While, due to ridiculous semantics games, you resist be satisfied by anything short of an actual tax-man physically pointing a gun at me when it's time to write my tax payment check... being hauled off to jail by gun-toting g-men for failing to pay, amounts to "tax levied at gun point", for all practical purposes. The reality is this: If you purposefully avoid paying your tax, guys with guns will show up to encourage you to reconsider. If you still do not, they will strip you of your freedom. If you still will not pay, they will take your property. If you resist their efforts to do these things, in any physical way, they will draw their guns on you and shoot you. Fear of these things happening is why people are generally compliant about paying their taxes. This is "tax levied at gunpoint" no matter how you want to spin it.
Well, I'm talking about freedom in the sense in which freedom is good. Of course, there might be people who don't value liberty, I'm just wondering what those who do mean by it. So would you say that a person in the middle of the desert, not able to do anything, because there isn't anything to do, is free, since there is no oppression per se, but he's still not able to do anything?
Well, obviously, the freedom lies in the fed who go from unable to survive and therefore completely unfree to alive, with all the freedoms that might entail, at cost, the freedoms of the person paying his taxes, which I would regard as lesser.
Oh dear, don't tell the British. Well, I imagine sometimes, they pull in different directions. Then what does one do? Which one is actually the priority?
It seems to me the law only escalates to taking your property. The fact that you can resist to the point where they feel they have to shoot you is like saying someone saying "hi" to you is a death threat because you can resist them saying hi by attempting to kill them, at which point, they're within their rights to kill you in self defence.
So, would there be 50 million people(US) starving if not for forced redistribution? I would argue the numbers of those becoming dependent on government is growing immensely. Heck, Americans actually believe unemployment is an earned benefit and not just another government welfare program.
No, maybe not. My argument just says arguments like these can exist and are not made invalid by reference to the freedom of the taxpayer. After that, further arguments would need to be made, but that wasn't the purpose of my argument, so I didn't bring it up.
No, the law escalates to stripping you of your freedom, and locking you away in a cage. That action will be performed by men with guns. If you resist in any physical way, you are likely to be shot.... over taxation. Please don't misunderstand.... I'm not complaining about any of this, this is just the way it is, and I willfully comply every year because I don't want a visit from Mr. Bighat. But if anyone suggests that taxes are not levied at gunpoint, they are mistaken, because they clearly are. All you have to do to test that theory is to purposefully refuse to pay your taxes. Then you will see how long it takes before the guns arrive at your house.
You're the one playing word games with your "gun-point" rhetoric. I'm trying to cut through it to find out if this is just aimless moaning of if you have any actual point beyond it. Do you?
No, maybe not. My argument just says arguments like these can exist and are not made invalid by reference to the freedom of the taxpayer. After that, further arguments would need to be made, but that wasn't the purpose of my argument, so I didn't bring it up. Edit: Sorry, double post.
Well, I've heard this idea that taxes are theft before and I disagree with it. It would be theft if it weren't for the fact that everyone of those dollars has the stamp of the US Federal reserve on the front of it just so you know who that money belongs to. That may sound a bit sarcastic, and it is somewhat, but without the economic system created by the many Americans before you and the many Americans alive today you would not have any means with which to live the lifestyle that you do. Every facet of your life is shaped by the society you live in and just as much as that society is taking a portion of your earnings so you take from that society. You are part of a web and that web makes you who you are. There is no such thing as living completely self -sustained in this time. The social contract that exists between man and government permits government to ask from the individual and it permits the individual to ask from the government. How much is exchanged between the two is a matter decided by the entire collective, not individually. Anyone who earns money does so because the government and society in general allows and enables it to happen.
People are far more capable(to self-sustain) and charitable than you give them credit. Government programs are just low hanging fruit. People weren't dying in the streets before these programs.[/QUOTE] I invite you to spend time in a country where there is no welfare.
I still wouldn't say that this counts as at gun point. You say "if you resist in any physical way", but I get the feeling that that case is beside the point. You can attempt to resist anything violently, and others may be justified in killing you in self defence. That seems to me not to be a feature of the law or the idea of taxation. The fact that you can resist violently and be shot seems to me to be irrelevant, since that is true for other, completely reasonable things. It doesn't seem correct to extrapolate to what can happen if you respond in certain ways if your response is not necessary and a crime in itself.
Well, I would say it's factually incorrect. The definition of theft is the unlawful taking of another's property. Nothing legal can be theft for anything but metaphorical purposes.
