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In this scenario, the consensus will inevitably trend to zero :)
This is a point of personal annoyance, because I have Democrat relatives who always say that they don't mind paying taxes and yet they never pay extra.
How amazing it is that the amount they were forced to pay just so happened to be the amount they wanted to pay?
Everyone who doesn't answer "0%" literally has Stockholm Syndrome.
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The first two sentences of your post are clearly right -- sort of like Christians who, miraculous to see, happen to be born into Christianity. What a funny coincidence that 99.9% of people who achieve this enlightened state happen to be enculturated into it! And how sad that the billions of people who adopt the non-Christian religions of their parents can't see how deluded they are! (People of other religions do the same, I just haven't endured so many conversations with them about it.)
But your final line is so clearly wrong that I think I must have misunderstood it. You think that anyone who believes that taxes can be legitimate -- that they would willingly pay some non-zero portion of them -- has Stockholm syndrome? Is that literally what you're contending?
If so, well, it's technically irrefutable so there will be no convincing you if you're taking a hard line on this one. But I can tell you that I think some amount of taxes are warranted, and it's not because I'm brainwashed, it's because I think there is non-zero value to society being a thing, and paying to support the collective interest of that society, even if you're grumpy about some of the things that society collectively warrants and supports.
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If they were paid voluntarily they wouldn't be taxes. That's called a donation or a price.
If you side with the people who are expropriating you, then yes you have Stockholm Syndrome (and I'm sorry to have to break that to you).
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And I'm sorry to have to break to you that certain ways of organizing collective action don't map easily onto the 'price' model, or the 'express everything in terms of property rights' model; and (related) that not every valuable thing in life is expressable in terms of prices.
I'm even sorrier to have to break to you that these issues have been wrestled with, extensively, over the course of the last few hundred years, or even the the last couple millennia. Your response suggests some sad things about your relationship to reality, and how much you actually care about the truth.
That's the thing that I am, honestly, sad to break to you, and to everyone else to whom it applies.
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You imply that everyone has deeply considered taxes and agreed to allow the current system. That’s patently false.
Representation through elections is a farce. Reps simply vote based on their self interest, and get re-elected based on their donors’ spending, not on who the people would want absent propaganda campaigns. Everything is manufactured consent.
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You imply that everyone has deeply considered taxes and agreed to allow the current system. That’s patently false.
I didn't imply that. The assertion was that a person couldn't possibly accept the role of taxes in society without being deluded. That's what's false, and it's trivially false.
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The assertion was that a person couldn't possibly accept the role of taxes in society without being deluded
False. The assertion is that you can't "accept the role of taxes in society" without siding with your rulers; and I stand by that.
If you champion someone else's right to violently expropriate you, then you have been brainwashed; and, again, I'm sorry.
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Get well soon
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Oh god...the "I'm happy to pay taxes" crowd like Peter McCormack really don't get it.
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Enlighten me. I don't see how society could function without some amount of taxes.
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Well, the safest place I am on a weekly basis with private security, and the second is my home, and finally a mall with private security; not only that, they have the best price to performance ratios of places I am in. The worst price to performance ratios, and places I am most likely to be subject to violence are in fact those run by the police. I could thus argue that we would all be safer if private entities controlled all property and were responsible for safety. So, the need for the investment is omnipresent, but the person collecting, the effectiveness, the price, and morality of the situation are all subject to being better when provides by the market.
There are a few key issues people start to question like this, who funds the courts, who defends the border, who regulates food and drugs. I can assure you that there are answers for all of those to be found in the market as a series of services, contracts, bilateral agreements and the such; most of these you already engage in already without even quite realizing it. When you pick up a pair of ANSI safety goggles or buy kosher food for instance, those are private regulatory agencies that ensure the quality of the product. Many contracts already outline private arbitration, because settling things in court is aweful; if you have an issue with a product you order for instance, the company does not rely on government arbitration to refund or replace your purchase.
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Honestly, the burden of proof should be on the people advocating violent expropriation, but here's a decent place to start anyway: https://mises.org/library/economics-and-ethics-private-property-0
If you have more specific topics in mind, let me know, and I'll send you some more resources. Society really doesn't require violent expropriation.
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Yes. But ask yourself why. Because we don't have choice.
If taxes were truly voluntary the state would have to convince people to pay for services. They say they are voluntary now but the threat of violence is the cost. If you remove that the state is just like every other service provider. They have to convince people they provide value.
I used to think this was crazy but honestly it is more sane than the alternative. We struggle with status quo bias. No one knows exactly how everything would work in a stateless society or in a society with voluntary governance organizations but many smaller more focused examples have been tried and worked well.
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It's worse than just status quo bias, because there never seems to be the same concern about the state making more "services" involuntary.
I really do think it's a form of Stockholm Syndrome: people have internalized the preferences of their rulers and prioritize them over their own.
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