Claiming that taxation is theft is an effective way to signal that you think of yourself as a libertarian of the more radical, uncompromising, and possibly more Rothbard-inspired sort. But are there substantive reasons to endorse the slogan? It is easy to point at differences between taxation and theft, after all: Taxation is widely regarded as legitimate, taxation is expected, institutionalized and to some extent automated, (at least some) taxation is put to good public use, etc. More sophisticated defenders of the “taxation is theft”-slogan will not deny these differences, though; they will concede that theft and taxation aren’t the same in every respect. Instead, they will explain that the fact that taxation is
A Trilemma for "Taxation is Theft"-Libertarians
A Trilemma for "Taxation is…
A Trilemma for "Taxation is Theft"-Libertarians
Claiming that taxation is theft is an effective way to signal that you think of yourself as a libertarian of the more radical, uncompromising, and possibly more Rothbard-inspired sort. But are there substantive reasons to endorse the slogan? It is easy to point at differences between taxation and theft, after all: Taxation is widely regarded as legitimate, taxation is expected, institutionalized and to some extent automated, (at least some) taxation is put to good public use, etc. More sophisticated defenders of the “taxation is theft”-slogan will not deny these differences, though; they will concede that theft and taxation aren’t the same in every respect. Instead, they will explain that the fact that taxation is