Outcomes don't morally justify immoral actions.

The actual nature or implications of an action can never be changed through attempts at rationalization. For example, kidnapping doesn't cease to be kidnapping just because you wanted to bring your abductee to Disney World. Murder doesn't cease to be murder just because you wanted to help relieve someone of a common cold.

Likewise, taxation doesn't cease to be theft backed by a death threat just because the men and women calling themselves "government" return some of the spoils of plunder in the form of roads, schools, and other "public services".

Ends don't justify means.

The means called "taxation" (theft + credible threats of kidnapping, imprisonment, assault, and murder) can NEVER be morally justified by its intended ends. Narratives put forth in favor of taxation are therefore a belligerent insistence that the ends justify the means, as evidenced by the fact that proponents of taxation universally DEMAND "solutions" whenever someone elucidates the fact that taxation is theft.

The SOLUTION is to stop believing in the superstitious delusion that the initiation of force is any way legitimate. The solution to plunder is STOP PLUNDERING. But of course, that's not what they mean by "solution". What they mean is: "How am I going to get what I want without stealing it from others?"

My answer to that question is simple: I don't fucking care. Not my problem. Anarchy isn't a "system"; it's the rejection of physical aggression and coercion. No one has to prove to any statist how society would work or how any given good or service would be provided absent an agency with a monopoly on physical aggression and coercion in order to prove that physical aggression and coercion are wrong.

The demand for "solutions" is nothing but a pathetic attempt to sugar coat a preference for physical aggression. It demonstrates the desperation of statists to maintain a "moral high ground" that was never moral or the high ground to begin with.

That's why the fallacy of necessity is so prevalent among statists.

Doubling down on the fallacy of necessity.

The fallacy of necessity, or modal scope fallacy, goes something like this:

Premise 1: Government is necessarily a group of men and women with a monopoly on violence.
Premise 2: The people calling themselves government use their monopoly on violence to monopolize the provision of roads, emergency response services, defense, and schools.
Conclusion: Roads, emergency response services, defense, and schools can't be provided without a monopoly on violence.

As you can see, each premise is true, but the conclusion is a non-sequitur. In reality, all of these things have been provided at some point or another by people who didn't have a monopoly on violence. Given that the non-sequitur can't be acknowledged without admitting to the falsehood of the conclusion, those with an aversion to acknowledging their own cognitive errors tend to defer to a second fallacy - the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy - by downplaying or ignoring all evidence of services provided voluntarily by private property owners. If pressed, they will insist that theft enriches society (fallacy of unseen costs), and call you a Utopian (argumentum ad hominem). If all else fails, they will defer to argumentum ad baculum.

Once you commit to a logical fallacy, other fallacies are sure to follow.

Keep the burden of proof on statists.

Stealing from people to pay for roads doesn't prove that people need to be stolen from to pay for roads. Replace "roads" with any value "x" and the same holds true. Statists are the ones making the claim that theft is necessary.

The burden of proof is on them.

Given that they're already deferring to a mountain of logical fallacies and the initiation of physical force, it's safe to say that they won't be able to back their claim with evidence. If the evidence existed, they'd just present it instead of deferring to logical fallacies and physical aggression.

About the Author

I'm Jared Howe! I'm a Voluntaryist hip hop artist and professional technical editor/writer with a passion for Austrian economics and universal ethics. You can catch my podcast every Friday on the Seeds of Liberty Podcast Network.