Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh 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