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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: freedom and taxes
Message-ID: <327@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Feb-85 15:43:48 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.327
Posted: Thu Feb  7 15:43:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 04:35:07 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 23

---
> BTW, Tim, how big does your majority have to be before it stops being 
> "theft" and starts being "taxation"?  Everybody will agree that a majority
> of two taking money from a single person on a street is theft.  The
> statists seem to think that two million taking money from one million
> in an organized manner isn't theft.  Where's the line of decision?

Please refer to your favorite dictionary.  Therein you will find that theft
is by definition "felonious," i.e., unlawful.  Taxation is by definition
enforced by law.  Whether "taxation is theft" is merely a matter of
*definition* and is not in itself a question of political philosophy.  

As to the philosophical question:  When such ordinary mortals as Kant and
J.S. Mill justified taxation, they found it necessary and advisable to
provide arguments in support of their assertions.  Libertarians, however,
are above such requirements.  All that they have to do is to proclaim that
"no one ever has the right, under any circumstances, to transfer wealth by
forcible means or by threat of force," and the rest of us will have to bow
down to this proposition as a self-evident axiom.  Great is their
indignation and wrath if they are asked to provide philosophical arguments
in support of this assertion.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes