I do not think of myself as an anarchist but other people have called me an anarchist. I am not opposed to having a government. I just people that people must have freedom of association and disassociation. Meaning if people do not want to pay taxes towards the government they do not have to. They will just to required to pay user fees if they use any service provided by the government, like roads or courts. And I also believe if you have a large community of people who want to move somewhere and seceed from the union then that is fine. I just do not believe in individual secession because there is not reasonable way to do it. If some guy lives in a community he cannot declare, “I seceed!”. How will we even keep track of this? He can, however, disassociate and not pay taxes. But secession must be reserved for large enough groups of people who can form their own communities. Does this make me an anarchist? I do not think of myself as know but others have said that because I believe in secession and voluntary taxation I am one.
Thank you for the answer, I was not familar with that term. But is panarchism just a form of anarchism? Wikipedia lists it under anarchism. By the way, I do think of myself as a minarchist. But am I wrong to call myself a minarchist because I believe taxation should be voluntary?
Insofar as a government derives its authority from a voluntary contractual relationship with its citizens, it is compatible with anarchism.
Not everyone who thinks that taxation should be voluntary would consider themselves anarchists. Ayn Rand is one such example — she held that the government ought to hold a monopoly on the use of force, but that it also ought to be funded by voluntary contributions. However, if the government’s funding is truly voluntary, each person would also have the right to fund other, competing government services. This is anarchism, and I don’t know why Ayn Rand was unable to see this logical implication of her theory.
It makes you a classical voluntaryist à la Auberon Herbert. Some consider it to be anarchism, some don’t (Auberon included), I think calling it anarchy just puts it with bad company.
“If some guy lives in a community he cannot declare, “I seceed!”. How will we even keep track of this? He can, however, disassociate and not pay taxes”
I don’t think that’s a sufficient condition to be called anarchy. If someone decided they didn’t want to pay taxes, maybe the government could shut off services like police protection, fire protection, and garbage collection. But to remain a government, it must continue to use coercion somehow. For example, it could insist that you do not set up a business providing competing police services in a certain geographical area. If it doesn’t meddle in peaceful dissenters’ business at all then it ceases to be a government and is simply something like an ordinary business or charity entity. That would be anarchy.
I would call you a minarchist. And slightly more rational than a majority.
What does that mean? If he disassociates, can he keep government agents off his property?
There is no such thing as voluntary taxation. It is a contradiction in terms. If you voluntarily decide to spend resources on certain services, it is just a normal purchase.
There is no such thing such as voluntary taxation.
Remember its not you paying tax or not paying tax which makes it involuntary, but the fact that government needs to have a monopoly in some or the other field(chances are, here we are talking about production of defense, and justice).
Lets take for example, government’s only job is to produce and sell milk(forget defense/justice to avoid complication, all a govt does is produces and sells milk), if government says that you don’t have to pay for the milk but pay taxes only if you want to, is the tax you give them now voluntary? The answer is no, because government has a monopoly in milk production, they are using coercion to prevent you or someone else from becoming a milkman therefore the tax you pay them(or not pay them) is not voluntary.
Similarly because your govt will have a monopoly(or at least ultimate authority in justice) , the money you pay as taxes are not voluntary, or maybe I should put it this way, the services provided to you by the state isn’t voluntary therefore there is no such thing as voluntary taxation.
A completely voluntary fees would not have the term ‘government’ in it, and if you are calling that entity government(which you totally can) then it won’t be a government which has monopoly in any field.
So if these are really your beliefs, trust me you are not an Anarchist, and anyone who was telling you that was taking a jab at you.
Whether you are an anarchist or not depends, obviously, on how you define the word. Anarchy means absence of government. Government can be defined differently by different people, but here is the definition we generally use here. Government is (1) a territorial monopolist producer of law. That’s the definition. Then (2) an organization that obtains its revenue through taxation, is the secondary characteristic of government, sometimes included as part of the definition itself.
You reject (2), which is great, but it sounds like from what you said that you still think (1) should exist. This puts you in the Ayn Rand camp. She believed that a government (territorial monopolist of law) was necessary, and viable without taxation. Maybe it could be. But Rand also thought that her government could exist without any kind of aggression, and on this point she is wrong, because a monopolist is necessarily aggressive. They must use aggression to prevent competitors emerging within the territory; otherwise they are not a territorial monopolist. (See Roy Childs’ Open Letter to Ayn Rand).
The question to ask yourself is: can a citizen within the governments’ territory choose to use a non-government court if he wishes (without relocating out of the territory)? If he can, then the “government” is no longer a government, but has the same status as any other court. That’s anarchy.