>I'm not trying to frame any argument. I have heard and read people say taxation is theft. You are the first person I read use that phrase but make a distinction between some taxes and others.

I'm absolutely not the first person to make that distinction. I may be the first to say it in a way you understand, but I'm not the first to say it. If you are paying a tax because there is a gun to your head, its no different than being robbed. Nobody is putting a gun to buy pot... hell even in most legal states you can grow your own and never even worry about it.

>On the face of it, taxation being theft seems stupid to me. But I am willing to learn why, I just have not heard anyone explain it. Clearly, we need government, many examples show we have no modicum of effective, civil society without some organization. Keeping that organization effective is a constant challenge, but even effective needs revenue, which it gets from taxes, of one sort or another.

I don't agree with your premise at all. I reject it entirely. We had roads, schools, libraries, universities all voluntarily funded long before an income or sales taxes.

The idea that government is required for basic cooperation is absurd to me. If anything technology has made it even more irrelevant. I'll agree that a limited government is useful in providing some aspects of that organization - but if fucking aliens landed tomorrow you wouldn't need to pass a bill to get rednecks with 12 guages protecting the homeland.

If ruskies landed at myrtle beach there is gonna be a whole shitload of empty shells, spent pbr cans, and dead russians to clean up before congress even gets to session.

>I am not for government picking winners and losers. Which is why I hate the fact that people who make money with their money have a much lower tax rate than those working for a living. Sales versus income versus property is to some extent picking winners. Efficiency comes in having one, so why not, which is effectively what we have in NH. MA sales tax does something like what you seem to favor: essentials such as groceries and clothes, but not extravagant ones do not suffer from a sales tax. I haven't spent much time down there in years, so I am not sure how that might have changed.

Those people making money with money wouldn't be able to without a government propping up a stock exchange and providing financial safety nets for speculative derivatives market. All of which are largely modern inventions. The regulations designed around that written by people with the most to gain from it.

Before financial markets got regulated into safe casinos; if the market had a bad day - you saw my favorite thing in the world... flying investment managers. then government rallied to protect them.

I can fix that shit in a jiffy. Transaction taxes on every individual stock trade and derivatives share. Congrats I fixed the stock market. Its also an entirely voluntary market, there is no life-blood need to own shares of twitter. Ergo, not theft. You can even make exceptions for Index and ETF markets if you want to protect private retirement accounts like 401ks.

The thing you say government is good at - efficiency, fairness, redistribution - don't exist in my book. Look at the homelessness industry in CA - you have managers making millions a year to manage homeless... so why would they actually improve the problem?

Same with education and unions - that spend more on administration than they do on teachers and salaries.

Cities pay billions in damages for cops who go overboard to enforce laws that only exist becuase otherwise it would cut into someones profit margins.

Hell Fauci has more blood on his hands than Dr. Mengele did with how he basically marched gay people to their deaths during the HIV\AIDS crisis - and literally did the same playbook for covid... He's going to retire with one of the biggest pensions in US History. Who did any of that benefit besides pharma?

Everything you say the government does more betterer... is in my opinion only a problem because government did it to begin with. Mostly to serve cronyism and fascism (as defined by Mussolini)