Let's be clear here: you're saying that forcing someone to pay you money they don't owe you (e.g. mafia protection racket) is amoral and just the same as forcing someone to pay money they do owe you (e.g. taxes)?

Are you sure about this?

My primary point is that it's not wrong to pay the minimum necessary tax bill because taxation isn't a moral enterprise. It happens without regard to morality. It's amoral.

To address your direct question, it's my position that using force or the threat of force to compel someone to pay you money -that you say they owe you- is no more moral when the government does it than when the Gambinos did it. Obviously, it's legal when the government does it but the government is not a moral entity.

So if I owe you money for some work, and simply refuse to pay it, you should have no legal recourse? How would that work in society? Would everyone just have to trust each other and if they were ripped off, too bad?

That's a strawman.

That's a useless reply. I was kind of hoping you'd expand on how you thought such a system would work (you could imagine something with a trust network of third party escrow, for example).

Try thinking more about your own arguments and how they might practically be applied.

It's a strawman.

Debt currently works that way in the vast majority of cases.

If you don't pay Comcast or Verizon (or whomever) for your internet service, they'll stop providing service to you. They'll also report you to Equifax, Trans Union and Experian so that other people will know that you can't be trusted to pay your debts and they'll require a security deposit before they'll provide you with service.

If you overdraw your bank account and close it without settling the debt, they'll report you so that other banks know about the issue and those other banks will refuse to allow you to open a new account until the original matter is resolved.

If you don't pay your Visa bill, again, they will stop extending credit to you and you'll be reported to Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. Other credit card companies will know about your history and they will refuse to extend any credit to you.

In none of those cases is force or the threat of force used to collect a debt.

Not in the UK. I guess you don't have debt collection agencies where you are or anything like bailiffs.

EDIT: Oh, and you're misusing the term "strawman". I was asking questions about your post, not positing an argument for you.

Your question presupposes that there would be no recourse.

I never advocated such a position.

It was a strawman.

One method I've seen proposed to answer your hypothetical is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization