The problem with the assumption that tax is theft is that there's either a moral or legal right to pre-tax income. There isn't. The legal argument is clear, the law clearly prescribes your don't have a right to your entire pre-tax income.

Morally is incoherent too, because it assumes the market automatically leads to just outcomes. It quite clearly doesn't because economic transactions are representative of relations of power, not moral worth.

Governments have always given themselves the legal right to appropriate the fruits of their subject’s labor. The law clearly prescribes this, yes, and no one is arguing otherwise. So much for the legal argument.

The moral argument is that it is wrong to take something from another against his will. You either believe this or you do not. If you believe it is right for the government to take from another against his will, then you believe it is right to take from another against his will. It’s actually quite coherent.

It's not nitpicking, it's central to the whole issue. What constitutes property is defined by law.

20% (or whatever) of your wages legally belongs to the government because it is defined by law that it does. That's absolutely no different to the way in which the remaining 80% belongs to you - because it is defined as such by law.

You want to claim one is 'robbery' but the other not when they are of no different status at all.

This is more casuistry. I’m going to have to ignore it.

The answer is “no” by virtue of each specimen occupying its own space and time. Your copy is someone else.

What is this, an interview? or can you only speak in questions? Do I have to speak in questions too?

What can better avoid an argument than quibbling and nitpicking about the choice of words?

The problem with common/public goods and services like street lights, police or army is that anyone can freely benefit from them. It is practically impossible to exclude anyone from their use. That's why they are paid for with taxes. You can't buy them voluntarily like you would buy a car.

That is a problem, and because it is immoral to plunder another’s money against his will, it needs fixing in my opinion.

Given for free? When it comes to government, no goods and services are free. I would settle for piecemeal reforms that trend in the direction of liberty. I think a voluntary system where you pay only for the services you need would suffice.

The whole way in which you say about what philosophers speaking about, including self and consciousness, as arising from the the body is why I am raising the whole topic of having a physical body, and what this means in terms of experience.

Yes, but I was trying to go further than that and say experience, self and consciousness are the body. I wouldn’t say they arise from it, like a plant would from soil. I don’t think emergentism is accurate on the simple basis that absolutely nothing of the sort emerges from the body. That’s why I think we need a philosophy of the body.

Because that's how we vote on stuff like taxes, but you see taxation as a denial of your liberty.

Not even a strand of chewing gum exists between the premise and the conclusion.

I am asking to what extent the whole experience of having a unique, individual body is of significance as a social and personal factor in affecting our experiences and understanding, as a basis for understanding everything.

The body is our experience and understanding. It is our mind, our consciousness, our soul. It is the self, the identity, the free will. Much of what philosophers speak about is the body, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Well, you can vote for political parties that propose less common goods and less taxes to finance them but I guess you see democracy as a threat to your liberty too. I wonder what alternative would work for you.

Why would I see democracy as a threat to liberty? I wager you just threw that in there without thinking about it much.

What a stupid thing to say. If it's legal, it's not robbery is it? That's the point. Robbery is taking something you don't legally have a right to take.

Robbery is taking someone’s property by force or by threat of force. You can employ whatever euphemism you choose, but your objection is silly.

I suspect that if I mention something, like fly fishing, you’ll go and talk about laws against over-fishing, nets, licensing and whatnot. No, I get it: government is everywhere. It is virtually inescapable.

Statists like to mention roads but never war, famine, slavery, censorship, gulags, genocide. You will pass off the softest of despotism as necessary (because without them we wouldn’t have roads), while the hard ones needn’t be mentioned at all.

Yeah, because economy works when stuff is given for free and people pay for it voluntarily.

Proponents of slavery argued the economy would collapse with abolition. Slavery worked, sure, but it was evil. My point is, the idea that taxation works is not much of an argument when it is premised on the denial of someone’s liberty and the appropriation of the fruits of his labor.

Who should pay for street lights when anybody can freely benefit from them?

Those who want to do so voluntarily.

Each of you, try to identify something, anything in your lives that you want, need, or benefit from, that government, i.e., taxes, have had nothing to do with. I will be surprised if you can come up with even one single thing.

I want the government to stay out of my way, and at most to defend my rights and liberty.

It’s difficult to identify such a thing because statism is very prevalent. It has taken over our lives to that extent. But the prevalence of statism surely isn’t an argument in favour of it.

And how are they robbed? Nor this is not a question of whether or not some people are robbed - maybe some have been. But how is an assessment for benefits provided a robbery?

Try refusing to pay taxes to see what happens. But it has become so common place that we now do it before they show up with shackles and their guns drawn.

Admittedly the idea comes from Frederic Bastiat in his book The Law. It’s a great read.

Who pays for infrastructure and services in your community?

