I don't see how it's more coercive. It's the same thing.

Taxes are something you pay in exchange for living and doing things on land that's owned by people / subject to rules that were arrived at through a political process that doesn't need your consent.

The only difference is that citizenship is something you don't choose as a child, and the case against it's justness is kind of like the case a teenager would make for their parents being too strict.

I don't want a free parcel of land no. I'm a staunch patriot and will happily uphold my nation's laws, values and sovereignty.

However, that has no bearing on whether or not the state as a legal persona is coercive. It most definitely is. It monopolizes violence, it decides the laws, it determines what is yours to keep and citizenship is not a choice for most. For me that is acceptable as long as the social contract between citizen and state contains is based on a concept of liberal rights and values (human rights, the right to vote, personal property, free speech and so forth).

You (and many others in this thread) seem like you are very comfortable with what the state can grant or cede, but extremely uncomfortable with its powers and the principles behind them. Instead of tackling this issue, which would be a healthy exercise and perhaps give some perspective on the ethics of how state power should be used, you seem to deny it instead.

The danger with your line of thinking is that the barrier between the despotic state and the liberal state is a lot thinner than most people realize. The liberal state is not at risk of slippery slopes, it exists on the slippery slope and it needs constant checks and balances to not tumble.

Pretty much this.

The state is sovereign. A lot of people have forgotten what that means, thinking of it only as a geopolitical term, as in sovereign borders. But it also means supreme authority, the right of the state as a legal persona to enforce its will and law. It's a bit more fluffy than that (this stuff can and has filled hundreds of thousands of written works), but at the end of the day the brass tax is that the state gets the power and right to use force.

Yes, modern liberal democracies are based on popular sovereignty (aka. a voting populace), but even the most ardent classical liberal philosophers would of course realize that not every citizen supports the state and that the state must therefore have a mechanism of force to enforce its will. That's literally what liberalism is, a defense of the state's legitimacy as long as it exists within certain political and legal boundaries.

i occasionally think about this subject.

it does seem like the progressives are not remotely thankful for all the money they take from the people who earned it. and they villify those people and are demanding much more.

i don't really have much problem with quite high tax rates on the rich. i do think progressives should occasionally thank those who give it.

one argument for taxing rich is that jeff bezos (insert another name) made his billions in the USA with systems set up by the government. US consumers, labour, financiers etc.. not sure i buy that argument totally myself but alot of people i respect do buy this argument

Bezos made 99.9% of his wealth from network effects which really should belong to us the people seeing as we are the ones generating the value and he is just the one landing spot lucky enough to capture it.

We should thank Bezos and Bezos should thank us. Like we're all in this together or something.

not sure if those bezos responses are serious or sacastic..

i do think bezos (gates, buffet etc.) are very thankful and have expressed that. and i think 2 of them are giving their wealth away. and at least 2 of them are comfortable with wealth tax but don't see what it would accomplish.\\

basically, people demonize the rich but frankly some of the nicest, most helpful people i've ever known were billionaires (or subsequently became such)

the progressives don't seem to acknowledge whatsoever that other people are paying for their programs, which i think most people are ok with. but some acknowledgement would be nice.

one thing a conservative i know bring up is this,

it seems like taxes used to go to things that benefitted most people, like roads, community centers, cheaper universities...

now, it seems like you pay a ton of tax AND then pay for alot of things that governments used to cover and/or governments elsewhere in the world pay for.

basically high taxes and what are you getting from them?... for much of the middle class, your taxes aren't paying for many of your own needs. university and healthcare being 2 big ones.

i have family with government jobs and little education (needed to know someone). they make $70k plus full-benefits for a job anyone could do with training. probably off work at least 10 weeks a year but complains that gets "no time off". might be 12 weeks off per year... one person has been on disability 3 times. and will retire at age 55... and someone else paid for that.

those poor children in the third world aren't just going to bomb themselves to death

haha..... i did think about defense after i posted that.

but my point was that taxes used to go for public goods, stuff that everyone generally needed and everyone benefits from. (and i would consider subsidization of universities as benefitting society. but i understand people disagreeing vehemiately)

now, it seems like alot of tax payments are wealth transfers..... basically i think the whole conservative activism got rolling in wisconsin over this exact issue.

i agree with much of what you said......

it bugs me that somehow people think you have to choose to venerate trump or AOC/EW/Trudeau... frankly, i intensely dislike all 4 of those people (maybe not EW now that i think of it)

why can't most people choose to like biden or kasitch or jeb bush or paul ryan. or even obama (seemed like his presidency worked fairly well for most people, with the proviso that he dealt with an outrageous congress)... not sure

Wealth transfers are good and universal benefits are good too

Governments fail in a lot of ways. Yet I continue to consent to it because the alternatives seem even less attractive.

We can complain that the existence of governments or we can focus on fixing it by opening these jobs up to competitive pressures, giving people who're willing and able to do the jobs for less the ability to do so.

Unfortunately it would put probably 90%+ of gov/union workers in a desperate situation so there'd have to be a gradual phasing out.

It is coercion

But so would you forcing me to live within a system that didn't have taxes under control of a democratically accountable government.

Is coercion itself immoral when all the options include coercion?

Two reasons. Not all rich people are actually like this. Some are conniving, selfish *****. You don't want to let the ***** get a free ride.
Secondly it's because people don't draw a distinction between charity and taxes. They assume that taxes are being used with similar efficacy.

I think the easiest fix to this is to increase the charitable deduction limits. Charity, if you're dealing with humanitarian based organizations that're closely monitored and audited, should be an alternative to tax except for some minimum amount that's necessary to finance services that're the most essential.

How are you being coerced in that scenario? Who is threatening you with violence?

How are you going to stop us having a democratically accountable government that includes raising taxes? Let's say one much like we have now.

I appreciate you don't want it but we do.

So any time someone doesn't do what you want, they are coercing you?

No. I'm very happy for you to do whatever you want except if it means stopping others from doing what they want.

The question for you is how can you have your AC state without preventing us from having our democratic one with taxation/etc

Anarcho Capitalism means the absence of a state. So obviously if a region is without a state, there cannot be a state. Your question doesn't make any sense.

So how are you going to stop the people (and there's clearly a lot of us) who want to form a state from forming a state?

By telling people what contracts they're allowed (and not allowed) to enter into on their own land obv.

The same way you get rid of the state in the first place, by convincing enough people that it is wrong to initiate force (or the threat of force, coercion) on innocents.

LOL good luck with that.

So government if moral if enough of the people are persuaded they want a government.

The 'weasel' word is is 'enough' as it's the rest who are being coerced. True either way although I'd suggest a much higher %age are persuaded that democracy is the better approach.