.) You consent to paying taxes unless you declare yourself to be stateless and fling yourself on the mercy of the world. Maybe you could live on that island of garbage in the Pacific.

Taxation does involve threats of violence against those who decide not to pay taxes.

At which point, they have broken the law. Should we do away with drunk-driving laws because breaking them will incur "violence" on the lawbreaking citizen?

You seem to think the tax-collector is the just owner of the property.

No, I believe that the taxpayer has used, or otherwise derived benefits from, services that he needs to pay for.

In the Rothbardian property order, everything starts out as unowned, and....

So? You found a philosopher whose scheme you seem to like. But it's a little late now for everything to be unowned.

But if someone decides they don't want to enter such a contract, the governor can't threaten them with violence within Rothbard's property order. In such a case, the taxation would be theft

And in every case we now have in the United States, as the implicit contract with the government preexists the desire of the recalcitrant owner to not pay taxes and runs with the land, as it were, the only recourse the owner has is to leave, presumably having sold his property to somebody with more sense and less petulance.

Whether the individual continues to live in the area the governor declares as within his domain is irrelevant. Unless you think the governor owns all of that land. At which point, one has to ask, how did they become the just owner of all that land? (They didn't.)

The government is the just owner of benefits that accrue to that land, and which cannot be separated from that land. Every owner (or his agent) now goes into a transaction with foreknowledge of the conditions.

In the case of the government which now exists, I'm not sure what I've done which you would consider as giving my consent to be taxed.

You're still here, aren't you?

If it's living in the area in which I live, the government isn't the just owner of the land on which I live, so that doesn't work.

But again, the government is the just owner of benefits that accrue to the land, and which cannot be separated from it, and which you had foreknowledge of.

If it's saying the pledge of allegiance or something as a child, or having my parents consent on my behalf, then I simply reject the idea that that's valid.

I agree. The Pledge of Allegiance is silly.

Walter Block's article talks about how governments start claiming "ownership" over land without getting the current owners to cede the title, and deals with a few other similar arguments.

That's a different issue entirely.

I guess it seems obvious enough to me that taxation is theft that I have trouble understanding how someone could believe it's not.

That's what happens when you wish really hard.

Without understanding this I find it harder to refute. It's like trying to refute someone who claims the sky is made of cheese, I can't get over my astonishment to identify the cause of their belief.

As I have done nothing so specious, you shouldn't be having this problem.

Oh well.

Well: there it is, then.

EDIT: I agree: your edit didn't change anything, but thank you for the clarification.

[Indium Flappers]

Your response amazes me. Both the response itself and the apparent sincerity.

I'll go off again to think a bit though.

[Dardedar]

I said it that way because I feel pain regardless of who it is being taxed, whether it's myself, or another, or a hypothetical individual.

I feel nothing but joy and satisfaction when I pay my taxes, or bills. I know that's not usual, but there it is. Why? Because I have the money to pay them, and since I am usually wise in my purchases and our taxes are quite low (a bargain really), it's a very good deal. I get all the benefits of a civilization and all of the work, contributions and advancements of those who came before, for about 10% of my income. A good deal at twice the price.
I don't know why conservatives, rightwingers and such are always such whiners about engaging in the adult activity of taking the personal responsibility of paying toward the cost of this civilization. It always comes across as a childish, immature, undeveloped attitude.
-----------------
"Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports." http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/tax ... axes_N.htm

[Doug]

Why don't I feel pain upon experiencing taxation?

Because I'm not a greedy, self-centered bastard like the libertarians and the anarchists.

Governments need money to run on. So give them their due and get on with your life.

That's kind of weird. I don't feel like they're due anything. Just because they do things which benefit me doesn't make me feel like I owe them money.

It's not just that the government does things: you do things too. You choose to use government roads, government money, government protection, etc. you take advantage of benefits on purpose. Pay for it.

The fact that they threaten me with violence if I don't pay them when I never agreed to pay them in the first place is painful.

