Taxation is theft. It´s the seizure of the property of another by the use of violence or intimidation, which is the same definition of… theft. While libertarians take for granted the obviousness of this statement, non-libertarians, i.e., the bulk of the world population, find a hard time to see this simple truth, and when confronted with this idea, deny this as a non-sense claim. What’s going on here? Can this be the first case of a real polylogism, where the libertarian logic is different from the non-libertarian logic; where what is true for a group of people is false for another? Not exactly, but I submit that what is crime for one group of people is not crime for the other.
The first objection raised by non-libertarians is that theft is illegal, while taxation is legal. This is a very weak objection that is easily refuted; for instance, no one would sustain that slavery were not a crime when it was sanctioned by state legislation, i.e., when it was “legal”. But within this objection we can find a useful hint for our purpose here: due to the current legality of the act, taxation is considered legitimate, while theft is not.
Suppose there is a society formed by 100 people who obtain their revenue through voluntary exchange, except one person, who is a known thief. Once in a while, he pays a visit to each member of this society, chooses a piece of their property, takes it and goes way. But oddly enough, everybody agrees with the robber presence and acts. They don´t call the police, and they don´t press charges. As a matter of fact, the police even helps the thief in case of someone trying to hide their property from him or refusing to hand it over. However, if someone else tries to do the same thing as this thief does, then they call the police and press charges. Only this one guy can perform this act of plunder legally — the same act performed by anyone else is illegal. So, if people agree with this act, is it a normal theft? No. Even if people protest or are coerced in the moment of the encounter with the thief, in the end they consent with it. This fundamental agreement is what differentiates sex from rape, euthanasia from murder and voluntary exchange from theft. And it doesn’t matter the reason of this consent. They can think that this thief is a necessary evil, or that he must perform these acts of robbery otherwise society would perish, or that their property isn’t really theirs and it belongs to the thief, or they can be deluded by a propaganda disseminated by the thief, or whatever bizarre reason they may have — what is important here is that they do consent. As La Boetie has thought us, the mass of people servitude is a voluntary one.
Now suppose that there is one person in this society that doesn’t agree with the thief acts. This person knows that the property he acquires by means of original appropriation or voluntary exchanges belongs to him and nobody else. He knows that any seizure of his property by the threat of use or use of violence is an intolerable criminal act of theft. Now we are talking about a real case of robbery – and the only one who is being robbed is the one that doesn´t consent with it. And I have just described taxation, because taxation is nothing more than a case of robbery supported by a majority of people. So we can stop the assumptions and just look around. In the real world, libertarians are the ones who can see through the state propaganda and knows that taxation is theft. They are the ones mentioned in the latter case who don’t consent with taxes and so they are the only ones who are really being robbed.
What happens when a thief steals someone? The victim calls the police, presents his case before courts, tries to recover his property and wants to see the criminal receiving the deserved punishment. Yet none of this happens when the tax collector collect taxes. No one, except libertarians, denounces tax collection as an act of stealing. Libertarians cannot go to the police and courts, because police and courts are part of the gang of thieves engaged in the theft — we are living in a society of criminals –, so they are just denouncing the crime to the rest of the people, hopping to convince about the true nature of this act a number large enough to resist to this crime. But they are denouncing; they don’t agree with taxation, and this is what makes taxation the same thing as theft and what makes them the only victims of this crime.
Some objections
Taxation is theft because people are coerced to pay.
B points a gun to A and asks for his wallet.
But suppose B agrees with A’s demand for his wallet?
B doesn’t call the police, and doesn’t think he was robbed. He thinks A has a legitimate claim over his wallet. Isn’t this a consent?
Is this what non-libertarians thinks about taxes.
Even if non-libertarians try to evade taxes, and are caught and are “coerced” to pay, they don’t disagree. They consent with taxation. They consent with the robbery. And a consensual robbery is a contradiction. If it is consensual, it’s not a robbery.
Recently Brazilian pilot Helio Castroneves was arrested in the US for Tax Evasion. Even being victimized by such violence, he never stated that taxes are theft, or that he was being kidnaped and robbed. He just tried to defend himself saying that he had indeed paid the robber properly.
Then why does A have to use a gun? Or, why does the tax man have to threaten prison for non tax payers? It is duress. The only time it is not duress is when people donate $ to the government, more than is required of them in tax payments.
This objection points out the “necessity of the gun” and the “duress”, but it doesn´t matter the presence or use of guns neither duress, neither intimidation, neither coercion.
The only thing that matters is indeed the consent.
Look at a Jiu-jitsu or MMA (Mixed Martial Arts, Vale-tudo) fight. In an UFC fight, there is the use of violence and coercion. A fighter only “taps out” if he is under a lot of pain, infringed over him by his opponent.
However, in any sense there is a crime in these fights. And it is just because everything is consensual.
A fight between two consensual adult is different than a fight where one man doesn´t agree with the fight (and hadn´t attacked other man previously). In the first case there is no crime at all, in the latter case, there is a crime, with an aggressor and a victim.
The same goes with non-libertarians and tax collection.
Yes, there is duress and guns in the process. But it is consensual.
There is a fundamental consent in it.
My above example of the Brazilian pilot Helio Castroneves is a good illustration.
Apparently he tried to evade taxes and had success with it for a while.
But when he got caught, and guns and duress appeared in the scene, and he was even jailed, he didn´t complain about that.
He thinks that who evades tax has to be jailed indeed. He doesn´t think tax is theft or that his prison was a kidnaping.
He didn´t say that the money was his money, and he was getting robbed.
His defense consisted of trying to prove that he was not evading anything.
He acted like every non-libertarian does.
If they (the non-libertarians) agree with the use of force, the duress, the guns, so, there is no crime.
This fundamental consent changes everything. The consent is what define the nature of the act (agreement is what differs sex from rape, euthanasia from murder and voluntary exchange from theft.)
Another example are some sex scenes from Ayn Rand novels. Some of them are pretty much hard. . . there is violence on them. There is duress on them. It looks like a rape. I think everyone who would watch a videotape of them would say that they were rapes. But where is the victim? There isn´t one, because there was no crime at all. The women consented with it, and that is what defines the nature of the act.
Nota: as visões expressas no artigo não são necessariamente aquelas do Instituto Mises Brasil.
