I Am A Recovering Libertarian

Just as all political debates inevitably end with someone making a Hitler comparison, all debates with libertarians sooner or later involve the claim that taxation is theft [whistlinginthewind.org].

The problem with most libertarian arguments is that it assumes we have only rights but no responsibilities.

Libertarians make the mistake of thinking of people as isolated individuals isolated from the rest of the world. For some reason they have difficulty understanding that wealth is not created in isolation, it is as much a product of society as it is the individual. They act as though, I and I alone earned my wage and therefore it belongs to no one else. They want some entity to enforce their theory of ownership but they don't want the entity. In reality, we are hugely dependent on others and society. 

One may make the case that society is at best a Faustian contract but it is nonetheless a contract. In this light, taxes are not theft. They are a social contract. 

The United States are exactly that. A collection of states, voluntarily united. This point can not be overstated. Becoming a member of this society required a great deal of work. States had to apply to voluntarily become a member of this union. They did so because when people become wealthy and powerful they typically do not place nice so they wanted justice. They also were under constant attack from hostile forces (Indians, Mexicans, etc.) so they needed protection and they needed infrastructure to improve commerce. To make the case that they did not need the government to do these things is to ignore reality. If they could have accomplished these things by themselves they would have. Since they didn't the assumption is they were not able to. 

When you complain you don't want the government now that all the Indians have been killed off and the roads have been built and the judiciary is in place it doesn't make you morally superior; it makes you an ingrate.

The belief that it would be just great if we had no government assumes we have no examples of such a place when in reality we have many. Mogadishu Somalia (to take one example) has been without any form of government for years. It is rated one of the least safe places on the planet. 

So the next time you want to make the case of how much better we would be without government consider the literacy rate and life expectancy in Mogadishu.