As Socrates pointed out 2300 years ago, as soon as you reached an age where you could move away--and didn't--you were tacitly agreeing to the social contract. You are agreeing to the set-up.

I don't know what it has to do with greed or self-centeredness, that makes no sense.

It makes sense to say you're greedy because you are complaining about MONEY. TAXES. You pay less in taxes than you would in many other developed countries, and yet you complain that you had to part with some of your hard-earned money. Well, others had to part with their lives to get you the economic system that allows you to have any money at all. You use it. Pay for it.

The self-centered part is justified because you are unwilling to think of the good of the whole community. You are only seeing this as an issue about yourself. But you are part of a larger society. You pitch in for the good of others just as they pitch in for your own good too. You can't afford a highway. So others helped pay for it, but you use it too.

The thing that causes me pain is the coercion involved, it has nothing to do with whether or not the money is being used to help people or not.

The money is being used to help YOU. Coercion is used so that greedy, self-centered people don't take, take, take and not give.

[Indium Flappers]

David, you seem to me to be making the following case:

All taxation is legal.
All theft is not legal. (No theft is legal.)
Therefore, all taxation is not theft.

All taxation is not theft.
If all taxation is not theft, then it is irrational to feel bothered by taxation.
Therefore, it is irrational to feel bothered by taxation.

Is this the argument you have made, as you perceive it?

Edit: A few other, more minor things I want to go ahead and address.

This is just the same canard statists always use.

Funny. I resisted the urge to call your sociopathic libertarian/anarchist claptrap a canard.

If it offends you, then I apologize for using the term "canard" to describe what you wrote. I also thank you for refraining from using it to describe what I wrote.

"libertarians aren't sociopaths" is out of context. You trimmed the quote too much. I would probably never say, "Libertarians aren't sociopaths." Except perhaps as a safe-word or posthypnotic suggestion.

You asked me in your post if I was going to attempt to demonstrate that "libertarians aren't sociopaths". I replied to answer your question, negatively, and part of my reply was asking what you thought "libertarians aren't sociopaths" meant. Asking you what you perceive a claim to mean is not the same as claiming that you are making that claim. I didn't expect our audience to forget in the few minutes between reading your post and mine that you had been asking me if I was going to make the claim myself, and not making the claim yourself.

I'm not sure how you would expect me to answer a question about whether or not I'm going to make claim x, if I don't properly understand what you understand claim x to mean. If our audience really has so short an attention span that they interpreted my request for clarification on what you understood the claim to mean as an accusation on my part that you were making the claim yourself, instead of asking me whether I would be making and attempting to defend the claim in the course of the thread, then I feel like any attempt to communicate with such an audience would prove prohibitively difficult. After all, how could I expect such an audience to even understand my preceding 75 word sentence? What would enable them to remember from one clause to the next what it was I was talking about?

I consider myself an extremely pessimistic person, David, but I feel like your expectations of the reading comprehension abilities of those following our thread fall even lower than my own.

[Indium Flappers]

How do you judge whether particular pains and/or pleasures are rational or irrational?

In this case, by the fact that your pain is not real enough for you to be able to describe it accurately, even though you presumably suffer it almost constantly; and even if it were real, it would not be based on a rational cause. Many shades of pale blue, such as in a room, cause me actual physical pain (in this case, a general achy twinge and slight nausea). It isn't rational, even though it is very real.

Sorry for the double post. I don't feel satisfied by this answer, and I wanted to ask for you to elaborate. For the first part of the answer, I confess it had never occurred to me that you would judge whether my pain was real or "rational" by how accurately or vividly I could describe it. I think that idea will be a useful thing for me to take away from this discussion. However, the second part of your answer is really the only part that tries to deal with whether an emotion is rational or irrational. (Whether someone feels something is different from rather or not it is rational for them to feel it.)

You sound like you're depending on an almost Objectivist, (randian), theory of emotions. That is, you seem to imply that emotions are caused somehow by the philosophy we hold, or by the beliefs that we hold. But I doubt the accuracy of that theory.

Honestly, I just don't know what you mean by "rational cause". You give an example, but you don't give any means by which to figure out what causes are rational or irrational.

