Simple reason why I do not think taxation = theft

[ALawPoker]

Basically, intent matters to me. And I think it does for everyone. There's a reason most people see murder as worse than manslaughter.

Take two scenarios:

Scenario A is a person who murdered someone intentionally. It was a specific target and for whatever reason you know there is a ~100% chance he will never be a threat to society. Play along with my hypothetical.

Scenario B is manslaughter when someone made a mistake driving (or whatever).

Logistically, it seems these things are exactly the same. He killed someone in some freak occurrence and it will never happen again. Personally, I still think much more lowly of person A, and would agree with harsher punishment for him. Because the intent matters to me.

About person B, I might think "Jeez dude, be careful when you drive, that's horrible." But it's still entirely possible he is a decent person who just made a mistake or has poor judgment when he drives. With scenario A, I can be much more sure that this is a bad person. Someone who is capable of intentionally killing is someone I think more lowly of, even if person B poses slightly more of a threat to society.

Most people who support taxes don't, I don't think, see taxation as theft, even if you can argue why they intellectually should see it that way. So until they do see it that way, I think of them as more misguided than evil. So when you throw around the "theft" word, it's like charging them with murder when really it was just manslaughter. It's not a fair moral judgment.

Why does this matter to me? Because it's polarizing, unfair, and counter-intuitive to helping them see the light.

I say this not because I want to argue against libertarianism or because I disagree that objectively taxation is theft, but because I think we can make more progress if we work on our approach. Socialists are for the most part good people; their ideas of how things work are just different.