Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site hou5a.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!hogpc!houti!ariel!hou5f!hou5g!hou5h!hou5a!trc From: trc@hou5a.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Voltaxes and Theftaxes Message-ID: <536@hou5a.UUCP> Date: Mon, 12-Mar-84 18:06:46 EST Article-I.D.: hou5a.536 Posted: Mon Mar 12 18:06:46 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Mar-84 19:40:06 EST Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ Lines: 56 Reposted - sorry if you see a repeat ------------------------------------- Phil Polli has taken up the cause "taxation is moral" - IE it is not theft. I agree that taxation is not intrinsically theft. People can form a political system and agree to voluntarily pay a tax to support the role they have agreed the "state" should take. Taxes become theft when the system forces people to pay them. Of course, maybe one should *define* taxes as involuntary, in which case, I would call them intrinsically theft. To clarify discussion, I suggest we use "voltax" to indicate any "taxation" that is properly voluntary, "theftax" for non-voluntary taxes, and "taxation" for the general class. Even if a political system declares its taxes to be voluntary in principle, if the system uses force to obtain taxes, the tax is a theftax. (Theft is the use of force to take someone else's property - IE without their voluntary consent. BTW, force and violence are not the same thing, and I really do mean force, rather than just violence.) I do think that taxes in the US are theftaxes. If I did not know that I would be tossed in jail, or effectively exiled, I would not be paying as much tax as I do, to support so many government programs that I am opposed to. It is this use of force that makes US taxes theftaxes. The only leverage a political system should have over people in causing them to pay taxes is the possibility of loss of the benefits of belonging to that system. This is analogous to a business refusing to provide a service to someone who refuses to pay for it. Citizenship *could* properly be made conditional upon payment of taxes. Polli might say "If you wont pay taxes, get out" - which means essentially the same thing, but applied specifically to *government* types of political systems. A government holds power over a geographic area, so that to "get out" really means being forced to give up one's hearth and homeland - hardly voluntary. The only way to avoid this problem is to either make taxes truly voluntary, or to give up the concept of a geographically based political system - since by letting people form or join other political systems without "moving out", the geographic monopoly on force of a government would be violated. I think that it might be interesting to discuss how the US tax system could be converted to pure "voltaxes". While it really doesnt seem like a necessary function of government, we could assume for the moment that no other problems would arise from allowing people that wanted to to designate that they be taxed more and the money given to the world's hungry, or whatever. The questions that we *need* to answer are - What *should* be paid for by everyone? How can we get them to pay for it without using force, and without some spoiling it by "free-loading" (that could encourage future changes back towards theftaxes)? (Ayn Rand proposed that the government charge a fee for every contract that the involved parties wanted enforced, in proportion to the amount of money involved.) How is spending of the tax money to be controlled? Could whatever proposal we come up with be made into law, within the reality of our current political system? How? Tom Craver hou5a!trc