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Anarcho-capitalist. Though I get along well with minarchists and try to avoid arguing with them.
I think even for people who are not minarchists/anarcho-capitalists that it is useful to recognize what government is doing. Governments collect money either by owning everything and charging rent, or they are stealing stuff from people. The government can own everything or steal things, because they have a monopoly on the use of force.
It is worth noting that under anarcho-capitalism, you can't own except to the extent that you can defend it. Much like feudalism really - in fact feudalism evolves from the anarcho-capitalism that existed briefly after the fall of Rome as the competing protection agencies (Knights, a word which derived from the old Saxon word for bandits) established local monopolies (Lords), set up the hierarchical system of arbitration between neighbouring protection agencies that David Friedman advocates (Kings), and cut a deal with the local influencers to propagandise for maintaining the system (the Church).
Under feudalism, the effective tax rate on non-warriors who wish to occupy land was also close to 100%.
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Would you say that some level of tax collection is a necessary evil, rather than both unnecessary and evil?
I assume that various tax schemes would fall on a gradient of more-to-less offensive, depending on the details; what type of taxation (if any) would generally be on the less offensive end of the spectrum?
If you want to have a government, yeah taxation in some form is probably necessary.
And yeah the badness of taxation is on a gradient, and not all forms of taxation are evil. The problem is that the less offensive forms of taxation are often not as good at raising massive amounts of revenue.
I think certain use taxes are often ok-ish. Like docking taxes that pay for dredging of waterways. Other use taxes seem pretty messed up, especially when the government has an enforced monopoly on the service. The more necessary the service and the more those taxes are used to pay for random other things the more messed up it is.
Sin taxes are annoying and paternalistic, but I wouldn't call them evil.
Import tariffs that are applied universally on all goods (and not used for protectionist schemes) seem ok as well.
Head taxes feel a little less evil than income taxes, simply because they don't require a massive administrative state to look into everyone's incomes.
If poll taxes were the only tax I would consider them fully reasonable.
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