I'll refrain from speculating further, I want to hear your own explanation.

[Indium Flappers]

Some questions for Doug as well:

1) Do you include benefiting from positive externalizes within the use that obligates people to pay for goods or services? (Ex: If the U.S. government does something to protect the environment, thus benefiting everyone in the world, is everyone in the world obligated to help pay for it?)

2) Do you consider the obligations to pay for services to be proportionate to the use of services? (Ex: Does someone who homeschools their children have less of an obligation to pay for public schooling?)

3) You make statements such as "Governments need money to run on. So give them their due and get on with your life." and, repeatedly, "Pay for it." You speak, in these cases, as if you were issuing a command, "Pay for it," rather than engaging in intellectual discussion, "therefore, you ought to pay for it." This sparks my curiosity, what if I refuse? How would you respond?

4) You suggest self-centeredness and greed on my part, and a lack of these things on your part, as a possible explanation for the difference in how we feel about taxation. But your hypothesis doesn't seem to me to explain why I dislike other people being taxed, while you don't mind it at all. In a situation in which I paid nothing in taxes, while others paid a great deal, and in which I still gained benefits from tax-funded goods and services, I would still favor abolition of taxation, because I empathize with those others being taxed, since I perceive them as innocent victims of threats of violence.

Ex: I ride a friend's bicycle to work everyday, and it always makes me feels bad, (kind of ill and depressed, to be slightly more specific, also a bit unclean,) that I'm using a bike trail that was built using bloodmoney. It makes me feel complicit in an action I dislike. I continue using the trail because I value keeping my job, (and being able to feed and shelter myself,) more than I do the gain in clear-consciousness I might receive from not using the trail, but if another trail existed which was funded voluntarily, I would use it, and if I found enough people of like-mind or like-heart willing to help pitch in to create such a trail, I'd most probably work with such a group to try and create an alternative route, even if it cost me more personally to help build than an involuntarily funded route would, because I would value the gain in clear-consciousness resulting from a reduced feeling of complicity in actions that are painful to me to experience more highly than the extra money or other costs.

My discussion partners in our current thread would all, I expect, have no such gain in clear-consciousness, because they don't experience the kind of pain that I do when they see others being coerced into paying for the bike trail. The hypothesis that I have an ability to empathize with those being coerced, whereas others here do not, seems to me to better explain this difference than your [Doug's] hypothesis that I am self-centered, greedy, and/or refuse to consider the welfare of others.

Do you disagree? Why or why not?

[Savonarola]

I ride a friend's bicycle to work everyday, and it always makes me feels bad, (kind of ill and depressed, to be slightly more specific, also a bit unclean,) that I'm using a bike trail that was built using bloodmoney.

1. You ride SOMEONE ELSE's bike to work, and the thing you feel bad about is not that you've commandeered a bike instead of paying for your own damn bike? Perhaps this gives us some insight. I feel like I should buy my friend lunch if I need to borrow his pickup truck for an hour.
2. Calling it "bloodmoney" is, shall we say, an asinine, alarmist overstatement. Good grief. If you have a good argument, why are you making one that relies upon appealing to emotion?

I continue using the trail because I value keeping my job

Oh. So what you're saying is that this trail is a valuable asset to the community, including to yourself who positively relies on it so that you can live your life (with food and shelter and other wants).

but if another trail existed which was funded voluntarily, I would use it

1. The people of the city -- independently of the government -- had ample opportunity to construct such a trail. They didn't. That means that your preferred system failed. You cannot have it both ways. Either you have a system that (we know from experience) doesn't produce a trail, or you have a trail because of a system you don't like.
2. Yet, as you yourself explained, there is demand for such a trail, and that trail would confer some amount of benefit to the people. There may be a question regarding whether the benefit outweighs the cost imparted upon the people. Well, it turns out, a panel elected by the people studied the matter and decided that, yes, using tax dollars to construct the trail would likely be good for the community. So they did, and you have your trail. In fact, you yourself admit that you benefit more from using this "bloodmoney" trail than by not using it.
Sounds like the panel got it right.
To argue that this is some sort of evil theft is ludicrous.

