Govts are tax farms that manage human livestock. They hide their true nature & manipulate people via secular religious structures & a completely inverted naming scheme, to which most are oblivious. The more important some portion of the govt seems, & the more benevolent sounding the name, the more evil it generally is.
Discussion
“Governments are tax farms that manage human livestock.”
On a farm, can the livestock vote for new farmers? Can they negotiate with the farmer for different terms of their exchange? Can the livestock overthrow the farmer if they get up fed up with the farm? I don’t think this analogy holds water.
The rest of what you said is not an argument against taxes.
I’m starting to think you are Canadian
Nope. I’m American. Voted for Trump. Pro 2A. Have an AR15 I built from an 80% finished lower. Raised on a farm. I hunt. I’m in favor of smaller government and lower taxes. You have still not convinced me why we shouldn’t pay taxes.
Read Larken Rose to understand your indoctrination, your religion, statism
I will definitely check them out! Thanks for the rec 🤙🏻 I do have to ask though, you have read their work but can’t use it to argue against the points that I am making?
Can you threaten & steal from your neighbor to fund things that you think are important?
If you believe that is unacceptable & uncivilized behavior (like most sane people), then how is it that you can delegate a right you don't have to people in made up positions? Does morality not apply to government employees?
Well, for one thing your taxes were used to rig the last election against you.
This episode might help
https://fountain.fm/episode/CG0oVdoJQdCGtLNgxSqZ
Also Guy's 2 part read of Anatomy of the State is a pretty great listen too.
Yep! You can critique what the taxes are spent on, and I encourage you to do so. But that is not an argument against taxes.
Yes it is. They wouldn't need to tax people if they only intended to do things people wanted. Services are voluntarily paid for, taxes are stolen in order to destroy things. They only sprinkle in public facing parks or trash pickup so that when people protest or try to hold up proposed increses in spending they have leverage & can take away access to the parks & take away trash services in order to squeeze people (they never stop the wars or any of the corrupt trillion dollar programs). You severely underestimate the nefarious nature of the organization & the people involved. Listen to the linked episode, listen to Anatomy of the State, read the abridged version of Gulag Archipelago & then look around at what is being done here. Read Atlas Shrugged if you've never read that either. Larken's book is good, but I found those others much more compelling.
I don’t really think you are making an argument with that, are you? That quote doesn’t provide any rational reason to do anything. It’s just a quote about some guys feelings about the state. Which is good! I encourage a healthy discourse about the state!
Guernsey bulls overthrow farmers all the time, just saying'.
And livestock attempt to negotiate all the time; cattle just suck at getting their way compared to cats.
They can't vote for their farmer-of-choice, but then, neither can I really. My second-favourite political party was deregistered here in Australia after daring to win a Senate seat.
Voting does not make taxation less theft. A victim getting to choose between two rapists does not make the rape and less wrong. Geez.
But that’s not the situation at all. The rapist is getting raped and doesn’t get anything good or wanted in return. With taxes, you do get good things in return. And even if you don’t directly get them, other people do, and that’s so so good for you because we live in a society where we all benefit many order of magnitudes greater than what we could on our own because of the division of labor. That’s straight from the book Human Action by Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises.
Also, the raped person doesn’t get to be involved with the process of creating the terms of the exchange. In a good healthy functioning state, that would be the case.
I really think you are misreading von Mises if you think he was talking about taxes being a benefit.
And that is *exactly* the case. I. Do. Not. Consent. Therefore, the action taken by anyone is immoral and should be preemptively stopped, struggled against, or violently opposed.
I DO NOT CONSENT TO HAVING MY EARNINGS GARNISHED. Nothing good comes of that.
If it were somehow possible (it’s not) to theoretically strip you of all the benefits that you gain from taxation, you would instantly consent. If all of the benefits that you gain from living in a society with division of labor could be taken away from you, you would instantly pay an arm and a leg (taxes) to gain access back to the system.
Dakota, all the good things you mentioned can be provided by collective action outside the state. And have been, in many different societies. Just not under the (historically unproven and experimental) modern Western nation state.
