Taxation is absolutely theft.
Taxation is our current system is not voluntary, and withholding the payment of taxes will eventually end up with you in a cage. It is confiscation of property with the threat of violence. This is theft.
The argument that taxation "is the cost of a polite society" does not work. As violently taking property is not polite, and if taxation is something we all agreed to with a "social contract", then it should be voluntary.
Which if was it was voluntary it wouldn't even be called taxes.
Exactly.
Is everything that is taken from you involuntarily theft? It's easy to come up with both mild and extreme counter-example, so there should be something besides agreement that makes it theft.
For instance, if you have acquired some possessions through criminal activity, I don't think society needs your agreement to take them away from you. In my book theft is when something that is rightfully yours is rightfully taken away from you. So for taxation to qualify as theft, it needs to satisfy both requirements. How do you prove that all possessions and finance that you might have gained control of as part of society is actually rightfully yours and not something that society has lent you? Do government-issued money belong rightfully to you without any need of taxation to support their upkeep? And does the government or society not have a right to tax you on your possessions and/or usage of goods and resources it has provided to you.
In a way, one could claim that you have been provided access to a free market and relative safety that is maintained by the government and taxes are a fee that you are charged for accessing those services. Of course, the caveat that you don't really have a way to opt-out of the system is apparent, but does this really turn this arguably reasonable fee into theft?
You did answer your own question. The government owns nothing. It creates monopolies that it controls, forces you to use its service, and pay for it with your property.
The government does not "maintain" a free market. It regulates the market, making it not free.
"Criminal activity" is also a loaded word, and would need to be defined. As buying an ICO in the United States is considered "criminal activity".
The question is how and if society would function without it. How could the market remain free without any regulation or maintenance? Is there a practical way to get there? A perfect free market without any government to enforce some rules or justice is either a very bad state of affairs for society (if you look at it practically) or a utopia (if you think it would the magic to solve all our problems).
If the government doesn't own anything, how does that lead to taxation being unrighful?
Yep, each crime needs definition, but does the word being loaded affect the hypothetical example I gave? Whatever crime is, there is some crime and one could have committed it to gain property and that property might be rightfully taken away from them, isn't that so?
Wow, really?! I didn't know that! Is that really the case?
A free market is a market without regulation. What type of regulation and maintenance are you referring to? Do you look at the market today as a free market? Many things on the "black market" would be legal under a true free market; drugs, prostitution, ext.
Taxation is involuntary as you stated. Removing someone's property without their consent (threat of violence) is theft. If the government doesn't own anything, which it doesn't, than anything it gain it took from someone else. Since its way of obtaining those funds are done under threat of force, the government is just a power source used to force people to give up their property to a centralized power.
Yes, if a crime is committed (fraud for example), that property was obtained through theft itself, and it should be returned to the rightful owner....which would not be the government. As it owns nothing.
The argument that the "government prints the money" does not mean that the government has ownership. It simple created a monopoly on exchange of currency, forcing people to be paid and trade in its fiat currency. However, the wealth created for which the person was paid the fiat currency was created by a private individual or business.
I believe certain ICO purchases are considered a securities issue. EOS for example.
I think the current market has it's problems and while it is not absolutely free, it still qualifies as free. I would say a prosperous free market will have a very hard time existing without regulation and oversight as there are some limitations that are needed to ensure fairness, prosperity and safety.
For instance, you need a way to make contracts enforcible which comes with regulations, limitations and some form of government body that can undo wrongs and issue penalties. Additionally, there are things that could be arguably unsafe or immoral to trade freely and while current regulations might be viewed as too stringent, having no regulation whatsoever comes with its own caveats and dangers.
Technically speaking, it does. All governments own things and some claim ownership of the natural resources of the countries they govern. Supposedly the citizens of the country own those things and the government is kind of a proxy.
Sure, abiding by any laws is not voluntary and that includes both crimes most people agree are a problem and taxation. Can you propose a system that would work better? If abiding by the laws was voluntary, the laws would be mute and unjust acts hurting people would easily become rampant as they will be left unpunished, isn't that the case?
Please notice that this is not the argument I was or am making. I'm saying that the value created by the private individual or business was created as part of an organized economy with publicly funded infrastructure, law enforcement and some level of stability provided by a government. Can you propose a system that would work equally well without taxation? Can you propose a system that would work equally well without any government?
I think this is the best system we've managed to come up with so far and since it requires taxation to function and all participants benefit from having this system in place, taxation should not be viewed as theft but as a necessity and as a logical part of the so-called social contract.