Is your son a computer hacker? (2001)

Sure. But that's not what you're actually arguing for; the point you're making is instead that you are obliged to give your money to the government in the hopes that they will contribute to the maintenance of that society. If I or anyone else can and am/are willing to do it more efficiently than the government can or will, you would still demand it go through the government, for no more justification than the fig leaf of the will of the people, which is not a homogeneous thing in any case as you pointed out and therefore is not some sacred duty that only the government is morally authorized to perform. If a billionaire or anyone else can make their money work better for a society than the government can, they should be allowed to.

>Then this whole thing somehow devolved into somehow trying to justify tax evasion as a valid form of protest

Except it didn't? I have never made an argument either for tax evasion or protest in this thread. The closest I got was the Jefferson quote, which is in the context of an actually evil government. I'm making the moral argument for billionaire philanthropy. And yes, removing tax breaks for said philanthropy will reduce it. It may marginally increase tax revenue. And on the whole, the result of that will probably, in my opinion, be a bad thing. It will result in more suffering than allowing tax breaks for philanthropy. My understanding is that you accept that this is true, and are saying that even though it is the case, it is still morally superior for that wealth to go to less effective government projects than more effective philanthropy.

>I never said that philanthropy was wrong.

So when you said "That isn't a brave stance against injustice, it's trying to justify greed by masking it as virtuous, and that's immoral" what is immoral, exactly? Because reading that paragraph, the only act that seems to refer to is "philanthropy."

Also, you think I'm strawmanning you? You've claimed that I assume moral superiority for not paying taxes, that I'm advocating for purely extractive economic activity and tax evasion from billionaires, and that my entire point is about masking greed through virtuous language. If you have a point that's not just handwaving away inefficiencies in government as an unimpeachable divine will of the people made manifest, I have yet to hear it. Taxes are not a moral good. They are a strategy for asset reallocation. If they work well, fine. If they don't, we should not pretend that we have to pay them for any reason other than the threat of force. If billionaires can do better than the government can through philanthropy, great! Let them. If it seems to be working - and a large part of philanthropy seems to be working - then incentivize that behavior, socially through status or economically through tax exemptions.

There are things that tax is necessary for. Critical infrastructure, the unsexy parts of building and maintaining a society (roads, sewers, etc), legislative and executive matters, national defense. There are things that both public money and private money can be useful for - social welfare, education, research, etc. Often, the private money results in much better outcomes in fair trials; it is less bounded by realpolitik and is more agile in redeployment to more effective methods. Often, the tax money is much greater than what is actually necessary for the achieved purpose. The United States spends a roughly equal amount of its tax income on public healthcare as the UK does, and has nothing comparable to the NHS. When it tries to reduce spending, it does so not by adapting itself to the times, reinventing itself like any long-running institution should aim to do, but by accumulating another layer of cruft, becoming ever greater, ever less efficient. The system creaks under the weight of its debts, just as the VA offices creak under the weight of thousands of tons of paperwork, as the halls of power creak under the load of yet more stultifying regulation, presented only to entrench the powers that be. It creaks under the weight of politicians made fat over the wealth of the people, vying for power among the crumbling institutions that first generated that wealth, now dilapidated, hollowed out and filled again with sycophants and psychopaths.

Pay your taxes. But don't pretend that paying taxes is morally superior to just giving money to a good cause.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

He would never become a dirty hacker.