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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Taxation is theft
Message-ID: <767@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 15:22:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.767
Posted: Fri Sep 20 15:22:40 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 16:36:56 EDT
References: <3700@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 26

In article <3700@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
> In article <762@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
> >I could emigrate to another nation tomorrow.  Upon changing my citizenship
> >(by renunciation or accepting other citizenship), I can cut any claims to
> >taxes on my future earnings, conscription, or other requirement by the US
> >government.
> 
> Mike's argument: by throwing away his income from sources in this
> country, he can prevent the government from stealing part of it.
> Well, Mike, if I burn my furniture as firewood it will prevent
> your breaking into my house and stealing it.  That does not make 
> your doing so the less theft.

What a dishonest misrepresentation.  I need not "throw away" anything:
I can liquidate properties and ownerships, and take my profits with me,
and buy anew in my new nation.  I can exchange my current job for another.

Earnings from within a nation are not much different than any other sort of
social contract.  They are analogous to sharecropping, where you pay the
landowner a portion of your crop for the use of his land.  You can switch
to any other landowner freely.  Thus, taxation on earnings is just another
non-coercive social contract that is compatible with libertarianism, despite
JoSH's misrepresentations of it as "theft".
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh