Taxation is Theft

Pro totally misunderstood my case, really, on every possible level. Let's examine how he's wrong: 1: Pro says that his special definitions are of "normal moral/colloquial terms." If this is true, most people would already think taxation is theft; after all, the provided definitions treat both as the exact same thing. But this isn't the case, so Pro's definitions cannot be colloquial. Pro can argue that these should be the colloquial definitions, of course; but given that he is using them as premises for his argument, he has to give us reasons to grant him that much. So far, Pro has not done that. 2: Pro is wrong that I did not make a case using other definitions. I did agree to an earlier form of the definitions (seen in Round 1), because they fit colloquial understanding. There is an important difference between the two systems: - in the first, theft is defined as both immoral and "[the] taking [of] justly-owned property" - in the second, theft is understood as being immoral because it involves "taking justly-owned property." This makes its definition mostly the same as the one provided for "taxation." The critical differences are that - definition #1 implies that it is possible to take "justly-owned property" without being immoral - definition #2 is just the same as his definition for taxation. I explained why this is misleading in Round 2. So, Pro is wrong, I did, in fact, work with other definitions earlier in the debate. And when we use the first set of definitions, Pro's case totally falls apart, as I demonstrated in Round 1. For Pro's case to not totally fall apart, he has to explain that taking "justly-owned property" is necessarily immoral. He failed to do this in Round 1, did not do so in Round 2 (where he re-defined taxation, but maintained the link with morality) either, and continued the tradition into this round too. 3: Even if we grant Pro's arbitrary, self-serving re-definition, his case is still hollow. Let's grant, to be very abstract and ignore the obvious social connotations of the word, that "theft" includes taxation. Given this, to reiterate, Pro still has not demonstrated that such taking is inherently immoral. Instead, all he has done is assume it is immoral, and try to stretch how many things he can cram into that assumption. 4: To make a new argument, there are positive reasons to think that theft and taxation are different things: a) Theft and taxation incur different social costs. While taxation is, at worst, protested or begrudgingly tolerated, theft is punished wherever possible. The very act of calling something theft is usually insulting. So, it's very clear that taxation and theft are very different socially. b) Theft is conducted by non-state actors (whether individual citizens, foreigners, or groups), taxation is conducted by the government. The idea of governments "stealing" isn't even popularly applied to cases of international interactions like conquest, for example. Other comments: - Correct, the first two comments Pro responded to are not arguments, because they were never meant to be arguments. Pro confused my description of his argument instead, which I wrote to point out what I found relevant about them - Pro totally misunderstood the context where I brought up legal definitions. I did not say that because taxation is not defined as theft, legally, it therefore can't be theft, morally. But if he's talking about colloquial definitions of terms, he can't ignore the law. After all, theft and taxation are unique among social concepts given the government's relation to each (it generally punishes one, and conducts other). I did, however, say that his definitions have no precedent in the law, which is true, so we're only left to guess why he uses them at all. Conclusion: Pro has not provided any reason whatever to use his premises. They do not correspond to everyday understanding of these concepts, and by his admission were formulated specifically to further his own politics. Furthermore, he has not demonstrated why, even given his definitions, "immorality" follows from taxation/theft. In sum, Pro fails to meet his BOP, not giving us any reason to ditch the colloquial understanding of theft and taxation as different things. Additionally, I'd tell voters to punish Pro for trying to obscure the debate by re-defining key terms in his favor, halfway into the debate.