Taxation is Theft

I feel the sentiment. And I like the slogan. But when the devil attends the details taxation is not theft — or more accurately, taxation requires no more theft than the concept of property does in general.

Property at its core is the exclusion of others from the use of a thing.

Prehistorically, the first property was probably food and territory. Later, increasingly complex tools introduce new forms of property from bead adornments and sharp edges to intellectual property and crypto.

As individuals we have a small capacity for excluding all others. It's fairly straight forward to keep enough food for oneself, perhaps an immediate family (sharing is selective exclusion) But securing a substantial territory and its valuable surpluses requires cooperation, at times violent cooperation. Or at the very least credible threats thereof.

History is clear that communities with specialists in organizing that cooperation will fare better, in terms of cumulative property secured, than those without. Since those specialists are producing less (or none) of their own food, etc. they must either be sustained through some form of taxation or not at all.

These basic premises haven't really changed since hunter-gatherer days. It's not clear whether they can ever change.

As technologies of governance have become increasingly complex along with our other tools and property we've experimented with and refined different formulas for taxation. But the productivity that enables those advances has never yet been achieved without the umbra of specialists sustained by taxes.

Taxation isn't theft. It's the minimally violent means to securing property beyond what can practically be secured in anarchy.

I don't like taxes when they're badly spent. Like instead of replacing old decrepit bridges, the government sends it for gender studies in Pakistan.

Well, a proof cannot be made.
Neither for your case or any other.

We have to agree on many definitions.

The not "taxation is theft"

Given a group of people, that decide that some infrastructure should be built, at the expense of all those included then it is not theft.

However, that was an agreement, before the event, about a certain thing.
Today, the same thing is done, but with many just assuming.

Assuming you are here, you help pay for the infrastructure.
And not assuming that leads to lots of problems like, people not paying their fair share.

Assuming you want the infrastructure.
Its just a given that you want roads.
You, of course, want trucks to deliver food to the grocery stores, right?

Assuming that the govern-cement officials are your representative on the infrastructure building a maintenance.

Soooo, according to our current law, if you have not challenged the assumptions, then you have given up your right of complaint, and are now bound to the "social contract" to pay your fair share as prescribed in the tax code.

Of course we could go back to the old way of things.
You are walking across our property. (real estate - the king's estate) And if you want to come across then you will hand over 10% of the commodities you are bringing across.

I’d argue with you, if I disagreed.

“Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.” — Plato

source: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-quotes