since taxes are conditional, to me they can be responsive rather than agressive. maybe call them fees or subcriptions. most of the taxes i have seen are conditional on citizenship , purchase, or/and or registration status.
What you’re arguing here is that somehow force is justified as a response to a non-aggressive act. My simply earning income does not entitle others to a portion of that income. You’re arguing that somehow it does…that the forceful taking of my earnings is not aggression, but merely a “response” to my earning income.
That has to be the lamest excuse to try to justify aggression I’ve ever heard.
Aggression in the context of the “non-aggression principle” is roughly defined as the initiation of force. Simply claiming that the taking of my income by force is a “response” to my earning an income does not negate the fact that it is an initiation of force.
it could take a few reposts to get where i mean
people sign a contract for and agree to be citizens under a republic. part of the contract means that taxes will be paid under certain conditions. those conditions are met. since the agreed apon conditions are met, the tax is honering the contract. not paying the tax would be breeching the contract. there is no agression between the people who have agreed to be citizens when the taxes are paid. after someone refuses to pay the tax, thus breeching the contract, tax collecters are sent to enforce the contract that both parties had signed and agreed to be a part of. like any club, so is a state with each person agreeing to be part of the state. the contract has rights, and duties that people must do or breech the contract. not paying taxes is breeching the contract, paying taxes is honering the contract. the initial agression that takes place in when people refuse to pay what they have said they would pay.
if people sign a contract where paying taxes is part of the contract, then not paying taxes is agression and breech of contract
Please show me this contract I allegedly signed.
that can be a problem for natural born citizenship, but there is also the case of people applying to be citizens. part of it is that taxes and contracts apply on action
the contract can also be signed by doing any government business , such as registering private property or a business with the government.
someone who does not want to sign the contract would not pay taxes, but they would pay whatever they had to to use the property owned by people that have signed the contract, and that could mean paying the taxes of the person who has registered a business with the government. with doing business with government property or with someone who has signed the contract, a person agrees to pay what they need to in that transaction.
noone is made to be a part of it, but they are made to deal with the contract if they engage with people that have signed the contract.
So basically you’re saying you can’t produce this contract you claim I signed.
So tell me again how initiating force against me is justified?
the constitution would be the contract.
i think the best i can do here is say is some cases, not all, that taxes are justified
if someone wants and owns their own private land and wants their own soverenty with no registration with the government or its constitution, they would not be taxed in that way or treated as a citizen.
looks like the nap way for citizenship would only be speficic opt in naturalization and citizenship.
Even so, if I want to build a house on some portion of land that is unowned, I would have to have government permission and pay taxes over my property afterwards. All that just because allegedly the government is the owner of all land inside an arbitrary imaginary line. Is important to note that ‘the government’ is just a bunch of individuals.
So, logically, this is similar to me and a group of friends pointing guns to all neighborhood, demanding a portion of their incomes because we own the land where they leave in, showing them a piece of paper (constitution) to prove it. Not nice, imo.
I assume you mean this constitution. I can assure you, I did not sign that.
So tell me again how
a) I am to be held to a contract I did not agree to
b) initiating force against me is justified
Conditional on citizenship? What you’re saying, in roundabout way, is that being a citizen obligates you to pay taxes. Obligations must be accepted voluntarily ahead of time. Thus, forcing an obligation on someone is an aggression, just as if I showed up with an orphan and said you’re now obligated to adopt him. No, you’re only obligated to care for the orphan if you accept that obligation.
This is the great apologist argument, that citizenship obligates one to this and that. But it fails the NAP-sniff test immediately.
Note that even the government does not make this argument. Technically, USG gives no (non-statutory) legal reason why you must pay taxes - you have to pay taxes because they wrote something on a piece of paper that says you have to pay taxes. There is no better reason than that and there sure as hell isn’t any contract or agreement between anybody and the government regarding taxes. Contracts can be terminated/settled. Taxes cannot. Taxes are perpetual and there is no prior limit to the extent of taxation.
Clayton -
Before I clicked Clayton’s link I was going to go ahead and embed this anyway…
But on this note, technically the income tax is not even a law (i.e. written on a piece of paper)…
property ownership is agression.
property is optained and maintained by violence. so by nap does that put morality on “first” and then agreed to by trade?
what makes human vs human different than human vs other natureal aspects of life on the planet?
eating is agressive
if writing on a peice of paper does not mean anything, how are voluntary contracts to be done? ive put on here that becoming a citizen by choice is a different criteria then having citizenship forced on birth and trying to apply it to people who have not signed it.
there are different types of taxes, so income taxes don’t need to be part of the tax discussion. part of it could be property taxes charged to people who register property. now the tax can be called a fee or subcription, but essentialy it’s supposed to be a payment for service that won’t be charged to people that don’t use the service. requiring payment for using a road would be another example, the fee can be called a toll or a tax or fee or whatever, its raising revenue from people that use the service or the property.
Why? And, if property is theft, why states can be the owners of all land?
I disagree with eating being agressive. To live you have to eat, so not eating would be an agression with yourself. Eating is a natural proccess, and nature just is. There is not right and wrong about nature. But human societies are not natural, in the biologic sense of the word, so, you can’t say that taxation is natural just because it is happening now. In other words, we don’t need taxation to sustain our bodies, unlike eating, so this argument does not follow.
