Oddbean new post about | logout
 I love sharing! I just don't like being forced to do it in accordance with the choices of a few well-armed people.

One of the things that we tend to miss in these conversations is scale: in a tribe of people, you have enough close relationships - and enough accountability of the leaders - that taxation as sharing for the public good makes a lot of sense.

In a system with millions of people and no accountability for those forcing the "sharing," it's theft. To make it worse, those same thieves can also print the money that you're forced (again, under threat of violence) to use, and your assets go up in price because they're debasing the money. 

We can discuss all those things you mentioned, and do that within a small enough community that we actually have a say in how the money is being spent and what taxation should look like.