Not long ago I wrote about taxation. I wrote,
Anyone who is capable of logical thought and has seriously considered taxation in relation to other forms of theft will come to the conclusion that either taxation is theft or taxation is just some other thing that they refuse to call theft.
A few years ago I had a bit of an awakening. I started to see how deeply shared lies have become in our culture. What I mean is that there are things that if pressed most people will admit are not true yet we rarely hear people admit this. They speak and accept the lie. I think we do a lot of pretending. We pretend that taxation is not theft. During this awakening I decided that I would no longer lie to myself. I would no longer use terms that are psyops. Phrases like "public schools". They are government schools. Why don't we call them that? My guess is that its because public sounds nicer. I'm not gonna be a jerk about it, but when I am using words I'm not going to use the language of propaganda.
There were several commenters objecting to my post about taxation but none of them actually had any logic or reason to contradict the statement that "taxation is theft". It all sounds like coping to me. It sounds like discomfort with the truth. They were all people rationalizing this form of theft. They were saying we have to have taxes because the current system will fail without it. How will we fund our military defense. I've read the arguments from anarcho-capitalists and they make sense to me.
They point out that in a truly free society insurance companies would likely fill many of the functions of governance that states fill today. Defense agencies would be employed by these companies. As we have seen in the last two centuries the most prosperous nations are those with the most free markets. There are other factors and I'm a aware of them but this is the short answer. My broader point is that to say that taxation is a necessary evil to maintain the status quo isn't wrong. I agree with you. I just reject that the status quo is the best we can do. I think we should be honest about what taxation is and how evil the status quo is.
When I hear people justifying taxation in this way it sounds like the same logic that was used to justify slavery. When you read the debates from the time prior to the war between the states you will see this come up. Today we rightly reject this reasoning for maintaining slavery. Slavery is morally wrong and even if its abolition risked harm to the status quo it should still be abolished. Today we know that not only is slavery morally evil, as economists have demonstrated it is actually less efficient and productive for societies as a whole.
It is my contention that we have not arrived at the ideal state of human organization. It is my contention that taxation is but one form of paying for the costs of governance. I also contend that until individuals stop lying to themselves we can never be truly free as a people. Taxation is theft. It is extortion. It is slavery. We should stop lying about it. We should stop pretending the state is good. Yes, some states are worse than others. That doesn't make the US government good. It makes it less bad. I believe we can do better. I believe that with more individual freedom we could be even more prosperous.
Democracy is but one for of human organization. Monarchists opposed it and some still do. In Democracy: The God That Failed Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes a strong case for democracy leading to larger and larger wars. One reason for this is taxation. Because democracy is the allusion of government by the people it is easier to psyop the masses into believing that taxation is not theft. It is much easier for a subject of a monarch to look at the king with disdain for his taxation to fund his wars. It is much harder to see the truth when you believe that democratic governments are "the people". I don't have all the answers but I personally refuse to lie to myself and accept taxation as morally just, or a necessary evil. It is not.
The state is evil. The state has a monopoly on violence. As I said, not all states are equal. Only a fool would believe that the DPRK is better place to live than the US. That said, we will never rid ourselves of a problem until we recognize it as such. We will never evolve to become a more just society if we do not recognize the evil that is the state.
But, if we are really gonna talk about lies we tell ourselves lets not stop at taxes. If you and I are honest, we know that the state is not really preventing us from doing most things we aren't currently doing. It is us. We are our own worst enemies. But if you are a liberty minded person it can become a crutch to blame the state for every ill in society and by connection why you haven't reached your full potential. Don't fall into this trap. If you live in a relatively free and prosperous nation you have more opportunities than most humans that ever lived. I am writing this to myself as well. I need to reach my full potential. Stop making excuses and do thing things I know I want to do. The things that will make an impact on my life and those that I care about.
Tell the truth to yourself. Stop speaking lies. It is corrosive.