Jardine,
"Look the question is perfectly simple. How do you know, at any given point, whether a tax is beneficial or detrimental, even in your own terms?"
By comparing the effects of having and not having the tax. Which can be very complicated, especially if the comparison is detailed enough to include the effects of raising/cutting/abolishing other taxes to reach the equivalent revenue position. I know it's not what you want to hear, but simple questions often have complicated answers.

Secondly, nothing at mises.org proves anything non-trivial to my own standards. The entire Austrian School is based upon false assumptions and non sequiters in order to promote policies that favour the already rich over everyone else. But despite this I did have a look at what the page you linked to said about land value taxes... and found a stupid rant about how the landowner provides such a valuable service allocating its use. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the author that taxing the value of the land would not deter the owner from performing that service. And amazingly (considering his adoration of free markets) nor did it occur to him that the market itself could fulfil that function.

Anyway there's a big difference between referring someone to a site that you claim will answer their questions and linking to a site you summarise the conclusions of before anyone even starts asking questions. And when it turned out you weren't really interested in the answers anyway, your allegation of appeal to absent authority lost any remaining credibility.

The appropriateness or fairness of a tax depends on the context. But some taxation is always needed to give a currency value. Unlike rape, where the appropriate rate is zero and the state should never commit it under any circumstances (although the appropriate rate may be unachievable because cost and other competing rights limit the state's ability to prevent it).
(TBC)

Jardine (continued),
If you barged into a discussion on radio spectrum allocation with a purely ideologically driven claim that none should be allocated to anything, everyone else would quite rightly want to shut you down. Very few want to waste time on tedious arguments to try to convince you of something most of the population already accept. The same is true with taxation.

And when people do engage with you, you nearly always misrepresent their arguments. For example your strawman that "Anything the government spends it on is intrinsically beneficial" when the real argument is that governments can and do spend money on beneficial things, and would be able to spend more money on beneficial things if tax were higher.

Similarly you miss the point about democracy. In our current situation it's what's democratically electable, rather than what's economically advantageous, which sets the upper limit for our taxation.

And the strawman "The fact of the existence of States, intrinsically and automatically proves the appropriate and fair rate of tax" is perhaps the silliest of all. What it proves is that some taxation is necessary; it doesn't say anything about what the rate should be.

The limits of government power are set by the constitution and by democracy. Do you have a problem with that?

"But how can the right rate of tax be determined without answering this prior question of what they are taxing *for*?"
FINALLY A SENSIBLE QUESTION!

In terms of the overall tax burden, it can't. However even if we don't know what they are taxing for, we can still determine the relative merits of one tax over another. Which is were we were before you came in.
(TBC)

Jardine (continued),
"At no stage do they offer any reason for their belief that a "democratic" process would provide goods and services that satisfy the more urgent wants and needs of the populace, "
The democratic process is just to keep the states accountable to the people. But there are several reasons why state involvement can lead to better results. Including:
• Individuals' financial situation often means they can't afford the goods and services that satisfy their urgent needs, let alone their wants.
• Many individuals don't have a good enough credit rating to make long term investments.
• States can do what individuals are unable to do, even when it's insufficiently profitable for corporations.
• Often there are risks at an individual level that don't exist at the population level.
• There are some investments that make sense at the economic level, but not at the financial level because passing on the costs to the users would deter them from using it. Governments, because of their taxation ability, gain from that even when the private sector can't.

"And if they could and did, then obviously there would be no justification for the rule of law, since why should government power be restrained, if it just presumptively knows better in anything and everything?"
The presumption is entirely on your part. I'm well aware that not only is their knowledge imperfect but so is their implementation ability. And a third justification is that without the rule of law, corruption flourishes (as you'd see if you looked at China).

"And they never have any theory of the State that takes account of the *value* of the coercive means they advocate, in the question how market or government services satisfy the final ends they are supposed to satisfy. They advocate political means to economic ends, but without any theory to connect the political means to the economic ends they seek to achieve, compared to the alternative. A completely defective and illogical thought process."
Far more logical than your tactic of basing every opinion on the absurd conclusions of your fundamentally flawed theory.

