The government has no right to tax

The argument

In the Second Treatise of Government, John Locke presents the proposition that the power of governmental authority is derived from the consent of the governed. Extending the basic premise of this theory, L.K Samuels constructs the Ruler’s Paradox in In Defense of Chaos. Since the people are the possessors of all the rights, they behold the electoral power to vote upon their desired leaders and bequeath to them the consent to be governed by them. This consent entails some of the rights which they possess; to elucidate: no governmental rights can exist which the citizenry do not enjoy. Taxation is not a voluntary action. Failure to file for your taxes promises financial and potential legal repercussions that affect an individual’s reputation and comfort in society. L.K Samuels thus argues that taxation must be voluntary or else it breaches the consent of the social contract democracy. The governmental authority is derived from the rights that they share with citizens, and hence the crux of the argument appears when the people do not have the right to forcibly take someone’s money without consent.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that the Lockean framing is contested at its root: consent theorists from Locke onward hold that residing in and benefiting from a society constitutes tacit consent to its laws, including taxation, so the 'no right the citizen lacks' premise does not obviously bar taxing. They note the analogy to individual theft ignores that citizens collectively authorise taxation through representative institutions and receive public goods in return, making it a reciprocal arrangement rather than a unilateral taking. Many add that property rights themselves depend on the legal and enforcement infrastructure taxes fund, so there is no pre-tax entitlement being 'stolen.'

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] On the same social-contract tradition, residing in and benefiting from a society can constitute tacit consent to its laws including taxation, so citizens may grant the taxing power the argument says they cannot. [Rejecting P2] Individuals lack a right to seize others' money, but taxation is collectively authorised through representative institutions and returns public goods, so the analogy to unilateral theft does not hold.