Is taxation voluntary?

[snjmom]

I am little confused about how you can believe that government gives us a free market.

By making it possible to enforce contracts and collect damages or inflict punishment for fraud. A black market is not a free market.

A black market is an underground market, correct? So wouldn't it be free, beyond government control?

Tell that to any Russian sitting in the gulag for selling Levi's. What is your recourse against fraud in a black market? If you contract for 50 pairs of Jordache and receive 25 pairs of Wal-mart brand, at what court to you apply for enforcement? You cannot operate a free market without the protections that government offers.

 

[JBeukema]

This is what liberals always get backward. Government does not exist to protect its citizens, it exists to allow them to protect themselves and each other.

I am little confused about how you can believe that government gives us a free market. A free market is one without any government involvement at all, like the black market that thrived in the West Bank while Israel and Egypt blockaded almost everything. The second the government gets involved in a market it is no longer a free market.

This is what people always get messed up. As soon as we begin thinking of the government as distinct from the People, we're in trouble..

You don't think of them as distinct?

Only in instances of tyranny.


government of the People, by the People, for the People is the only valid government

 

[JBeukema]

This is what liberals always get backward. Government does not exist to protect its citizens, it exists to allow them to protect themselves and each other.

I am little confused about how you can believe that government gives us a free market. A free market is one without any government involvement at all, like the black market that thrived in the West Bank while Israel and Egypt blockaded almost everything. The second the government gets involved in a market it is no longer a free market.

This is what people always get messed up. As soon as we begin thinking of the government as distinct from the People, we're in trouble..

You think the government of China and the people of China are the same? Or the government of Iran and the people of Iran.

I don't believe most of the people living within those regions enjoy any valid government.

 

[snjmom]

You think the government of China and the people of China are the same? Or the government of Iran and the people of Iran.

I'd say that they certainly aren't involved in self-government.



Yet.

 

[QUENTIN]

Taxes are coercive, not voluntary. They are however not theft because they come back to the taxpayer in the form of services they utilize and depend on. It would be theft if it was coercive and then you never saw it again. You see it, you benefit from it, it's just been transformed by the time it gets back to you from money into a service.

Whether all those services are beneficial and the myriad things taxes are utilized for that aren't, well, there's the rub.