How to Recognize and Respond to “Taxation is Theft” and “Enforcing the Law is Violence” Arguments
You’ve heard it: “Taxation is theft.” Maybe from a libertarian uncle, maybe from a podcast, maybe in online debates. It sounds principled. Who likes being forced to pay for things they don’t support?
Here’s what’s actually happening: that phrase is a weapon. A corporate-funded weapon designed to eliminate the only tool (democratic government) capable of constraining concentrated wealth.
For fifty years, far-right rhetoric has been dismantling democratic capitalism. Every time someone says “taxation is theft,” they’re attacking the legitimacy of democratic collective action itself. When all collective action becomes “violence,” oligarchs operate without democratic accountability.
This essay defends democratic capitalism by exposing how these far-right arguments actually work. You’ll learn the core contradiction that makes libertarian philosophy self-defeating, six rhetorical techniques designed to make you accept oligarchy, five economic myths that make collective action seem impossible, and specific response templates for real conversations.
This defense matters because democratic capitalism (markets with democratic oversight, genuine competition with economic security, community control with federal resources) represents our best path to broad prosperity. As I detail in Opportunity Economics, we can use democratic collective action to make capitalism work for everyone.
But only if we recognize and counter the far-right attacks designed to make that impossible.
What’s at Stake: The Future of Democratic Capitalism
This isn’t academic philosophy. Far-right attacks on collective action legitimacy threaten the foundations of democratic capitalism itself.
Democracy requires collective decision-making. If every policy needs unanimous consent, democratic governance becomes impossible. Far-right philosophy doesn’t just oppose specific policies. It denies that pluralistic societies can legitimately make binding collective decisions.
Capitalism requires democratic oversight. Markets don’t naturally produce fair outcomes. They produce the outcomes they’re designed to produce. Genuine competition requires preventing monopolies, ensuring fair practices, and maintaining infrastructure. All of this requires collective action. Without democratic oversight, capitalism becomes what I’ve called technofeudalism in my essay on that topic: platform monopolies and financial oligarchs ruling economically fragile populations.
Pluralism requires collective provision of security. A diverse society where people can pursue different values requires everyone having access to basic economic foundations. Without collective healthcare, education, and security, pluralism becomes hollow. Only those born into wealth have genuine freedom to choose their path.
Far-right rhetoric enables this transformation by declaring democratic market regulation as “illegitimate violence” while corporate domination appears as “voluntary exchange.”
The choice is clear: democratic capitalism where markets serve everyone through democratic accountability, or technofeudalism where concentrated wealth operates without constraint.
This is what we’re defending.
What We’re Defending: Democratic Capitalism That Works
When I talk about “democratic capitalism,” I mean using properly designed democratic institutions to make markets serve broad prosperity. This is what Opportunity Economics provides: genuine competition (not monopolies), economic security enabling opportunity (not desperation forcing bad deals), community control with federal resources (not corporate extraction), and democratic oversight ensuring markets serve everyone (not just concentrated wealth).
Far-right libertarian rhetoric specifically attacks this vision.
“Taxation is theft” prevents the economic security that makes real opportunity possible.
“Regulation is violence” prevents the anti-monopoly enforcement that enables genuine competition.
“Government is coercion” prevents the democratic oversight that keeps markets serving people.
Understanding their attacks helps you defend the alternative: markets that actually work because democratic institutions maintain competition, prevent extraction, and ensure everyone has the foundation to participate.
This is what we’re fighting for. Let’s see how they’re attacking it.
The Core Vulnerability: They Need What They Call Illegitimate
Here’s the fatal flaw in far-right libertarian philosophy: it claims all coercion is wrong, but requires coercion to function.
Think about property rights. You own land. Someone trespasses. You call police who forcibly remove them. That’s coercion, using force against someone for using “your” land.
You sign a contract. Someone breaks it. Courts enforce compliance. That’s coercion, forcing someone to honor an agreement.
The framework needs enforcement while declaring all enforcement illegitimate.
When defenders claim “defensive force isn’t coercion,” watch what happens: Who decides what counts as legitimate property? Who determines contract violations? Who enforces these decisions?
Any answer requires exactly the collective coordination the framework calls violent aggression.
