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"You never "demolished" the tax=theft argument - and saying you did 20 times wont change that. All you did is use one dictionary definition that didn't make any sense (theft is only theft if it's illegal) and then ignored the other dictionary definitions that did make sense. An approach typical of the dick." While you are correct that repeating something doesn't make it right, the debate is in the archives for anyone who wants to revisit it to make an independent assessment of whom dicked who. Among other things, those who do so will see that you were forced at one point to shift ground from your initial position of "tax is theft" to a position of "tax is the same action as theft", to which I then responded that manslaughter and murder and are also the same action but people wouldn't run around saying manslaughter=murder. It should also be remembered that Stephen Dawson - who, although more open-minded than most Libertarians, can hardly be classed a Marxist sympathiser - was convinced by my arguments. At a minimum, my arguments mean that there is no credible basis for you to continue with your simplistic tax=theft rhetoric; at best, you can argue (credibly) only that tax is theft if certain non-standard conditions apply. "I never entered a social contract, explicitly or implicitly. I never agreed to trade my freedom for security. I prefer insecurity. To pretend that I have freely chosen government through my act of not commiting suicide is absurd. As far as I am aware, you have not renounced the rights that come with your citizenship of this country. Until you do, I gather that you also accept the responsbilities that are part of that bargain. "I own my labour. My employer owns his money. We trade it freely." The point I made - which you haven't addressed; just asserted the opposite - is that, under the conditions of Australia's social contract, people do not have full ownership of the money they earn (whether from selling their labour or applying their capital); part of the deal of living in this society is that a proportion of that money will be taxed and redistributed. You (like Condi on another post) implicitly assume that creating something gives you title over it. The point though is that our society lays down conditions as to what part of things you create to can own. We clearly do this with children; my point, which it seems some are having difficulty grasping, is that we also do it with income. "The only reason the government gets the tax money is because the alternative is going to jail. This is obvious to everybody but the dick." From a debating viewpoint, I always enjoy it when things that are obviously wrong are said by my debating partner to be "obvious". Here are four further alternatives to 24601's prison option: (1) don't pay tax and evade capture; (2) emigrate to a zero tax country; (3) commit suicide; (4) organise a zero tax political party and try to convince enough of your fellow citizens to vote for you that you can get into government and then abolish the tax office! It suprises me that you apparently did not think of any of these alternatives to jail when you wrote the sentence cited above. :) In fact, you even mentioned one of these (no. 3) yourself earlier in your post, but then claimed that the "only" reason for paying tax is that "the" alternative is jail, and concluded by saying that this is obvious to everyone but me! Richard
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