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Comment by refraincomment | Hacker News Reader

I enter all of these interactions voluntarily

I choose the family, I choose the job, I choose what I consume and where I live

Unfortunately I can't walk away from being stolen 50% of my revenues every year.

I don’t think you voluntarily chose the city or country you were born in. Taxation is like paying rent. Would you use this argument to say that you get to squat rent free in an apartment because you were brought there after birth by your parents and you never signed a lease? The only reason you don’t think about this is because the apartment complex is small. The larger the organization, the more likely it is that you were born there. And you just have to realize that this organization doesn’t “owe you” anything other than the rights it has agreed to guarantee all its citizens.

If you want to find a jurisdiction that will be willing to enforce your property rights above every other right of all its citizens, you’re welcome to try to immigrate there, leaving your family and others or taking them with you. Maybe the Honduran cities are such a jurisdiction, or the high seas, but you’ll probably find they are not. And the jurisdiction you are moving from has no obligation to let you move any arbitrary amount of money out of it.

You don’t really choose where you live unilaterally. Wherever you go, people have already formed organizations and have jurisdiction with laws, and by moving there, you have to agree to abide by those laws. If you have ever traveled, you’ll know this is the case!

And no, it’s not “stealing” when it’s according to the laws of the jurisdiction. And furthermore, stealing implies that it’s your property to begin with. You should look up the difference between Sovereign/Alloidal title and Fee Simple. Read up on property laws. Your revenues are simply numbers in the account of a banking system chartered by your jurisdiction.

I know, I understand. Societies become mafias and they start extorting high-income individuals to guarantee the peace and the welfare.

I just applaud fair countries that don't extort their own citizens.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. High-wealth individuals need organizations to enforce their property rights. At the same time, we have gravitated towards democratically managed organizations when it comes to running our cities and states. That is why, for example, there are rent control laws, easements and many other restrictions on what you can do with your property. It’s what the majority of the people want, although the few who amassed a great deal of the currency may not.

My question is ... why does any organization owe you to enforce your monopoly ownership of resources and let you unilaterally exclude others from using them? Is it better for society to let high “net worth” individuals to centrally plan where the resources will be diverted, and at a whim move arbitrary amounts out of a town, emptying it of jobs and resources?

Let me put it in stark terms. Should a city allow a few individuals to buy up arbitrary amounts of its fresh water reservoirs, removing them from being collectively managed? Once that they “privately own them” should the city allow the individuals to pollute them for profit, subsequently moving out and taking the profits from externalizing the costs to the people living there? It may result in “more revenue” to the city in terms of job creation, and cheaper goods, but can do you agree there is a trade-off?

Okay, you claim 50% taxation is beneficial for all. It's highly debatable.

But the point it's that taxes should be phrased and understood for what they are, a whitewashed extortion. It has no proportion at all with costs of running a rule of law society. Be grateful that we take just 50% from you because we could take everything!

Just replace the word “taxation” with “rents” and imagine that each city is owned by an individual and it’s their own private property. Suddenly this becomes OK under anarcho capitalism, right? Such private cities exist, eg Walt Disney World.

So now, imagine that each city’s owner chose to “go public” and sell shares of the city to each citizen equally, and they put in place bylaws. So now you have a democratic society.

In fact that is how cities like Boca Raton came to be owned by the residents. How is paying taxes to the city of Boca any different in your view than paying rent to locate your business in Walt Disney World?

Well you paint a very gloomy dystopian picture, with scarcity and fighting for every square inch.

This issue is present in any political system, even full egalitarianism, increase population by an arbitrary amount to reduce land per citizen to an epsilon.

Provided you are a good neighbour, it will always be possible to find space to rent at the marginal cost, without a rent-seeking political class.

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