Change My Mind: Taxation is not theft - the Fauxlosopher, anarchy, and the importance of nuance

::EDIT:: Watch this also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oDQShnzUho

Read this: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/06/loren-lomasky-taxation-is-not-theft/

The Fauxlosopher (@thepholosopher) shared a meme of a picture of Andrew Napolitano accompanied by a quotation of his which reads "I'll say this plainly, I've said it before - Taxation is theft. It presumes the government has a higher claim on our property than we do." She shared this meme with her sentiments which read: "One of the rare judges who gets it and should've been picked for Supreme court. #TaxationIsTheft #FreeSpeech #PropertyRights" 

In the finest traditions of philosophy, rather than engage in any kind of discussion about this meme, she chose to sit on the sidelines and downvote anyone she disagreed with while the comments on this meme devolved into a mindless cesspool about how we should get rid of all government and how anarchy is the one true answer. And while one commenter appeared to be interested in a good faith discussion about first principles, when actually engaged in just that kind of a discussion, the commenter chose instead to act in bad faith, ignore every direct question, and render the whole conversation tedious with endless red herrings and distracting questions. 

So let's be clear - an unqualified statement like "Taxation is theft" implies all taxes are always theft. What is theft?

Wikipedia has a serviceable enough answer: "In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it." I don't think there's a need to go to a strictly legal definition or anything and I think most people would inherently agree this definition of theft is generally what theft is. So, the question to ask is, is taxation equivalent to "the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it," in every single context under which taxation occurs (as, again, the statement we're debating is the idea that all taxation is always theft)?

Right away there are many places to poke holes in the idea that taxation is theft. The first is that people actually do consent to taxation - an idea called the social contract theory - and as such no theft is occurring (since an integral part of theft is lack of consent.) This idea was brought up in the thread I mentioned up top, only to be derisively dismissed with no actual counter argument or rebuttal. So, there's that. I am more than willing to change my mind on any position, which is why I have decided to write about this in the first place (and why I included Steven Crowder's idea of "Change My Mind"), but there was absolutely no argumentation on this front in the initial thread. 

The other place you might attack this notion that taxation is theft is by asking the tough question - do you actually "own" ALL of the fruits of your labor in such a way that - even without your consent to the taxation - the government requiring you to pay some of your portion is theft? Because here's the thing - free markets don't just happen. They need to be built and supported and protected and defended. This largely boils down to funding through taxation.

And it is these free markets that even provide you the opportunity to earn an income in the first place. Assuming you are born in America, for example, for at the very least 14 years, you are clothed, fed, educated and able to be productive at all due to a system which was built for and paid for entirely by people who are not you, which you have not paid anything into at all. (I say 14 years because the federal law states children cannot be legally employed until they are 14, and it isn't until you are earning your own income that you will at any point be paying any sort of taxes for anything.) 

Without that system, would you even be able to earn and own something worth taking in the first place? If things were to devolve into total anarchy, you'd be primarily occupied with securing and maintaining your own resources for survival, such as growing or bartering for food, providing or bartering for protection, and under constant threat of betrayal from the people you depend upon for any greedy and selfish reason that might come along with no higher authority to appeal to in the case of injustice. 

(The uncomfortable fact of the world is that might does make right. Right now, it's the government's might which makes right; all forms of punishment for failure to comply with rules and ethics are essentially backed by threat of violence. Sure, we might have "lesser punishments," but those only exist because people know if they refuse to comply with the lesser punishment, violence will be used to enforce compulsion. If I refuse to pay a fine, I could be arrested; if I refuse arrest, I could be violently compelled, even to the point of death.)

So how much of what you are able to earn is owed to the fact you were raised and trained by a society that prepared you to earn something in the first place?

The third place you could attack the idea that taxation is theft is in the part of the definition of theft which says theft has an intention to deprive the owner of whatever is being stolen. What is being taken from people is money, but are they being deprived of the benefit of that money? Does taking money to build roads, provide schools, pay police forces and courts, provide for national defense, build and sustain and protect free markets and so on actually constitute deprivation? I'm willing to hear arguments on this point but I think you could rightly argue that the intent behind taxation is not to deprive people of things, but provide all people with a greater combined opportunity to achieve things.

Having now deflated that idea that all taxation is always theft, we could get into what types of taxation are more closely equivalent to theft - but that's not really a point I'm interested in quibbling about. This rhetoric that all taxation is theft is dangerous, stupid, lacking in nuance and misguided. If you honestly believe the world is better off without government entirely (and I'm not saying the American government or any other government is "perfect," but I am saying it is a far sight better than anarchy) then you've never been in lawless places or situations.