> the anti-taxers want others to pay the cost of living in the modern world
This simply isn't true. Anti-taxers want to choose where their dollars go - each and every one.
This simply isn't true. Anti-taxers want to choose where their dollars go - each and every one.
In none of these cases--paying for a car where you'll take out the seats, paying for a meal where you don't get the mushrooms, paying taxes for government services you don't agree with--is the payment suddenly "theft".
The difference is consent. People consent to paying for those meals or the car. But nobody ever consented to taxation. That's all part of the "social contract" we're born into.
You're right that initial decision of consent was made for you by someone else--it was made for you by your parents, when you were a child and they had custody of you.
As an adult, you are free to revoke your consent by leaving the country and ceasing to enjoy the benefits its government provides.
(And as for "nobody consented to taxation," I consented, and continue to do so, because I like contributing to the country where I live and where I'm a citizen.)
Even then, it would be basically impossible to avoid benefiting in some way without leaving the country altogether. There will always have to be at least some "core" services that everyone has to pay into, but that doesn't mean techlibertarian's idea totally lacks merit. Maybe some things should be partially opt-outable. Maybe people would start to question whether America really needs to spend half of its tax revenue on the military; maybe there would be more pressure to get some of the presently useless (and very expensive) 2.3 million prisoners back into the workforce.