But we all agree that the government is legitimate, and so it's use of force is legitimate. Additionally, if the government forced you to pay it $1000 a year, even if you could deposit that in gold, you would still be forced to pay. The currency seems irrelevant.

It seems like what your saying is you believe taxation is legitimate, but requiring taxes to be pain in USD is illegitimate. Which, like, is just your opinion man (and makes the whole argument circular) I don't see any generic argument that makes taxation compatible with your definition of liberty but taxation in USD incompatible". I don't see really any generic definition of liberty that would distinguish between those two actions.

I'm rate limited, but to your example below of a currency no one could obtain, the government could equivalently apply a greater than 100% wealth tax. Or the government could define all speech as force or any number of other things. A capricious government can do bad things yes, but requiring taxes to be paid in a particular currency doesn't give them any more powerful ways to be capricious.

The currency seems irrelevant, but it's not. Imagine my government in Tyrannia only accepted taxes in a currency which was impossible to obtain except by stealing it (also illegal). The government would then hold every citizen in a catch-22, allowing it to arbitrarily decide whom to imprison for not paying taxes and who to imprison for stealing the currency required to pay them.

It seems like the government issuing their own currency still isn’t really the issue in this thought experiment…

It is though, since they can debase that self same currency as they see fit. This fundamentally changes the playing field when negotiating your taxes with the government. The only reason USD has any value at all is because it's what everyone has to pay taxes to the US government in, and what US bonds are paid in.

What you’re saying is essentially “imagine a government with the power to create laws that allow arbitrary imprisonment with no recourse, that would be tyrannical”, which, yes, but that only has to do with the currency because that’s what you chose for your example.

Said government could pass a law stating that all citizens must be in two places at once, and achieve the same effect.

As mentioned in a previous comment, I'm saying "Imagine a government without broad power over general welfare". This was the US government until 1936 with United States v. Butler. I don't think it would be a catastrophe to reverse this decision again. It seems that in spite of best efforts, the US has failed to preserve the very meaning of liberty, as it was initially envisioned, from total deterioration even in its very definition.

The material distinction when the United States was founded wasn’t whether the state in general had broad power over the general welfare, but whether the federal government would. State government did have such power.

Yep. The bill of rights didn't even broadly apply to the states until the 20th century. Have fun with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...

Any centralized authority with a monopoly on force is going to have to levy taxes. Otherwise you’d end up with people just refusing to pay because they didn’t get the judgements they desire.

If there is a state _at all_ there is force involved. I don’t really understand what you believe is possible here. What you’re discussing is tantamount to assuming that American traditions of due process just exist in a state of nature when they absolutely do not.

I believe it's possible to have a state whose powers and authority are fundamentally limited. I also believe that was the original intention of US. I agree taxes must be levied. I just disagree it's legitimate to levy them for most of what they are spent on today.

If I ask myself "what should the state be allowed to do?", it's basically answered by "what would I be comfortable holding a gun to someone's head for?". To take a popular example: If it's wrong to hold a gun to a doctor's head in order to force them to treat a patient (which I think it is), and it's wrong to hold a gun to a bystander's head to force them to pay the doctor, then it's wrong to fund healthcare with taxation.

You would hold a gun to someone’s head over petty theft or the violation of a contractual agreement?

> over petty theft

Yes, I'd have no problem shooting a thief, especially in defence of my primary food supply.

> violation of a contractual agreement

I'd have no problem holding a gun to someone's head in order to extract what compensation is due to me under a lawful agreement.

Stealing from your primary food supply isn’t really what I had in mind when I was referring to petty theft. If anything I meant stealing a small amount from a significant excess.

> I'd have no problem holding a gun to someone's head in order to extract what compensation is due to me under a lawful agreement.

So if a doctor enters into a contractual agreement with the state to provide healthcare, then it’s ok?

Contracts should have monetary penalties only - you can't sign yourself into slavery. If the doctor breaches a contract, and the contract has provisions for what he will pay in breach, then he must pay it or have it seized (with force). We've long banned debtors prisons for good reason. There's no holding a gun to anyone's head required unless they try to stop you from seizing property to which you have a lawful claim.

So as long as I write the laws and excite the laws I can do whatever I want. Taxation is lawful because the government duly passes laws asserting such claims. Taxation therefore cannot be theft.

Unless there is some definition of “lawful” that exists outside of writing and enforcing the laws. Which begs the question according to who? In this instance that someone seems to be you.

Taxation isn't theft, it's robbery, since it involves the threat of force. The only remaining question is "What services is it ethical to rob people in order to fund?". My answer is "Not nearly as many as most people today suppose".

This doesn’t square with your definitions of legitimate claims on property.

Taxes are “lawful”, therefore under your framework, they are neither theft nor robbery.

Unless, somehow, lawfulness has nothing to do with laws. In which case what you’re saying is just straight up nonsense.

Anything that we enact into law is "lawful", it's circular reasoning. It doesn't say anything about the ethics of the situation. If 80% of people agree democratically to murder the other 20%, it will be lawful, but does it suddenly become ethical? And if they change the word so that it's "lawful execution" does that make it OK?

In the same vein, I'm using the common definition of "robbery" without any legitimizing window dressing. I'm asking "under what circumstances is it ethical to rob people?" and "under what circumstances is it ethical to enslave them?"

Surely some exist. For instance, being drafted to fight a war and being enslaved are basically equivalent in terms of lived experience. We've decided that yes, in order to defend society against existential threats it's ethical to enslave people. I don't disagree, and would like to point out adherence to the maxim of violating liberty only in direct defense of liberty.

But this does frame the draft to fight WWII and the Vietnam War differently. It's much harder to make the case that North Vietnam was an existential threat to US liberty, so drafting/enslaving people to fight there seems much less ethical.

Following this line of reasoning, the question is "Is it ethical to rob people to pay doctors?". And since lacking a doctor doesn't deprive anyone of liberty, the answer must be "No".

You'll note that all of this can basically be derived from the following (from the Declaration of the Rights of Man)

> 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights...

> 4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights...

So many words, and yet still no coherent sense of what makes something “lawful” or not.

A couple comments ago you said it would be ok to murder someone for stealing an apple.

Anything written into law is lawful. I'm trying to discern what's ethical to write into law. It would help if you answered the questions I posed.