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.