Robbery vs Slavery

Proximo: Can any of them fight? I've got a match coming up.
Slave trader: Some are good for fighting, others for dying. You need both, I think.
--Gladiator

Are income taxes better thought of as acts of robbery or slavery? Robbery is the forceful taking of property for the benefit of someone else. Robbery is different from theft. A thief can take property without directly threatening an individual. For example, a thief could steal items from a home while the owners are away on vacation.

Robbery involves the use of force or threat of force in appropriating property. The robber may shoot the gun, point the gun, or convince the victim that shots are imminent in order to obtain the victim's property.

Robbing the same person multiple times, while certainly possible, becomes challenging because the victim learns to anticipate and defend against attack. As such, robbery has a 'one off' nature about it. The application of robbery on a particular individual tends to be singular rather than routine.

Slavery is the forceful taking of production for the benefit of someone else. Slavery requires that the slave works in a manner that produces output that the slave master can benefit from. In order for slavery to be profitable, slave masters must ensure that the slaves engage in activities that produce output deemed as valuable. This may or may not require the use of force on slaves to work in a certain manner. In some institutional designs where slaves prefer the work and the output produced, the force is applied instead in the confiscation of production--either partially or in total.

Slavery is rarely a 'one off' crime. Production is routinely confiscated. If the slave becomes more productive, then the amount taken is likely to rise as well.

To be sure, slavery could be viewed as a form of robbery. The master robs the slave of property, and does so on a regular basis. But because property taken from the slave is directly tied to production, slavery can be readily construed as a direct violation of individual liberty, as it prohibits individuals from pursuing their interests in an unencumbered manner.

Rather than a one off appropriation of property, slavery is routine confiscation of production and the liberty that accompanies it.

Because of their focus on the output of production, and because of the regular occurrence of confiscation, income taxes seem to have more in common with slavery than with robbery.