Resolved: The United States Should Implement a Progressive Consumption Tax

My opponent seems to have a strange definition of theft. He says that, since taxes are used to pay for governmental programs and initiatives, taxation isn't really theft; after all, you're getting something in return for your money. However, this view can be shown to be absurd by example. Imagine that a mugger walked up to you, pulled out a gun, and demanded your wallet. You, not wanting to die, gave it to him. I hope I don't have to explain how this incident is non-consensual and how the mugger coerced you into surrendering your wallet. Now, imagine that the mugger took your money, went to the store, and bought a television. By this point, nothing has been consensual – you did not give him consent to take your money or buy a TV with it. Does anything change if he looks up your records, finds your address, and mails the TV to you? Does that suddenly make the mugger any less guilty of coercion? Obviously not. However, my opponent seems to indicate that something did change – after all, he made the same claim, only replacing “mugger” with “government” and “television” with “social programs”. As can be seen, the idea that compensation neutralizes the force that was used is ridiculous, so my opponent's stance is untenable. My opponent then argues that, since the money we use is fiat currency, the government owns it. By continuing to use this money, we have consented to allowing the government to do whatever they want with it. However, in a rational society, fiat currency should be gotten rid of. My opponent says that doing so wouldn't work since the government is the only entity that can assign worth to currency. This is wrong on multiple levels: firstly, fiat currency itself is valueless. By definition, fiat currency is backed by nothing but promises. If money is not directly tied to any tangible object, it's completely floating – it has no worth in itself without an entity declaring that it does. As such, there is no objective value inherent in fiat currency, so the claim that fiat currency is any more intrinsically valuable than anything else is false. Secondly, objects can have values without a central organization dictating what they are. For example, if two men, one with ten cows cow and one with ten goats, were to meet, if each decided that the value of the things they each currently had was lower than the value of the thing the other person had, a trade would occur. There was no centralized entity dictating that ten cows are worth ten goats. No one, other than the traders, decided what they valued. This is entirely unchanged if, instead of ten cows, one person was offering gold. The advantage of gold is that it's easy to use in trade, and, because of the collective impact of individual trades, it would have value based on people valuing it for either its being a luxury item or its ability to be used as currency. All trades involving gold would have one side wanting the gold because of the value they place on it, and, if this is so, the gold must have value regardless of government intervention. If my opponent denies that gold is valuable to people, I would ask him to look at its current price (the measure of the value of a thing to the market). Even if these values are based on nothing more than the arbitrary whims of consumers and gold has no value in itself, this can be said for fiat currency as well. The difference is that fiat currency has no backing, allowing its value to be manipulated by the government without the input of the market, effectively allowing the Fed to control the values of its citizens' wealth without their consent. If my opponent replies that people don't have to use fiat currency, I would say that, in the current world, they very much do – if a man gets paid only in under-the-table gold, the government would label him as a tax evader. On the Social Contract Imagine that I own a store. A man walks in, sees a jug of water with cups by it, and drinks some. I then point a gun at him and demand his credit card information. He objects – he says that I can't morally do such a thing. In response, I tell him that, by walking into my store and drinking my water, he has implicitly consented to anything I might do to him. Would anyone defend my actions? How is this scenario any different than the scenario of the government sending threats via means of taxation? How can you prove that I gave “implicit consent” to be robbed in one scenario but not the other? My opponent's argument is fundamentally undeveloped and provides no way of distinguishing between these two scenarios (he never explicitly defines what constitutes implicit consent nor what you can implicitly consent to), and, since one is obviously unjust, the other, by the same principle, must be as well. I must ask: where is this supposed social contract? When did I sign this contract? Show me my signature. Quoting Lysander Spooner: “The laws holds, and reason declares, that if a written instrument is not signed, the presumption must be that the party to be bound by it, did not choose to sign it, or to bind himself by it. [...] Neither law nor reason requires or expects a man to agree to an instrument, until it is writteN; for until it is written, he cannot know its precise legal meaning. And when it is written, and he has had the opportunity to satisfy himself of its precise legal meaning, he is then expected to decide, and not before, whether he will agree to it or not. And if he do not THEN sign it, his reason is supposed to be, that he does not choose to enter into such a contract. The fact that the instrument was written for him to sign, or with the hope that he would sign it, goes for nothing. Where would be the end of fraud and litigation, if one party could bring into court a written instrument, without any signature, and claim to have it enforced, upon the ground that it was written for another man to sign? that this other man had promised to sign it? [...] The very judges, who profess to derive all their authority from the Constitution — from an instrument that nobody ever signed — would spurn any other instrument, not signed, that should be brought before them for adjudication. […] Moreover, a written instrument must, in law and reason, not only be signed, but must also be delivered to the party (or to some one for him), in whose favor it is made, before it can bind the party making it. The signing is of no effect, unless the instrument be also delivered. […] The Constitution was not only never signed by anybody, but it was never delivered by anybody, or to anybody's agent or attorney. It can therefore be of no more validity as a contract, then can any other instrument that was never signed or delivered.” [2] On Public Services My opponent posits that, since roads, schools, utilities, etc., are publicly funded, and since people use those things, people have no right to protest against taxation implemented to pay for them. However, my previous example about the robber who has bought a television for his victim still holds true – no matter what “benefits” a thief takes your money and then grants you, he is still a thief. It doesn't matter how much roads cost or how much you drive on them – public roads are inherently contrary to morality, were built based on coercion, and do not have any moral claims on anyone. I doubt my opponent would argue that it is immoral for slaves to object to their status because they're being provided with food and clothing that they eagerly use. It is on this same principle that my opponent bases his argument, and it is a principle of mass subjugation based on UNCHOSEN “benefits”. There should be no public services to use. There currently are such services, but they are the property of murderers and crooks, and, as such, do not need to be respected by thosewho were forced to pay for them. On Consensuality My opponent somehow tries to claim that PCTs would be consensual, since you could always leave the country or stop buying goods. This is equivalent to saying that, had Soviet Russia allowed open emigration, it would have been a consensual State – after all, the citizens could leave, so those who didn't were obviously consenting to the policies of the Reds. The insanity of this is clear for the following reason: any State that designs policies that affect people with legitimate claims to property within its borders cannot use the idea that people can always leave to defend itself. If citizens rightfully own property and have done nothing wrong, who is the government to implement new mandates and then tell them that they can no longer live the way they had been living? If they had every right to live as they were previously, no amount of reasoning can lead to the conclusion that they can suddenly lose those rights and be forced to choose between slavery or expatriation. The idea that, since you can “stop consuming goods”, PCTs are voluntary is the same as saying that “since you can choose between leaving your house and getting murdered and staying indoors, getting murdered by doing the former is completely voluntary.” The fact of the matter is that any tax, even consumption taxes, impose a fundamental choice: either comply or be locked up. My opponent tries to sidestep this by saying that you can just not consume goods – he completely ignores that people have a fundamental right to trade in the first place. The introduction of restrictions and regulations of trade via PCTs would be just as much of a violation of property rights as any other form of taxation would be. My opponent is misrepresenting the issue when he says that there would be no threats of violence with a consumption tax – it's hard to imagine that under-the-table deals would be left unpunished. If they would be punished, then the government would be stopping individuals from freely trading, and, as such, they're inherently coercive in nature. Sources:[1]: http://aynrandlexicon.com... [2]: http://jim.com...