Comments made about my last two diaries "Parasites: Real and Imagined" and "Bad Logic and Reasoning About Taxes" indicate a lot of confusion about the difference between voluntary and coerced interactions. The comments in question are " Or you consider that if an INDIVIDUAL takes your money, that's OK but if govt does it- that's not?" and "Libertarians support privatization and fees for roads, etc., but you shouldn't pay the government. Flawed logic.".

To a libertarian the difference between paying a person or company for a good or service one desires and having the government take money by force (against ones will) is obvious. Not so, apparently, to the Progressives. In their world view an interaction is an interaction, and that's that. This is where the Progressive's "logic" breaks down. While Progressives will stand with libertarians in condemning individuals for stealing from one another, they seem to consider that the same act done by government is acceptable. This ignores morality and Human nature. The immorality of stealing needs no going over (or so I hope).

What separates Humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our intelligence, our minds. That is our means of survival. When we interact voluntarily we respect each others judgment (minds) about what is best for us and can, therefore, mutually benefit from the interaction. For any system of social organization to be moral it must recognize this. A system based on coercive government and taxation is, therefore, immoral and bound to cause harm.

A more in-depth explanation here.