Voluntary contracts are only valid if they are voluntary, that is, if both parties agree. The constitution does not fit in the definition of a voluntary contract, thus it is really only a piece of paper. As for “voluntary citizens”, or imigrants, they left a country where they were forced to be citizens as well, so that can’t be used in defense of states.
The name doesn’t matter. If it is forcibly acquired, it violates the NAP (not that you find it relevant). Furthermore, I don’t use all the services I’m forced to pay. For example, I’m brazilian, and Brazil has universal healthcare (guess what? it’s a dump). I don’t use it, because honestly, I’m afraid to use it. The majority of hospitals are so bad that people lie on the corridors, for there are no accomodations for them.
im saying agression is part of nature and part of survival, just how we are agressive is up to choice.
eating is resource posative, taking from one to give to another.
a business needs revenue and customers to survive and must be resource positive
the interaction of a business and customer each each give to each other.
if a person uses a business services, they can expect to pay, saying that its agressive to force someone to pay for something they have already consumed seems that it’s responsive force. to not have the obligation to pay, a person can avoid use of the business services or property.
the land of a government could just be the sum of the land of the voluntary citizens and how they choose to delegate it’s care and management. the land can be gained from trade or homestead. someone coming into that owned land would have to follow what the government has chosen as to what payments are in order for usage of the service or property.
payments would not be required from services not used, although the funds could be used to pay for them, like any private business does.
I think we’re not on the same page here when it comes to agression. Wikipedia definition of agression:
As you can see, predatory agression may not be considered agression in the same sense. You can consider, but, as I said in my last post, nature just is. Humans have to agress against other animals to survive (vegetarians would disagree, but the evidence that humans evolved eating meat is pretty clear. As a side note, I’m a vegetarian, but I’m considering a primal diet. Alright, enough of it). In human social realm, though, agression is viewed quite differently. So, keeping agression on human social relations, I don’t agree with your assertion that we agress anyway, so it’s just a matter of choice of agression. First off, I don’t think we agress anyway, because just acting to meet biological needs is not to agress, and even if we did, who chose the state? In the US, for example, virtually NOBODY that is alive today was born when the constitution was written. Of course, a case could be made that most people today support the state, at least in some way. But the few who don’t can’t opt out of this system. In fact, if people could opt out of it, then a state would not exist in the first place. I suspect that even some supporters of state action would not pay taxes if they could choose. Actually, I think a lot would not pay.
So, we just have this construction called the state, that eveybody is forced to comply, whether we like it or not. Why have it instead of a non-agressive system, i.e, the market? I’m not even mentioning the morality of it. We have PLENTY of facts and data showing that state intervention are only doing harm to societies. Just search the website.
predatory agression wise, i think that happens eating with both meat and plant material. both animals and plants are living beings that take resources to grow and survive. building a farm out of a wooded area uses force to change nature, i also think perhaps if we have total private ownership, that it needs to mean more than just land marked off by human use. we need to have areas that can be trusts with human stewardship that can be santuarys for animals if the property owners choose such use.
agression human relationship wise, as in intention to harm or social dominance, that is something i think is easyer to avoid. whether we have private or state protection services and collection services, they will need to be forceful be definition to those that resist obligations. a free market will still have courts and law and enforcement. the systems are in place not for when things go well, but when people choose to breech contracts or be initiate agression. business will choose how people pay for services and tell people how they will be delt with should they use a service and not pay.
right now a state can give the right to secede, my thought was particpation in a state as being only opt in.
im really just starting to explore these ideas, a large part of what i’m thinking about is that i can’t find any ancap or minarch society that was not taken over by a state. the world is shaped more by agression then ideas such as voluntary interaction only and the non agression principle.
EDIT: Actually, consumers would choose what to pay for. Bussinesses that successfully supply the demand of the consumers would survive on the market.
Yeah, but the state, i.e, a handful of people, created this right for themselves, pretty much like the guy on the video Clayton and JJ posted above explained. As we can see, there is really no opt in or out.
But that doesn’t mean that it will never happen. We (by we I mean people who acknowledge the value of liberty) are here for the change. We may not see it in our lifetime (just like many who advocated change in the past, but didn’t see it in their’s), but history showed as well that every central planning society fell apart. I believe that someday, and I really wish to see this, we will grow out of this state paradigm. Just a matter of time. Until then, we learn, we teach, and we stand for what is truthful and principled. At least that’s what I try to do.
Christ. Not this again.
I find a rock on the ground in the forest. I pick it up and keep it. I have obtained new property. When did the violence occur, exactly?
I find a rock on the ground in the forest. I pick it up and keep it. I have obtained new property. When did the violence occur, exactly?
when you walked throught the forest, when you picked up the rock. when you kept the rock. if people are able to consider steping on private property trespass and want to have consequences for it (such as trespasers will be shot signs and a willingness to shoot on sight), this as well would be , a physical change in the environment. it takes physcial force to walk though a forest and pick up the rock. there can be animals that use that rock and it would be taking away their home. there is a whole ecosystem in place that is being disrupted when that rock is taken from it.