This contradiction isn’t a bug. It’s how the system works: declare democratic collective action illegitimate while requiring non-democratic enforcement of property and contracts that serve existing wealth.
Understanding this contradiction gives you immunity to every “taxation is theft” argument. They all rest on this foundation. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Far-right philosophy claims coercion is wrong but needs police to enforce property rights. The contradiction isn’t a bug. It’s how oligarchs prevent democratic accountability while maintaining their own power.
Anatomy of the Attack: Five Building Blocks
To defend democratic capitalism, you need to understand the philosophical structure underlying these arguments. These five building blocks all lead to the fatal contradiction I just showed you. Each one sounds reasonable in isolation but creates impossible contradictions when combined.
Building Block 1: You Only Have Obligations You Personally Choose
The claim: Democratic processes cannot create binding obligations. If you didn’t personally agree to a rule, it has no authority over you.
The problem: Did you consent to property rights? Traffic laws? Using dollars? No. You were born into society with these rules. Yet you benefit from all of them daily. The framework cannot explain how any social coordination happens without impossible unanimous agreement.
What this means for your life: Your neighbor refuses vaccination during a pandemic outbreak. Your employer removes safety equipment to cut costs. A factory upstream dumps chemicals into your drinking water. When someone claims you have no obligations you didn’t choose, they’re eliminating every rule that protects you from these harms. You lose every collective shield while concentrated wealth gains total freedom to exploit you.
The quick counter: “If only personally-chosen obligations count, how do we coordinate anything? Who builds highways if anyone can opt out?”
Building Block 2: Your Property Rights Exist Before Government
The claim: Property rights exist naturally, before any government. You own what you produce through your labor. Government taxation takes what’s rightfully yours.
The problem: How do you know what’s “yours” without a legal system to define and enforce property rights? If I claim this land is mine and you claim it’s yours, who decides? We need collective institutions (courts, police, property records) to make ownership work.
What this means for your life: You work 50 hours a week. Without government-enforced contracts, your employer doesn’t pay you. Without government-created currency, you can’t buy food. Without government-maintained courts, you can’t enforce deals. The income you earned exists only because government creates the system that makes earning possible. Far-right philosophy declares this system illegitimate while depending on it completely.
The quick counter: “Property rights require enforcement systems. Who enforces them in your system, and how do you fund that enforcement without collective resource pooling?”
Building Block 3: All Enforcement of Collective Decisions Is Violence
The claim: Any law that might eventually be enforced through physical force counts as violence. This makes democratic governance morally equivalent to assault.
The problem: Your property rights require enforcement. If someone trespasses, you’ll eventually call police who may use physical force. Your contracts require enforcement. Courts will eventually enforce compliance. If all enforcement is violence, then the far-right system requires violence too. They’ve defined the term so broadly that everything becomes violence, which makes the term meaningless.
What this means for your life: When they equate democratic taxation (with legal processes, appeals, graduated enforcement) with violent assault, they’re using emotional manipulation to make you reject the only tool capable of constraining concentrated private power. You’re supposed to feel like a victim when you’re actually being robbed of your political power.
The quick counter: “You’re using ‘violence’ to mean any enforcement, then treating it as morally equivalent to assault. Those are fundamentally different things.”
Building Block 4: Markets Work Without Collective Rules
The claim: Markets emerge naturally from voluntary exchange, requiring no institutional framework or collective coordination.
The problem: Markets need someone to define what can be owned (intellectual property laws), enforce contracts when people break promises (courts), prevent fraud (consumer protection), maintain infrastructure (roads, utilities), and create standards so products work together (electrical outlets, building codes). Markets don’t emerge from the wilderness. They’re human-designed systems requiring extensive collective coordination.
What this means for your life: The “free market” you’re told to worship is actually a carefully designed system that currently serves concentrated wealth. Understanding that markets are designed means we can redesign them to serve everyone through democratic collective action. The question isn’t whether markets should exist, but who they should serve.
The quick counter: “Markets require property rights, contract enforcement, fraud prevention, infrastructure, and standards. All of these require collective coordination.”
Building Block 5: Economic Transactions Are Always Voluntary
The claim: If no one initiates physical force, transactions are voluntary. Economic desperation doesn’t count as coercion.
