A society cannot prosper without the state, and the state cannot exist without taxation, so taxes are essential to prosperity.
Not true at all. Your arguments are simplistic, and stupid. The state is not necessary for the benefit of society. Society functions through voluntary exchanges, not through one party holding a proverbial gun up to another group and demanding that they do this or that against their will.
I think that is a rather simplistic, and well, distorted interpretation. Theft implies that something is being taken wrongfully. As to whether or not taxation is wrong, well, most people are able to be objective regarding the matter, and believe that taxation is necessary to preserve order and maximize liberty, and this is what I believe as well. As for income tax being slavery, well, I am not quite sure what your definition of slavery is...but I assure you, it is not.
If you don't even understand what I am saying then you should shut your mouth and think a bit longer.
What is mind numbing though, is that either you have deluded yourself into believing that a system(or lack thereof) without taxation would work, or you are willing to sacrifice civilization because you perceive it as the moral thing to do. There is a very good reason why anarchism if a fringe ideology.
Again, no one is being enslaved...Anyway, morality is not black and white. You bring up killing one person to help ten, what about killing one man to save ten from being killed? Here I'll give you a hypothetical: Let's say you're in Africa, your village has been invaded by some rebel military group that is going through village murdering everyone in it. You and 9 other people are hiding in a hut. The group has overlooked the hut and is leaving. You have a baby in your arms, it starts to cry and you quickly cover it's mouth. If you move your hand, the soldiers will discover the hut, and everyone will be murdered, including you and the baby. If you do not, you will smother the baby.(Please remember this is a hypothetical situation, these are your only choices...don't tell me you would try to muffle the cries or something) Now you can either say to yourself, "killing another human is wrong" and sacrifice everyone including yourself for what you perceive to be the moral thing to do, or you can be objective and realize that the baby will die either way and smother the baby, saving yourself and the other people. Me, I would be objective, and smother the baby, and I do not believe I would be doing so immorally.
It would still be an immoral action.
Would it be the correct action to take... possibly, of course, you're assuming in your example that there is not a way to quiet the infant with out killing it, and there probably would be.
This situation is analogous to anarchy; either we can do what you perceive to be the "moral" thing, and everyone suffers(well, except maybe for a very few rich elite, who would then posses a great amount of power over the rest of the population), or we can be objective and do what is best for everyone. And taxation does benefit everyone, the roads you drove to work on today, police, courts, prisons, even the money you are so desperate not to be 'coerced' out of, were paid for through taxation. Either people can sacrifice a little money, or we can abolish taxation and sacrifice civilization...it's a no brainer for most people.
There is no issue with local taxation. The issue is with federal taxation that is used for the benefit of a few individuals instead of for the benefit of all of society.
You characterize this logic as the ends justifying the means, and that is not the case. In the end, morality comes down to values. In the hypothetical situation, it comes down to whether you value an axiomatic belief that killing another human being is wrong, or you value the lives of yourself and the other people. With taxation, it comes down to whether you value an axiomatic belief that "theft" is wrong, or you value civilization.
Again, you can either value "the principles that lead to the creation of the nation," or you can value, well, the nation. But, the founding father supported taxation so you must be referring to something else?
The founding fathers would probably be urging on a revolution right now, because they opposed excessive taxation, and taxation with out representation.
The transmogrification of the United States into a democracy routinely deprives a minority of their representation and voice in government, and exposes the totalitarian rule of the mob for everyone to see.
The gross expansion of government power is not efficient, nor is it the best way to accomplish what needs to be done.
Besides, it routinely flows directly against the Constitution, which is the document that defines and delineates the powers that the federal government has, and does not, and the limitations placed upon the government to intrude into the lives of the citizens.
If you are so ignorant of the document as to believe that the Federal Government is really helping you, or so callous in your disregard of your freedoms as to be willingly turned into a slave, then there a myriad of nations that would probably gladly welcome you into them.
If you want to voluntarily pay for all these programs, then that is up to you. If you are going to force everyone else to, then it is not a just or moral system that you are proposing.
If a town needs roads, then it should be up to each area to ensure that everyone agrees that the roads need to be paved.
Of course, you're assuming that there are not trade offs, between wasteful spending that benefits just a few individuals and generally useful spending such as intrastructure that more or less benefits everyone, and is primarily funded at local levels with the federal government routinely giving back to the states what they took from them to begin with, and thus making it look like they are doing something useful.
The power should be more at the local level where people can demand more accountability than at the federal level where people are distant from their representatives, and can not see exactly what they are doing with their power.
Oh, and killing one to save ten isn't an issue of morality, that's a cost-benefit trade off. It's still immoral to kill the one.
