this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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It is not legal where I live, and I assure you that the tax agency where I live will hunt me to the edge of the world if I refuse to pay exactly what they demand.
We are just looping around the same arguments here, and do not move anywhere.
Let's try not talking about the binary situation of refusing a government or taxes altogether. I can agree that certain things can be handled by a state (although not in the most efficient way imo). There are still a shit ton of things that governements spend money on that I might not want. For example, where I live a significant portion of my obligatory tax goes to state run "public service", i.e. state run entertainment. And our process for public procurement is a mess, where things cost insane amounts of money, and most of the time don't even lead to any actual executed projects.
How are such things defensible with an obligatory tax design?
What I'm trying to say is that yes in a perfect world taxes are fine and dandy, and we get nice roads and healthcare, but in the reality that at least I live in it is just an expensive mess of things that I mostly don't want, but am forced to pay for.
Edit: a word
Does where you live also restrict emmigration? If so, you're not in a free country in the first place. It's 100% legal where I live.
So? Independent will is not the be-all end-all. If you want to kill people, you don't get to do that. Not paying taxes is not a victimless act, either. That's part of the societal agreement. You don't always get what you want. But you do get to do things that many people think you shouldn't get to do. As I mentioned "property is theft" to many people. And I reject their opinion the same as yours.
Are you a democracy? If you're a free country, at least some percent of society wants to use tax dollars to that. If you're not a in free country, well, taxes is a weird hill to die on.
Private sector inefficiency is pretty horrible in most of the world... and most of the world thinks it's ok to have private sector inefficiency (aka, profit margins). I tend to fight FOR regulated efficiency in both the private and public sectors... so you have my sympathy, just disagreement that it means taxation is actual theft.
I don't know where you live or the details, but it seems you agree taxation isn't theft :). But more importantly, I'm sorry to hear your government is wasteful (or that you think it is. Though I can't really guess where you're from, I find the most effective governments often have the most complaints of government waste).