Do you disagree? Why or why not?

I disagree with you because, using your own damn example, we see that the panel of local people elected by local people did the correct thing for the vast majority of the local people. This is what should happen in a representative government, and you're glad that it does.

[Doug]

Some questions for Doug as well:

1) Do you include benefiting from positive externalizes within the use that obligates people to pay for goods or services? (Ex: If the U.S. government does something to protect the environment, thus benefiting everyone in the world, is everyone in the world obligated to help pay for it?)

Unless it was arranged ahead of time, other countries are not obligated to pay ahead of time because they had no say it what our government did. They had no representation and thus no participation. Unlike you.

2) Do you consider the obligations to pay for services to be proportionate to the use of services? (Ex: Does someone who homeschools their children have less of an obligation to pay for public schooling?)

Everyone in the country benefits from an educated populace. Some taxes are proportional to use, such as tolls on roads. Most aren't. It's good to have a mix, but most taxes don't relate to a specific use. That's as it should be. There are many services we pay for (police protection, etc) that would be impossible to quantify.

3) You make statements such as "Governments need money to run on. So give them their due and get on with your life." and, repeatedly, "Pay for it." You speak, in these cases, as if you were issuing a command, "Pay for it," rather than engaging in intellectual discussion, "therefore, you ought to pay for it." This sparks my curiosity, what if I refuse? How would you respond?

It IS a command, i.e., a law. For the community to survive, all should contribute who are able to do so. If you are able to do so but refuse, you are a poor excuse for a citizen. You are a freeloader, a free rider. You should leave or forfeit property that can be sold. Same with any other system, even the "anarchist" system. Do you tolerate free riders in your system?

4) You suggest self-centeredness and greed on my part, and a lack of these things on your part, as a possible explanation for the difference in how we feel about taxation. But your hypothesis doesn't seem to me to explain why I dislike other people being taxed, while you don't mind it at all. In a situation in which I paid nothing in taxes, while others paid a great deal, and in which I still gained benefits from tax-funded goods and services, I would still favor abolition of taxation, because I empathize with those others being taxed, since I perceive them as innocent victims of threats of violence.

So you project your self-centeredness and greed on others. You would rather see the country go broke and disintegrate than pay taxes and live in a decent society. Typical armchair anarchist nonsense.

Ex: I ride a friend's bicycle to work everyday, and it always makes me feels bad, (kind of ill and depressed, to be slightly more specific, also a bit unclean,) that I'm using a bike trail that was built using bloodmoney.

Bloodmoney? Are you living on Cutthroat Island, among pirates? What crap.

It makes me feel complicit in an action I dislike. I continue using the trail because I value keeping my job, (and being able to feed and shelter myself,) more than I do the gain in clear-consciousness I might receive from not using the trail, but if another trail existed which was funded voluntarily, I would use it, and if I found enough people of like-mind or like-heart willing to help pitch in to create such a trail, I'd most probably work with such a group to try and create an alternative route, even if it cost me more personally to help build than an involuntarily funded route would, because I would value the gain in clear-consciousness resulting from a reduced feeling of complicity in actions that are painful to me to experience more highly than the extra money or other costs.

Your system DOES NOT WORK in large communities. Maybe in a commune, but that's about it. Your way also costs more, since it would have more freeloaders and fewer payers. What if you had a bunch of buddies that pitched in and made your own bike trail, but a bunch of people who didn't pay also used it? What would you do, hire police for the bike trail to kick out the free riders? See how the costs rise? That's just ridiculous.

My discussion partners in our current thread would all, I expect, have no such gain in clear-consciousness, because they don't experience the kind of pain that I do when they see others being coerced into paying for the bike trail. The hypothesis that I have an ability to empathize with those being coerced, whereas others here do not, seems to me to better explain this difference than your [Doug's] hypothesis that I am self-centered, greedy, and/or refuse to consider the welfare of others.

