I certainly had no intention of meaning anything other than “embracing some level of taxation as acceptable”.
When I thought about the issue, the phrase you used did not come to my mind as it seems to me to imply too much. Total quantity of taxation in a society is an important factor, but not as much as other structural arrangements. That is to say, your phrasing with the word “level” offended my libertarian sensibilities, which entertain tax schemes such as only taxing imported luxuries, for which the word “level” seems inappropriate; in my opinion “level” to strongly connotes rates oriented around less differentiated categories, and implies that the most important factor is the amount, whereas in my mind the amount of taxation in society is less important than how it is distributed. Even setting aside issues of proportion paid per class, whether taxes are levied on income or spending, whether they are passed on to consumers or put upon them directly, these are issues I think important. As I believe there to be many important variables distinguishing one tax from another, it is not surprising that I think some combination of those variables produces a good outcome, as there is so much theoretical space for a good solution to be in, as against if I thought the only important thing were, say, tax as a percentage of GDP, in which case it would be more plausible to say no outcome is favorable, because there would only need to be a one-dimensional search along the “how much” axis.
The particular problem for the “taxation is slavery” position that I was thinking of is the lack of boundary between taxes and fees that mirrors the lack of boundary between taxation and slavery, though it is on a different axis. In general, the absolutist position that defines things within a category as bad has these boundary problems. One can change the terms of how the government, directly or indirectly, takes and spends money and one subtle change at a time gradually make something once best described as a “fee” become better and better characterized by the word “tax”.
One could respond by saying all fees are slavery, or that the enactment of too vague structures of appropriation and spending is itself immoral, etc.
excludes any types of slavery it naturally occurs to people to argue for, such as the draft or prison labor.
I confess to having not considered those things when I wrote what I did, I was only thinking of the relationship between taxation and human ownership, and that taxation does not seem to make people think ownership more acceptable. Upon reflection, the implicit absence of absolute private property rights would seem to make the opposite true.
I don’t, however, see how those or any particular cases could be used to rebut what I said, as I offered a general framework: I accept banning good things to the extent we are deluded, by their being allowed, into doing bad things worse than the good things. If it were the case that any taxation is made humans accept kidnapping people and using them to do manual labor, which would be very, very bad, then I would oppose any taxation; if it is the case that any taxation is, all else equal, a necessary condition for humans accepting the draft or prison labor, and those are on net bad, and those bad things outweigh the net good derived from taxation, then I oppose any taxation as a matter of practice until we fix our bias of thinking in unnatural categories that lead us to think moral permissibility is a matter of an act having features of a category such that all acts within the category have the same vector of moral import (if not the same magnitude), and can resume enjoying the otherwise net benefits of taxation.
My argument isn’t a direct policy one, just that taxes being bad would have to be because of consequences, the most important of which likely be human susceptibility to inappropriate categorical thinking. It would not be because taxes take from people unwillingly, or any other such reason that is a direct product of the inappropriate categorical thinking.
As far as the examples go, if they are wrong, it is because they suck, for the victims and by warping state incentives, and in general do more harm than good, and anything that promotes them must count them as a loss on its moral balance sheet. If this loss is turning an otherwise valuable human construct, such as taxation, into a losing one for humanity, then we ought to rescue it by severing the false degree connection in people’s minds, to the extant we can.
It does not seem to me that there is much relationship between taxation and prison labor, and there is much more between taxation and the draft.
When I thought about the issue, the phrase you used did not come to my mind as it seems to me to imply too much. Total quantity of taxation in a society is an important factor, but not as much as other structural arrangements. That is to say, your phrasing with the word “level” offended my libertarian sensibilities, which entertain tax schemes such as only taxing imported luxuries, for which the word “level” seems inappropriate; in my opinion “level” to strongly connotes rates oriented around less differentiated categories, and implies that the most important factor is the amount, whereas in my mind the amount of taxation in society is less important than how it is distributed. Even setting aside issues of proportion paid per class, whether taxes are levied on income or spending, whether they are passed on to consumers or put upon them directly, these are issues I think important. As I believe there to be many important variables distinguishing one tax from another, it is not surprising that I think some combination of those variables produces a good outcome, as there is so much theoretical space for a good solution to be in, as against if I thought the only important thing were, say, tax as a percentage of GDP, in which case it would be more plausible to say no outcome is favorable, because there would only need to be a one-dimensional search along the “how much” axis.
The particular problem for the “taxation is slavery” position that I was thinking of is the lack of boundary between taxes and fees that mirrors the lack of boundary between taxation and slavery, though it is on a different axis. In general, the absolutist position that defines things within a category as bad has these boundary problems. One can change the terms of how the government, directly or indirectly, takes and spends money and one subtle change at a time gradually make something once best described as a “fee” become better and better characterized by the word “tax”.
One could respond by saying all fees are slavery, or that the enactment of too vague structures of appropriation and spending is itself immoral, etc.
I confess to having not considered those things when I wrote what I did, I was only thinking of the relationship between taxation and human ownership, and that taxation does not seem to make people think ownership more acceptable. Upon reflection, the implicit absence of absolute private property rights would seem to make the opposite true.
I don’t, however, see how those or any particular cases could be used to rebut what I said, as I offered a general framework: I accept banning good things to the extent we are deluded, by their being allowed, into doing bad things worse than the good things. If it were the case that any taxation is made humans accept kidnapping people and using them to do manual labor, which would be very, very bad, then I would oppose any taxation; if it is the case that any taxation is, all else equal, a necessary condition for humans accepting the draft or prison labor, and those are on net bad, and those bad things outweigh the net good derived from taxation, then I oppose any taxation as a matter of practice until we fix our bias of thinking in unnatural categories that lead us to think moral permissibility is a matter of an act having features of a category such that all acts within the category have the same vector of moral import (if not the same magnitude), and can resume enjoying the otherwise net benefits of taxation.
My argument isn’t a direct policy one, just that taxes being bad would have to be because of consequences, the most important of which likely be human susceptibility to inappropriate categorical thinking. It would not be because taxes take from people unwillingly, or any other such reason that is a direct product of the inappropriate categorical thinking.
As far as the examples go, if they are wrong, it is because they suck, for the victims and by warping state incentives, and in general do more harm than good, and anything that promotes them must count them as a loss on its moral balance sheet. If this loss is turning an otherwise valuable human construct, such as taxation, into a losing one for humanity, then we ought to rescue it by severing the false degree connection in people’s minds, to the extant we can.
It does not seem to me that there is much relationship between taxation and prison labor, and there is much more between taxation and the draft.