“The institution of taxation is one in which one party uses force to demand payment from another.”As I have pointed out, there is considerable empirical evidence that the majority of people do not regard paying taxes as immoral or as theft, but as the right and proper thing to do as a citizen.
If the threat of force or use of force invalidates everything, then we are left with a very strange situation indeed. For example, the law employs the threat of force or use of force. Is that any reason to abolish the law?
It is the law that you cannot park in an ambulance zone in front of a public hospital, and the threat of force or actual force can be seen as restricting your “freedom” to park where you want. If you park your car there, the car will be forcibly removed and you will be fined, yet most people freely choose not to park their cars in these zones, and they think this behaviour is moral and right. Why? When pressed, I suspect, most people would give a utilitarian argument: parking your car there could have very bad consequences indeed for sick people arriving in ambulances, if they can’t get in quickly and easily.
If this silly argument above against taxes were valid, under such an argument, no action made illegal by the state is avoided by anyone “voluntarily”.
In other words, it’s like saying that the reason why everyone doesn’t go out now and commit a crime spree is that people are being “coerced” by the “evil” state from committing theft, arson etc. etc. Do we seriously think that people don’t commit theft only because there is a threat of force by the state to arrest and try them, if they in fact do commit it? That in fact it is only coercion that stops everyone from breaking the law?
No, it is because most people think theft is immoral and unacceptable, and refrain from it voluntarily, and the threat of force by the state is not what makes most people adhere to the law. It is the same with taxes: most people pay taxes because they think it right and fair. Some people are indeed coerced, but I have already dealt with that issue.
