> I shouldn't need to point out why harassment and taxation is an apples to oranges comparison.
Sure. But you can see how (1) me being worse off and (2) me being upset about it are not sufficient for people to be persuaded that harm is being done to me. I mean, technically there is a point there but most people don't consider it appropriate to describe taxes as "harmful".
* War and Peace
There is a lot of war in the world, but if you look at the overall trends we're actually in a period of remarkable peace [0]. Absolute number of wars is way down, and death rates due to war will be way down (note that population growth is exponential so absolute numbers being a little higher actually means rates are dropping).
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/conflict-measures-how-do-research...
I agree. Things like this are potentially traumatic. This reduces to a form of cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has gotten people killed.
> [T]hat has always been a bit of a cop out taht people use when they just don't like something...
I disagree. Furthermore I would describe saying that there wasn't harm, and then admitting that there was but that it doesn't count, as a copout or equivocation.
> Tax springs to mind as a light example.
I shouldn't need to point out why harassment and taxation is an apples to oranges comparison.
> [A]lthough war became much more horrific, it became so much more horrific that we seem to have stopped doing so much of it...
We do a huge amount of war. I'll wager you're not aware of all the conflicts categorized as a "war"/"major war" in the list below (I wasn't when I came across it a few days ago).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
I'm not even sure how to respond to the idea that war getting more horrific is a boon except to say that you should think on that again.