The problem: “Work or starve” isn’t meaningfully voluntary. When you need healthcare, housing, and food to survive, market transactions involve structural coercion. Economic power constrains choices just as surely as political power.
What this means for your life: You’re diabetic. Insulin costs $300 per month to buy, $10 to produce. You pay or you die. Is this voluntary? You need a job. The only employer in your town pays poverty wages with dangerous conditions. You accept or your children go hungry. Is this voluntary? Far-right philosophy calls this freedom while declaring democratic minimum wage laws “violent coercion.” They’ve got it exactly backward.
The quick counter: “When someone needs insulin to survive and you charge 30 times the production cost, that’s not a voluntary transaction. That’s exploiting desperation for profit.”
When far-right activists say you have no obligations you didn’t personally choose, they’re eliminating every rule protecting you from corporate harm. Workplace safety, pollution control, infectious disease prevention all become “illegitimate violence.”
Who Funds These Arguments
These aren’t emerging from philosophical truth-seeking. They’re part of a deliberate corporate-funded project.
Starting in the 1940s, groups like the American Liberty League (funded by the DuPont family and major corporations) and Mont Pelerin Society (founded by Friedrich Hayek in 1947) promoted free-market ideology. The real transformation came through systematic corporate funding of university economics positions.
Corporations began funding endowed chairs costing $1-5 million each, giving donors significant influence over hiring and research priorities. Over decades, this shifted economics faculties toward market-friendly approaches that minimize collective action. The Koch network alone has spent over $1.3 billion on academic programs and advocacy since 2000.
Far-right libertarian arguments represent the extreme version: mainstream economics claims government might be inefficient; far-right philosophy declares it inherently violent.
This matters because it reveals these arguments aren’t scientific discoveries. They’re deliberate products designed to prevent democratic societies from constraining concentrated wealth. As I document in Economics is not a Science, what presents as economic wisdom often functions as corporate-funded ideology.
Now that you know these arguments are corporate-funded, let me show you the specific rhetorical weapons they use.
Far-right libertarian arguments aren’t philosophy. They’re a multi-billion dollar corporate project to prevent democratic accountability. Every time you accept “taxation is theft,” oligarchs win.
Six Rhetorical Weapons: How the Attack Works
Once you recognize these six techniques, far-right arguments become transparent. You’ll start seeing them everywhere. This is your decoder ring.
Weapon 1: Definitional Manipulation (The Core Trick)
Watch how terms get redefined.
“Violence” normally means direct physical harm intentionally initiated against someone. In far-right usage, it means any enforcement mechanism behind laws, including legal processes and democratic collective decisions.
By switching between these definitions, the argument performs sleight of hand. The moral weight and emotional response come from the first definition (assault, battery, initiated harm). But the speaker applies it to the second definition (taxation, democratic governance, enforcement of collectively-decided rules).
This is the equivocation fallacy. Use one definition to generate emotional response, then apply it to a completely different situation.
The same trick works with “coercion” (redefined from “forced against your will with threats” to “any collective decision I disagree with”), “aggression” (redefined from “initiating harm” to “enforcing democratically-enacted laws”), and “innocent people” (redefined from “haven’t harmed anyone” to “anyone who disagrees with the law”).
Watch the trick: “Violence” means assault (emotional weight), then gets applied to democratic taxation (different situation). This equivocation fallacy is how “taxation is theft” gets its power. Your brain responds to assault while they’re talking about legal processes with appeals.
Weapon 2: Moral Loading
Notice the language choices.
For government: violence, coercion, aggression, force, punish, take, deprive, theft
For their position: voluntary, peaceful, freedom, choice, tolerance, kindness, legitimate
This isn’t neutral description. It’s loading the deck. Taxation becomes “violence against innocent people.” Enforcement becomes “punishment.” Democratic decisions become “aggression.”
Meanwhile, their preferred system is “voluntary cooperation” and “peaceful interaction,” even though it also requires enforcement of property rights, contracts, and defense.
The emotional valence does the arguing. If you accept the terminology, you’ve already lost.
Weapon 3: False Equivalence
The arguments equate taxation with assault, regulation with violence, being outvoted with being victimized, and contributing to collective needs with being robbed.