Do you disagree? Why or why not?

Your "empathy" is just thinking others are as self-centered and greedy as yourself. You get no credit for that.

[Dardedar]

[David Franks]

David, you seem to me to be making the following case:

All taxation is legal....
Is this the argument you have made, as you perceive it?

No. The argument I am making is that calling taxation "theft" is wrong on its face, and so is an irrational reason to be bothered by taxation. (It is irrational to be bothered by things that aren't even true.) There are reasons to be bothered by taxation that are more, if not entirely, rational. Try arguing using one of those reasons.

This is just the same canard statists always use.

Funny. I resisted the urge to call your sociopathic libertarian/anarchist claptrap a canard.

If it offends you, then I apologize for using the term "canard" to describe what you wrote. I also thank you for refraining from using it to describe what I wrote.

I'm not offended at all; I'm amused by the fact that you carefully specify my argument while simultaneously flinging the word "statist" around like a simian flings feces.

"libertarians aren't sociopaths" is out of context. You trimmed the quote too much. I would probably never say, "Libertarians aren't sociopaths." Except perhaps as a safe-word or posthypnotic suggestion.

You asked me in your post if I was going to attempt to demonstrate that "libertarians aren't sociopaths". I replied to answer your question, negatively, and part of my reply was asking what you thought "libertarians aren't sociopaths" meant.

That was not at all clear from what you wrote. Perhaps you shouldn't have convoluted my question before trying to answer it. Answering a direct question using a rhetorical device or tone is not a good approach if you lack the artistry to present good rhetoric.

I'm not sure how you would expect me to answer a question about whether or not I'm going to make claim x, if I don't properly understand what you understand claim x to mean.

If you don't understand what "libertarian" and "sociopath" mean, you're trammeling the conversation. It was a direct question.

If our audience really has so short an attention span that they interpreted my request for clarification on what you understood the claim to mean as an accusation on my part that you were making the claim yourself,....

That's entirely your thesis, not mine, and I have no idea where you got it.

I consider myself an extremely pessimistic person, David, but I feel like your expectations of the reading comprehension abilities of those following our thread fall even lower than my own.

I have no expectations of kibitzers or eavesdroppers. My expectations are of those I engage in conversation.

[Indium Flappers]

No. The argument I am making is that calling taxation "theft" is wrong on its face, and so is an irrational reason to be bothered by taxation. (It is irrational to be bothered by things that aren't even true.) There are reasons to be bothered by taxation that are more, if not entirely, rational. Try arguing using one of those reasons.

But the reason you think calling taxation "theft" is wrong on its face is because taxation is legal. Right? Do you think it's irrational to be bothered by anything the government does that is lawful? Do you condemn anyone breaking the law regardless of what the law requires them to do?

I'm not offended at all; I'm amused by the fact that you carefully specify my argument while simultaneously flinging the word "statist" around like a simian flings feces.

Oh, ok, cool. I don't use the word "statist" for the negative connotation, (I see no reason why it should have a negative connotation for anyone else here but myself,) I use it because it accurately describes your position. You favor the existence of an entity, which I call a State, one of the attributes of which is that it has the power to levy taxes, to threaten noninvasive individuals with violence or confiscation of property if they do not render some amount of funds to the entity in question.

What word would you use to describe your position?

You asked me in your post if I was going to attempt to demonstrate that "libertarians aren't sociopaths". I replied to answer your question, negatively, and part of my reply was asking what you thought "libertarians aren't sociopaths" meant.

That was not at all clear from what you wrote. Perhaps you shouldn't have convoluted my question before trying to answer it. Answering a direct question using a rhetorical device or tone is not a good approach if you lack the artistry to present good rhetoric.

I still think it was clear the way I wrote it, but I don't have anyone here to pass an impartial judgment. Even if it was unclear, I see no reasonable way in which you can draw the implication you drew.

If you don't understand what "libertarian" and "sociopath" mean, you're trammeling the conversation. It was a direct question.

