If the government stops providing services, should citizens stop paying taxes?#EvanPoll #poll

[evan@cosocial.ca]

If the government stops providing services, should citizens stop paying taxes?

#EvanPoll #poll

[mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca]

@evan No. There is a moral obligation to obey legitimate authority, whether it serves your interests or not.

(Of course other moral obligations may override that of obeying the law; one must choose the least bad option in a clash.)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@mpjgregoire That's an interesting point! So, is there a point where the social contract breaks down? Is it 1 year? 10 years? How long is it before the entity that claims to be governing your jurisdiction, but doesn't provide the services a government is supposed to, can no longer be held as legitimate and deserving of your obedience (and tax dollars)?

[johnefrancis@cosocial.ca]

@evan taxes aren't conditional on services. The govt will be very happy to recover the taxes and may use violence to do so. So people should keep paying them.

Federally, taxes don't fund the spending on services - they create money first, and then tax back only a portion, much later. The ends don't meet, not paying will make no difference to the govt, since they don't need money.

If the govt stops providing services, the best way to fix that is to work as slowly as possible.

[jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange]

Depends somewhere on how you're defining the social contract.

At its most base form, a government is just paying protection money to a mafia. You pay them because they keep other mafias from fucking with you too much, and at least some amount a vested interest in not fucking their people up TOO much since they're the ones who make the money that they get to take as protection money.

So basically, until and unless you have another wannabe government group ready and able to step up and say they'll fight to be your government and work to protect you instead of the current one, you pay the government you got because they have force of violence to compel it from you.

@evan @mpjgregoire

[jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange]

Refusing to pay taxes is an act of rebellion, so not something to do unless you have enough other people with enough power to actually make it an effective rebellion.
@evan @mpjgregoire

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@JessTheUnstill @mpjgregoire so, the claim to legitimacy is just having enough firepower to enforce tax collection? That seems pretty Hobbesian.