2021年6月30日 · Defining theft as wrongly taking someone's property, some will simply argue that taxation is not theft because it's the right thing to do. For instance, a utilitarian might think taxation is not theft because it maximizes utility. There's much more to say but that's what I remember off the top of my head.

2016年5月27日 · The way you've been responding to this argument appears most similar to (3) - admitting that taxation might be theft, but that there are some overriding moral concerns which justify this particular instance of theft (in a similar way that grabbing a child might be coercion, but there is an overriding moral concern when doing so is necessary to ...

2016年12月31日 · Taxation pays for the services that we all use and deem necessary for a civilized society. Police, sewers, firefighters, roads, utilities, the military are all things that we need and are provided for by our taxes. We can argue that money is wasted and that government should be reformed but taxation isn't theft, it's paying for those services.

2014年3月18日 · Anyway the upshot of calling taxation theft if it really is, is that no one would deny that we should have as little theft as possible, and so there would be even less excuse for taxes to be made as low as possible, which would be good for society as a whole.

2020年3月16日 · Modern day "taxation is theft" rhetoric is focused around the idea that the government is doing far more than these people want it too, and thus must tax far more than "necessary" to provide essential services. To these people, the government is no longer performing legitimate functions, and an illegitimate government's actions are not ...

2022年4月25日 · "Taxation is theft" is a rhetorical device to correlate in peoples minds the archetypal example of theft (man breaks in wearing a mask and robs you) with taxation, which has elements of coercion, but is explicitly not the same as someone breaking into your house and stealing your jewelry.

That taxation is theft is an ethical claim of a deontological sort, so appeals to consequentialist ethics entirely miss the point and merely demonstrate a lack of familiarity with philosophical ethics. Further, Michael Huemer has considered the above arguments and shown they have no …

So, taxation is theft in the same vein that all chocolate is a particular frog that existed. In that the definitions don't match, but strong feelings might be enough for someone to disregard what the word "definition" means and then just say whatever. I bought a coffee last weekend. Starbucks stole my money, though, because by definition it's ...

2019年11月12日 · One problem with saying “taxation is theft” is that some people make the semantic argument that it’s not theft because it’s legal, and the definition of theft is “an illegal taking”. Taxation is theft in the same way people say abortion is murder. It’s not literally theft, but it’s immoral in the same way.

2021年10月2日 · Taxation is indeed theft, but the far greater theft is what capitalists and corporations take from us daily. Taxation is just a drop in the bucket compared to the value that capital steals. So, yeah, while the line is true, it's kind of a "missing the forest for the trees" thing.