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RE: IRS Tax Rules for Cryptocurrency in 2018
To the point of whether federal taxes are voluntary, actually legislated etc. etc. ... it doesn't make a difference. Even if there was a page in the lawbooks that said in huge red letters "Y'all needs a pay yo' taxes. That be the law." that doesn't make it any more legitimate.
Taxation is theft, pure and simple. And you don't quibble about whether getting robbed is "voluntary." Pay them or don't, but don't try to use clever word games to weasel out of paying your fair share of the extortion. These people want their money and they will literally murder you without remorse in order to get it.
In my libertarian political viewpoints, I have wandered far past "right and wrong" when it comes to government. In the Bible we learn that all governments are evil. This is why Jesus destroys world governments in Revelations when he returns. A symbolic depiction of God destroying man's flawed government systems is seen in Daniel chapter 2: "During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever. "
Despite all governments being evil due to the general corruption of mankind's behavior, God encourages us in the New Testament to pray for government officials. God even says taxation at gunpoint is something good for the present era:
"For government is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For government is God's servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong."
In other words, God uses evil government sometimes to accomplish the purpose of dispensing justice or keeping general order to save life. An example of this might be the government of Iran. According to the Bible (and I agree with what it is saying), the Iranian government is a "good" government. Good in the sense if a muslim goes rampaging on the streets of Iran killing people willy nilly for no reason that benefits the government, the government is going to arrest that person and jail or kill them. This is why government is good. Where governments failed due to US intervention like in Iraq, people do go around killing willy nilly. I'd rather live in Iran than Iraq in terms of personal safety and livelihood.
So this idealism libertarians and volunteerists have about government is misguided. They believe governments can be reformed, improved, ect. Any real reformation of a government has to come from a reformed heart, political idealism wont cut it because if people still engage in evil at the end of the day, that evil spills over into other areas, back into government.
A well designed government governed corruptly is worse than a poorly designed government governed virtuously. So at the end of the day, if I want a good government, it is more about having a reformed heart than it is about this or that idea. People who have a reformed heart don't mind so much when we are wronged. Jesus said love your enemies. People who do this are the solution. It solves the corruption that corrupts governments.
Libertarians and volunteerism often care very much they have been wronged, we go around making big points of it, holding it against others. But I have learned to forgive them and I have moved on.
I'm late to reply, but I appreciate the core of what you're saying here. In the end, the most powerful changes are the ones we make to ourselves. We are better off when we turn our utopianism inward. Give Caesar his due, because Caesar is surely not going away in this lifetime. And then spend the rest of the day according to the principles of a "reformed heart" (to borrow, and possibly abuse, your term.)
In other words: C'mon people let's be realistic. If you want to be effective, you've got to have an accurate estimation of the situation you're dealing with. Get a good read and proceed accordingly. Which means pay your taxes. You can't upend the system from inside a prison cell. Unless you're Nelson Mandela. And you're not Nelson Mandela.