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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

How are those roads you're driving on? Did you go to school? What about the police force, did they ever do anything useful for you?

In most countries you'd have free access to medical assistance as well and quite possibly a state pension when you're over 65 as well as if you become disabled or simply out of work.

Taxes are not always spent efficiently which is a real problem and plenty of times they are used to be spent on things we don't actually need but on the whole you can't really argue that all taxes are theft.

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Do you mean anyone stealing money from you and then using some percent of them to provide services for you is not a thief? This explanation do not explain why non-government entity doing the same thing is still a thief.

Or a protection racket

Which non-government agency is stealing money from you as "tax"?

Genuinely interested, as where I live the only tax taken from our wages is federal tax.

That is neither what the poster meant, nor what they said.

The poster did not state that taxes are theft, nor that they are stolen from you. Stealing is taking without the right to take, or the permission of the individual.

Whilst you may not like paying taxes or agree with them, I am fairly sure the government has the right to take them.

Not the other poster, but I am always bothered by the fact that, because I live in NH and work in MA, I have to pay MA state income tax. Now, because I DO use the roads there, and in the case of an emergency in that state I'd make use of the emergency responders I'm not completely opposed to paying any taxes to them. But to be taxed at the same rate as a resident does bother me. I cannot make use of public schools nor do I count as a resident for the purposes for in state tuition for MA's state universities. I wouldn't count this as "stealing" but I could definitely see how it would feel like that.

I'm also bothered by the fact that I am taxed by a legislature that I cannot vote on and I'd question their right to tax me without representation.

Work from home in NH, and have your employer pay you there through an HR firm like Trinet.

Society as a whole agrees that taxes are generally a good idea. In today's complicated democratic systems it may be harder and more tedious to prove how exactly, but the reason taxes are levied is that society does not want to change this.

Society is just a bunch of people. They can agree about something among themselves, but they can't force that agreement on others.

Imagine you are in a bar with friends, and they agreed, that you should pay the bill. Can they collect your money by force? Clearly the answer is no.

A liberal democratic Western society has law. That is what is missing from you and your friends out at the bar. Just by being born into society, you have to agree to be governed by that explicit system of law. This, now, includes income taxes, policing, etc.

To your example, specifically, if you and your friends had an explicit system of law governing your night on the town, then yes, they could agree that you should pay the bill and collect the money by force.

Being born into system can't be an explanation, because it can explain slavery too: by being born into slavery society you have to agree to be governed by that system of law.

You don't have to agree to it, because it doesn't matter. You don't have a choice so you are in slavery.

In modern states, you don't have a lot of choices either. But at least, even though you are "forced" into a society, you eventually get the right to participate politically.

That is a strawman argument if ever I saw one. Nobody outside of "the society" is forced to pay taxes, even if membership is not completely voluntary. So yes, the majority should be able to force their will on the minority, within reason.

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