These aren’t equivalent. Democratic taxation with legal processes, graduated enforcement, and appeals is fundamentally different from someone initiating physical harm against you. By treating them as the same, the argument makes democratic governance sound like criminal assault.
Weapon 4: Cherry-Picking Enforcement Extremes
“What happens if you refuse to pay taxes?”
The answer jumps immediately to property seizure, imprisonment, or force. This ignores warning notices, fines and penalties, payment plans, liens, court proceedings, appeals, and years of process.
The slippery slope presents the final extreme outcome as the immediate consequence, when reality involves extensive graduated responses and legal protections.
“What if you refuse to pay taxes?” They jump straight to imprisonment, ignoring warning notices, fines, payment plans, liens, court proceedings, appeals, and years of process. This slippery slope presents final extremes as immediate consequences.
Weapon 5: Superficial Agreement Trap
“We both see the problems. We both want people to be happy, healthy, prosperous, and free. We just disagree on methods.”
This sounds reasonable but it’s a trap. The “method” isn’t a neutral tool choice. It’s a philosophical commitment that determines what’s possible. If your method cannot solve collective action problems, cannot provide public goods, and cannot address large-scale coordination challenges, you’re not offering a different route to the same destination. You’re saying we shouldn’t try to reach the destination at all.
Weapon 6: The Conversion Story
Far-right arguments often include anecdotes of educated people (PhDs, professors) who “never thought of it this way” before having an epiphany. These stories create unprovable claims, position the speaker as enlightened teacher, suggest opponents simply haven’t considered these ideas, and provide social proof.
The reality: Political philosophers have debated these exact questions for centuries. Social contract theory, collective action problems, democratic legitimacy, and the relationship between individual rights and collective obligations are foundational topics in political philosophy. These aren’t new insights. They’re old arguments repackaged.
The Economic Myths Enabling the Attack
Far-right rejection of collective action gains credibility from widespread economic myths. Understanding and debunking these myths is essential for defending democratic capitalism.
The Foundational Confusion: Hard Money vs. Soft Money Thinking
Most Americans still think about money using pre-1971 gold standard logic even though we’ve operated under a completely different system for over fifty years.
As I detail in Why Monetary Systems Matter, this “hard money thinking” versus “soft money reality” distinction is crucial for understanding both how far-right arguments gain traction and why they’re fundamentally wrong about economic constraints.
Hard money thinking (gold standard logic): Money is a scarce commodity that must be “backed” by something tangible. Government must acquire money through taxes or borrowing before spending. Creating money causes automatic inflation. Government debt is dangerous and must be paid back. Federal budgets work like household budgets.
Soft money reality (fiat currency since 1971): Money is created by government spending, destroyed by taxation. Government creates money when it spends, doesn’t need to “find” it first. Inflation comes from resource constraints, not money creation. Government debt is simply dollars created but not yet taxed back. Federal government is currency issuer, not currency user like households.
This distinction matters enormously. Far-right arguments exploit hard money misconceptions to make democratic collective action appear economically impossible. When people believe government must “find money” before spending, programs benefiting working people seem unaffordable while corporate subsidies somehow never face the same scrutiny.
Understanding that we’ve operated under soft money reality since 1971 reveals that most constraints we accept are artificial. The real constraints are workers, materials, and organizational capacity, not government “running out of money.”
This foundational confusion enables far-right arguments to sound plausible even when they’re completely wrong about how our monetary system actually operates.
Since 1971, government creates money when it spends. It doesn’t need to “find” it first. Far-right “we can’t afford it” arguments depend on you not knowing this.
Five Economic Myths Exploited by Far-Right Rhetoric
Myth 1: “Government Budgets Work Like Household Budgets”
The myth claims government must collect taxes before it can spend, just like households must earn money before spending.
The reality: Since 1971, the U.S. has operated on a fiat currency system. The federal government is the currency issuer. It creates dollars through spending. You and I are currency users. We must obtain dollars before spending them. The operational reality is that government spends money into existence first, then taxes it back.
