re: #151 KGxvi

It all goes back to the idea that taxation is theft, and taxation of income is theft of labor. It’s bullshit, mostly because it fails to recognize that without taxation and the state, there is no ability to form a contract, and those with more power/resources/followers can simply take your labor.

The glibertarian movement likes to think that all problems come from government. They completely miss Hamilton’s points about ordered liberty and the absence of government not being liberty but instead license, or what we’d call anarchy. They’re the sorts that read Locke and thought “yeah, that makes sense” and never bothered to read Hobbes… or to realize the answer is probably somewhere between the two points.

There was a time I really thought taxation was theft. I was probably 10 or so at the time, and this conviction lasted only until first contact with a reasonable counterpoint.

Now I simply ask: When was the last time a thief took from you a fraction of what you have, according to rates ultimately set by a representative democratic process?