Taxation is theft.

Rents are a form of tax.

@HeavenlyPossum if taxation is theft, then no roads for anyone 🤷‍♂️

@voron

I’m not sure why we’d need taxes to fund roads, since roads existed before taxes.

@HeavenlyPossum really? You would have to go all the way back before feudal times 🤔 no even further, so yeah there were tracks made by cart wheels that were called roads before taxes, those awesome Roman roads were even paid for by taxes

@voron

- Roads predate states. States are much older than either the Roman state or the medieval period. We don’t need taxes to have roads.

- States don’t tax to fund spending.

- Coercion is bad. If people have to be coerced into doing something, it’s probably not worth doing. If it is worth doing, then people will probably do it without being coerced.

- The usefulness of coercion to you is not a good justification for coercion.

@HeavenlyPossum yup dirt tracks predate states, not a fan of drive on dirt tracks

@voron

“People living thousands of years ago didn’t have asphalt” is not a particularly good argument for the state.

@HeavenlyPossum well, pragmatism never works with idealists

@voron

The observation that people in nonstate societies without taxes still have roads is empirical, not idealist.

@HeavenlyPossum ok show me a place today without any taxation with roads that are functional for my Honda Fit

@voron

Not sure if your dork car can handle roads in places like Chiapas, but, again, your argument seems to boil down to “men with guns should extract resources at gunpoint to fund amenities for me and my dork car” which still isn’t compelling.

@HeavenlyPossum your argument seems to be live in a hut and work by consensus as hunter gatherers which is not compelling to very many people today

@voron

Is it your understanding that the people of Chiapas live in huts as hunter gatherers?

In any case, no, that’s not my argument, but I’m starting to wonder which part of “anarchist communist” you misunderstood when you decided to follow me.