How far-right arguments exploit this: By accepting household budget logic, people believe government programs require “finding money” through taxes or borrowing. This makes collective action appear unaffordable, supporting far-right claims that such programs are impossible to fund legitimately.
The truth: The real constraints are actual resources (workers, materials, organizational capacity), not money. When far-right activists claim government programs are “unaffordable,” they’re perpetuating hard money myths that make collective action seem impossible when it’s actually limited only by our real productive capacity.
Myth 2: “Money Creation Causes Inflation and Economic Collapse”
The myth claims creating money automatically causes inflation, so sound policy requires hard money constraints.
The reality: This hard money misconception confuses money creation with resource constraints. Japan created money for decades with minimal inflation. Massive U.S. money creation after 2008 didn’t cause hyperinflation. Countries imposing austerity based on hard money thinking saw deflation and economic collapse.
Inflation happens when demand exceeds productive capacity. If 100 people want cars but you can only produce 80, prices rise. But if you train more workers, build better factories, and improve supply chains to produce 120 cars, prices stabilize.
How far-right arguments exploit this: Fear of inflation from money creation makes government spending appear dangerous, supporting claims that collective provision of economic security will cause economic collapse.
The truth: Inflation comes from resource constraints, not money creation. The 2021-2022 inflation episode came from semiconductor shortages, port congestion, energy price spikes, and corporate pricing power, not government spending. Opportunity Economics expands productive capacity through job guarantee programs, infrastructure development, and community wealth building.
Myth 3: “Taxation Takes ‘Your’ Money”
The myth claims you earned your income through your labor and talent, so taxation takes what’s rightfully yours.
The reality: Your pre-tax income isn’t “yours” in some state of nature. Income distribution is determined by tax policy, labor law, market structure, and collective decisions about resource allocation. Property rights are created and enforced by government. Your income reflects a particular set of policy choices about how markets are structured and resources are distributed.
How far-right arguments exploit this: Framing taxation as “taking your property” begs the question of what constitutes “your property” in the first place. It makes taxation appear as theft rather than as democratic decisions about resource allocation.
The truth: Your tax dollars don’t fund federal programs. The federal government creates money for spending first, then uses taxes to manage inflation and resource allocation. Federal taxation serves to create demand for the currency and remove excess money from circulation when necessary, not to “fund” spending.
Myth 4: “Markets Are Natural, Government Is Artificial”
The myth claims markets emerge naturally from voluntary exchange, so government interferes with this natural order.
The reality: Markets are human-designed institutions requiring extensive legal infrastructure. As I detail in Your Mainstream Economics Decoder Ring, this is one of mainstream economics’ most damaging myths. Property rights, contract enforcement, dispute resolution, standards, and regulations are all government functions that make markets possible. There is no “natural” market separate from government.
How far-right arguments exploit this: Treating markets as natural makes government appear as artificial interference rather than as the institutional framework that enables markets to function.
The truth: The question isn’t whether government shapes markets, but how and for whose benefit. Far-right arguments against government intervention actually serve concentrated wealth by preventing democratic oversight of market structure.
Myth 5: “Private Charity Can Solve Collective Problems”
The myth claims voluntary charity is morally superior to government programs and can address social needs.
The reality: Private charity faces the free rider problem. If helping flood victims is voluntary, rational individuals wait for others to contribute while enjoying the benefits. Result: systematic underprovision. Historical evidence is clear. Before Social Security, elderly poverty was endemic. Before public health systems, epidemics killed millions. Before public education, most children received no schooling.
How far-right arguments exploit this: By claiming voluntary charity can replace government programs, far-right activists make collective action appear unnecessary.
The truth: Voluntary charity works for some local needs. It cannot replace systematic collective action for infrastructure, disease control, basic research, environmental protection, or national defense. The scale and coordination required exceed what voluntary action can provide.
Denmark has 30% higher business formation than the U.S. because their safety net enables risk-taking. But far-right arguments prevent Americans from building this by calling economic security “violent coercion.”
What Happens When They Win: From Democratic Capitalism to Technofeudalism
Understanding the connection between far-right libertarian philosophy and technofeudalism is crucial for defending democratic capitalism.
Technofeudalism is the system where platform monopolies and financial oligarchs rule over economically fragile populations. It’s not a free market. It’s a system where concentrated wealth sets rules that extract value from working people while preventing democratic accountability.
