Anti-Climacus

UM, NO: this doesn't really work:

"1. On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs.
2. Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church.
3. Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who acts as bagman.
4. Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says.
5. Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.
If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft."

Why is it wrong? Consent. There is no direct analogy between 1. and 5. because the threat is not the same. To put 5. into 1. in the correct way: "An official agent of the government mails me a demand for money," except, as you will note, the demand of the government official is not the same as the demand of the person on the street because their penalties differ. There are only two options with the man on the street: do what he says or suffer immediate physical harm. There are three options with the government official: either you can comply, fail to comply and suffer a harm that is of entirely a different kind (you're unlikely to be killed for refusing to pay your taxes, even if you refuse to pay them a lot), or fail to comply and go someplace else that has laws you find to be more amenable to your situation. Everyone who is a citizen of a country makes an (implicit or explicit) agreement to abide by the laws that country passes, right or wrong. If you think there's no hope for change, you can always go somewhere else*.

*Hobbes and Locke both assert versions of this view