Those who have money to take.

If a neighbor told us we need to make a compulsory contribution to their revenue we’d cry “Extortion!”. But when the government does it we call it “taxes”.

It is legal robbery, plain and simple.

Why is a movement against perpetuating the package of social structure and negative evaluation of human activities needed to survive condemned off the bat, but the perpetuation of this package is condoned and praised? Can't there be another point of view?

I think the simple reason this movement is condemned is that it is ugly. To look upon and preach that the world as an imposition, escapable only by suicide and self-sterilization, is itself a negative human activity, and many don’t like believing or participating in it. We can’t paint dog shit on a canvas and expect people to condone and praise it.

Anthropologist Franz Oppenheimer wrote a good little book called The State that is worth a look, because it covers the thesis of the “conquest theory of state”, the idea that the state formed in no other way than the exploitation of the vanquished by the victors:

“The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors.”

There are some great ideas within. He lays out some anthropological evidence for his thesis, though it may be a little outdated. But I’ve come to accept the “conquest theory” over the so-called “social contract”.

I know that you are not speaking about the current rules and regulations and they may vary from country to country. However, I have wondered if this whole situation might have been better responded to if people had been asked to take care of themselves and others rather than it all being enforced by the government.

Absolutely. The knowledge and will to protect oneself is all that is required. But what happens to this knowledge and will when a society that has been raised to depend on the state for both education and protection is asked to protect itself?

If the track-record of political correctness is any indication, this phrase will be deemed racist, discarded, and we'll be presented with another handy but inadequate phrase to describe a vastly diverse group of people. It's an absurd game, and It won't be long until "descendants of Ham" becomes vogue again.

The only advancement racists have made in the last while is the critical race theorists permeating academia and the industrial media complex. It will lead to segregation, apartheid, but not war.

My point is you have referred to criminality and corruption this whole time without being able to mention what crime he has committed or if a crime has occurred at all. In other words you advocate for using a criminal justice system to harass your political opponents. That makes you corrupt and weak at the same time.

So, what do you think? How long until he's in jail?

Who knows? 30 plus investigations and nothing yet. What’s another 30?

So all this talk about determinism, free will and physical processes - how does that have an impact on Free speech at campuses?

Like the sophists of old, some believe words can harm the human body, and if they rid the world of the words their pain will end.

That’s what corrupt, immoral and unjust witch-hunters do, yes.

To deny the power of words could be a defensive stance taken as a means to exonerate someone from bearing the responsibility of the results stemming from their own word use(free speech). It is self-defeating. In order for it work, the defender and/or defendant uses the power of words(free speech) to convince the jury that words(free speech) have no power. The key to defeat such a defense is to point this out to the jury.

Well, yes, that’s the point. It puts responsibility on the listener. Think of Mashal Khan, who was lynched and murdered for posting blasphemy online. Were the actions of the mob caused by his words or was it caused by their own bigotry and superstition?

I’m not sure what you mean by neurological processes being at the mercy of biology...they are part of your biology. This biology is triggered and effected by abstract symbols as well as other biological processes. Symbols we recognise have an effect on our thoughts and actions. You call it sorcery, but it’s only sorcery in the way an ipad is sorcery to a caveman.

I understand your point about knowledge, understanding and language...these are the sorts of biological processes that you referenced right? There are internal things effecting action as well as external. Sometimes (maybe most of the time) the internal things can override the external but saying the external has no effect in the way you are is incorrect. It’s both. It’s dynamic.

Glyphs may not cause you to understand them but they do cause certain neurological outcomes if you do recognise them. The degree to which they do effect action is certainly debatable, but that they do is well established.

I think you can recognise that and still maintain your free speech absolutism but your argument that it’s fanciful, magical thinking to claim words effect action doesn’t hold up.

I don’t deny that the environment effects the body, and that words exist in the environment. My only contention is that it is the biology that causes us to recognize, interpret and supply meaning to symbols, give them “power” so to speak.

One can make a word out of anything, say a pile of sticks, but the light from a symbol made from sticks will hit your eye in the same way, with slight variation, as sticks in any other configuration. It does the same to other mammals, too, and they would be none the wiser despite having a set of mammalian eyes and neurons. This isn’t because the symbol doesn’t effect their eyes or doesn’t fire their neurons. They lack the capacity for recognizing these kinds of patterns and they lack the capacity for language.

And until someone can convince me that words can travel through light and sound, that they can effect humans differently than any other being or phase of matter, I have to chalk up such a belief to magical thinking, because it necessarily leads one to believe that speaker can manipulate another’s biology, matter, with words. That’s sorcery.

I am not ignorant of neurological processes. My point is that neurons and neurological processes are at the mercy of my own biology and not some abstract symbol out in the world. Yes, we recognize symbols, not because there is something in the symbols, but because we already know what they mean.