Far-right libertarian philosophy enables this transformation in three ways.
It prevents economic security programs. Economic security is political power. When people have healthcare, education, housing stability, and baseline income guaranteed, they can reject exploitative deals and organize for better conditions. As I explain in Opportunity Economics, economic security creates political independence.
Far-right philosophy prevents this by declaring ALL collective provision of economic security as “violence against innocent people.” Job guarantees become coercion. Universal healthcare becomes theft. The result: economic insecurity that makes people politically exploitable.
Denmark has 30% higher business formation than the U.S. precisely because their safety net allows entrepreneurial risk-taking. But far-right arguments prevent Americans from building similar security by calling it violence.
It prevents market structure reform. Genuine competition requires preventing monopolies. Platform giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have created network effects that eliminate meaningful competition. Financial institutions have become “too big to fail,” privatizing gains while socializing losses.
Breaking up these concentrations and regulating finance requires democratic collective action. Far-right philosophy declares such intervention illegitimate regardless of how concentrated private power becomes.
The principle “competition cures all” only works when markets are actually competitive. Far-right arguments prevent the democratic oversight needed to maintain competition, guaranteeing that markets become dominated by concentrated wealth.
It prevents community economic development. As Opportunity Economics demonstrates, communities need federal resources to become genuinely competitive. Right now, local wealth-building is constrained by local economic capacity. But connecting community initiatives to federal resource flows (with local control over usage) could make them competitive alternatives to corporate extraction.
Far-right philosophy rejects this as “coercion,” preventing the federal capacity communities need to build real alternatives.
The pattern is clear. Far-right philosophy prevents every form of democratic accountability over private economic power. It declares illegitimate exactly those collective actions that could constrain concentrated wealth.
This isn’t an accident. As I document in Economics is not a Science, libertarian think tanks receive massive corporate funding not because wealthy donors believe in individual freedom, but because libertarian philosophy prevents the democratic collective action that could constrain their power.
Far-right arguments enable technofeudalism by eliminating democratic capacity to shape economic outcomes while making corporate domination appear as voluntary market outcomes.
The stakes: whether democratic capitalism survives or we complete the descent into technofeudalism.
Far-right philosophy prevents both economic security programs AND institutional reforms that could constrain wealth extraction. This is why it serves concentrated wealth perfectly. It eliminates democratic accountability while making corporate domination look like voluntary markets.
Your Defensive Toolkit: Protecting Democratic Capitalism in Conversation
You now understand the philosophy, rhetoric, and myths behind far-right attacks on democratic collective action. Here’s your defensive toolkit for real conversations.
These responses don’t just counter individual arguments. They defend the legitimacy of democratic capitalism itself. When someone says “taxation is theft,” you’re not just arguing about tax policy. You’re defending the principle that democratic societies can make collective decisions to shape market outcomes for broad prosperity.
The key defensive move: Don’t defend specific policies. Expose the philosophical assumptions that make their entire framework self-defeating, then redirect to what democratic capitalism actually enables.
When Someone Says “Taxation Is Theft”
Don’t say: “But we need taxes for roads and schools!”
Do say: “Taxation is how democratic societies coordinate resources for collective needs. Calling it theft assumes property rights exist before government, but property requires enforcement systems. Who enforces property rights in your system, and how do you solve the collective action problems that require coordination?”
Why this works: It exposes the foundational assumption and forces them to explain how their system actually functions.
When Someone Says “Government Programs Are Coercion”
Don’t say: “But government helps people!”
Do say: “All enforcement involves some element of force, including enforcing property rights and contracts. The question isn’t whether force exists, but whether it’s legitimate. Do you accept democratic legitimacy or only individual consent? If only individual consent, how do you coordinate collective action for things like infrastructure, defense, or public health?”
Why this works: It clarifies the real disagreement and shows how their position makes collective coordination impossible.
When Someone Says “If You Don’t Pay Taxes, Men With Guns Will Force You”
Don’t say: “That’s not how it works!”
