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Comment by boie0025 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know where you reside, but I always find it interesting when people in the US refer to taxation as thievery. In a representative democracy, the "government" is the people[^1]. Don't like taxes? Rally support behind yourself, and run for office.

[^1]: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_trans... see: preamble.

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I don't think your opponent believes that the US system is a "representative democracy" or a "democracy" or whatever it is that lets N-1 people take arbitrary stuff from 1 person. Your "rally support" solution would not fix the situation.

You're forgetting that that 1 person is also getting stuff from N-1 others - his freedom, safety, absence of famine/war/disease, ... It is simply illusionary to expect a person to be really well-off if everybody else around him is dirt poor. Yes, there were rich people throughout history, but today the average US/European citizen has better healthcare than anyone 20 years ago.

I don't think that it's fair to say that any "democratic" type of government lets any number of people take anything from any 1 (or any arbitrary grouping) person, it's that the self governed group decides that the cost of existing is paid collectively. And rallying support, from my understanding, is the only way to fix any situation in any type of "democracy".

[edit] More directly to your point, it's irrelevant what anyone thinks is "letting" government "steal", the "thievery" is enabled by laws which are created by elected representatives, therefore "the people" (aka government) is directly responsible for taxation.

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