Tag: Legitimacy of the State

Short answer: Anything that violates the NAP.

Long answer: A crime is any aggressive action. For example, theft, assault, fraud. The NAP says that no one may initiate aggression against another; thus, any such action violates the NAP.

Note that this does not mean that all actions that avoid violating the NAP are morally correct. They aren’t. Many actions violate the Golden Rule, and are therefore morally improper, but that doesn’t mean that one can use violence in response to them, as that itself would be a NAP violation.

Of course it must also be noted that this is not the legal definition of a crime. All that means is that we do not live in anarchy. Under anarchy, that would be the definition of a crime, because anarchy does not authorize the violation of the NAP by anyone at any time. Using violence to prohibit actions that are not NAP violations is in itself a NAP violation, which cannot be considered legitimate in anarchy.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, because paying taxes is involuntary.

It should be obvious that anything that another person forces you to do cannot validate the legitimacy of the commands of that other person.

By definition, if you have not initiated aggression, any use of force against you must be violating the NAP, which means that it is a crime.

Thus, it is impossible for your forced cooperation with this person to signify that their commands are legitimate.

What it signifies is that you are choosing to avoid even worse penalties as a result of disobeying a command backed up by force.