Do say: “You’re describing what happens after years of refusal and legal process. This is like saying stop signs are violent because if you run enough of them while resisting arrest, police might use force. The question is whether the underlying obligation (traffic safety, collective provision of public goods) is legitimate, not whether enforcement eventually involves compulsion if you refuse legal processes.”
Why this works: It exposes the slippery slope fallacy and refocuses on legitimacy rather than enforcement mechanisms.
When Someone Says “Voluntary Charity Is Better”
Don’t say: “But charity isn’t enough!”
Do say: “Can voluntary charity build interstate highways? Control epidemics? Fund basic research with 50-year payoff horizons? If not, how do those things get done in your system? If they don’t happen at all, how does modern civilization function? And why should we accept a system that makes solving collective problems impossible?”
Why this works: It forces them to confront the practical impossibility of their framework.
When Someone Claims “We Can’t Afford Government Programs”
Don’t say: “Rich people should pay more!”
Do say: “As I explain in Why Monetary Systems Matter, the federal government creates money when it spends. Since 1971, we’ve operated on a fiat currency system where government is the currency issuer, not a currency user like households. The constraint isn’t money, but real resources: workers, materials, organizational capacity. Do we have enough doctors, nurses, and hospitals for universal healthcare? Yes. The question is organizing resources, not finding money.”
Why this works: It directly challenges the hard money myth and redirects to real resource constraints.
When Someone Uses Loaded Language
Don’t say: “Taxation isn’t really violence!”
Do say: “You’re redefining violence to include democratic enforcement, then treating it as morally equivalent to assault. But democratic taxation with legal processes, graduated penalties, and appeals is fundamentally different from initiating physical harm. Are you using ‘violence’ to mean any enforcement, or specifically initiated harm? Because those are very different, and conflating them is intellectually dishonest.”
Why this works: It exposes the equivocation fallacy and forces clear definitions.
When someone says “taxation is theft,” don’t defend taxation. Ask: “Who enforces property rights in your system, and how do you solve collective action problems that require coordination?” Force them to explain how their philosophy actually functions.
Successfully Defending Democratic Capitalism
You now have everything needed to defend democratic capitalism against far-right attacks.
The vulnerability in their attack: They need the coercion they call illegitimate (property enforcement, contract enforcement) while declaring all collective coercion invalid. This contradiction makes their entire framework self-defeating.
The six attack patterns: Definitional manipulation, moral loading, false equivalence, cherry-picking extremes, superficial agreement, and conversion stories. Once you recognize these, their arguments become transparent.
The economic myths they exploit: Hard money thinking, government budget constraints, and “we can’t afford it” rhetoric, all designed to make democratic collective action appear economically impossible when it’s actually limited only by real resources.
Your defensive arsenal: Response templates that expose assumptions, force them to explain how their system functions, and redirect to what democratic capitalism actually enables.
What you’re protecting: The principle that democratic societies can use collective action to shape market outcomes. Genuine competition through anti-monopoly enforcement. Economic security enabling real opportunity. Community control with federal resources. Democratic oversight ensuring markets serve everyone.
This defense matters because the alternative to democratic capitalism isn’t libertarian freedom. It’s technofeudal subjugation. When far-right rhetoric eliminates democratic accountability over markets, concentrated wealth operates without constraint. That’s not freedom. That’s oligarchy.
Democratic capitalism works when properly designed: competitive markets with democratic oversight, economic security enabling achievement, genuine opportunity through collective provision of foundations, and community control over development with federal resources.
As Opportunity Economics demonstrates, we can build this. But only if we successfully defend the legitimacy of democratic collective action against far-right attacks designed to make it impossible.
You now have the tools to mount that defense. Use them.
The future of democratic capitalism (markets serving everyone through democratic accountability) depends on people like you who can recognize extremist attacks and defend the principles that make broad prosperity possible.
Part 2 of this series examines how far-left positions create different constraints on democratic capitalism. Part 3 makes the positive case for public money as the tool enabling democratic capitalism to serve everyone.
But first: successfully defend democratic capitalism from far-right attacks designed to destroy it. That’s the foundation everything else builds on.
The antidote to “taxation is theft” isn’t defending every government program. It’s understanding that the argument depends on five false assumptions, six rhetorical tricks, and deliberate confusion about how money has worked since 1971. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.