That little trick also works for things we believe in:

How to keep a State-Church Separation believer busy:

* Tell them the government should abolish all regulation which interferes with "freedom of religion"

* Then remind them that this would be an action taken by a government, and thus by definition the incorrect thing to do.

You believe in separation of church and state, right? I believe in separation of market and state. Before you post another childish remark, remember you can always make that comparison yourself to see if your remark has any weight.

Not really; the difference is that most people want only some types of government actions to be off-limits, and will list the things they want to forbid.

Other people start from a principle of "if a government did it, it was wrong". Which places all government actions off-limits.

> Other people start from a principle of "if a government did it, it was wrong". Which places all government actions off-limits.

Of course. Think of it this way:

- I don't have the right to take your money.

- My friends and I voting unanimously to take your money still doesn't give us the right to take your money.

- No matter how many friends I vote with, we as a group never have the right to take your money, or anyone else's.

- Then how did government get the right to take my money and yours?

You may say because it owns the land and if we don't like it we can leave. But think of it this way:

- I don't have the right to keep others from using unused land that even I am not using.

- And so on, same as above.

- Then how did government get the right to keep others from using unused land that even itself isn't using?

The problem here is that no one can grant another person or group with rights that they themselves don't possess.

It follows that the governemnt has no way to acquire this right, and so it does those things illegitimately (not authorized by any person or group of persons, since no person or group of persons has those rights to give up to the government). That's why anything a government does with tax money is wrong, because that revenue is ill-gotten.

That's why the excuse is usually "oh, there's a social contract"; this is a red herring. Even if the people had actually read and signed such a contract, they still don't possess those rights in order to be able to give them up to another party.

We allow ourselves to be taxed and to pay the government for land not by consent [1] but by threat of force, since if we disagree, we are fined, and if we don't pay we eventually go to jail.

[1] consent means voluntarily agreeing to do something. voluntarily means without coercion or threat of violence.

The problem with your argument is, of course, that you presume there is private ownership of property, but neglect to specify how that ownership originated.

Absent the threat of violent force against anyone who does not obey conventions with respect to ownership, there is no such thing as ownership. So in order to have even the concept of private property and "rights" thereto you must postulate some entity which recognizes those "rights" and will enact violence on your behalf against certain classes of others who would "violate" them.