Dear Anarchist*1

Posted by Colonel Nogov on Feb. 20, 2015

Dear Anarchist:  (this is paraphrased from a recent conversation).  If taxes are extortion, how do we get all the services government provides like roads, firemen, emergency rescue services, etc. without taxes?  -P

Colonel Nogov:  The short answer is markets.

To answer your question more thoroughly, I’ll give both the pragmatic answer along with the bigger picture of morality.

Free markets are amazing things.  They produce everything people need or want.  They produce things you didn’t even know you wanted until someone produced them.  Think about Ipods.  Before Apple developed the Ipod, you didn’t even know you wanted one.  Once it was developed and brought to market, everybody wanted one.

If there’s a demand for something, such as roads, or firemen, the market will provide it.  It’s not faith.  That’s how markets work.  Do you require faith that your car will start in the morning?  No.  You know how the car works.  If its got gas and functioning properly, it will start when you turn the key.

Governments are the very worst provider of services.  The main reason is monopoly.  Monopolies provide the worst service at the highest cost.  It takes government for a monopoly to exist.  Without government interference, all wanted or needed services would be provided by markets at higher quality and lower costs.  When the government regulates or takes direct control of a market, it ruins it.  The market can no longer function properly.  The more control the government exudes, the worse the market works.  If the government keeps trying to “fix” it, the market will eventually no longer work at all.

Government took over the “essential” services, not because the market wasn’t providing them, the market was, but because government wants money, power, and control.  Government exists for its own purpose.  The highest level of government employees and the people who control the government are nothing more than thieves, extortionists.  They want to work very little or not at all but still want to get lots of money for themselves.

Taxes is how they do that.  They tax(extort) the people claiming to provide an essential service the market was allegedly not providing, or not providing well, they provide the service poorly and skim off the top.  They don’t actually do the work providing the services themselves.  They have low level government employees who do that.  The low level government employees get a small portion of the loot(their paychecks funded by taxes) to keep them happy.

Taxes is theft.  The specific type of theft is called extortion.  Extortion uses the threat of violence to get people to hand over their money instead of taking it directly.  Theft/extortion is wrong.  It doesn’t matter whether an individual or a group of individuals does it.  The government is nothing more than a group of individuals.  The government is a group of extortionists.  It doesn’t matter what supposed service they are providing.  The act of extorting the money in the first place is a crime.  The ends do not justify the means.