Oddbean new post about login | logout You might think it's ridiculous, but, it's not. All human governments have taxed. Taxation is theft. 🤷♂️
If all taxation were theft, there wouldn't have been any point in developing two different words for it.
There are plenty of words used as an alternative for taxation. The differing definitions are merely used to confuse people and keep hidden their true purpose. In the end, it's all just different forms of taxation. So yes, taxation is theft, regardless of how it's termed.
Exactly the opposite. The reason the word "taxation" is needed is because having a different word makes the theft easier.
There is a reason: propaganda. It's better when victims of theft don't know they are being stolen from. Or even better they are happy to be stolen from because 0.5% of stolen money pays for the roads
If you lived in a constitutional monarchy, and you have the freedom to leave whenever you want, and the nearest alternate monarchy is 10-20 miles away, is that monarchies taxation still theft?
It depends what kind of tax. If you pay rent from using land that's like the most legitimate thing that they own the land and you use it so you pay for it. But if they tax your ETF capital gains that you have made in different country from money that you have invested before you started living there then there is not much legitimate about it. Because the moving thing it's kind of cope of digital nomads. Many businesses farms, factories, mines can't be moved so the government can basically tax whatever but that doesn't make it legitimate.
Why does it depend? If you don't want to play it, you're free to leave.
That's nice thing for single bitcoiner digital nomands. You cannot build society on that. For most families or businesses moving is more costly than paying 30% tax. That doesn't make the tax legitimate that just means that thugs are stronger and have advantage. Choosing to pay a robber rather than dying doesn't make robbery legitimate. It's a victim blaming telling that people who don't move agree with tax. We as a society need farmers and families and factories in order to survive a humanity
Not just taxation, imposing your "law" onto my property is also theft of that property. If i dont have exclusive control over it, it is not my property. We understood this. Thats why church asylum was a thing, tthe churches property was recognised and as such nobody could enforce his will there.