Asking you what you understand the words to mean doesn't seem out of line. If you're using "sociopath" in some kind of scientific, medical sense, then no I don't know the technical definition off the top of my head, and I don't feel like looking it up. I took it in a moral sense, so I explained that I don't believe in objective morality and that I didn't find the word "sociopath" useful for that reason. I explained that you may condemn me if you feel like it.

If our audience really has so short an attention span that they interpreted my request for clarification on what you understood the claim to mean as an accusation on my part that you were making the claim yourself,....

That's entirely your thesis, not mine, and I have no idea where you got it.

Your complaint is that in asking you for clarification on what you understood "libertarians aren't sociopaths" to mean, you think I implied that you were making this claim. If this isn't your complaint, then I perceive your responses as psychotic, and have no ability to discern what your complaint actually is. Please speak more clearly in the future.

I consider myself an extremely pessimistic person, David, but I feel like your expectations of the reading comprehension abilities of those following our thread fall even lower than my own.

I have no expectations of kibitzers or eavesdroppers. My expectations are of those I engage in conversation.

Ok.

I've written up responses to the rest of what people have said since my last post, but in going over it I feel like I'm missing something.

In response to my saying "It's an observation that governments make threats of violence against those they tax", David says, "Not me. I don't know anybody who has been threatened. (Do you?) Apparently the carrots work so well that the stick isn't often needed." But Doug points out that not paying taxes is against the law and that coercion is used, and David seems to implicitly admit this elsewhere in his posts in this thread.

So, to David, I want to ask for further clarification. I don't know why you ask me for anecdotal evidence instead of documented examples, unless it's just a lack of ability to empathize with people you don't personally know, but I want to ask what claim it is you're actually trying to make. Are you claiming that the U.S. government does not threaten anyone with violence for not paying taxes? Are you claiming that they do not threaten to imprison people, or to confiscate their property, for not paying their taxes? Are you claiming that no one is ever sent to prison for not paying taxes? Are you claiming that no one ever has their property confiscated for not paying taxes?

I mean, I can provide documented examples demonstrating that people are sent to prison, that people have their property confiscated, and that people receive threats from the government indicating that they will go to prison or have their property confiscated even though the government doesn't always follow through with these threats. They let Karl Hess get away with living mostly on barter; they didn't kill him, and it's cool that they didn't kill him. But they still threatened him with force, they still threatened to take away his property.

And anyway, all laws enforced by the government implicitly involve threats of physical violence against those who break them. Maybe the first threat is a fine, but then what if someone doesn't pay the fine? More fines? What if they don't pay those? Confiscation of everything you own? What if you refuse to pay that? Prison? What if you refuse to go? Police coming and dragging you away to prison? That's violence, and it's violence that keeps you in prison, and there are plenty of cases of police brutality out there providing evidence that the police are ultimately willing to use lethal force against those who resist them. If the string didn't come to a threat of violence at some point, I would feel very differently, as would, I think, most people who pay taxes. Actually, I wouldn't even call them taxes anymore.

I mean, obviously you're ok with these threats of violence, and I'm not. You're ok with threats of violence against those who break the law, and I, in not all but in many cases, am not. I use another standard and judge laws by that standard, because I judge all human beings equally; I don't understand what standard you use or are claiming to use. But regardless of who is ok with what, the State does threaten people with violence. If you're denying this, then I just have no idea how to deal with such weapons-grade doublethink. I don't know how to process such a claim.

I could post more, but until I understand what you're claiming as far as whether the government threatens people with violence or not, I don't know how to proceed.

[David Franks]

But the reason you think calling taxation "theft" is wrong on its face is because taxation is legal. Right? Do you think it's irrational to be bothered by anything the government does that is lawful? Do you condemn anyone breaking the law regardless of what the law requires them to do?

No. Calling taxation "theft" shows no understanding of the definition of "theft". Stop torturing our language in order to make irrational points. As for my feelings about anything the government does, we are not discussing that. We are discussing taxation.

Do you condemn anyone breaking the law regardless of what the law requires them to do?