Heiroglyphics don’t cause you to understand them. We cannot understand or recognize a language by virtue of it being spoken. We have to refer to our own knowledge, understanding, language in order to do so.

I wish to see a compelling argument that makes thinking of free will as a possibility without the use of some outside power.

When you extend your notion of self to the very surface of your being, beyond the little homunculus we often pretend is there, you’ll find that the “outer forces” are often your own. The thing that causes the heartbeat, the metabolism, the immune system to do what they do is none other than yourself. All conscious and unconscious activity is determined, “willed” by this being. This being persists in all anterior, present and posterior events throughout your time here.

For what?

It's not enough 'not to be racist (fascist)'; you're either anti-racist (anti-fascist) or you're not.

Simply repeating that old saying is not enough, though. One has to actually do it. And to do that one must not be racist. Unfortunately one finds plenty of racism in those who repeat that saying.

It literally does. 654 exerts a power on the system which unlocks the door, 456 loses all the mechanical power in waste heat. It's basic physics. If 654 physically switches a switch but 456 doesn't then 654 has more power (within that system) than 456 (whose power is lost to that system as waste heat). You can't make things happen without power - basic laws of thermodynamics.

The keys exert power, no matter what’s written on them. The numbers on the keys exert none. This beginning to get ridiculous.

The only moral choice is to lead by example, hope for the best and prepare for the worst, unfortunately. Any “solution” as applied by some centralized authority will ultimately end in tyranny and failure.

That’s right. I will respect someone’s property rights while simultaneously holding the belief their censorship is unwarranted. No matter how many times you speak my position back to me, sooner or later you might have to come up with an argument against it or drop it altogether.

I once picked up an Arabic newspaper and my eyes went immediate to the top-left of the page and I followed the script left-to-right. Had I known Arabic went right-to-left I might have started on the other side. That wasn’t determined by the symbols, which are completely blameless. It was the consequence of me not being able to read Arabic.

As for your keypad, the code opens the door because it is programmed to do so, and is able to do so through mechanical forces and means. It certainly doesn’t open the door because 654 is more powerful than 456.

All you're saying is that the sum of the energy within the arbitrary boundary you've chosen (the paper and ink) is the same, so the sum of the energy in that which it causes will be the same. Yes. You're absolutely right about that. So?

Right. So how can one be more powerful than the other? You’ve already said “because the ink is in a different arrangement”. That to me is sorcery. Witches inscribe runes on objects and recite incantations premised on the same belief.

I enjoy your formulation and largely agree, though we could probably quibble with the terms. It reminds me of Thomas Paine’s distinction between society and of government in Common Sense: “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices”.

Yes, all censorship is unwarranted in my view. It is for this reason that I refuse to deny or punish someone’s choice to publish what they wish, and censor what they wish, on their own platforms. I can hold that their censorship is unwarranted while refusing to censor them at the same time without any contradiction.

Edit - just to be absolutely clear - this is the grounds on which I don't believe your false virtue signalling about 'free speech'. If you really believed words were powerless, then banning all of them would be a trivial matter, like banning hats. Stupid, pointless, but ultimately harmless. We'd all just get used to wet heads and have done with it. No. The reason why you don't want certain words banned is because (despite your phoney nonsense to the contrary) you know perfectly well that words have the power to influence people and you don't want influence in your chosen direction to be taken away from you.

That’s a silly analogy and conclusion. Your claim to understand what I know and want is fabricated from thin air, projected, just like the power you ascribe to words.

Here’s a thought experiment. Take two pieces of paper and two inkwells with a small but exact amount of ink in them. On one piece of paper, scribble gibberish and random symbols until all the ink is applied to the page. On the other, write something, maybe a letter to a loved one, a song or whatever, until all the ink is applied to the page. There should now be the same amount of paper, same amount of ink, same mass, same velocity, same potential energy, same forces acting on each. So how is the power of one different than the power of the other?

I wouldn't characterize your having written that as "ironic". I'd say it was, is, and will forever remain self-contradictory, untenable, inconsistent, irrational, illogical, unacceptable rhetorical bullshit.

If all censorship is unwarranted, then none is warranted. <-------that points out the self-contradiction and/or untenability of what you've offered here.

It's really pretty simple and easy to understand...

If all censorship is unwarranted then even in situations when an individual owns the means of discourse - say television, radio, or other social media outlet - that ownership does not provide warrant for them to censor.

I never said censorship was warranted. I said that they can censor if they wanted to. This is because it is their property. To deny or punish them for publishing what they want on their own property is to infringe on both their property and free speech rights, which I fully grant them and defend. That doesn’t mean they did the right thing.