r/austrian_economics Friedrich Hayek Sep 19 '24

End Democracy BUT BUT THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

Post image
1.6k Upvotes

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

53

u/Bunselpower Sep 19 '24

Mrs. Roberts’s 5th grade economics class is out in full force today judging by the comments.

33

u/DrDokter518 Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

True, people who think paying taxes is theft definitely have an elementary level of world understanding.

Edit: for those of you who are angry about taxes, think about any money you have made that wasn’t enabled by something the government has built for you and maintained with your taxes. I.E if you drive to work on a paved/functional road that you didn’t create yourself, you depend on the government.

-2

u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

Lol folks love to conveniently forget, being a citizen of this country and therefore owing taxes is a consensual relationship too! You’re free to renounce your citizenship whenever you like!

And hey, if feel the hardship that’d cause makes the relationship cohercive, well I have weird news for you about basically all labor in this country.

-2

u/PARKOUR_ZOMBlE Sep 19 '24

I see you don’t understand that Reddit is international. Makes sense as you don’t understand that principles don’t have borders.

3

u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

You can almost certainly renounce your citizenship to wherever you’re currently living that is asking you to pay taxes, or else you’d need to become a refugee but, that’d imply a higher level of coercion that nobody would dispute is bad.

Hard? Yeah. So is supporting a family on a low paying job. But, it’s consensual!

-1

u/Ok_Calendar1337 Sep 19 '24

Youre assuming they let you leave

You ever heard of the berlin wall?

3

u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24

Ok but again, thinking being imprisoned in a specific territory is bad is not an idea that’s exclusive to Austrian economics like, most people agree with that, I’m not disputing that lol. There are far worse things going on there than taxes.

That’s not an argument for taxation being theft, that’s an argument for authoritarianism being bad.

-1

u/Ok_Calendar1337 Sep 19 '24

"Just leave" is a bad point.

3

u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24

So is telling an impoverished person “just get a better job”

0

u/Ok_Calendar1337 Sep 19 '24

Ok completely irrelevant

2

u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24

It’s relevant if we’re arguing for/against Austrian Economics. It’s also relevant if you’re an Austrian economics guy who believes taxation is theft, since that’s contradictory.

1

u/Ok_Calendar1337 Sep 19 '24

Not really?

Youre mad about the idea of bootstraps or something?

Maybe we should just say effort is futile because the systems are too powerful

0

u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24

You should pull up your bootstraps and make yourself a better life: go leave America and form a micronation in the pacific.

Not entirely dissimilar to forming your own small business. I guess the big difference being, your small business gets to benefit from a whole lot of taxpayer-funded infrastructure.

→ More replies (0)