Freedom to me personally is non-reliance on the physical system for day to day survival. I mean this in the purely practical sense. I can survive without public utilities (power, water etc), supermarkets, shopping malls, restaurants, cinemas, etc etc. I can survive without a car. It's also the freedom from desire for all the above. I know that the minute I start 'wanting stuff', I lose freedoms in the obligation to raise money to pay for the stuff. Impatience just adds to that. The upshot, the subsistence farmer who has no money and no choices, is as free as the man with enough money to make choices. Many would say, freer. He is his own master, in the human realm - slave only to nature. He can live, in the minutiae, exactly how he wants to live. He can go to work naked, or dressed as a chicken, he can sing show tunes loudly all day, he can hold unpopular political opinions and fear no repercussions. He can sleep in if he chooses (it will impact him directly - not via a domino effect between himself and actual survival - with each domino adding an extra layer of pressure and complexity despite it's buffering effects). Etc. I'm also passionate about Freedom of Speech. We lose that (RIP, Canada), and we're basically ######.
If I were to decide to not pay my tax, the guys with the guns will show up and force me to pay, and they will not take 'no' for an answer. This is the very same thing as taxation at gunpoint. If they have to, they will beat me, jail me, confiscate my property, or kill me to get their tax. I am forced by law to pay the tax, and I risk everything to not comply. Regardless if a gun is actually drawn, the threat is real, and they are quite capable of doing so with very little provocation. This is the very same thing as taxation at gunpoint.
It is clearly related to freedom. Government is force, period. We accept a certain amount to balance anarchy. An example is national defense. We accept paying taxes in order to not become the bitch of a foreign invasion. To the contrary, forcing me to feed others is not a necessary function that preserves freedom, but does enslave one person to another.
In principle, if it is wrong for me to take from you and give to another, it is wrong when a government does it. Legalized theft is still theft.
When you live in a democratic nation where all citizens have equal right and opportunity to participate in government then taxes are not theft. The social contract guarantees participation in the system. Perhaps the United States is lacking in some of the features for that to work effectively but it is still possible for people to cause change within that system to alter that social contract, especially if you are a white, adult male. I completely agree that if the people of your nation are able to create a system that requires less or even no taxation while still maintaining the standards of what is necessary to have a government that can help its citizenry lead a meaningful, productive existence then they should. However it is important to note that a democracy has to be healthy and when certain parts of it are not functioning effectively the whole organism suffers. The health and welfare of the populace are of central importance to the effectiveness of democracy and to neglect that factor or to just abandon that factor as a matter of self determination is a certain way to cause the whole to become unhealthy. There are certain key features that are essential to the functioning of an effective democracy. An educated populace, a bill of rights to protect the rights of the population, a court system to make decisions based on that bill of rights, a police force to enforce the decisions of the court etc The more highly technological and advanced the society the more elaborate these needs become. In your political philosophy, from where would government get the resources necessary to run a country? Do you value democracy? Do you not see a benefit to living in a democracy? For me the decision about rates of taxation have a lot to do with factors in the economy. Taxation should be used to regulate growth in an economy. When the economy is expanding taxation is used to moderate growth to avoid inflation and high prices but during times of economic recession taxes are relaxed to enable growth to accelerate. Of course that is easier said than done and a drastic simplification but this thread is more about freedom in a political sense and I wouldn't want to digress too far into matters of economics.
I want freedom from needs as principle everyone should get a place to live, food, water, education, a job, health care, assured time for rest and vacation and personal security from harm then other lesser areas of freedom which are softer can be considered.
I still fail to see how the intended threat is that of death. You are right in that they intend to confiscate your property. In rare cases where they are somehow unable to do so, they might jail you. I don't see how the guns enter the equation unless you do something that might get you killed regardless of your tax situation, like attacking them. How is this different from a normal policeman just going about his business? He could also draw a gun at any moment, he could do so with not much provocation. It seems to me you are missing a part of your own narrative here.
Well, the example that spawned the discussion is the idea of a person starving and tax being levied to stave off the starvation. The tax payer is less free because they lose money, and they have no choice but to lose money. That's a loss of negative freedom, since the tax payer is forced by the tax collector directly to give up their money. The starving person, however, is now more free because they have choices other than dying, which was their only choice otherwise. This is a positive freedom, since it's about what they are able to do, even though there is no agent capable of guilt whose fault it is that they were starving. Nobody was directly oppressing them, but they were still not free to do anything. The latter freedom is certainly greater in scope, making it the more important one in the eyes of whatshallwecall'em non-libertarians. Some libertarians argue that when we talk about freedom, only the former should be discussed, basically because it comes directly from the government, and an agent like the government should first and foremost be concerned with the effects of their own actions.
The only things you would not be able to do in such a society would be those that your resources or physical self dictate are possible, but that would always be the case. I would not think that such a society would be desirable for anyone but the elite and indeed only they would be truly free. I would say that true freedom can only really exist within your own mind and even that might be said to be constrained by your imagination. In society freedom will always be a compromise and I would suggest always should be. Hence my assertion that we only ever really discuss what restrictions should be placed on freedom.
