If a gang member tells you he will severely hurt you unless you give him your money, and you give it to him without any fight, did he take it forcefully?

If the government tells you "give me your money or we will lock you up in a cage for years with people who will likely rape you", and you give it without any fight, did the government take it forcefully?

I would argue that even though force was not used, the threat of force is enough to say it was taken forcefully.

some people consider taxation forceful because it's involuntary.

Which I've always found hilarious since most forms of income make use of tax-paid services.

Which most people would not use if this service was optional and adevertised beforehand priced at the amount they pay in taxes.

You can't properly price the service into your economic activity if it's forced onto you.

> You can't properly price the service into your economic activity if it's forced onto you.

Couldn't agree more. The ONLY way to price AT ALL is through willful participation. With government services, this is not the case and that explains why they're often exorbitantly priced and suck at the same time; two components that are mutually exclusive in a laissez-faire environment.

Hence why ISPs are so reasonably priced and good quality. /sarcasm

I understand balking at governments paying for services the private sector can deliver on (though oftentimes that still requires a level of regulation to ensure that monopolies don't develop), but not when it comes to services that the private sector either can't, or at least -really really shouldn't- be handling. And there are a lot of those, even things that the private sector currently handles (such as pharmaceuticals, where without a monopoly there's no reason to invest in drug research, but as you move toward a monopoly you get price gauging a la Epipen, Shkreli, etc; taxes funding drug research without seeking to maximize shareholder profit seems a much better approach).