Quote:
Originally Posted by spanktehbadwookie
Conflating the difference between ownership and possession doesn't support your claim. Taxation has a definition and it is not theft.
Yes. It. Is.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tax
a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theft?s=t
the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny.
Taxation is the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services
Quote:
It cannot be ignored, unless a person chooses, that words stand for concepts that operate in reality as part of a system of events. An event that generates tax involves no theft.
That's just circular logic. It's not theft because we've passed laws that say it's a tax instead? BS. It's still theft. Laws don't change the definition of words. If I grow tomatoes and you come and take 30% of them, that's theft. Your intentions are entirely irrelevant to that fact. Your laws are entirely irrelevant to that fact. Your entire purpose can be to use those tomatoes to fund improvements to infrastructure that end up making my remaining 70% of my tomatoes worth triple what they would have been without you "taxing" my tomatoes, effectively doubling my worth despite the fact you took 30%, but that doesn't change the fact that it's theft.
But if you
do have some explanation that somehow magically turns you taking my stuff into "not theft," then the burden of proof is on you to show that, not me, so stop trying to put the burden on me. All I'm doing is saying that you haven't shown your work. You're taking stuff from other people against their will. That's theft. Period.
The worst part is that there's not even any reason to deny that taxation is theft. It simply doesn't matter if taxation is theft or not. Just because it's theft doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. All you do by denying it is encourage semantics discussion with libertarian-types instead of talking about the actual issues and actually working to make the world a better place.
Quote:
Can a person steal from themselves?
That has nothing to do with anything.