(TBC)

Jardine (continued)

Most people acknowledge that economic theory, when based on facts, can be very useful but it doesn't explain everything. But a few such as yourself ignore the facts because you think your theory explains everything.

It's better for a theory to be incomplete than completely wrong.

In the final analysis, there are many things that are much much much much much more desirable than lack of taxation. Prosperity depends far more on having a highly skilled workforce, good infrastructure and low interest rates than it does on the tax burden being low.

"Even Aidan's squarking about 'anarchy':
1. doesn't answer in that case, why shouldn't government choose our friends and foods and sexual partners, which currently are chosen in a state of 'anarchy'?"
Anarchy and freedom are not the same thing. Living in fear of more powerful people tends to be far worse than being under government rule; the latter usually has some rules which limit its power.

Food safety regulations mean our foods aren't chosen in a state of anarchy at all. Likewise with sexual partners (e.g. we have age of consent laws).

"2. must admit that any government intervention more than is necessary to stop anarchy, is not justified, even in his own terms."
I admit no such thing!

I know life would be so much simpler if those whose arguments you're too brainwashed to comprehend could only believe the things you thought they could. But my comments about anarchy were in response to your question of "why have taxes at all". There is no logical reason for me to agree with any of your highly illogical claims.

Aidan

So in other words, you don't know whether or not a tax is beneficial or detrimental at a given point. It depends on a whole lot of variables, contingencies, and unknowns - which themselves go to subjective values - which you don't and cannot know.

"The entire Austrian school is upon false assumptions and non sequiters [sic] in order to promote policies that favour the rich over everyone else."

It's just that you can't identify any?

"It doesn't seem to have occurred to the author that taxing the value of the land would not deter the owner from performing the service."

But you yourself admit that it would so deter him if the rate were 100%. Therefore you admit that whether your statement is true depends on the tax rate.

And we have already established that you don't know whether or not the tax rate would have a beneficial or detrimental effect at any given rate, because the best you can do is say "it depends on the effects".

So you're arguing that the effect depends on the effects. In other words, you cannot defend land tax as conferring a benefit on the economy, because according to you, the effects go to squillions of unknowable, constantly changing, subjective values. You're proving my case for me.

"But some taxation is always needed to give a currency value."

Why? That's like saying bank robbery is always needed to give a currency value.

You keep trying to ignore that taxation is a compulsory exaction, not a voluntary donation. It's nonsense. Not even the government agrees with you.

Obviously if the people wanted it, then taxation would not be necessary. People would just send in a cheque to Consolidated Revenue for as much as they think the government deserves, and its revenue would be no less. It's complete nonsense.

It is not a straw man to say that you argue that the existence of states demonstrates the existence of an appropriate or fair rate of tax.

My copy function on this puter doesn't work, but your quote above starting "States exist. .... Least damaging combination." proves it.

The issue is WHETHER an appropriate or fair rate of tax exists. You argue from the factual premise THAT states exist and need taxes to fund their spending, to saying that some taxes are more damaging than others, to saying there is a need to establish the least damaging tax. At no stage do you establish
a) that an appropriate or fair rate of tax exists, or
b) what it is, or
c) how you know.

You simply assume it exists, and that the question is how to minimise the damage caused by taxation. Which only begs the question.

So it's not a straw man to say that you argue from the factual premise that states exist, to the value conclusion that an appropriate or fair rate of tax exists. That's exactly that you did.

The limits of government power are set by the constitution and democracy. Do you have any problem with that?"

Yes. If the people are not competent to know what goods or services they should purchase, how can they be competent to elect persons to decide for them, especially when those representatives are not bound by the law against misleading and deceptive conduct? If the people vote for an abuse or oppression of a minority, do you have any problem with that? And the limits of a legal monopoly of force and fraud, are to be decided by agents of that same monopoly.

And finally, you need to prove that that process would be more representative of the people, than the people are of themselves by their own voluntary and peaceable transactions.

You have made no attempt to come to terms with the real economic or political issues.