I would shake my head and laugh at anybody who mistakenly claims that a government activity is a crime, then commits that very crime by violating the law pertaining to that activity. I'm not condemning you (though I find your "standard" to be substandard); I'm shaking my head and laughing at you.

I don't use the word "statist" for the negative connotation, (I see no reason why it should have a negative connotation for anyone else here but myself,)

In other words, you use "statist" for the negative connotation.

I use it because it accurately describes your position. You favor the existence of an entity, which I call a State, one of the attributes of which is that it has the power to levy taxes, to threaten noninvasive individuals with violence or confiscation of property if they do not render some amount of funds to the entity in question.

But when you use it not for the purpose of clarifying the argument but for labeling me with a term that you admit has a negative connotation, you are not using it to accurately describe my position. You are blowing a dog-whistle.

What word would you use to describe your position?

"Citizen" is a start, but there is a lot more to me than my favoring a good system for getting along and getting things done, and your attempt to "describe" me with one word is inaccurate, superficial, irrelevant to the conversation and pointless in general. If forced, I would suggest that "artist" is a much more likely one-word description, but it is just as irrelevant.

Even if it was unclear, I see no reasonable way in which you can draw the implication you drew.

Your reasoning here-- or your explanation of it-- is still not clear at all. What exactly do you think my implication is?

If you're using "sociopath" in some kind of scientific, medical sense, then no I don't know the technical definition off the top of my head, and I don't feel like looking it up.

I am. And I'm a little disappointed that you can't be bothered to look up the meaning of a word you find key-- or to ask directly; your post was so convoluted that i didn't find that question in it-- in a conversation that we seem to be going to some trouble to have.

I took it in a moral sense, so I explained that I don't believe in objective morality and that I didn't find the word "sociopath" useful for that reason. I explained that you may condemn me if you feel like it.

I find it hard to condemn a sociopath who lacks self-awareness. Once they are self-aware, however, I have no patience with their continuing antisocial behavior. You appear to be on the brink, as you seem to understand that the word has a moral connotation.

Your complaint is that in asking you for clarification on what you understood "libertarians aren't sociopaths" to mean, you think I implied that you were making this claim.

That is indeed part of my complaint, because you certainly appeared to have made that implication. As for clarity, your baroque rhetorical tone made subsequent clarity well-nigh impossible.

But Doug points out that not paying taxes is against the law and that coercion is used, and David seems to implicitly admit this elsewhere in his posts in this thread.

Again, you are confused by your notion that our system of laws is a threat. It is a framework. The threat comes from weakening the framework. A stepladder is useful and safe, unless it is misused, or until someone kicks it while you're standing on it. (And by the way: like it or not, you're standing on this stepladder.)

I don't know why you ask me for anecdotal evidence instead of documented examples, unless it's just a lack of ability to empathize with people you don't personally know

I do so because none of the people who have claimed to me that the government uses threats of violence in order to get them to pay taxes has ever been so threatened, nor do they know anybody who has. I'm not asking for anecdotal evidence in lieu of data; I'm pointing out that the claim is entirely baseless: not only is there no data; there aren't even any anecdotes. The government is not the Mafia; it does not threaten people, unless those people choose to be threatened. A system of laws is not itself a threat, and a law does not become a threat until one or more lawyers gets involved. Are the Ten Commandments a threat?

Are you claiming that they do not threaten to imprison people, or to confiscate their property, for not paying their taxes?

No. But that happens after the law (our general and specific agreement with ourselves) is broken. And yes. Your referring to our system of laws as nothing more than a threat is not only superficial and inaccurate; it is silly and childish.

Are you claiming that no one is ever sent to prison for not paying taxes? Are you claiming that no one ever has their property confiscated for not paying taxes?

Of course not. But at that point, they have broken the law. Would you have the rest of us live in a lawless society in order to assuage your exquisite irrational pain? Further, remember that, as you pointed out yourself, even after the law is broken, the "threat" is not absolute, as you otherwise continually imply. The government settles tax cases all the time, and when that happens, any "theft" has been committed by the scofflaw, not the government.

