It's really hard for me to comprehend how people imagine that this is a reasonable attitude to have. It strikes me as willfully ignorant, entitled, and delusional.
People who have this stance typically seem to understand "business transactions", i.e. two parties exchanging something that the other values, so I guess I'll try to keep it simple:
If you exist in a country with internet to post a comment on HN, you have taken something of value from the government of that country, and it's fair and reasonable to compensate them for that value by paying taxes. The cost of those services is never 0, and so the tax should never be 0.
People who have this stance typically understand something called voluntary exchange. The whole point of this stance is that you don't have a choice not to pay taxes and not use government services.
I don't have a dog in this debate, but it seems like people would gain from at least having a cursory understanding of the basic arguments and counter-arguments so they don't repeat the same fallacies over and over.
Did you or the companies you worked for or owned benefit from the US government providing things such as roads, education of you or the people you worked with, the government defending property rights, or ensuring that you had clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, non-poisonous food to eat and medicine to take? Or how about all the basic research that the US government funds that virtually every company and person in the US benefits from?
All of these have been funded with taxes, and odds are that you've benefited (directly or indirectly) from them. Did you feel you deserved these benefits? Would you feel entitled to them despite paying no taxes?
