I'll try to keep this brief, in case you won't respond again. And yeah, this is getting too taxing on my time too :p

> For one thing, I might want to control the laptop you paid for, so it's clearly leaving something important out.

Blindingly obviously, "value you want to control" only applies when you've produced or legitimately acquired that value, through a voluntary exchange for example. But I think this idea covers all property, regardless of whether it's a house or a book you wrote. There's no point in bickering about "what if you don't want to control the value you've produced? -is it property then?" .. etc, what you want to do with value under your control is up to you.

As for an apple in your hand, yes, of course it depends on the context, but it's pointless to confound the issue like that. The point was that in general, anything that's already in your possession is automatically considered your property, and there's no need for a central state to "enforce" that - it's just our intuitive understanding of property.

> Reasonable levels of taxation, determined democratically and enforced fairly, don't violate any of these.

There is no reasonable level of extortion, and it's not like we get to determine it democratically anyway.

But how exactly do you think a portion of our property could, in fact, be the government's property instead? -Because "we" (hah!) have "democratically determined" a certain level of taxation? Does taxation mean some of your property magically turning into the government's property? -How does that work? :p

Or perhaps more pertinently, does a piece of paper grant some people rights that others don't have? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ngp... .. or the flipside, does a piece of paper magically prevent the government from shipping people off to Guantanamo and torturing them for months?

Here are the correct answers, for your convenience: "No" and "No".

Oh, but silly me! I've overlooked the democratic process again, which gives the government ownership of a portion of our bodies, and they're certainly free to use their property as they please! In Guantanamo's case, they're using portions of some people's bodies to inflict pain on the other parts! But it's obviously a perfectly legitimate use of one's property!

> I am not confident it is correct to generalize it to "all transfers through coercion are illegitimate". Restorative transfers (giving you your laptop back) seem clearly legitimate

Your stolen laptop never ceased to be your legitimate property.

> Most people feel that some amount of taxation is legitimate

Yes, you could say that. But why is that, and have they thought things through?

Imagine you're a murderous, psychopath warlord, and you're looting a population of say, 100 000 people through active violence. You want to keep looting other people, because you just want money and power and you're a psychopath, right? But would you also like to minimize the risks and effort involved?

For example, the longer you continue your violent oppression, the higher the likelihood that one of your victims decides to risk his life in an attempt at killing you. Clearly, that's something you don't want to happen, because they might actually succeed, and then you'd be dead and unable to continue looting everyone!

Not only that, but your henchmen would prefer not having to keep risking their own well-being by actively subjugating the general population. Someone might hurt them too!

But what if the population you're looting stopped resisting? What if you could loot them all their lives, without any risk to your personal well-being, and without the need for such a large number of henchmen eating into your loot?

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could get the population to believe that your looting is actually necessary and beneficial to them? You know, if you set up an "education" system, you might be able to shape their thinking into something conducive to effortless looting! Perhaps something like the Prussian system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system - As the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system, said, "If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLmmQ8peduhsoaTpJELl6a9P-t... )

That would certainly get you quite far, but would it be enough? Perhaps you could offer them some services too? If you could convince your victims that without your security services, there would be chaos and mayh- nay, anarchy on the streets, you could make it much more difficult to dismantle your looting system.

If you could, then, add helping other people into the mix, that would be a delightfully convoluted mess for anyone to pick apart! I mean, if someone woke up and realized you're looting everyone, he'd face massive resistance from everyone around him! Others would be angry at him for wanting poor people to suffer and die of starvation, and what kind of a monster would want innocent children deprived of education?! -They'd get nowhere in life without proper education!

.. OK, you get the idea. But I think I'll just give up here. It's not like this will get through to you either.