//IMHO, taxation is only theft when the people do not have true representation in tax negotiations//
No it is not it's theft
It's theft even if it does not feel like theft, and you gladly pay taxes.
It has nothing to do with feelings or emotions.
If someone can force you to pay him and then he gives you what you want it is still theft.
Actually it's not only theft it's slavery
@wordsword It sounds like you would call every interaction theft! However, I see that you are not. I realize that we are required or forced to pay taxes, and I really wish our schools taught young adults why we pay taxes.
To be clear, you say that: "if you are forced to pay, it is theft." Technically, you are not forced in that you can expatriate.
Here's the thing.
People are born into this world where so many other humans have come before us, creating this world designed to accommodate more of us humans. (I'll be happy to expand on this if you would like to challenge it, but for the sake of brevity ...) Over hundreds of years, people worked out taxation as an imperfect solution - and then here come some of us noobs, really pretty fresh in the world and having NO experience of what it was like without all of this accommodation, and some of us go "Tax is theft and slavery."
Societies have tried all sorts of arrangements, you know
You see what I mean? It is a pretty smartass thing to say. Then again, our culture (USA) places high value on being tough, so I understand the rugged individualism and the strange need to present it. "I don't need civil services like the fire department! I can put out my OWN fires!
I get that we are in a really bad space right now what with our government no longer being of and for we the people. However, throwing the baby out with the bath water is very short sighted. Whether one likes it or not - we all benefit from working together, compromising and seeking consensus before majority. Governance in and of itself isn't wrong by default. Humans are social creatures and we do much better in groups.
Think back to the Dark Ages where 'might was right.' Boy that sucked! Someone who could kick your ass, could take everything of yours that she could carry! Sadly, now it is 'financial might is right' which is almost worse, because the violence is much more out of sight and not as easily pinned on the true perpetrator, with blame usually falling on the victims.
No I do not call everything theft. If I trade with someone that wants to trade with me it's not theft, If someone asks me something and I give it to them, it's not theft.
We are forced to go to school to learn the things they want us to learn.
The only thing I learned at school was obedience. That's THE thing you learn at school.
A few months back I still thought; Well at least I learned math, reading and writing, and although that's the case. Most of the words that where handed to me, to memorise, are totally the opposite of the real definition and that is for a reason.
School is nothing more than an indoctrination camp, from the state, for the state with state schooled teachers, that teach you what the state want you to know, cause if they didn't they wouldn't be teachers.
That with the '' so many people have come before us" that is true and that's all nice and I'm thankful of that and so, but they in their time where also noob's to the one's that came before them. That doesn't mean they did have to do everything like their forefathers. If they had done that, we still would be in the middle ages and have slave plantations or be building stupid pyramids and palaces.
I'm not an "American" and I'm not though and individualistic but I'm an individual
I don't put out my own fire. I'm willing to pay for people to do that for me.
The only thing I ask is not to force me to pay for people to do that for me.
I don't say this from a point of being all individualistic and self sufficient and so, I'm just asking, please let me be free to do the things that I see as good. To take my place in society to work together with people, to compromise and seeking consensus, if I think that is a good thing to do.
//Sadly, now it is 'financial might is right' which is almost worse, because the violence is much more out of sight and not as easily pinned on the true perpetrator, with blame usually falling on the victims.//
Government IS the violence used by the bankers and the multinationals.
If the people ask government to make rules for the bankers or multinationals to protect them from the bankers, the bankers or multinationals like that, they can easily meet the requirement but the small banks and company's can't and so they are bought up by the big ones or they disappear. Rinse repeat.
Government "protecting" your saving makes that they have to bail out bank's in the process maybe saving you from loss of money but on the other hand robbing you with taxation to save the criminal banks that should have gone bankrupt.
So that people would be more aware where they save their money or take a loan.
It's complicated if you look at it in big, like a whole country or the world, and that's what government wants you to see, how big and complex everything is. But life is not that complex. They only make it seem complex so that you think you need them (politicians that is)
It would be strange to think that you were born not capable of living your own live or with the capacity to make good decision. That is exactly what they teach you at school. It's the same as what they teached in the church hundred years ago, that you are a sinner and never can trust yourself to do good and that you must listen to and pay the people who tell you how you can become good.