Slavery

[Wootah]

Assuming you are against slavery: how do we justify taxation where a portion of a person's work is taken from them for nothing in return?

Bare in mind a slave has the fruit of their labour taken from them and yet may still indirectly benefit if the master uses some of it to feed and cloth them or build roads for them to walk on.

This isn't so much an anti taxation post but questioning whether we really are all against slavery.

Can we be pro taxation and anti slavery and not inherently hypocritical?

[Wootah]

Assuming you are against slavery: how do we justify taxation where a portion of a person's work is taken from them for nothing in return?

Bare in mind a slave has the fruit of their labour taken from them and yet may still indirectly benefit if the master uses some of it to feed and cloth them or build roads for them to walk on.

This isn't so much an anti taxation post but questioning whether we really are all against slavery.

Can we be pro taxation and anti slavery and not inherently hypocritical?

You do get something for the taxes that you pay. You get roads, you get police service, you get military protection from other nations that may want to take over the part of the planet you live on. Claiming there is "nothing in return" is nonsense.

I'm not saying you get nothing in return, I'm saying the slave benefits as well.

Furthermore, a slave is not allowed to leave, or change jobs, or do many other things that a tax payer in this country can do. You are even free to leave this country entirely if you don't like the taxes. You are not a slave in any sense of the word.

We can move states quite easily but i think you underestimate how hard it is to leave a country.

[Bust Nak]

I'm not saying you get nothing in return, I'm saying the slave benefits as well.

But slaves aren't working specifically for those benefits assocated with slavery, tax payers are paying specifically for those benefits assocated with taxation.

We can move states quite easily but i think you underestimate how hard it is to leave a country.

Do you accept that "allowed to do X but X is hard so most don't bother" and "not allowed to do X" is a difference in kind?

Do you accept that "allowed to do X and X is easy" and "allowed to do X but X is hard" is a difference in degree?

If you accept both then that's the answer to your challenge.

[William]

Assuming you are against slavery: how do we justify taxation where a portion of a person's work is taken from them for nothing in return?

I am against slavery. I am also against the barter of objects as a means of exchange, or more to the point, the placing of monetary values on objects and using these as a system of social control and manipulation.
I do not think it is accurate to say that a portion of ones income taxed, gets the taxpayer nothing in return. I would agree that the return is less than equal to what was paid.

Bare in mind a slave has the fruit of their labour taken from them and yet may still indirectly benefit if the master uses some of it to feed and cloth them or build roads for them to walk on.

True. In that context what is occurring is that the non-governmental population has delegated the governing institute to administer the program's which are required to ensure that the work is done. This is because the non-governmental population are not educated in how to achieve this for themselves without a 'middle-man', and either do not possess the integrity and intelligence to figure it out, or are too busy being distracted by governmental bureaucracy and other social institutions, to have the time to do so. Probably a mixture of both.

This isn't so much an anti taxation post but questioning whether we really are all against slavery.

If what I have written above is true, then no - generally speaking we are not against slavery, just certain forms of slavery which exhibit bigotry etc far too obviously for a modern world to accept. The slavery is subtle, and ingeniously invented by extremely intelligent people who take maximum advantage of far less intelligent people.

Having said as much, it is better - because it is more accurate - to think of the setup as more a prison where everyone is a slave, but only the few are the top dogs.

Can we be pro taxation and anti slavery and not inherently hypocritical?

Not really, but we can succumb to the illusion that we are not slaves to any current social system one might like to name, and thus not actually realize any hypocrisy is happening.
This because there appears to always be some other countries system which is far worse for the population than our own which can be used to example 'slavery', which gives us that illusion we are 'free' rather than enslaved/imprisoned in our own.

All in all, a diabolically clever system from a certain tiny percentage of humanities perspective.