> Unlike the legislature, I did not elect you, nor did I swear an oath to a constitution that empowers you.

So you would agree with me that its immoral to collect taxes from someone who has neither voted for you not sworn an oath of loyalty? As opposed to the current system where the winner of the election exerts authority over the entire populace.

> What makes taxation so much more objectionable than any other law?

Its a mandate to appropriate someone else’s property. Its nonconsensual and results in one party benefitting at the expense of the other. The law codifies a differential status: a person who is required to produce value, and a person who is allowed to claim that value. The amount of the value is decided by the person claiming it, not the person providing it. Essantially this is a statutory codification of parasitism, Whereas an acceptable law, such as prohibitions against murder codifies conduct between peers (people with the same status). The law against murder says no one is allowed to murder, the law permitting taxation says one person pays and another person collects. Clearly this is abuse, just like a law specifying who we were allowed to murder.

> You are imposing a model upon a category that does not apply.

I’m not following. It seems like you’re pretending that its not possible to do without taxation without having identified any difficulties. I understand that taxation is literally what you want, that is to be able to avail yourself of other people’s money. I’m just not convinced that we would lose anything by choosing not to allow that.

> By what basis is it self-contradictory?

On the basis that he dictates acceptable use for a piece of property, which is exerting property rights. How come I’m not allowed to rent my machines, by Proudhon is allowed to tell me what I can do with my machines? Proudhon isn’t opposed to private property, he wants all the private property to belong to him.

> By what higher authority do you define the acceptable relations with regards to property rights?

The nature of property rights only begets logically consistent arrangments, on this basis logically inconsistent or incoherent arrangements are not recognized.

> Is someone allowed to set fire to his house, so that all his neighbor's homes downwind are also consumed by conflagration?

Once the effects of their actions have crossed crossed the boundary of the property line, conditions have been met for other people to intervene proportionately or tender a claim for damages. If someone inteferes with his actions because they anticipate the effects, then they incur liability for their inteference with his property. The specifics would depend on how the parties to the dispute felt about their particular circumstances. In essence, peer-to-peer dispute resolution.

> If you say no, then you have already begun to impose limits of what is acceptable or not to do with one's property.

The limits are other people’s property.

> According to Proudhon

Why would I or anyone else allow Proudhon to dictate the nature of property to us?

> Regardless of the debatable effects of rent, Proudhon would argue that property is backed by force, which makes it inherently a product of violence and aggression.

This is typical of the confused thinking that comes from many of these property revisionists. Property is a social arrangement and would be impossible to sustain by force in the absence of a suitable social environment. While it is true that property rights are usually/often enforced with force or the threat of force, characterizing this as aggression commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Its not aggression unless tou already agree that property is illegitimate.

So when you find a person who thinks property is illegitimate, try a simple experiment. Wait until they are eating then take some food from their plate. Better yet, get the food out of their refrigerator and put it in yours. When they object, remind them that property is illegitimate. When they distinguish between the property that they want to own, and the property that they don’t want others to own, remind them that property is a mutual social agreement and inform them that you decline to recognize their proposed version of the agreement, in exactly the same way as they decline to recognize the right of a landlord to rent out an apartment, or whatever.

> The same regime that forces you to pay taxes is the same regime that uses those taxes to safeguard property and the rents acquired through property;

Yes, its literally a protection racket. Which is why its so depressing for people to defend the protection racket when it extorts the working class (taxes) and then turn around and assert that the working class doesn’t deserve to own anything anyway because “property is a system of oppression used to oppress the working class.”

> indeed, often force is also used by the state to accumulate property for its favored oligarchs and the conformists who support the state.

Yes, and this is why we oppose taxation. This behavior is justified using the exact same arguments as you have made and I have responded to in this interesting and gratifying discussion.

Thanks for your replies and thanks for enduring the downthread squeeze with me.