Uncle Sam is Like the Uncle that Molested You When You Were 12 Years Old

Statism, the belief in authority and that certain people living by a separate moral code from the rest of us is the way to a better society, is a death cult. Government is the biggest mass murdering gang on earth and its supporters either ignore this fact, make excuses for it, or deny it. For the non-libertarians out there, the following is a post explaining why taxation is not just theft, but very destructive and evil.

There are two ways and only two ways to get something from someone and to get someone to do what you want: 1) Persuasion or 2) Force. One can either rape or engage in lovemaking. While the degrees of coercion may differ, in principle there are only two ways people can interact with each other. On a voluntary basis, or in a hegemonic "relationship." The market is simply the name given to the aggregate network of voluntary exchange and interaction. In a free market, in order for a firm to get money they must persuade someone to fork it over. The only way to profit in the market is to provide value for value.

The problem with taxation, is not only that it is just theft, but that having a firm, especially one that monopolizes in the use of force, get guaranteed revenue is very dangerous. A guaranteed income, irrespective of job performance, encourages abuse and violence since there is no penalty for being wrong. Anarchists are often told that we are naive in our view in human nature and that men cannot be trusted to govern himself. Quite the opposite is true. It is naive to think that a group of people who lack any real competition, get income by compulsion instead of persuasion, and have tremendous power won't abuse it. An anarchist is not a utopian belief that government is outdated and that humans have transcended and are now capable of governing themselves, but a person who is not ignorant in history and sees the rivers of blood that result from having politicians be entrusted with such awesome power and responsibility. In the words of Edward Abbey, “Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”

The problem with taxation is that it is compulsory and therefore the money which is extracted from the state's subjects ends up benefiting the political class, where the price is broken bones and lives destroyed. Imagine for a second, how many people would wage war if they had to pay the full cost of war. How many people would engage in wars if the money to pay people to risk their lives came out of their own pocket? If people had to risk their own life fighting instead of drafting some poor stooge who just happens to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Imagine all the people in prison for victimless crimes. How many people would use their own money to pay to incarcerate them? How many people would support heroin being illegal, if the full burden of paying for such enforcement fell solely on those who supported such a law? The real evil of taxation is not just that it is theft, but that the money is used to cause violent destruction against peaceful people in ways the money would have never been used, if the people obtaining the money had to actually earn it.