To be brief, taxation, much like highway robbery, is backed by aggression. Refusal to pay taxes will result in harassment, kidnapping, and eventually death(basically in that order). First, the Government sends some letters demanding pay. Then, cops with guns come to your door and forcibly take you away. Finally, if you refuse to go with said officers and defend yourself from their aggression, you will most likely be shot. Let’s say the cops instead knock you out and don’t kill you. Well, assuming you are brought to prison, resisting would still result in death. Exercising your autonomy and escaping the prison will surely have you killed if you don’t get recaptured. Therefore, it is sound logic to conclude that taxation is ultimately backed by threat of violence.

When a statist is confronted with this, often times they will argue that one signs a “social contract” simply by living or being born in a given geographical area. The first problem with this is it disregards the concept of property. Private Property is established by homesteading, or purchasing it. Most people understand purchasing property, but homesteading is usually a foreign concept. Because you own your body, you own your labor. Labor is created with body and mind, and one has a natural right to use their labor. So, if you own your labor, mixing it with unclaimed materials makes the final product, the property, yours. If man mixes his labor with wood and creates a boat, that boat is his and any act of aggression against that boat should be treated like an act of aggression against the man himself. The same concept of mixing labor with materials is true when building a house or fencing-in property. So, if the Government didn’t homestead a piece of land, and an individual does, the Government has no claim over him or his property. Secondly, the “social contract” is also a gross perversion of the word contract. A contract, by definition is: a written or spoken agreement. Saying that an individual consents to robbery at gunpoint, healthcare mandates, or any other coercive things, simply because his justly acquired property falls under the geographical area the State claims to be in charge of, is like saying one consents to robbery because he or she moved in to a poor neighborhood that a street gang is in charge of. Taking all of this into account, it is easy to conclude that the “social contract” is nothing more than an excuse for authoritarians to justify forcibly controlling others.

As libertarians, we apply morality to Government. Government should only have the rights an individual has. Government is not exempt from morality. If one owns a piece of property, he, of course, can rent that property out to others. The same applies to Government. Tolls, tariffs, basically anytime the Government charges you for using it’s service or property is a moral way to generate revenue. That’s basically how Government functioned when the founders were alive. What Government certainly can’t do is steal the fruits of your labor, or tax your property. To conclude, in the words of Ron Paul: Government should never be able to do what you can’t do. If you can’t steal from your neighbors, you cant send the Government to your neighbor to steal for you.