A perfect analogy is the squeegee men of New York and other major cities. You WILL have your windows cleaned, whether you like it or not. (If you are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it is when aggressive characters on the street spray and wipe car windows to shake down drivers for cash.)Kim O'Hara wrote:Do you use public roads? Publicly funded hospitals? Rely on public safety provided by the police/army? Were you educated in publicly-funded schools?
If your answers are yes, yes, yes and yes - as they are very likely to be - then your taxes are the cost of services you use and have used, and your argument falls down. Paying for what you receive is absolutely normal and absolutely fair.
It is commonly accepted that services are contracted voluntarily. Price is always agreed upon mutually. Services are terminated at the choice of either party (fired or quit). When one contracts for a service, it is not also part of a bundled package of things one also do not want - such as laundry service (which I need and want) bundled with an estimated 500,000 dead Iraqis.
What I personally find interesting is the subversion of language, so that the use of coercion is cloaked as a "service". When I hear that word, associations of "servant" and "servile" come to mind as well as associations of certain jobs in the "service" sector like waiters and such. Public service is service at the barrel of a gun. You WILL be served, whether you like it or not.