I mean, I can provide documented examples....

But were they threatened before they broke the law? (The law itself is not a threat.)

And anyway, all laws enforced by the government implicitly involve threats of physical violence against those who break them....

No more so than any other legally-binding agreement. Question: are garnishing wages and assessing fines really physical violence?

there are plenty of cases of police brutality out there providing evidence that the police are ultimately willing to use lethal force against those who resist them.

And those cases are subjected to scrutiny under the law, and may or may not be found to be illegal and punishable. Certainly the fox often guards the henhouse in those criminal cases, but not in the arena of civil cases. Also note for context that there are many cases of citizen brutality against other citizens and against the government. A great number of those brutal citizens are sociopathic, and some of them get away with it.

I mean, obviously you're ok with these threats of violence, and I'm not.

That's not obvious at all. What is obvious is that you have a ridiculously low threshold for what you consider to be violence.

You're ok with threats of violence against those who break the law, and I, in not all but in many cases, am not.

Given your peculiar violence against language, that might be true-- in your language.

I use another standard and judge laws by that standard, because I judge all human beings equally

Well, except for the statists. Maybe you will someday find a country that has the same standard you do. (Paradox alert!)

I don't understand what standard you use or are claiming to use.

And until you grow up, you never will.

But regardless of who is ok with what, the State does threaten people with violence.

The government outlines the consequences of breaching the agreement citizens (and, for that matter, non-citizens who stand on our stepladder) have engaged in. Does a bank engage in violence when they hold the note on your home or car? Does a landlord engage in violence when you lease an apartment from him?

If you're denying this, then I just have no idea how to deal with such weapons-grade doublethink

It's not doublethink on my part; it's doubletalk on your part.

I don't know how to process such a claim.

And you're apparently determined to never figure out how.

I could post more, but until I understand what you're claiming as far as whether the government threatens people with violence or not, I don't know how to proceed.

If it makes it easier for you, I am aware that violence of various types at the hands of government does occur, because government entities do abuse citizens. But this is a threat that is outside the law (which itself, remember, is not a threat until lawyers are involved). Our system of laws does not entitle the government to abuse citizens; indeed, in most cases, it is written to prevent abuse of citizens and revised to correct abuses as they come to light (and in many cases, even if no abuse actually exists). However, the agreement you made by continuing to live here has terms and conditions that you must live up to, just as it has terms and conditions that the government must live up to. That is not violence; that is accord.

What would your response be if somebody stole from you? What if somebody walked up and started peeing (but not too closely) on the rose bushes in your front yard? Is a cat a threat? A pit bull?

[Savonarola]

I've written up responses to the rest of what people have said since my last post, but in going over it I feel like I'm missing something.

Yeah, like all of the holes in your argument that I pointed out. You didn't respond to any of my remarks. You didn't even mention them, or defend yourself or your position.

You want to use the trail, but you don't want to have to pay for it. But you sure like that trail, so you'll use it. And you want to use it for free. And you don't see a problem with this.
Typically, if I use something of yours -- or benefit from your service -- without compensating you, that's theft. The way you're framing things, you're benefitting from available services and then -- upon being asked for compensation -- accusing those service providers of theft. No. You are the one stealing use of the trail.
David is right. You need to grow up.
With children, sometimes we have to use the "you need to look at the big picture" line. But I'm not sure you're even to that point. You're still having trouble with the concept that the world doesn't revolve around you.

I can't believe you're still blathering on with this "threats of violence" nonsense. When was the last time the government started breaking the legs of tax evaders? Don't you hate when those tickets issued by traffic cops are so violent? Can you believe the IRS so violently garnished my wages?!

I mean, obviously you're ok with these threats of violence, and I'm not.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you don't seem to be paying attention: You keep using that word, "violence"; I do not think it means what you think it means.

So, one more time: If you have a good argument, why are you making one that relies upon appealing to emotion? Fortunately for my side of the argument, David is doing the heavy lifting, but he's being nice about it. I think you should feel ashamed that you're arguing for such a ludicrous position.