[throwaway1980]

From my perspective I was giving a counterexample to challenge the claim that all theft is unlawful.

You're saying that if legal money collection benefits society it is "tax", but if it does not benefit society it is "stealing"? Sure, if you split the words that denote legal money collection into these two forms, then tax is not theft. I simply define tax as legal money collection.

I'm not anti-tax, btw, but neither do I subscribe to the view that just because a government passes a particular money collection law that it's a just law.

[eksith]

It shouldn't be the law just because government passes, but I like to think our government isn't so broken that laws are passed with complete disregard to majority consensus.

But I don't think it's hair-splitting to call the collection of funds for the benefit of society (and actually used for societal projects) taxes and those collected to stuff the coffers of politicians and their cronies as stealing.

In other governments, where order is kept at the end of a barrel rather than with a vote, I imagine stealing takes place quite flagrantly, but then the rest of the wouldn't call that a "tax" at all (secretly, those citizens would also call that stealing).

[throwaway1980]

Well, ok, two things. First, it sounds like we basically agree that legal theft is possible. Second, even in the US there is corporate lobbying to influence government spending, which amounts to taxation without representation (i.e. theft), and moreover there is a revolving door between government and industry, particularly with the military which is where 50% of our tax money goes. At least, it is bad enough that Lawrence Lessig has moved on from fighting copyright concerns to fighting corruption in Washington.