For a brief overview of what we're talking about, maybe read over: https://archive.org/details/TheEthicsOfLiberty0
That may or may not be true, I’m not sure. Even if it is true, it does not make the statements that “taxation is theft” nor “taxation is slavery” true statements. The fact that things can be provided by collective action is not an argument that proves taxation is theft or slavery. They are not mutually exclusive; both things can be true.
I also question the ethical and moral implications of some services being provided by the private sector. For example, I don’t want private companies funding standing militaries. I don’t want to pay a subscription fee to a private company for military protection. I think that is worse than a state funded military.
It's not worse since you can define terms of service and then you're done. Geez, dude, you're so far into the BS you can't even think of a way to not puppet propoganda. It's gross listening to you.
1) pretending like the goal of government is to not give people control of the services provided is fallacious. Just because you currently can’t “define the terms of service” for the US military (which I think in itself is up for debate) is a critique of the currently establishment, but not of the idea as a whole (state and taxation).
2) even if the terms of service could be defined, that matters very little. If all of your neighbors pay a private company for military protection, you now no longer have to pay for it, because you get de facto protection from your neighbors. That is a very bad incentive that you should not be arguing for.
It’s truly horrifying how religious Statists are
Dude I’m not even religious about it lol. I don’t have any blind faith in anything. I’m not worshiping anything 😂 like just give me a good reason to believe what you are saying. Give me an argument that I can’t counter. And just dropping a book on me and telling me to read it isn’t an argument. I’ve read a LOT of Austrian economic books. Ludwig von mises and Rothbard mostly. I’m willing to change my mind, you just haven’t convinced me yet. You on the other hand haven’t countered anything I have said, but you are not willing to change you’re mind, so who is the religious one 🤔
The good news is I don’t need to
Cope
Let me put this in the most Austrian Economic way possible, so that maybe you, and the others that will see this repost, can understand. I am of the belief that there are certain goods and services that satisfy the preferences of all people which are best provided by cooperative action between individuals. We call the cooperative individuals “the state” and we call the money that they pay for these goods and services “taxes.” This is not an argument for big government. This is not an argument for exorbitant taxes. This is a true statement even down to the tiniest most decentralized state you can imagine. The state could be the size of a neighborhood, and this would still be true. Thoughts? Willing to hear your side. I’m so close to being an ancap, please get me there daddy 😩
The revolutionary generation, who experienced coercive taxation, will be able to distinguish that from voluntary payment to a collective caretaker. However, after a few generations, the distinction between voluntary taxation, which has now become rote, and traditional “government” taxation will be gone. Many people will be living under a government they call by another name. I see the ancap future as very important clearing of underbrush, but a totally new way of being. We do tend towards at least a little government.
So I think you are arguing in favor of taxation then? The critique is “how much” and “what it’s spent on” but not whether it should exist, no?
I’m taking the approach of what is, less what should be. Historically, we always tend towards some taxation. I’m not convinced we will avoid this pitfall through competition, so sadly we must put some work into what and how much
ANCAPS don’t make anyone do anything, ever
Yeah, that’s kind of the point though. You would voluntarily pay money to have goods and services that benefit you. Some of these goods and services are best provided by the cooperative actions of all the people who would benefit from these goods and services. We call the cooperatively acting individuals “the state” and we call the money that they pay “taxes.”
Thoughts on the implications of Moore vs US?
All taxation is criminal, & all taxes fund further violations of basic rights, so they should all be avoided in every way possible, legal or illegal. The first step in preventing or escaping your own enslavement is to stop funding it. Saving in Bitcoin is an easy way to escape inflation, but it's important to find creative ways to avoid other taxes too.
The idea that the govt owns a portion of some increase in the valuation of your assests before you even make a transaction is just a sign that the game is nearing its end. They have run out of ways to hide their theft & they are becoming much bolder. It's on par with seizing Russian assets because Russia. Before long they will just be taking assets from anyone they disagree with like Canada or China.