Hacker News Reader

Comment by ageek123 | Hacker News Reader

I think they meant get from the government (unless you believe in an extreme collectivist view of the economy and think all wealth fundamentally belongs to the government, not the person who received it through voluntary transactions with other people).

View on HN

One of the only convincing rebuttals to the statement "taxation is theft" I've heard relies on the fact that the government is the entity that bootstraps the very concept of private property as we know it. Without this guarantee of private property, there is no way to accumulate wealth for an individual in the first place.

The main problem with that argument is that it's based on false "facts". Private property predates government; it wasn't created by government. People have to actually have stuff worth taking before the predatory protection rackets will appear to prey on them.

Afaik governments emerged during the transition from hunter gathering to agriculture. Hunter gatherers have some concept of private property, but it's in no way the same extent as in modern society. For one, hunter gatherers wouldn't really even think about owning land or animals.

Robbers can take stuff from you or governments can take stuff from you and build public goods with the money.

> think all wealth fundamentally belongs to the government

Not the government, no.

The government created the systems (the markets, the laws, etc) that allowed that person to acquire their wealth. Fundamentally there is no way they would acquire it without this government. Most rich people's wealth is stored in legal fictions back-propped by the legal system they live in.

That’s why I singled out remote workers. The governments who created the systems that allow people to acquire wealth are different from the ones that collect taxes. The government that allows my employer to exist could invade the one I pay taxes to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com