Tax resistance

Time was, tax resistance in the US and UK was something practised by mild-mannered but notoriously determined Quakers and their fellow-travellers, in protest at military expenditure. In this tradition, in March Roger Franklin of Stroud was sentenced to prison, being in contempt of a court order to pay his share of the cost of the Trident nuclear submarine.

"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible." That was Henry David Thoreau -- but quoted by frogfarm@yakko.cs.wmich.edu (who, after much digging, appears to be one Ian M. Schirado). It is doubtful whether Thoreau would recognise the uses to which his idea of civil disobedience are being put.

In the anarcho-capitalist view of cypherpunk Vincent Cate: "Many of us are Objectivists and Libertarians. We think the only thing the government should be doing is punishing those who initiate force or commit fraud. ... After some time, governments will be only taxing the things they should."

Cate is a moderate: there are many out there in the rugged-individualist US mode who believe there should be no government at all, with the weak going to the wall.